Hi, my name is Paul Weitz. Suzanne and I are Matt’s parents, and as Matt is married to Dana, this gives me entrée to this site. She asked for some personal stories, so here goes. So as not to put you to sleep in one sitting, I will do this in bits and pieces.

I was born in Erie, Pa. in 1932. I graduated from Harborcreek High School in 1949. Harborcreek is a small town about 6 miles east of Erie. I attended Penn State on a Navy ROTC scholarship. In January 1954 I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Aeronautical Engineering and a commission as an Ensign in the US Navy.

I had always wanted to make a career as a Naval Aviator. One of the NROTC instructors convinced me that if that was the case, I should go to sea first to experience the surface (“real”?) Navy. So I applied for, and got orders to, a destroyer in San Diego. In February I reported aboard USS John A. Bole (DD 755) (named for a WW II submarine skipper who did not make it back from his last patrol.). We made a Western Pacific cruise that summer. When we got back to the US, I applied for, and was accepted to, flight training. (A look ahead – I am not sorry I did the destroyer thing, but it put me a year and a half behind my squadron contemporaries.)

So I bought a 1948 Hudson Commodore from my friend and shipmate Al Hanson and set off for Pensacola. The day I left Bole in May of 1955, the ship departed on another WestPac cruise – bon voyage, I said.

1948 Hudson Commodore 

We started Preflight at Mainside Pensacola. Lots of classes – aeronautics, meteorology, Morse code (yes, really – dit dah, dah dit dit dit, dah dit dah dit, etc.). And of course, physical training. The Marine PT instructors, I am sure, loved to work us officers. Step tests, obstacle course, water survival, and others. I am not now, nor ever have been, comfortable when standing with lots of air and nothing else out in front of me. One of my favorite memories is of the session where you are supposed to jump off a platform 12 feet above the pool, and swim off inflating your trousers. Well, with quaking knees, I somehow managed to sneak back down the ladder and did not jump into that pool of death. I managed to beat the system on that one!

So now we are off to Whiting Field, about 15 miles north of Pensacola, to learn how to fly!! We flew the trusty SNJ.

SNJ

We had 19 dual hops, and got to solo on number 20, after which we had a mixture of solo and instructor flights. At the time (late 1955) the Navy had several outlying fields along the Gulf Coast.

After Whiting, we went to Saufley Field, about 20 miles west of Pensacola, for formation and night flying. Then on to Barin Field in Foley, Ala. for bombing, air-to-air and carrier qualifications. (Aside – folks liked to renew their automobile registration while at Foley – Alabama license plates cost $2 a year!) We made six landings on the carrier. However, the best part was shooting at the tow banner – the SNJ had a nose-mounted .30 caliber machine gun. If it stopped firing, which was not uncommon, you reached up and manually recharged the gun. The cockpit filled with smoke and the smell of cordite – it was great!! Also, as it fired through the prop, the synchronization sometimes would not work properly, and you might get a bullet hole in the prop. If the hole was within prescribed limits, the mechanics would file it smooth, and match the prop blade up with one that matched the weight and balance and put it back on one of the airplanes. You could tell which airplanes had a prop with some holes in it by the whistling sound it made.

I next went to the Naval Air Station Memphis, which was really about 30 miles north of Memphis at a town named Millington. The syllabus there was several hours of instrument flying in the T28.

T28

I decided that I did not want to live without my high school sweetheart Suzanne, although we had at times had an off-and-on relationship. So while I was home on Christmas leave in 1955, I showed her a ring. I was ecstatic when she accepted my proposal. I analyzed my schedule at Memphis, and we picked a date of June 23, 1956, when I should be between syllabi. Well, dear hearts, that did not work out. To make a long story short, I managed to sweet talk an instructor into taking me on a syllabus flight to Youngstown, Ohio. We flew into Youngstown on the night before my wedding. (Erie did not have appropriate fuel for the T28.) My father, Suzanne and her brother picked me up at 2 a.m. on our wedding day.

It was a hectic day. Fortunately, it turned out that if you had your blood test work done and paid a little extra, you could get a marriage license in one day rather than three. We were married that afternoon, and early the next morning, it was off to Youngstown for my flight back to Memphis.

I finished the instrument flying phase of the syllabus the next week, so it was off to Erie, pick up my new bride and back to Millington in Suzanne’s ivory and robin egg blue 1955 Chevy, a two-door BelAir hardtop ($2,500 new.).

1955 BelAir

I was only going to be there for two more months, and no one would rent an apartment for only two months. But I found a place that was a former tourist court (most of you folks remember those pre-Holiday Inn places) for the magnificent sum of $55/month, which was a lot of money then.

Our first home

It had a bedroom and a kitchen. The shower was one of those metal enclosures with a nylon curtain that tended to waft in and stick to your legs when you were showering. The kitchen had a stove and refrigerator, as well as a small table with a couple of chairs. One day Suzanne saw a cockroach!! So we got some roach spray. We sprayed some under the kitchen sink. That turned out to be a mistake! Roaches came thundering out from under there to get away from the poison. There must have been hundreds. We were only going to be there for a few weeks, so we called a truce with the roaches. Suzanne must have been truly in love to accept this.

The next part of the training at Memphis was a transition to jets. That was in the TV-2, the Navy version of the Air Force T-33.

T33

When I finished there, it was off to NAS Corpus Christi, Tex for fleet-type training in the Grumman F9F-2 Panther.

F9F Panther

More formation, night and air-to-air gunnery. This is a picture of one of the greatest times in my life – Suzanne pinning on my coveted Wings of Gold.

Suzanne pinning on my wings

I got orders to an attack squadron, VA-44, in Jacksonville, Fla. and reported aboard in September of 1956. It was great to be flying an operational fleet airplane, the F9F-8 Cougar.

F9F Cougar