Here is Ray, the Major Dude, at the exhibit of the USS Cairo.

He is 68. He left home at 17, in August of the year I was born, to join the Coast Guard. He was stationed in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, after retirement, he has become a honcho in the Coast Guard Auxilliary patrolling the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon.

Guess he liked it, hunh?