TWO VERY SPECIAL MYC FLAGS
John Harrison and Club Captain Jack Fadden
Raise the Julie Harrison Flag at the Club Commissioning
for the 2006 Season
Thanks to the sentimentality of the late Club Captain Carl V. Magee (and Carl, bless him, had a strong sense of sentiment) as well as his interest in maintaining and establishing traditions, the national colors which fly at the annual Commissioning ceremony of the Manchester Yacht Club and at its Decommissioning each fall have a special meaning.
The American flag which flies in the spring was used at the burial service in 1989 for Julie B. Harrison, Lieutenant-Commander US Naval Reserve, wife of longtime MYC member John W. Harrison. The flag which flies at Decommissioning ceremony in the fall was used at the burial service for Gordon Abbott, Commander, US Naval Reserve, who died in 1973.
Julie Beaulieu Harrison was born in 1918 and grew up in Whitman, Massachusetts, graduating from Smith College with the Class of 1940 with a major in French. After college, just prior to WW II, she was engaged in clerical work in an office in Whitman, but with the war on in 1943, she joined the WAVES (Women Accepted for Emergency Volunteer Service) a year after the unit was established by Congress and the Department of the Navy. Her older brother was in the Army and a younger brother served with the US Coast Guard, retiring with the rank of Commander.
For orientation, as then a brand-new Ensign in the Navy Supply Corps, Julie was sent back to Northhampton and to Smith for orientation and thence to Radcliffe College in Cambridge for Supply Corps training. Upon graduation from Supply Corps School, she was assigned to the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Virginia, where she worked in parts procurement for major shipbuilding and repair projects. Among them were modernizing the guns aboard the French Battleship RICHELIEU. After her tour of duty at Portsmouth, she was transferred to the David Taylor Model Basin in Washington, DC as a Supply Officer for the Model Basin's activities, working on ship design for the Navy's Bureau of Ships. Its supply operations were understandably quite different from acquiring parts for battleships. It was at the Model Basin that she met her future husband, a Naval Officer and engineer. "We WAVES would lunch together in the cafeteria," recalls former WAVE Lieutenant Rosamund Betra friend of Julie's. "And John would often join us, In fact, he was one of the few male officers who seemed to enjoy our company."
John and Julie were married after the War in 1948. At the conclusion of her Navy Service (and she continued on active duty for a year after the war ended), Julie, then Lieutenant-Commander Beaulieu, was entitled to wear the WW II Victory Medal and the American Theater Ribbon. She also received a Special Citation from the Navy for Meritorious Service. It was signed personally by Harry S. Truman, President and, of course, Commander in Chief of US Armed Forces.
The Harrisons who had two daughters, Jean and Ann, lived first in Danvers, moving to Manchester in 1963. Active sailors, they cruised to Maine and South of the Cape as a family aboard their 24-foot sloop, GOSSAMER and later aboard John's present sloop, STRIDER, designed by Phil Rhodes. "Mother was an excellent helmsman," Jean recalls. They also chartered in the Bahamas and the Virgin Islands. At the MYC in 1986, the Harrisons were presented with the Henry E. Hall Award for exemplifying high standards for family cruising.
Gordon Abbott who died in 1973, was born in 1904 and commissioned a Lieutenant (j.g.), USNR, in 1939. He received early training at the Boston Navy Yard. The country could spare few ships to train Reserve Officers, and with his classmates, he was taught about the Navy aboard what were called "Eagle Boats," patrol craft used for coastal defense and anti-submarine warfare during World War I. With World War II fast approaching, and the submarine war in the Atlantic heating up, Abbott was called to active duty in 1940 and was assigned to USS ST. AUGUSTINE, a former steam yacht converted to a gunboat for the Navy.
As First Lieutenant, he ran the deck division. The ST. AUGUSTINE became well known because of a story later told by her skipper. She had been commissioned in a hurry to meet the critical needs of the country at the time, which meant that a few items had been overlooked in her conversion from pleasure craft to warship. One, the Captain discovered when lying in his bunk in the owner's cabin just after he had assumed command. Curious, he pushed a button nearby and a portion of a bulkhead in the cabin rolled back to reveal, to his astonishment, a bar completely stocked with the best liquor that money could buy! What he did next is not a part of the story, but it can be assumed that the contents of the heretofore undiscovered civilian luxury, was carefully removed and perhaps sent to an Officer's Club to supplement its supply of spirits.
After duty with ST. AUGUSTINE, Gordon Abbott was fortunate to be chosen for command of every other ship he was aboard during the war. The first was a 98-foot wood minesweeper built at Robinson's Shipyard in Ipswich, USS ACCENTOR, AMC - 2. ACCENTOR was assigned to coastal patrol off Portland, Maine, which was fast becoming a major port and fuel oil storage area for the Atlantic Fleet. ACCENTOR was then transferred to Argentia, Newfoundland, another major Naval Base where convoys were made up to supply England as a part of our Lend-Lease agreement. After two winters in Maine and Newfoundland, then Lieutenant Abbott was given command of YMS 122, a 122-foot mine sweeper, and sent back to Newfoundland. Following Abbott's promotion to Lieutenant Commander, he was transferred to Bremerton Navy Yard in Washington State to await command of USS DEFENSE, AM 317, a steel-hulled, 220-foot fleet minesweeper which was under construction at Bremerton. When DEFENSE was commissioned in 1943, Abbott was delighted to swap the cold northern Atlantic for the warmer (in every way!) Pacific. After training operations, he was just in time to take part in the Battle for Iwo Jima, sweeping close to shore so that cruisers and battlewagons could bombard Japanese gun emplacements before the Marines landed. Among the latter, unbeknownst to Abbott, was Lieutenant Dan Slade of Manchester, who, upon his safe return, became Editor and Publisher of the Manchester Cricket and CEO of the Cricket Press.
The next assignment for DEFENSE was to join the Picket Line north of the Invasion beaches at Okinawa to intercept kamikaze suicide planes as they swept down from airfields at Kyushu. With her were destroyers and other smaller ships whose duty was to shoot down enemy planes to protect troopships, carriers and larger warships which were bombarding the enemy ashore prior to the US landing at Okinawa.
During the next few days action was hot and heavy. Swarms of kamikazes attacked every US ship in sight. DEFENSE was hit by two Japanese suicide planes, neither of which exploded. She also shot down two others. Although a number of her own men were killed and wounded, Lieutenant-Commander Abbott, then also commander of MINEDIV 10, comprised of his own ship and five other sweepers, saw the disabled (and newly-built) destroyer USS LEUTZE (DD 481) which had been hit by a number of kamikazes. Her stern had been blown off, and she had many dead and wounded aboard. Without propellers, she had no steerage way and, dead in the water, could do little to maneuver to protect herself.
Despite the attacking Japanese, which were still buzzing about like killer bees, DEFENSE went to the rescue of LEUTZE, using her sweep wire to take the damaged ship in tow and move her out of danger far from the other vessels, which were still keeping up the fight. For his "expert seamanship, courage and determination throughout the action," Lieutenant-Commander Abbott was decorated with the Navy Cross, just after the Medal of Honor, the nation's second highest award for valor. It was his hope that that the ship would receive the Unit Commendation. She would have been the smallest surface craft in the Navy to do so, most of these awards going to aircraft carriers or submarines. But this was not to be. LEUTZE's rescue is recorded in the five-volume history of the US Navy in WW II written by Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison.
Gordon Abbott was Commodore of the MYC for two terms: from 1929 to 1930 and from 1940 to 1941. For many years after WW II, he owned and operated Manchester Marine Construction Company as well as other businesses including a concrete construction firm which built all of the bridges on the Northeast Expressway leading to then new Mystic River Bridge, a large flood control dam in Vermont as well as many other bridges throughout the Commonwealth. He died in 1973.
Through the years, Carl kept the two flags, using them only for ceremonial occasions and to preserve them, flying them for only a few hours. It's fitting that we remember Carl for creating this tradition and for his general devotion to the Club. And it is wholly appropriate, as we see these two flags flying, that we consider that they honor not only the memory of two special people to whom the MYC meant a great deal, but are also pay a tribute to every member of the Club (and there were many) who served his or her country during World War II.
Gordon Abbott, Jr.
To Home Port ________________________________
|
