The crew of the Hazelwood has been having a reunion every 2 years on the anniversary of the Kamikaze attack, April 29. The most recent reunion was held in Philadelphia and we had our commemoration ceremony on the battleship USS New Jersey BB-63. It was a well attended reunion but the number of attendees from the WW II era dropped to 4. The 2007 reunion had 12 attendees from WW II.
At the Philadelphia reunion I accepted the honor of preparing for the 2011 reunion. It is my intention to have the reunion in Jacksonville, FL on our normal dates of April 26 -29. The planning is very preliminary at this time but I have been in contact with the Convention and Visitors Bureau to obtain needed information on hotels that would accommodate our group.
It is also my intention to do all possible to convince the Navy at Mayport to take our reunion group on a day cruise on one of the Destroyer type ships based there. I have asked one our crew mates, "Gil" Guilbault to help me get to the right contact there. Gil came on board the Hazelwood in 1960 as an Ensign and retired as an Admiral. I am sure he will know the right places to get us help.
I am going to use this Blog as means to communicate to those who use the Internet. It will not be updated every day but only as I have information to present. It is possible for viewers to post comments to this blog and if you wish to contact me you can use it also. If you have my normal email address it will be faster if you use it.
So I guess at this time you can say ..... THIS IS A TEST.... I am expecting it to be successful!!
PS. The Blog below this one is a history of the Hazelwood. I thought you might enjoy it.
Hi, I am Kay Keith...my dad is W.B. (Dub Keith) most of the Hazelwood group knows us because we hosted the reunion in Tulsa, OK in 1999. Glad to see you are off and running with this reunion, trust me it takes time to smooth out all the wrinkles, but it is worth it. My dad's health has kept us from attending in recent years, but I am hopeful that 2011 will be a good year. He is in therapy right now for a broken arm and shoulder and I told him to quit telling people I pushed him off the sidewalk and broke it. They are going to arrest me for elder abuse. He tripped over his own clumsy feet. Anyway, I think the blog is a wonderful idea, it allows everyone to converse with each other instead of just sending e-mails. Hope to see you in Florida.
ReplyDeleteKay, I am glad that my system for Commenting worked for you. I had to learn how to do it myself first!!!
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