Sailor Guy!

Dolph joined the Navy in 1952. He attended the Naval School of Music in Washington DC. Before he graduated, he was sent to the USS Yorktown (an aircraft carrier) for their band. As Dolph tells it..."They needed a trumpet player real bad, and I was real bad, so they sent me". Actually he was a very good trumpet player.

 The year before and the year after we were married, he played in a dance band. We spent many Friday and Saturday nights in (smokey, boozey) Elk's Clubs where the band was booked. We would then drive back to Lebanon in the middle of the night. I can remember trying to see the side of the road driving back across the mountains in the fog! The guys in the band kept asking us when we were going to get married and we would always tell them that we didn't have money for the license. We told them that one too many times and one night they took up a collection and gave me the money! We used it to buy the license. We got married on a Friday afternoon and went to the coast on our honeymoon. The band was playing in Florence that weekend and they couldn't find a trumpet player to replace Dolph. They told him that if he would play, they would pay for our motel room on Saturday night. We were so broke that we took their offer...we spent one  night of our three day honeymoon at the Elks Club. The band booked the "honeymoon suite" at the Paddock Motel in Yachats for us. The "honeymoon suite" consisted of a table, some chairs and a bed that was draped with some old curtains. It looked pretty good at night but lacked a lot in the light of day.

While Dolph was in the Navy he spent two years at sea off the coast of Korea and Japan. He was also stationed in Norfolk Virginia. I like this picture of him in the coolie hat and kimono.