Late last July, I sat down on the front porch ready to conduct my first question-and-answer story. My interview subject was an older man, a Rotarian, who had been recognized for keeping the organization’s fundraising efforts ongoing during the pandemic.
I took notes with a pen and paper between peeling my blouse from my armpits to avoid sweat stains, knowing I would have to transcribe the interview anyway.
The man had bounced for much of his life. South Haven, a town that struggles to build a consistent economy because of its large and transient tourist population, was where he and his wife put down their roots after spending most of their adult lives going from nuclear plant to nuclear plant for his job.
He had been a Naval Academy grad, studying nuclear engineering. Even today, he spent some of his retirement helping the interested high schoolers of Southwest Michigan apply to his alma mater.
While on active duty, he served on a nuclear cruiser, the USS Long Beach, with the Enterprise Battle Group.
They were dispatched to the Gulf of Oman during the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979. They sat there as a “security blanket” for the fifty-two Americans held hostage.
“If they did anything bad to the hostages, they knew that we would—we would make sure they wouldn’t do it. Let’s just say that,” the man said from his porch.
Iran delenda est, was what he was saying.
The American sailors spent the next five to six months just circling offshore, a reminder to the Iranians. Produce runs out on ship after just a few weeks; powdered eggs became the staple of most meals.
All the while, the Soviet Union had parked their own ships nearby.
This was the Cold War after all, he explained, and every conflict was a proxy for a much larger conflict, one with the potential to wipe out cities. He, a nuclear engineer not all that long out of school, knew it well.
So when he stood guard one night, in an ocean far from home, he could make out a Soviet sailor at his post. Not that he could tell, but he imagined his foe had to be even younger than him.
Even from a distance, he felt the Soviet man’s gaze and knew he too was being watched.
And in the cool of the night, with the water and the weight of the world between them, he asked, “What are we doing here?”
He knew the answer, of course, and the two stood watch.
Juliana Knot graduated from Calvin in 2021 with a degree in philosophy, mathematics, and German. She covers Southwest Michigan business and agriculture as a reporter for the Herald-Palladium.
