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Life After Spinax: Gil Carlson After all this time, there has been a lot. I'll try to keep it short but informative. I left Spinax in the Spring of '64 and headed to Dam Neck prior to duty as Navigator USS Patrick Henry. After that, I got orders to Squadron 16 as Staff Asst. Ops/Comm. A couple of interesting things happened during that tour. I was Squadron duty officer when the USS Von Steuben SSBN-632 got tangled with a submerged tow cable between a tug and an old liberty ship. When it became apparent they no longer had depth or steering control, but not knowing why, they emergency blew and came up directly under the old ship carrying three more as scrap iron in her hold. They managed to get an emergency whip antenna up and radioed the Squadron and reported the collision and were inbound. The squadron repaired Von Steuben alongside by replacing about 1/3 of her sail, several masts and some missile hatches. A second thing was that I was the last person to communicate with the Scorpion SSN-589. They were exiting the Med after a deployment but had been ordered to take on a special op in the vicinity of the Canaries. They requested a personnel transfer after exiting Gibraltar and I arranged a Tug rendezvous. We gave them their mail, took ten messages from them for transmission and received about 8 people. The ship was never heard from again. After Spain, I went to XO, Sea Robin SS-407, then Sublant Communications Officer and following that, CO, USS Jallao SS-368. What a great time I had on the SS-368. Toward the end of my tour, we sold the boat to Spain. I was fortunate to go to England for a tour as CO, US Naval Communications Unit London and following that off to XO USS Simon Lake. I decided to hang it up after that as there wasn't much fun ahead and driving a desk was about all that I could expect. After retiring, I used my telecommunications experience to make a second career as a telecom engineer. Been doing that since about 1978 and am still commuting into Washington, DC three days a week and telecommuting on two. I may give that up in a year or two at most. In general, I am still in pretty good health. Had two serious accidents that could have been fatal but were not. Fell off the roof of my house in Annapolis and broke my neck. It was a stupid ladder setup. I was lucky as I had no spinal cord damage even though I fractured 4 vertebrae. The second was a pedestrian accident. I was crossing Independence Avenue in DC and got hit by a car. I was a quadriplegic for about 4 months but being a very stubborn old diesel boat sailor, I wasn't going to let it get the best of me. With great physical therapy and a lot of personnel determination, I am able to walk pretty well and do almost everything. I am still married to my wife of 41 years, we have three great kids and four grand children. That's quite a lot to read already so I had better get off this. Cheers,
Gil Carlson
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