112 Submarine Birthday Guam

About a Year ago, I was standing in line at Home Depot when a guy comes up behind me wearing a Submarine cap. I asked him if he use to be on boats and he said yes he was on submarines back in the late eighties. We exchanged phone numbers and that was the last we talked.

I got a call from him last May 21. He said that there was going to be a gathering of Sub Sailors at 6:00 Pm on Saturday, May 26 at the Sheraton Hotel. He had a ticket but could not make it and asked if I wanted his ticket. I said sure, and he gave me a number to call to confirm my name. I called and talked to a person who added my name to the list.

Saturday comes by and for the first time in 20 years, I actually thought about what I should wear, other than my normal shorts, t-shirt and Zories. This is Guam, I said to myself, how formal can it be? I found a pair of shorts from the middle of the pile that weren’t wrinkled to badly, and even though I had to look for over 20 minutes, I found a shirt that kinda went with my shorts. Now, here came the hard part, what pair of Zories should I wear? My blue ones or my brown ones? I toyed with the idea of wearing one of each, but Pauline said that I should, in fact, wear a real pair of shoes. This turned out to be the easiest decision of them all as I only have two pair of shoes. One pair of leather shoes that were given to me by a good friend in Hawaii, and the other was an old pair of sneakers. I decided on the sneakers, mainly because there was some kind of blue/green, fungus growing inside the leather shoes and I didn’t want to spend any time cleaning them. (Note to myself…After you email this, think about cleaning those leather shoes sometime in the near future) I actually thought about wearing a pair of socks, but here again I was running out of time and I really couldn’t remember were I last left them.

I drove over to the Sheraton hotel, looked at the time, 6:15, not too bad I said to myself, and went inside. I went up to this table and gave them my name; they had my name but no “name tag” but said I could go in anyways. The person I talked to on the phone was there, and he said that he would find me a place to sit. We walked in, and holy shit, there were about 500 people there, and it was formal! And by formal I mean, major formal, everybody was in full dress uniforms, and tuxedos. The guy walks me right to the front and seats me next to two Captains with there wives, and a Commander. The tables on either side of me were all full with Admirals.

It turns out that it was the 112th birthday of the Submarine service. The Commanding Officer of COMSUBGU 7 was up on the podium, gave a brief history of the Submarine Service, and then introduced the Captains of all the Boat that were in Guam. As he introduced them there were about 50-60 sailors from the boat and they would stand up and cheer. He then said that there was a seaman by the name of Torres who had just qualified on Submarines and they were going to present him with his Dolphins. He pinned the Dolphins on him and everybody clapped and cheered.

He then said that everyone who was qualified to wear the Submarine Warfare Dolphins to please stand up. Just about everybody there stood up. “Ok, if you got your Dolphins’ after 2005 please sit down.” About half of everybody standing sat down. “After 2000” and just about everybody sat down. “After 1995” and there was only about ten of us standing. “After 1990” Now there are only two of us. He looks at the other guy and ask when he got his Dolphins and he said “1987” He now turns to me and asked when I got mine? “1968” I said, and everybody starts clapping.

He then asks Torres and me to please come up front, as Torres is the newest Sub Sailor, and I was the oldest. When I got up front, I asked the Captain if I could have the microphone. He handed it down to me with a little hesitation…

I turned to the Admiral and said. “Hi, my name is Lenny Oberg and I got my Dolphins on the Pomodon SS486 in 1968. However, things are different now, when I got my Dolphins it was tradition that after the Captain pinned your Dolphins on, the crew would grab you, give you a hickey, and throw you over the side of the boat. I guess you don’t do that now a days. “Everybody goes crazy. “Had I known this was going to be ‘Formal’, I would have worn my clean shorts.” I then told them that when I was a kid the first book I ever bought for myself was a book about Submarines, and that in 1963, I was in ROTA Spain a Submarine came into port and I got a chance to go on board, it just happened to be the Nautilus SS571 the first atomic submarine.
Everybody stood up and cheered, I got the biggest standing ovation of the night, way bigger that all the admirals combined…

The Admiral then came up and asked that Torres and I help cut the official birthday cake. He whips out his ceremonial sword after two or three tries we manage to cut it with out loosing any fingers.


Anyways I had a great time and look forward to next year. I will still probably wear my shorts and sneakers but out of respect, I will get a new pair of white socks…Nah….


To see more pictures of the event go to this web site:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.377596402304096.89793.139973689399703&type=3