Navy Boot Camp; Great Lakes Company 739 of 1966

Hi!
I was at the US Navy's Boot Camp, Recruit Training Command (RTC) Great Lakes from December 22, 1966 until May 9, 1967.
I am using my blog as a way to find other recruits who were there over the snowy winter of 1966-1967.
If you're a member of company 739 or fellow companies, I'd enjoy hearing from you.
After a twenty-two+ year career I retired from the Navy.
Our recent 21 inches of snow in Oregon brought back memories of that winter, and I am looking for leads as to where those other recruits may have gone or ended up.

Heater Condensate Pump

Okay. I'm hear to brag about my Loving Wife (LW) again.
So on the first day of freezing weather, we got up to no heat.
Freezing has been unusual here in West Linn Oregon until this past week.
I was due at work. So LW sent me off on my way and assured me she'd take care of the heater problem.
Our Trane furnace-air conditioner a TRANE XV90 has a condensate reservoir and pump which pumps the water to outside the back of our garage.
About 10:00 AM I called and we talked about the problem. LW told me the condensate pipe to outside the garage had frozen. Our heater has a shutoff mechanism which triggers to turn off the furnace if the condensate pump reservoir is overly full.
She disconnected the pipe and the heater started to work.
Then our neighbor who was venturing out in the snow and cold agreed to get her some pvc pipe and 1/2" hose.
LW hooked up the hose where the pipe had previously come out of the pump, and put a length of pipe under the garage door to protect the hose from the garage door. It worked.
Then the next morning, I discovered the pvc had frozen. I just put the frozen pipe into the sink and warmed it up. We now leave the hose in a bucket each freezing night.
Our one son's house has the same type of heater. His hose drains from the basement furnace to the condensate pump reservoir and then into the basement deep sink by the washing machine. The warmth of the basement keeps it from freezing.
We may take a lesson for the success of one installation over the other.
Our garage furnace is adjacent to our laundry room. It would be easy, but require a hole through the wall between them, to drain the hose into the toilet tank, bowl or sewer drain pipe hole there. We haven't decided yet. I'll let you know what we agree to do.

Lath and Plaster

So if your working on an old house, and it has lath and plaster, that is wood slats with plaster on top, what should you do to mount a switch box in the ceiling. If you cut the board, the lath, you cause the whole plaster system to be unstable. In my case it was compounded by putting in a feed to provide the electrical wire to the box on the other end of the same piece of lath. Unwittingly I had cut both ends of the same piece of lath. After the fact I realized to put the hole for one end in one board and the hole for the other in another board. Granted you won't be able to get the two in line nice and symmetrical like an obsessive compulsive might want to see it. But given the choice between the plaster being sturdy with a board behind it holding it up or not and being in a nice neat line, I'd have preferred sturdy.
My very clever LW came up with the idea to put a piece of plywood over the affected plaster anchoring the loose plaster with liquid nails onto the plywood which was then holding up the liquid nails, paint, plaster to the beams the plywood was anchored to. The wiring boxes on each end were held in place onto the beams screwed in as a sturdy solution to replace the structural integrity which was lost by the lath behind the weakend plaster not being anchored to anything.
Still it would have been easier if someone had told me don't cut into the opposite end of the same piece of lath.

Snow in Orgeon

Well I've always told visitors to Oregon we only get one snow storm per year.
I've never said how long they were; well maybe a day or two....
Wow! This storm reminds me of winter storms in Quakertown, PA. Just North of Philadelphia we used to get at least one doozy winter storm, every year in March. Snow would pile up in drifts 3 to 6 feet tall.
Then when I got to Boot Camp in Great Lakes, Ill. December of 1966 I just figured God had been preparing me for Boot Camp. Great Lakes that winter I was in one of the companies which had to handle Service Week for the long winter build up for Vietnam. We shoveled snow every day and every night for four (plus) months we had snow. I remember the train from Milwaukie to Chicago with the snow blower on the front coming down the track swaying on the rails, blowing a column of snow off into the night. It's headlight shooting ahead into the dark like a laser with snowflakes shooting down through the light.
O’Hare Airport was shut down for two weeks. On Boot Liberty to Chicago we got as far as North Chicago. In the streets the snow had been shoveled and built up so the sidewalks were like canyons of snow.
Firefighting at Great Lakes was burning down the WWII barracks in the night. The firefighting water was go cold it froze coming out of the firehouse nozzle.
Going to our swim test was c.o.l.d. Hitting the water from the dive tower was like hitting a concrete floor. The cold water was as though it were extra dense from the cold. The drill instructor told us it was 40˚. Our bare bodies in that cold water were freezing, chattering teeth cold.
Walking,.. Marching back from our swim tests was freezing! Company 739, December 23, 1966.
We got our shots and everybody came down sick. Those of us who could stand did the laundry for the whole company, then out into the cold yard in the middle of the barracks to tie everything up on the line with “little string ties”. Of course we were bare for that too since All of the clothes had to be washed and hung out ready for the next day’s inspection of our clean clothes… although a bit frozen.
Great Lakes was packed that year. San Diego was shut down by hepatitis. Everybody got sent to Great Lakes. We had to stand in line for the chow hall first at Main side then near our newly built concrete barracks… Camp Dewey Porter. We learned to stand really close together in the Illinois wind while we waited for chow. About half of my company was on mess cook duty for the four months. I only had to do mess hall for a couple of days and then got to be outside doing something else…. But shoveling snow that long and that cold… well it eased up well before the other guys got out of being mess cooks.
The two companies before us and after us went straight to Marine Corps indoctrination to go on to become corpsmen. About 300 guys went that route, roughly 75 guys per company, while I was there. Word was out that it was not a good thing to get to do, more like a death sentence for the bulk of them.
I was gun shy of that calling, corpsmen. I’m thankful for the path I was given. I had choices to go to First Army, Naval Academy Prep School, go to Nuclear Power School. So many options it sounds like now. My cousins husband, Lcdr Charles (Chuck) Hary, was teaching Mechanical Engineering at the Naval Academy. After talking with him I took Nuclear Power School, but ended up at Polaris Electronics (missile school) at Dam Neck, Virginia.
On my way there I visited Chuck and Barbara Hary at their quarters on the Naval Academy grounds. It was by the boat house on the Severn. Chuck even took me to a football game at the Sailor's and Marine's athletic field where I got to sit in the faculty section of the bleachers with us all in uniform. I was in my cracker jacks and Chuck in officer winter dress blues. I was agog at all of the officer uniforms.
It was there that Chuck put me on the track to watch for and sign up for the Navy Enlisted Scientific Education Program (NESEP).