David Kroenlein
The military service stories our classmates told at last week’s Zoom session inspired me to remember a special Thanksgiving.
On board the USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (DD 850), Piraeus, Greece
In early November 1969, Commissaryman Second Class Petty Officer (CS2) Albert Klos asked me as the ship’s Supply Officer (including responsibility for food service among other areas of ship life), if our commissary specialists could create a special Thanksgiving experience for our crew during our deployment to the Mediterranean. We had an able-bodied, creative group who turned out first rate meals on a regular basis, at sea and in port, but his idea struck me as a stretch – a sit down dinner, served to crew members on the mess deck.
This is the galley we had, with two large ovens and a very large mixer not shown (I took this photo of part of the galley when I visited the ship many years later, after it had been preserved as a museum in Fall River, MA, but it is essentially what was in place in 1969). The Joey P was launched in 1945 and decommissioned in 1973.
In addition to CS2 Klos (from upstate NY), we had two other commissary petty officers, CS1 Fred Apodaca (a career sailor from the Southwest with almost 20 years of exemplary service) and CS2 Phillip D’Artre (an extraordinarily skilled baker from New England who worked miracles as the night baker in all kinds of weather at sea). They were proud, confident sailors. They convinced me we could pull it off; I trusted them. Our ship’s captain quickly approved the plan with strong encouragement. We set to work.
We only had a few weeks to come up with our menu and put in orders for supplies – all food (except some local fresh produce) was from the USN supply system delivered to us from USN vessels, sometimes requiring weeks of preorder. The menu was fairly straightforward, but the quantities were significant to serve more than 300 sailors on the ship. My best guess is that we had to obtain and prepare 20 whole turkeys, 150 pounds of potatoes (they wanted to use real potatoes, not the mix that was the normal fare), 75 pounds of stuffing, 16 gallons of gravy, 75 pounds of green beans, and ten #10 cans of pumpkin for pie. Plus coffee, tea, milk. Order placed and then wait for the next time alongside a supply ship to receive our orders.
The next task was to meet the challenge of preparing the meal to meet our petty officers’ standards, in a modest-sized galley, smaller than many private residential kitchens. We were fairly confident that we would not be at sea during the several days before Thanksgiving and during Thanksgiving, providing a better platform to start preparation several days in advance, alongside with regular meal preparation, receiving supplies, cleaning spaces, etc.
The biggest hurdle in my mind was changing the service for Thanksgiving from a steam line approach to a sit-down dinner. That wasn’t done in the operating Navy that I had experienced. Klos was insistent that this was more than about food, it was to give the sailors a sense of home while we were away from home. They planned a three-seating meal, which meant a lot of back and forth by six sailors bussing the food, with four working the kitchen, over the course of several hours.
Thanksgiving came, and the sailors arrived at their appointed time, all in dress blues, even the sailors who had unglamourous tasks as machinist mates and boiler tenders. An emotional time for me as I watched the commissary men fulfill their plans, with great appreciation from their crew mates.
It came together with cooperation, collaboration, good will and support from all levels, lessons that are learned in the life on a USN destroyer, especially one of the vintage of the JPK, Jr. These lessons carry forward today.
Below: David visits the Joey P with his granddaughter.
