I never saw Norfolk during my enlistment, I was strictly a west coast sailor
then. On the other hand Norfolk was a port of call during the later 2 of my
employments with Military Sealift Command- Pacific. All three of the special
project ships I had been on came to Norfolk at one time or the other. The first
ship was the USNS AEOLUS T-ARC 3 which I had flown to Norfolk to meet but wound
up going to Cheatham Annex to board. We did however berth at the N.O.B on
occasion. The other two ships were the USNS MIZAR T-AGOR 11
and USNS OBSERVATION ISLAND T-AGM 23. I served aboard AEOLUS in
1981, the MIZAR in 1989 and while I was aboard O.I. in 1994 we berthed
at Norfolk for a short time before proceeding out to the Med.
In 1981 I took advantage of the time at N.O.B to play tourist and so I
took the Hampton Roads boat tour and went to see the board walk at
Virginia Beach. To much has changed since those first days. I had taken
my wife and kids on a trip to Norfolk in 2007 on our US HERITAGE tour. We
saw the Battle Ship Wisconsin which was berthed at the Naval Museum
and I took them on the boat tour once again. Virginia Beach however had
changed so much that we could not see the board walk with all of it's
tourist traps anymore. There were just to many high rise Condo's and
Resort Hotels that had built on the water front.
