One Hundred Years and Counting

We watched with bated breath as the ferry Adirondack approached the dock in Burlington, Vermont.  It was in the late morning of Wednesday, August 20, 2014, and Miss Patty and I had just driven across two states in order to sail aboard this great ship.  As the vessel eased gently into her berth, we noticed the name board that identified her as the Adirondack mounted on the pilothouse just under the large windows.  Right below that, another inscription gave the date, 1913.  These two simple signs told the world proudly but quietly that the Adirondack was over one hundred years old!  Very few ships have become centenarians, but the Adirondack was one of them.   Furthermore, unlike most of her contemporaries, she remained in revenue service, crossing Lake Champlain every day.   On this day, it would be our great privilege to sail with her.

We had crossed Lake Champlain with our four children on ferries previously.  We sailed aboard the Champlain on July 2, 2001, and aboard the Valcour on July 31, 2002.  These were magnificent voyages on a large and beautiful lake surrounded by pristine mountains.   The crossing from Burlington to Port Kent, New York, just south of Plattsburgh, took an hour.  The return voyage took about the same time.  For us, though, it always seemed too short.  The dark blue water rushing past the hull, the verdant mountains rising majestically on both sides of the lake, and the light blue sky laced with billowing white altocumulus clouds all beckoned us to stay with them and not return home.  Well, we needed to go home, but we also needed to come back.  And when the Adirondack reached her one hundredth year, we decided we must take our next voyage with her.

We boarded the Adirondack eagerly and got comfortable on the upper deck where the views would be best.   At the appointed time, and after taking on a full load of vehicles and passengers, the Adirondack set sail.  Easing gently away from her berth, the great ship headed north and out of the harbor sheltered by the Burlington Breakwater.  On passing the small lighthouse that marks the northern point of this jetty, the vessel accelerated and set a more northwestward trans-lake course for the New York shore.  A peaceful, quiet, and restful voyage followed.  For an hour we imbibed the natural and unspoiled beauty of Lake Champlain and the surrounding mountain ranges as the ship rode smoothly and gracefully through the calm blue water.  That it was the fresh water of an inland lake and not the salt water of the open ocean made no difference; the voyage was still, in Shakespearean terms, “a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.”[1]

With the leisure time that such a voyage affords, I thought of the long career of the Adirondack.  She had come to life as the South Jacksonville of the Jacksonville Ferry and Land Company in 1913, and she served on the Saint Johns River between downtown Jacksonville and South Jacksonville, Florida.  In 1921, after only eight years in this trade, the ferry line was replaced by a bridge, and the South Jacksonville was sold north to the Tocony-Palmyra Ferry Company in Philadelphia.  She then plied the Delaware River as the Mount Holly until 1927.  At that point, she was sold north again, to the 34^th Street Vehicular Ferry Company in New York.  With no change of name this time, she sailed on the East River between Long Island City and the foot of East 34^th Street in Manhattan.  This arrangement lasted until 1936 when the company failed.  Two years later, however, the Mount Holly was sold south to the expanding Chesapeake Bay Ferry Company and renamed the Governor Emerson C. Harrington II.  Under this new identity and with a newly rebuilt superstructure, she linked the communities of Claiborne and Romancoke on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  In the early 1940s the State of Maryland assumed the operation of the ferries from the private owner, and the Governor Harrington ran until shortly after the Chesapeake Bay Bridge was opened in 1952.[2]

In 39 years, our Adirondack had served five owners, sailed on four routes, and had twice been replaced by bridges.  In addition, her original coal-fired steam engine had been replaced by twin diesels.  But she was not finished yet, I thought, as she glided past Schuyler Island and slowed for her approach to the dock in Port Kent, New York.  Easing up to the wharf on a northerly heading, she came to rest gently at a small facility in the lee of a large promontory just to the south and almost adjacent to the Amtrak line that connects New York City and Montreal.  We remained on the upper deck as the westbound traffic disembarked and eastbound traffic came aboard.  This did not take long, and soon the Adirondack got underway again.

The return voyage to Vermont was just as lovely as the initial crossing to New York had been.  Again I contemplated the Adirondack’s long life and marveled that a ship could keep going so far beyond the usual expected lifespan of thirty to forty years.  She had gotten her new lease on life in 1954, two years after the Chesapeake Bay Bridge had taken away her work.  Purchased by the Lake Champlain Transportation Company, the Governor Emerson C. Harrington II was brought north from Maryland and renamed the Adirondack.  Following the long trek through the Hudson River and Champlain Canal, the Adirondack has remained on Lake Champlain for the last sixty years, making the seasonal crossings between Burlington and Port Kent every spring, summer, and fall.[3]  Job security at last!

Few ships, few things in general, and certainly few people live to be one hundred years old.  But even those who do reach the century mark know they won’t last forever, at least not in their earthly form.  While we often stand in awe of someone who has lived so long, we also recognize the 100^th birthday as something of a last hurrah.  For the end of necessity must come, and fairly soon.  Not even the grand old Adirondack can sail forever!  Her time shall come, as will ours.  It is inevitable.

In the long history of the world, even a life lasting one hundred years is a comparatively short time, a small window of opportunity that should be used wisely.  We are told many times and in many ways throughout the scriptures that one of the best uses of our time involves showing Christlike care and concern for others and helping them to feel the Lord’s love for them.  This thought calls to mind the famous remark of the great Quaker missionary Etienne de Grellet:

            I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or kindness I can

show to any human being; let me do it now.  Let me not defer or neglect it,

for I shall not pass this way again.[4]

Good advice to follow, no matter how long or short our lives.  Admittedly, this is not always easy, especially when it involves disagreeable people.  Annoying personalities can challenge the good intentions of even the most saintly.  But we must strive to overcome such petty differences.  Also, most of us will not be able to follow this counsel for one hundred years.  Our windows of opportunity to serve others will most likely not be as large as the Adirondack’s.  But there will be opportunities nonetheless. 

Carpe diem, then, as the ancient Romans commanded.  We must seize the day, for every day presents an opportunity to do good for and to show kindness to someone else.

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[1] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, III:i:62-63.

[2] Information from Lake Champlain Transportation Co., posted at www.ferries.com/assets/files/OurFleet.

The Adirondack’s history with photographs is located on pages 7 and 8 of a pdf file.

[3] Ibid.  See also Jack Shaum, “Former Romancoke-Claiborne Ferry still going strong at 100,”

at www.myeasternshoremd.com/news/queen_annes_county, posted May 16, 2013,

and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claiborne-Annapolis_Ferry_Company.

[4] Available at values.com/inspirationalquotes.

The Lady Commodore

In between voyages, the Bartlett usually moored in the basin of Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  During these layovers, oceanographic survey equipment was  installed and changed out, technicians reported aboard and were discharged, fuel and provisions were loaded, and repairs to machinery were made.  All routine operations.  Occasionally visitors came aboard, mostly in connection with the survey equipment and mechanical repairs.  On Thursday, October 18, 1984, however, the Commodore of the Fleet came to visit the ship.

Nowadays a Commodore is an unusual personage.  In the Navy, there were Commodores ranking above Captains and below Rear Admirals until the late 1890s, when the position was abolished.  In the Merchant Marine, a Commodore was the senior Captain in the company.  Mostly an honorific, the rank and title of Commodore recognized the long years of experience and extensive knowledge of ships and the sea held by the line’s longest-serving Master.  In some cases, merchant Commodores had some administrative duties ashore; more typically, however, this administrative work came under the jurisdiction of the Port Captain.  Most Commodores continued to go to sea.  When they retired and came ashore, they often wrote their memoirs.

The Commodores who reigned over our line in the 1980s were different.  They were commissioned naval officers holding the rank of Captain, not Commodore.  Also, they were not the senior shipmasters in the fleet; in fact, none of them even held Merchant Marine licenses of any level, let alone as Masters.  Simply put, they were administrators.  They were not real seamen but office personnel who sailed desks in the company offices in Bayonne, New Jersey.  And these offices, contained in a windowless building situated on the waterfront of New York Harbor, did not permit the Commodores to even peek outside and see the shipping.

In my eight years with the company, I think we had four or five Commodores in succession.  They never stayed long, but arrived and departed with express train regularity.  Until this one day aboard the Bartlett in Port Everglades, I never saw any of these Commodores, although aboard all the ships we routinely received communications from them.  They remained distant and ethereal figures who sent commendatory memos for work well done and felicitous greetings at Christmastime.

Most of the seamen preferred it this way, and for good reason.  The Commodores and many other high-ranking personnel were regarded not with reverence and respect but with suspicion and disdain.  Too many times aboard too many ships big shots of various descriptions  came on board in various ports for very dubious purposes.  They demanded lavish attention from busy crews, and their presence on board interfered with the ships’ routines and wasted much of the company’s time and money.  In short, they got in everyone’s way.  They had no useful work to do and they made nuisances of themselves.  Consequently, the seamen came to regard visiting big shots as nothing but trouble.  The more inquisitive-minded of the seamen wondered about the psychology that drove these big shots to behave the way they did.

Impromptu discussions in the chow hall or at the gangway sometimes focused on the abnormal psychosis of the big shot.  There were many questions but few answers.  Why does this guy act like this?  What’s he trying to prove?  Is he compensating for an overwhelming inferiority complex?  Is he an unwanted second son trying to outshine his older brother?  Is he an  ignorant person trying to sound more sophisticated than he really is?  Is his demonstrated contempt for the crew an act to conceal his own lack of self-esteem?  Whatever his problem is, we don’t need it here.  He should go home and get counseling!

One big shot and retiring Commodore especially rankled the crews of every ship in the fleet with a farewell message which he sent on his departure.  In this missive he discussed his upcoming retirement, and went so far as to brag that he had taken the exams for and had been given an original Master’s license by the Coast Guard!!  This meant that on the basis of going to sea in the Navy, the Coast Guard had permitted him to take the exams not for third mate or second mate or even chief mate, but to jump right to the top.  Whatever his military credentials may or may not have been, he had not built a career of sailing aboard civilian cargo ships.  This lack of experience in seaborne commerce, of which the Master’s license stood as the crowning achievement, struck the Masters and mates in the fleet as outrageous beyond belief, a slap in the face to all merchant seamen everywhere!  If this fellow could get a Master’s license without ever having been a merchant seaman, let alone working his way up through the licensing levels, then the Master’s license itself would become nothing but a meaningless piece of paper, a mere decoration.  But then, big shots always seemed to somehow get everything they wanted.

It was with the cynicism generated by negative experiences involving big shots that the crew of the Bartlett anticipated the arrival of the company’s first lady Commodore one bright and sunny October morning.

About 9:00am Commodore Elizabeth Wylie drove onto the pier in a nondescript rental car.  She parked the vehicle in a legal parking space, got out, and walked over to the ship and up the gangway.  She arrived alone, without an entourage.  She wore plain Navy khakis with only her rank insignia on the collar.  She did not wear battle stars, campaign ribbons, or gold braid.  The gangway watchman and I met her when she stepped aboard.  She greeted both of us cordially and introduced herself simply as Elizabeth Wylie without adding any titles.  She cheerfully showed me her company identification when I asked for it.  In fact, she remarked that of the five ships that she had visited thus far, the Bartlett was the only one to require identification, and she was happy to see this done.  I next notified Captain Giaccardo that the Commodore had arrived,   He came along a minute or so later, and the introductions continued.  The discussion that followed took place in normal conversational tones.  There was no shouting nor barking of orders nor unreasonable demands for lavish hospitality.  Neither were there any displays of self-importance, military pomposity, or personal aggrandizement.  On the contrary, the occasion was noteworthy for its simple civility.  After previous experiences aboard other ships, it seemed astonishingly benign.

After a few minutes of light conversation at the head of the gangway,  Captain Giaccardo  and Commodore Wylie set out on a tour of the Bartlett.  I returned to my own duties thinking that the day would not be so bad after all.

And it wasn’t.  The Commodore spent the next few hours touring the ship, meeting and talking with the crew, having lunch, and discussing business with the Captain and Chief Engineer.  I saw her again a few times, too.  She impressed me as being very interested in the ship and the oceanographic survey work that it did, and also as an exceptionally pleasant person.  After spending most of the day on board, she wished us all well and returned ashore as quietly as she had come aboard.  After her departure, a broadly smiling and very happy Captain Giaccardo told me more about her visit.

He, too, had not been looking forward to this state occasion.  A young man in his early thirties, Captain Giaccardo was serving his first stint as Master on the Bartlett, and quite naturally he did not want any trouble with big shots visiting from the Bayonne headquarters.  Well, he didn’t get any.  Captain Giaccardo described Commodore Wylie in glowing terms.  She was friendly and courteous and very gracious.  Obviously intelligent and well educated, she asked many good questions about the ship and its survey voyages, and then she listened attentively to the answers without interrupting or otherwise demonstrating impatience.  Somewhat surprisingly, she admitted to never having gone to sea—this was before the Navy became fully co-ed—and also to being new on the job as Commodore, having started only two and a half weeks ago, at the beginning of the month.  For these reasons, she stated her intention of visiting as much of the fleet as she could and learning as much as possible about all the ships and their operations.  She expressed a sincere admiration for the crews she had met thus far and for the work they did.  In this way, she made an outstanding first impression as a gracious guest and industrious administrator. 

Everyone on the ship who had met Commodore Wylie liked her and appreciated her polite and professional demeanor, her interest in the ship and its crew, and her demonstrated willingness to listen and learn.  While this behavior sounds like simple common courtesy, previous experiences had unfortunately shown it to be more the exception than the rule with visiting big shots.  But this one was different.  In Shakespearean terms, Commodore Wylie displayed neither “the insolence of office”[1] nor “the proud man’s contumely.”[2]  In shipboard terms, she did not act at all like a big shot!

The Bartlett remained in Port Everglades for another week and then sailed on Thursday, October 25.  She went on a three-weeks-long survey voyage in the southwest Atlantic, just outside the Caribbean basin.  I never saw Commodore Wylie again, but I did hope that she would do well in her new position as Commodore of the Fleet.  In retrospect, I see Commodore Wylie as following the scriptural admonition, “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up” (James 4:10).  She boarded the Bartlett humbly and without fanfare as a new employee striving to learn the ropes, and she returned ashore commanding the respect and admiration of the entire crew.

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[1] Hamlet, III:i:73.

[2] Op. Cit., III:i:71.

From the Sea to the Hinterland: The Destination and Homeward Bound

The Destination

Wednesday evening soon became Thursday morning.  After a few short hours of sleep, I walked the short distance to Miss Karen’s residence and we breakfasted together.  Then we set out for the campus.  Provo impressed me a well laid out medium size city.  With an orderly grid pattern to its streets, square blocks of a tenth of a mile, and broad sidewalks lining each block, it was an easy city for a pedestrian to negotiate.  The campus interrupted the grid pattern, but it was also well laid out and beautifully landscaped, too.  Miss Karen had a few errands to run, and by combining these with my tour of the university and the downtown area, we covered a lot of ground.  We started at the Carl F. Eyring Science Center, where she had done much of her school work, and then visited the Harold B. Lee Library and the campus bookstore.  Heading downtown, we stopped to examine the under-construction Provo City Center Temple, and then continued south to the railroad station.  Returning north to Miss Karen’s residence, we stopped briefly at Smith’s, the local grocery store, for provisions.  By then it was time to prepare for the graduation ceremony, which was scheduled to begin at 4:00pm.

The highlight of this walking tour took place in the Lee Library, and it was a very special family history moment.  Miss Karen led me to a section of the book stacks that contained scientific works, and there she showed me several shelves filled with the multi-volume series Proceedings, the annual collections of technical papers and committee reports published by the American Society for Testing Materials in Philadelphia.  Several of these volumes contained the engineering prose of Robert Burns, my grandfather and Miss Karen’s great-grandfather.  Perusing through the volumes for the appropriate years, we found such scholarly masterpieces as “The Impact Testing of Plastics,”[1] “Measuring the Plasticity of Molding Compounds,”[2] “Report of Committee D-20 on Plastics,”[3] and more.  A bit awestruck by this discovery, I felt like I should genuflect!

Then Miss Karen explained.  When she and James had both been students at BYU in 2008 and 2009, they had found these volumes and looked through them, knowing that they contained material written by their great-grandfather.  They did this because they remembered accompanying me on numerous expeditions to the Boston Public Library in Copley Square and to the Martin J. Lydon Library at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell when they were little.  I was researching my family history then, and part of the project involved locating my grandfather’s published works.  Miss Karen especially remembered coloring at the tables in the big reading room in Boston and feeding dimes into the photocopy machine in Lowell.  That was back in the good old days!  But this was a good day, too, and I wondered if my grandfather was watching us from a celestial vantage point as we perused his pages.

Across the plaza from the library, we visited the bookstore.  Not surprisingly, I found many of my favorite books from the Greek, Roman, and English literary traditions.  Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Shakespeare, Dickens, and many others lined the shelves in both their original languages and in translation.  My favorite discovery was an edition of Saint Augustine’s Confessions, said by many to be the greatest spiritual masterpiece in the entire history of Christianity, in both Latin and English, Latin on the left-hand pages and English on the right.  Oh, to be a career student and take a lifetime to “become acquainted with all good books!”[4]  Once again, I felt that I should genuflect!  Being more practical-minded than that, however, I indulged myself by purchasing two of David McCullough’s historical volumes, The Johnstown Flood and 1776, from the bargain table.

The main event of the day, of course, was the graduation ceremony.  I joined Ross and Ruth Ann Wheelwright, formerly of the Nashua 2^nd Ward, in the Marriot Center, while Miss Karen in cap and gown marched in the academic procession.  A very upbeat yet dignified ceremony then took place in which all the graduates were recognized by the university administration.  As a pleasant surprise, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the First Presidency of the Church came into the Marriot Center, sat with the assembled dignitaries in the front, and briefly addressed the graduates.  Afterwards, on the lawn outside, there was much conviviality with lots of picture-taking among friends.  It was a very felicitous occasion. 

The next main event took place the following morning, on Friday.  Each of the colleges of the university had scheduled an academic convocation in which the graduates would be called forward individually and publically recognized and presented with their degrees.  Miss Karen and I attended the convocation of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, which was held in the ballroom of the Wilkinson Student Center.  With parental feelings of great affection and admiration, I watched as my beloved Miss Karen Elizabeth stepped onto the stage and received her credentials from one of the college administrators.  A professional photographer recorded the event for posterity, and these portraits would later become important additions to our family archives.

Afterwards, the staff of the Eyring Science Center hosted a buffet luncheon for the science graduates and their families.  Miss Karen and I attended this together, and I had the pleasure of meeting some of her fellow students and chatting with one of her professors.  Also, as I had the previous day, I was able to see several of the classrooms, laboratories, and displays in the science building, and I found it quite impressive.  My favorite item was the Foucault Pendulum in the lobby, a working replica of the famous pendulum in Paris by which Dr. Leon Foucault had proved the rotation of the Earth.

In the afternoon, my guided tour of Brigham Young University continued.  Miss Karen showed me around the broadcasting building, where she had worked as a student employee.  Following that we visited the paleontology museum, viewed the athletic fields and the sports building, and finally spent an hour and more in the art museum.  While these were all very interesting, the art museum was especially so because of a special exhibit of Danish and German religious art.  Featuring the iconic works of Carl Bloch, Heinrich Hoffmann, and Franz Schwartz on loan from their European homes, this sublime and spiritual exhibit of extremely life-like and deeply thought-provoking paintings of scenes from the New Testament was very well attended.  We both liked it very much and found it to be both a great source of inspiration and an occasion for reflection.

It had been several years since I had last spent any significant time on a college campus, and I’ve missed the intellectual atmosphere.  It felt good to experience it again at BYU, in the library, the bookstore, the museums, the science building, the broadcasting facility, and the graduation ceremonies.  It also felt good to visit a university established on religious beliefs and moral values, one that recognized and developed human intelligence without glorifying it as our secular society often does.  How appropriate, then, that the BYU motto comes from the scriptures: “The glory of God is intelligence.”[5]   

Following a quiet dinner together in Miss Karen’s residence, we spoke with Miss Patty and James, and made plans for our last day together in Utah.

Following two beautiful days of blue sky and sunshine, it rained on Saturday.  Undeterred by the weather, Miss Karen and I set out on foot for breakfast at Kneader’s, where we dined with Cali Christensen, one of her former missionary colleagues.  Following breakfast I collected all my belongings and then we rode the bus to the Provo station and took the 10:00am train to Salt Lake City and points north.  We alighted in Farmington, three stops north of Salt Lake.  There Elder Chet Brooks and his family met us, and we all had lunch together at a new local restaurant called Habit.  We knew Elder Brooks from his mission in Nashua in the mid-1990s.  It was good to see him and his growing family again!  After lunch,  Miss Karen and I rode another train back to Salt Lake, where we had some sightseeing to do.

Like Provo, Salt Lake was also laid out in an orderly grid pattern and was very pedestrian-friendly.  It also impressed me as a very spiritual city.  Our first stop was at the Cathedral of the Madeleine.  Located a few minutes’ walk from Temple Square, this small but beautiful building is the seat of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City.  We toured the cathedral quietly, and we noticed that large portraits of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II were on display just in front of the altar in anticipation of their canonization by Pope Francis in Rome the next day.  A truly historic occasion.

Returning to Temple Square, Miss Karen and I visited Brigham Young’s residence, the Deseret Book shop at City Creek, the Assembly Hall,  the Tabernacle, the North Visitor Center, and the Conference Center.  I was particularly impressed with Brigham Young’s house, and I learned some important things about the man in addition to his well-known role as a religious leader.  He had a bare minimum of formal education, yet he became a highly skilled and accomplished furniture builder who, valuing education because of his lack of it, read the great English classics, and especially Shakespeare, in order to improve his mind and educate himself.  In his house we saw his books.  They were neatly lined up in a special cabinet with glass doors that he had built for them.  How fitting that now a major university is named after him. 

After finishing our sightseeing, Miss Karen and I walked a few blocks west and met Bishop Carl Belnap and his wife Carolyn, formerly of the Nashua 2^nd Ward.  Enjoying another pleasant reunion with old friends, we dined at Crown Burger and lingered over dinner before needing to head out in separate directions.  At the appointed time, the Belnaps drove us to the Salt Lake Central Station, where Miss Karen and I bade each other farewell.  She then boarded the 9:11pm train back to Provo.  Next, the Belnaps delivered me to the Salt Lake International Airport, from which point I would take an overnight flight to New York.

Homeward Bound

Our three days together in Utah had gone by much too quickly.  I thought this as I reviewed the week’s events while I waited to board the aircraft that would convey me home.  It was not all over yet, though. 

At 11:55pm I departed from Salt Lake City aboard a Delta Air Lines 757.  One of the more fortunate passengers, I had a window seat in coach on the port side.  I watched carefully as the aircraft taxied to the runway and took off in the mist and then ascended through the overcast and set a course for the East Coast.  Most of the other passengers went to sleep; I remained awake and attentive through most of the flight.  This was not hard to do, as it was vastly different from my night aboard the Lake Shore Limited.  There were no leg rests.  In fact, there was no leg room.  I had not been on an airplane in many years, and I was rather surprised at how tightly packed in everyone was.  The metaphorical sardine can description fit quite well!  To be fair, though, it was comfortable enough for four hours, and I did enjoy watching the world go by outside.

As the aircraft headed east across the Midwest, it passed to the south of a very large area of thunderstorms.  For hundreds of miles along the route I could see clusters of such storms with bright flashes of lightning.  The storms that were closest to the flight path generated some turbulence, which I did not enjoy, and as it became rougher the pilots directed the cabin attendants to discontinue the snack and beverage service.  After a couple of hours the sky calmed down, but the overcast continued with only two small breaks.  While many would call this bad weather, it nonetheless displayed beauty and majesty and formed part of “the beauty of the earth”[6] and “the beauty of the skies,”[7] and I was grateful for the opportunity to observe it.  Next, looking to the northeast, I began to see light emerging from over the horizon.  The Earth beneath me was rotating eastward to meet the sunrise.  It seemed a supernal sight, the light of the world coming into the world, and the natural world, at least, rushing to meet it.[8]

At 5:30am, about half an hour ahead of schedule, the aircraft emerged from the cloud cover as it passed over the city and then over the western end of Long Island Sound.  Descending now, it flew eastward over the North Shore of Long Island.  Looking down, I had a wonderful view of the Connecticut coast, the open sound, and the harbor of Oyster Bay where we had often brought the children when they were little.  Turning south, the aircraft crossed Long Island and went out over the open Atlantic, giving me a panoramic view of the Great South Bay, Captree, and Fire Island, places where the entire family had gone sailing, swimming, and picnicking for five generations.  Turning west over the Atlantic, the aircraft passed over the Ambrose-to-Nantucket commercial shipping lanes, through which my grandparents and I had sailed many times.  Still descending, it passed over the Ambrose pilot station.  Sandy Hook came into view in the west as the airplane now turned north.  Brooklyn appeared out my window as the plane turned northeastward on the last leg of its approach to the runway at JFK.  I remember when this place was called Idlewild, I thought.  That was over 50 years ago, when I was a small child myself.  Finally the pilots brought the aircraft down to a very firm landing on the runway and then a rapid deceleration with full reverse thrust of the twin jet engines.  Navy pilots, I thought, trained to land hard and stop fast on an aircraft carrier at sea.  As the plane taxied to the gate, I noticed the lights of four following aircraft that were making their approaches to the same runway.

After taking two and a half days to cross the continent from Boston to Utah, it felt a bit disconcerting to retrace nearly the same route in reverse in only four hours.  It reminded me of an overnight flight I had made from New York to Italy to join a ship many years ago.  That had just been too fast, a surreal nocturnal fantasy that disgorged me into another country on another continent with a different language and different money and a different culture that often looked askance at itinerant Americans.  At least this time the country, the continent, the language, and the money were the same.  As for the culture, well, I had just experienced some very sublime culture in Provo and Salt Lake.

From the airport I rode the trains to the Mineola station and walked home from there.  It was a peaceful and quiet Sunday morning.  The sun was by now shining brightly in a clear blue sky.  It both looked and felt like a day of rest, the perfect day for a family visit.

After a day and a half of visiting with my parents at Family Headquarters, I embarked on the 12:30pm train for Boston on Monday afternoon, April 28.  It was the 35^th anniversary of my receiving the Merchant Marine license as third mate.  So long ago, and so many tides have come and gone.  I gazed seaward as the train followed its route along the famous Shore Line through coastal Connecticut and Rhode Island, but for once did not think very much about the sea.  Instead, I thought about my transcontinental journey, about the prairies and the mountains, about Provo and Salt Lake City, and of course, about Miss Karen Elizabeth.  I had had a wonderful time with her, and I was already missing her very much.  But another wonderful time lay just ahead of me.  When the train reached Boston, I found Michael waiting for me on the platform in South Station.  With family members in Provo, New York, and now Boston, it was the perfect conclusion to an outstanding vacation!

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[1] In American Society for Testing Materials, Proceedings of the Forty-first Annual Meeting Held at Atlantic City, N.J. June 27-July 1, 1938, Volume 38, Part II, Philadelphia: American Society for Testing Materials, 1938, pp. 39-52.

[2] In American Society for Testing Materials, Proceedings of the Forty-third Annual Meeting Held at Atlantic City, N.J. June 24-28, 1940, Volume 40, Philadelphia: American Society for Testing Materials, 1940, pp. 1283-1288.

[3] In American Society for Testing Materials, Proceedings of the Forty-sixth Annual Meeting Held at Pittsburgh, Pa. June 28-

July 1, 1943, Volume 43, Philadelphia: American Society for Testing Materials, 1943, pp. 402-406.

[4] D&C 90:15.

[5] D&C 93:36.  This is one of my favorite quotations from the scriptures.  With all due respect to the original language of the Doctrine and Covenants, because of my religious background I often contemplate this verse in its Romanized version: Gloria Dei est intellegentia. 

[6] Folliott S. Pierpoint, “For the Beauty of the Earth,” in Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1985, p. 92.

[7] Ibid.

[8] See John 1:4-10.