Gerald Wethington

DOB: 8/30/1945
Service Dates: 6/4/63-2/27/72
Boats Served On:
USS Remora (SS-487)
USS Sargo (SSN-583)
USS Snook (SSN-592)

In The Beginning, USS Remora, 1964: After doing the boot camp thing throughout the summer of '63, my first set of orders sent me to Treasure Island for ET school. A student I was NOT. Bad attitude I guess. After crashing out of school at the 6 week period, I was temporarily assigned to the mess hall. Interesting what one can learn at the tender age of 17 working in a mess hall. Anyway, I digress; I had originally enlisted to go into the boomer program so I was stuck for 6 years and I just hadn't started off too well. I assumed I would catch some orders to Nam on a river boat or something since that was the big bugga-boo at the time. Unfortunately it did happen to a lot of people, but it didn't happen to me. I requested submarine duty because my attitude at the time was "What the heck, they gonna say no?" Well, wouldn't you know; it late November, early December I received orders to report to the USS Remora SS487 in Pearl Harbor in early January of '64. At the time I didn't really think too much about the fact I did NOT receive any orders to Submarine School, I was just very happy to be out of that mess hall and headed toward a climate much warmer than San Francisco Bay. When I arrived in Pearl Harbor and went through all the fun one gets to go through just to locate their new home, I finally located the boat at the pier at the sub base. 487 was pretty easy to find since she was pier-side and not tied outboard three or four rows. As I think back on it, I don't seem to remember names as much as characters. I recall the topside watch was a seaman and Big George (first class torpedoman) was chewing somebody's ass big time about how to tie off a bow-line or something. As much as I wanted to absorb so I could at least act cool, nothing was making much sense. I'm sure I had that proverbial 'deer in the headlights look' on my face. I guess the reason I remember Big George the most is because after being directed below decks and getting all the paperwork completed, my first task was changing into dungarees and reporting topside to Big George. He was having a conversation with Valpoon and I really didn't want to interupt either one of them. Together they probably weighed in about 500 lbs and I couldn't have been more than 155 lbs at the time. Well, you know I don't remember exactly what I wound up doing the rest of that day, or for that matter the next couple of weeks but I do know that I would do whatever it took to NOT work for either one of these guys if I could help it. I had to make a choice around the third or fourth week I was on board and I chose the engine room. Johnny Faldo, Mike Young and I got along pretty good and that helped me make my choice. Thus, I began my submarine duty as an Engineman and believe me, there are more stories to come after this short beginning.