Steve Brown

I served onboard the USS Parsons from December 1977 to December 1979. I was an ASROC Gunnersmate 3rd Class. I'd come to the ship direct from BEE and Gunnersmate School in Great Lakes, Ill. I remember we were sent to Subic Bay in the Philippines and waited there for almost a month for the ship to come and pick us up. The ship was on deployment, so several of us got to know the bar strip outside of the base pretty good before the ship showed up. After staying in the transit barracks for almost a month it was a bit of a let down to find my self being berthed in a temporary rack in the snipes compartment. My rack was the top rack with a huge steam pipe passing overhead, seemingly inches from my head. I kept thinking this pipe was going to explode or spring a leak while I was sleeping.

There was a big turn over of ship's crew in Subic in December of '77 and I ran into the 1st class Gunnersmate who was the LPO of the division as he was departing the ship. He said hi and told me that I was now the new LPO and good luck. I was new to the Navy and knew nothing of ships or the ASROC and I was in charge. I knew this was going to suck. But, I jumped in and I had lots of good hands to work with. We had a great Gunnersmate division and worked well together. Some of those guys I met on the Parsons I knew through out my Naval career. Guys like Mark Trusty, John Haggins and Larry Lewis. We spent lots of time together while in Japan. Today, I'm in touch with John and Larry via e-mail but I've lost touch with Mark after he retired from the Navy.

The two years I spent on the Parsons were great times. We spent a year in Yokosuka in dry dock while the ship went through a major repair. A bunch of us bought bicycles and rode all over Yokosuka together and saw some great sights. Spending that much time on shore duty in Japan, naturally we got to know several of the bar owners and one stands out in my mind and her name was Mickey. She owned a small bar near an alley not to far from the FRA (if memory serves me). She asked John and I to design and make a sign for her bar and we did. We spent several days there at the bar and made a great looking bar sign over the door and painted Mickey's Bar on the tinted glass doors that led into her bar. She paid us back in beer and sandwiches. A friend of hers asked us to re-do the wall paper on the stairwell that led up to her bar. We did it. This took lots of work and we were very proud of the results. Several years later while on other ships, everytime the ship pulled into Yokosuka, I'd check to see the condition of the wall paper and report it back to my old Parson's shipmates.

While aboard the Parsons, I saw some rough seas in Japan. It was the first time I saw guys walking on the bulkheads as the ship was tossed side to side. During one harrowing storm the 1st Lt was swept over the sides by a huge wave at night. We rescued him but it was a touch and go situation and he was lucky to survive. It was on another rough sea that I felt and heard the screw coming out of the water as the ship pitched fore and aft. I was on the Parsons when a Gunnersmate was found dead, shot with his own 45. He'd been an ASROC rover. We were ported in Hong Kong at the time. We buried him out to sea several days later after getting underway. Very strange time.

After transferring from the Parsons, I served duty on the USS Bagley (FF1069), USS Acadia (AD-42), USS England (CG-22) and a couple of stints at SIMA (Gunshop-San Diego) mixed between a couple of sea/shore rotations. I retired in 1993 after 22 years of active duty. I moved to Sierra Vista, Arizona and currently work as a parts manager of a Honda/Yamaha motorcycle shop.

I guess I have the most fond memories of my Navy career thinking of the times on the Parsons. It was my first ship. I saw lots of exotic lands and met lots of different people. I made some good life-long friends on board the Parsons and I always liked the idea of being a 'tin can sailor', something that was quickly disappearing as the new Navy encroached. We worked hard on the Parsons but we played hard too. There was a team work atmosphere on the Parsons that I never felt on the other ships I got stationed on.