After I was passed over for Lieutenant Commander the first time, my detailer offered me a LT CDR billet with the suggestion that I might survive the next selection board. Since I was married to Joan, a young LT jg with a hot career, it was only fair that her career take precedence over mine.  The Navy's policy of keeping married couples stationed in the same area meant that I would stay in the Norfolk-Portsmoth area, because Joan was assigned to a high priority teaching software billet at Guided Missile school in Dam Neck.

The billet I was offered was the Inspection Officer in the "mothball fleet", responsible for the decommissioned ships being held in reserve for possible recommissioning, for spare parts for commissioned sister ships, for sale to foreign military services, for transfer to cities to be made into Naval Museums, for example, like the Battleship Massachusetts in Fall River, as well as for target practice to be sunk as a reef. No warship can ever be converted for civilian use, so don't get you hopes up to buy one for conversion to a yacht.  It's considered an undignified end for something like that happening to a glorious warship, no matter how small.

When I got there we were supervising the inspection function of the Radium Removal Program.  During the Second World War, darken ship conditions required luminous dials in order for the crew to function.  Before the radioactivity hazard was understood, these glowing dials were painted with a mixture of Radium and phosphorus.  Every Navy asset had to be inspected for the presence of radioactivity so that the decontamination team could remove the instruments that contained radium or other radioactive materials.  The program was nearing it's end when I took over, so we had to deal with strange things in strange places.  For example, there was a half sunken hulk that was in a river and was used by Marines for training.  It just happened to be defended by wasps! The sentry conducted a strafing run on one of the Marine guides, stinging a couple of times in the process. Suffice it to say, the Marine was unfazed, and the sentry was back on the nest.

While I was at ISMF, the asbestos snafu hit the fan.  The problem with asbestos attained national attention. Sales and transfers were halted for a year while the Navy researched the problem of liability for all these asbestos laden ships. Normally the manufacturer of products are liable for the safety of their products, but that does not apply to warships and other large weaponry and other military asserts. These items would not exist if government didn't procure them, thus the governments inherit "manufacturer's liability."

Our inspection team and other departments all learned how to identify asbestos and count asbestos fibers to determine the risk level in these ships.  We developed OSHA warning and caution signs to identify the presence of loose and sealed asbestos in each and every compartment on all the ships. We spent part of that year sampling the air and settled dust in every compartment and placing the appropriate signs prominently on every entrance. Meanwhile the legal people were writing provisions requiring OSHA procedures be agreed to to add to contracts. Even I took these courses and demonstrate the ability to do what all our team had to do.

Now, 40 years later, the media is still loaded with asbestos related ads to deal with the cancers asbestos fibers can cause even 20-30 years after exposure.

"Mesothelioma is a rare cancer and very few treat it. 1/3 of all mesothelioma patients are veterans, and approximately 6,000 veterans afflicted with this asbestos-caused cancer died between 1999 and 2005 alone. The reason this cancer targets so many veterans is because of the prevalence of asbestos use in the military in the past."  (Mesothelioma guide)

I was quite happy to continue in the Navy until the next promotion board passed me over a second time. I got my commission by coming up through the ranks.  I had 7 years of enlisted time in an engineering specialty - steam propulsion and maintenance - including nuclear power, when I was selected for the Naval Enlisted Scientific Education Program (NESEP).  The program was a good source of career Naval officers, because, by the time one paid back for the schooling, one was already past the half way point toward minimum retirement.  The pay back was three for two.  A four year degree was paid back with a six year officer commitment.  But, there was a problem with how we NESEPs were treated.  The officer detailer tended to assign us to officer billets related to our enlisted experience.  In my case I got engineering and staff billets, missing out on critical operations billets.  NESEPs were given the same designation as unrestricted line officers 1100 - Naval Academy grads and Officer Candidate School grads, (ring knockers and 90 day wonders as each called the others). The promotion law requires a 65% selection factor.  100 candidates will be reviewed in strict seniority and 65 of them will be promoted from LT to LT Cdr. Because of our lack of balanced promotion, the NESEPs were being promoted at 25% while the Academy and OCS officers wire benefiting from a proportional higher promotion rate. It could have been much better if the NESEPs had had their own designation.  The lower promotion rate was used to kill the program.

Somebody passed over twice is then subject to the "up or out" policy and must be discharged on June 30 of the year of the second pass-over. However, the Reserve Officer law is slightly different.  It allow a person who accrues 18 years by June 30, to stay the remaining two years to minimum retirement.  The Navy Polity, in such a case with a Regular officer, is to require that the officer surrender his or her regular commission in the regular Navy and be given a reserve commission in the Reserve Navy. In my case, I joined on June 30, so I made the cut-off by one day.  It didn't take more than about six months to notice the change in attitude of the "regulars" toward "reserves" to manifest itself.  So, I went from insult to injury.  But I didn't let that faze me.

While there I took over consolidating activity to minimize the number of times the sealed ships had to be opened - so that inspections, getting parts, searching for parts, and general maintenance could be consolidated into the fewest number of times the sealed ships had to be opened.  I built databases and reports to combine the schedules of all departments.  The software would even print the boarding documents for any opening.  This was all done on a "prehistoric" Wang word processing machine with 16K of memory and 1 meg of hard disk.  The Parent command, Naval Sea Systems Command, awarded me a Navy Achievement Medal for this work.  After I was well into this work, I switched my college work to computer science, getting a MS in CS at Old Dominion University.

I worked right up to including July 1 until they came to drag me away from my desk and pipe me ashore - to the Retired Navy