Red Headed Stepchild
(The Barrett family memoir of Navy Life)
by Sophie Ruth Meranski with photos
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#361 or #998 p 46 Photo by landlady Eva Costa at birthday party for Gabriel Moses at her home 111 W. Third St. Port Angeles. Gabriel stayed at John's house 113 W. Third St. summer l998 while doing forest conservation work for Washington Department of Natural Resources...Impressions of CLALLAM county After six years in Hawaii the Barrett family toured California and the Northwest summer 1947, visiting Yosemite, Monterey, redwoods, Crater Lake, Willamette Valley, Columbia River highway and aNd waterfalls, Dalles, and Mount Hood orchards,then Seattle, Mount Rainier, a hot night at Ritzville, breakfast at Spoakane and travel pased Pend Oreille Lake in IDAHO PANDHANDLE EN ROUTE TO KALISPELL, GLACIER PARK GOING-TO-THE-SUN HIGHWAY AND SWIFT CURRENT CABINS AND ICEBERG lAKE IN NORTHEAST ARCTIC DRAINIAGE - THEN HELENA BUTTE AND THREE NIGHTS AT MAMMOTH SPRINGS NORTH YELLOWSTONE entrance,where Mollie encountered a bear at night - a long day's drive went past Obsidian Cliff, Apollinaris Spring, Old Faithful and Grotto Geysers,down to Tetons and Jackson Hole - then passing Yellowstone Lake, a remarkable sunset was observed at Artist Point overlooking Yellowstone Falls and Canyon. However, Olympic National Park was cut from the original plan, as Sophie Barrett was recovering from recent surgery, and she and Mollie her sister in law wanted a coupoe of days for rest and washing. around July 1-2, 1947 at Portland Oregon, where the family stayed at Portland Rose Motel during annual Rose festival. John Barrett did not get to Olmypic area until August 1996, when he was visiting the Burkhart family in Tenino and exploring county bus routes. He visited the Hoh Rain Forest area August 14, 1996 and camped out observing meteor showers under excellent clear skies with minimum light pollution far from electric lights.He explored first to Forks, where Jason Earls a senior and lineman of the high School football team worked in Sully's restaurant. On another trip in mid-September, John explored further by bus to Port Angeles, and the headquarters of Olympic Park.He got to know the night shift at Safeway store on downtown Lincoln St, and eventually found a place for rent nearby on West Third St. overlooking the harbor. Already by October he was looking for places to observe silver fir, Abies amabilis, which grows in snowy middle elevations, but is surprisingly inaccessible from the main highway 101 or other bus routes. Eventually June-July 1998 good populations of silver fir were found mostly above three thousand feet on Aurora Creek Trail near mile 225 of Route 101 on shore of Lake Crescent, and on the Heather Park Trail, that leads up the north side of Mount Angeles from Heart of the Hill campground past foothill First and Second Peaks. The view in Port Angeles is dominated by Mount Angeles 6424 feet altitude, part of the Crescent Basalt that is very thick on east edge of Olympian Mountains - high Mount Deception and Mount Constance near Doswallips and very thick folded layers at Maynard Peak near the town of Sequim. Basalt is dark, heavy, erosion-resistant igneous rock with a usual density about 3.2 times that of water. It often forms underground in deep rock pools called batholiths or forced upward in dikes - cracks between older rocks.Sometimes it erupts under the ocean, where the pattern of cooling and solidification produces a form called "pillow lava" which is found many places in the Olympics. Sometimes on islands basalt erupts to the surface and contracts into hexagonal sturctures called "columnar basalt". a famous example is "the Giant's Causeway " in the north of Irland. A few examples occur near Bremerton. Basalt forms most of the ocean floor, but the Colmbia Plateau is one of the larger examples of basalt in a continental situation. The Deccan Plateau of India is another. A thin ridge of basalt continues across the north Olympics past deep glacial Lake Crescent, where the local basalt was first studied and received its name. Mount Storm King and Pyramid Mountain on Lake Cresent and Mount Muller and the ridge north of the Solduc River represent the narrow northwest extension of the crecent basalt.A second inner ring of basalt can be seen at the Needles east of Hurricane ridge - this inner ridge is believed to be the most recent of the igneous rock in the Olympic area. A great continental ice sheet came down from canada about nineteen thousand years ago and filled Juan de Fuca Strait and PUGET sOUND, causing outflow south of the ice through the very large valley now occupied by the Chehalis river. Around fourteen thousand years ago this most recent ice sheet was at maximum and covered Olympia and the regions of ice-associated mima mounds near Tenino, but around twelve thousand years ago a warming trend melted the great continental ice sheet and most of the separate mountain ice sheets of the Olypmic mountains. Lake Crescent and the Hoh, Queets, Quinault and other rivers have very steep walls in a U-shape from active large deep valley glaciers that left much ground till. Most of the central region near Mount Olympus and the Upper Elwha River has ocean floor sediment that has been subject to sharp recent uplift - the Elwha is eroding more rapidly than any other local river in mixed greywacke sandstone of highly variable grain size, which is interpreted to have been rapidly deposited by turbidity currents.The sandstone is faulted in many places by seismic activity. The lasrgest unbroken block extends about twenty miles from the Sol Duc river to Mount Carrie.Western hemlock is the most shade-tolerant tree at lower elevation and might completely dominated old growth forest except for grazing by elk, which permits competition from sikta spruce, western red cedar,and understory plants like vine maple and salal. Shifting streams often leave gaps where first cottonwood and then bigleaf maple can colonize. In the ice ages it is believe about three ice-free "nunatak' AREAs permitted a number of unique endemic local plants to survive such as the Olympic red oxalis species.In a warm period about five to ten thosuand years ago, the Olypmics had a more typical Oregon-Washington flora, but about three thosuand years before present, the cooling, rainy trend favored the development of a very unusual Sitka-Spruce temperate rain forest - interpreted by many ecologists as the largest temperate rain forest in the world, though there are small comparable areas in Chile, New Zealand, Tasmania and the province of south Australia. Tree growth is among the most productive anywhere in the world, though limited to a few species. Species diversity is concentrated in lower ' cryptogramic" plants = the "Oregon" club moss is actually a vascular plant "fern ally" with diploid genetics, but lichens, true mosses, liverworts grow in profusion and diversity. |
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Gabriel Moses stayed at 113 West Third Street summer l998 while doing forestry conservation work for Washington Department of NaturaL RESOURCES.HE REMAINS A FREQUENT VISITOR WHILE A STUDENT AT PENINSULA JUNIOR COLLEGE HERE. HE IS A NATIVE OF PADDOCK HILLS, CINCINNATI OHIO.His mother Dr. Mary Hopkins teaches anthropology at Northern Kentucky University in Covington, Kentucky, with a special interest in West Africa.His grandfather Hopkins was a career Army officers many years in France after being a prisoner of war in Philippines l942-l945. |
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#363 Eva Costa arranged a birthday party November 14, l998 for Gabriel Moses, who actually turned twenty years of age on November 18. Standing next to Gabe is Joe Wixom of Salt Lake City Utah, whose twentieth birthday was two days before Gabe's on November 16. Next to Joe is Dan Speakman of Mesa Arizona, and at right John Barrett, junior, who is editing Barrett family memoirs and setting up this website through Jim Ullyot and Chris Teigen of Minneapolis MN. Photo by Eva Costa.p 45 #1000 |
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Maria Nonn was born in Hungary 1902 and celebrated her 96th birthday at the home of her daughter and son-in-law Eva and Phil Costa 111 West Third Street, Port Angeles Washington. She lived in Florence Italy about nineteen years and operated a hatter's shop. Her husband was a maitre d'hotel of a leading Florence restaurant.Her daughter Eva came to United States l956 and in l980's brought her widowed mother to Port Angeles. The Peninsula Daily News newspaper in 1992 published a feature on Maria and her crocheting. Language was a problem, as she had limited English, though proficient in Hungarian iand Italian.Several times whenJohn Barrett was visiting in 1997, she sang the popular ITALIAN SONG "O SOLE MIO!" Eva has several videotapes of her mother at Christmas 1992 and other times. |
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At lower right is a shiny, round table-like object, which Sophie referred to as a "drum." She believed they were made of some sort of durable heavy paper. The Barretts purchased a pair of these while in Tientsin 1930-1931 and had them in their living rooms with the Chinese rugs first at 422 Columbia Road, Dorchester, Boston 1932-3; then at Stradone Road, Bala Cynwyd near Philadelphia l937-8, 9615 Shore Road Brooklyn 1939-l941 and at 52 Emmonsdale Road, West Roxbury from Thanksgiving Day l947 when they moved in, until Chinese materials were stolen in l976.Information on the style or history of these and other Chinese furniure will be welcome. |
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#366 Sophie Barrett's nephew Col Arthur Meranski abnd his wife Betty had four children born l950s while they had duty in Germany.Two of the boys Hank and Tom had Army service also- much of it in Aberdeen area.Tom also has computer skills.He and Paula are twins- she is a histologist in Milford Delaware.John Barrett saw Tom during a May 1988 visit in Aberdeen at the time of Amy Meranski's graduation from Havre de Grace High School. |
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Jack Barrett photo -During three day visit weather was very rainy, and Jack Barrett obtained this photo on final day during a ninety minute break in clouds.The Barretts planned this trip for several years in Hawaii while waiting for return of peace. Jack's father died in August l942, while the family were in Hawaii, but Jack's sister Mollie came out from South boston in June l947 and joined the family at San Francisco for tour including Yoemite, Monterey, Salinas, Redwoods, Crater Lake, Williameete Valley, Portland, Columbia River highwazay and waterfalls, Mount Rainier, Ritzville, Spokane, Pend Oreille Lake in Idaho north panhandle, Glacier Park, Yellowstone and Grand Teton.At Bismarck, North Dakota the axle of the l937 Lincoln Zephyr borke, and Mollie had to take train back to her job at Metropolitan Life Insurance south Boston office after six weeks vacation.The Barretts used Irving Melbo's "Our Country's National Parks" in planning their trip. They had a collection of stereo "Viewmaster" views from Sawyer's company of Portland Oregon. It was necessary to cut Olympic National Park from the original plan of the trip. -- 1983 TEXT A PROPOSAL FOR NUCLEAR - WEAPON - FREE CITIES John B. Barrett, jr. Congress should prohibit deployment, storage, transportation, or manufacture of nuclear weapons within forty or fifty miles of urban populations. The United States & Soviet Union on a bilateral basis should agree to create and de-target nuclear-weapon-free zones around all cities. A citizen should have a legal, constitituional right not to have nuclear weapons placed in his back yard in an urban area, both on safety grounds and from doctrines relating to the law of war. Under the law of war it is probably a crime to bomb an unarmed civilian population. But a warship with nuclear weapons is probably a legal target. Why make San Francisco, Honolulu, New York, Boston, or any city a legal target under the laws of war? The Soviets has assured the Scandinavaina they will respect NUCLEAR - WEAPON -FREE ZONES. The century - old Hague Convention, the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the United Nations charter, and the American Catholic Bishops 1983 declaration on nuclear weapons all prohibit the deliberate killing of innocent civilians, unless they are near legitimate military targets. The Air Force has placed most of its missles in thinly populated regions like North Dakota. The Navy, however, has placed ships and nuclear weapons storage sites in areas like San Francisco and Pearl Harbor and plans to deploy hundreds of nuclear cruise missles at Staten Island, New York. Nicholas Yost of the Center for Law in the Public interest in Washington DC has a suit pending in the DC Court of Appeals on the failure of Caspar Weinberger to file Environmental Impact Statements on the MX under the National Environmental Policy Act. In July Mr. Yost also agreed to handle the environmental legal challenge to the Battleship IOWA Task Force. Environmetal Impact Statements should include Worst Case Scenarios -a nuclear accident or a war that could kill one billion people, Mr. Yost argues in his MX brief. Dr. Carl Johnson, a public health official in Jefferson county, Colorado, who investigated the medical consequences of a nuclear acident at Rocky Flats. recommends that "from a public health viewpoint nuclear weapons facilities should be located at least forty miles from population centers, in isolated parts of the country." Following a 1957 fire at a nuclear weapons plant,Dr. Johnson says he knows of at least 241 people who have chromosome damage from plutonium body burdens. In a population ner the plant Johnson found an excess of 24 per cent of all cancers in males and ten per cent in females. Constitutional amendments may be desirable to restore local control to states and cities over nuclear weapons hazards. There is a substantial popular movement to create nuclear-free zones, but the constitutionality of state and local laws is doubtful. Congress needs to take action, perhaps by constitutional amendment. Speaking in Boston June 25, 1983 the noted British historian and anti-nuclear activist Edward P. Thompson stated that a major nuclear weapons accident is almost inevitable in the next ten years. Commnenting on plans to station nuclear cruise missles in Boston, New York, or Newport, he remarked, "It is absolutely criminal to base these missles in a heavily populated center." He called for international solidarity in the peace movements of American & Europe & east & west. Stephen Talbot of public television station KQED made an important study of nuclear weapons facilites around San Francisco. |
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Rug came from Nicholson Rug factory in Russian section of Tientsin China l931. Card table was used by Jack Barrett for study while at Boston College Law School l941-l951 when living at 52 Emmonsdale Road, West Roxbury #368 ---1983 TEXT A PROPOSAL FOR NUCLEAR - WEAPON - FREE CITIES John B. Barrett, jr. Congress should prohibit deployment, storage, transportation, or manufacture of nuclear weapons within forty or fifty miles of urban populations. The United States & Soviet Union on a bilateral basis should agree to create and de-target nuclear-weapon-free zones around all cities. A citizen should have a legal, constititutional right not to have nuclear weapons placed in his back yard in an urban area, both on safety grounds and from doctrines relating to the law of war. Under the law of war it is probably a crime to bomb an unarmed civilian population. But a warship with nuclear weapons is probably a legal target. Why make San Francisco, Honolulu, New York, Boston, or any city a legal target under the laws of war? The Soviets has assured the Scandinavains they will respect NUCLEAR - WEAPON -FREE ZONES. The century - old Hague Convention, the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the United Nations charter, and the American Catholic Bishops 1983 declaration on nuclear weapons all prohibit the deliberate killing of innocent civilians, unless they are near legitimate military targets. The Air Force has placed most of its missles in thinly populated regions like North Dakota. The Navy, however, has placed ships and nuclear weapons storage sites in areas like San Francisco and Pearl Harbor and plans to deploy hundreds of nuclear cruise missles at Staten Island, New York. Nicholas Yost of the Center for Law in the Public interest in Washington DC has a suit pending in the DC Court of Appeals on the failure of Caspar Weinberger to file Environmental Impact Statements on the MX under the National Environmental Policy Act. In July Mr. Yost also agreed to handle the environmental legal challenge to the Battleship IOWA Task Force. Environmetal Impact Statements should include Worst Case Scenarios -a nuclear accident or a war that could kill one billion people, Mr. Yost argues in his MX brief. Dr. Carl Johnson, a public health official in Jefferson county, Colorado, who investigated the medical consequences of a nuclear acident at Rocky Flats. recommends that "from a public health viewpoint nuclear weapons facilities should be located at least forty miles from population centers, in isolated parts of the country." Following a 1957 fire at a nuclear weapons plant,Dr. Johnson says he knows of at least 241 people who have chromosome damage from plutonium body burdens. In a population ner the plant Johnson found an excess of 24 per cent of all cancers in males and ten per cent in females. Constitutional amendments may be desirable to restore local control to states and cities over nuclear weapons hazards. There is a substantial popular movement to create nuclear-free zones, but the constitutionality of state and local laws is doubtful. Congress needs to take action, perhaps by constitutional amendment. Speaking in Boston June 25, 1983 the noted British historian and anti-nuclear activist Edward P. Thompson stated that a major nuclear weapons accident is almost inevitable in the next ten years. Commnenting on plans to station nuclear cruise missles in Boston, New York, or Newport, he remarked, "It is absolutely criminal to base these missles in a heavily populated center." He called for international solidarity in the peace movements of American & Europe & east & west. Stephen Talbot of public television station KQED made an important study of nuclear weapons facilites around San Francisco in 1980, particularly at Concord Naval Weapons Station. "An active earthquake fault runs less than two miles west of the weapons depot; aqueducts delivering drinking water to more than one million people flow through the base and would be subject to radioactive contamination, -...and there is no evacuation plan for the more than 200,000 residents of ... neighboring suburban communities:" NATION Jan. 7, 1981. Military authorities are very secretive about nuclear weapons sites & have done little to work out emergency procedures with the Federal Emergency Management Agency or state & local officials. Talbot quotes Bill Arkin of the Center for Defense Information, who estimates that there are more than one thousand nuclear weapons in California, with over half in the San Francisco Bay area. The National Association for Research on the Military-Industrial Complex, a project of the American Friends Service Committee in 1980 compiled a list of 121 nuclear storage sites in the US. Nuclear weapons are located in at least forty states. In Hawaii lawsuits have been filed to get the Navy to disclose possible hazards of nuclear weapons storage at West Loch Naval Magazine at Pearl Harbor, just two miles from Honolulu International Airport. Talbot says weapons are transported over heavily populated areas in helicopter. Columnist Jack Anderson says, "The tight-lipped people at the Pentagon admit to 32 nuclear mishaps between 1950 and 1980. My sources say the true figure is closer to four times that number.... Federal and state officials are barely beginning to prepare for the dreadful possibility of a nuclear disaster in your back yard... Allaying the public's fear more than protecting its safety seems to be the main emphasis of the Defense Department's emergency program to handle nuclear weapons accidents... in urban areas ... the havoc could be unmanageable, if not beyond comprehension." Anderson quotes a 1979 General Accounting Office report to Congress, "An accident could occur while a weapon was being moved from one location to another.... It would create a radiological cigar-shaped cloud extending ... for about 28 miles, with a bwidth of 2.5 miles." A dangerous accident took place at Holy Loch, Scotland in November, 1981, when a nuclear missle was being transferred between a submarine and another US Navy ship by "winching". The unstable chemical LX-09 in the detonator exploded. This chemical is intended to be replaced eventually for safety reasons, but is widely used on Navy nuclear missles. An Air Force officer was killed, and a thousand people were evacuated when an explosion occured in a nuclear misle silo near Damascus, Arkansas Sept. 19, 1980. Only conventional explosives in the detonator went off, but the missle traveled 600 feet. Eight fuel leakage accidents occured at Arkansas missle sites in 1979 and 1980. "BROKEN ARROW" is the Pentagon code name for nuclear weapons accidents. B-52s used to stay in the air on alert with nuclear weapons, until serious crashes occurred at Palomares, Spain in 1966 - and Thule Greenland in 1968, with H-bombs scattered and release of plutonium. Tons of contaminated soil, snow, water & ice had to be moved to storage sites in the US. The US has more than 30,000 nuclear weapon warheads. About 120,000 people have access to nuclear weapons and materials. Boston psychiatist Dr. Lester Grinspoon is one of many authorities who have studied alcohol, drug & personality problems among servicemen at nuclear installations. Lloyd J. Dumas, writing in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists November 1980 on "Human Fallibility and Weapons" cites several Department of Defense studies on abuse of marijuana, psychedelics, stimulants, depressants, and narcotics. Stress, monotony, boredom, & isolation also affect many servicemen at nuclear installations. About 5000 military personnel annually have to be transferred away from the nuclear weapons program because of personality problems. Dumas reports that "there is a serious problem of transmission of valid information to the upper echelons, especially where such information points out errors made either by subordinates or by top-level decision-makers.... Former missleman Ted Wye (reports) that in a silo - based strategic nuclear missle force, 'Crew members dare not tell higher command that the regulations are flouted. Non-communication with higher command is endemic in the missle field with the result a gap between regulations and what is really done in the capsule.'" Admiral Gene LaRocque says, "Everybody ought to know where the military weapons are. The reason the military does not tell people whether or not there are weapons on a ship or stored in a certain place is they are afraid people would be unhappy about it & want those weapons moved. But that does not make those people who live in the vicinity any safer.." Among the advantages of a freeze and reduction of nuclear warheads will be the reduced risk of serious nuclear weapons accidents. Admiral LaRocque says a major accident is inevitable unless there is a sharp reduction in the number of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal, & drastic improvement in safety & handling procedures, & greater public awareness. Mayors & municipal officials should join in calling on Congress to prohibit nuclear weapons with 40 or 50 miles of cities and provide constitutional guarantees of the rights of citizens to be safe in their homes and workplaces. An urban Bill of Rights on nuclear safety is urgent. De-targeting of cities should be an important ingredient of a verifiable bilateral freeze. SOURCES: Stephen Talbot "Nuclear Weapons Accidents: The H-Bombs Next Door" THE NATION Jan. 7,1981 -2. Boston Sunday Globe Dec. 13, 1981 p. 12 World Press by Alan Berger "A Missle Mishap - N-Weapon Hit U.S. Ship but Didn't Explode" -3. John Lindsay "How Many Mistakes Have You Made Today? Nuclear Weapons Accidents and U.S. Responsibility" (Mobilization for Survival Flyer) -4. Jack Anderson "Are we Safe from Our Own Nuclear Weapons?" Parade, Oct. 18, 1881 pp 12-14 - 5. Lloyd J. Dumas "Human Fallibility and Weapons". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Nov. 1980 pp 15-20. - 6. PEACEWORK July-August 1983 p. 1 - "E.P.Thompson calls for Internationalization of Anti - Nuke Forces at Boston Harbor Teach-In." |
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