Thanks, Chief, for remembering "Willie". Don't know if we ever called him that to his face, but the nickname carried a lot of notoriety with it, even if not total respect and awe. He was the personifcation of an Old Salt to us, and so full of Baloney or some other substance that it couldn't be measured.
Several of the ET's would do imitations of his monologues about the old days, usually starting with an arm around your shoulder and his face inches away from yours with something like: "Yes lad, back in '44 when I was at Gitmo with Admiral Nimitz, I said to him, I said, Chester, you know, here's what I think we oughta do..."
He smoked and affected cigars from which he would cultivate the damndest halitosis this side of an open sewer in Japan or the PI at morning muster, but he had merry smile and twinkle in his eye that I remember still with all of the above.
I heard he lost his wife not too long after I left. If this was true, did he remarry?
