Attached is the photo they gave all the crew members. They told us we were in the East River just after we left the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I believe this was Denebola's maiden voyage.

 

Things are starting to come back to me. I told you I came aboard the ship in the fall of '53. I think that's wrong because I just remembered they first sent the entire crew to "commissioning school" in Newport, RI and that must  have been the Nov-Dec time frame in '53. I recall we froze our butts off up there. That was a pretty rigorous course of training, lots of fire-fighting and running emergency pumps to bail out leaking ships.

So I must have come aboard in Jan. '54, which would make more sense.

 

Leon