Loretta Y. Gillespie
The Cullman Times
ADDISON — Jim McElveen shook his head as he recalled the harrowing experience preceding the Cuban Missile Crisis. “A first lieutenant could have started World War III by using a dummy shell,” he said.
McElveen was a young sailor on a small ship that just happened to be the closest U.S. vessel around when a big Russian freighter, thought to be loaded with missiles, plowed through the choppy waters toward its destination, Guatanamo Bay.
The year was 1962, and McElveen was the helmsman on the USS Papago, a ship that towed aircraft carriers, other large vessels and distilling ships all over the Caribbean.
“We had just come from Puerto Rico in the dead of night, and I had gone to bed,” McElveen recalled. “It was about 3:30 a.m. when someone came in, woke me, and handed me a loaded pistol.”
“The Cubans are coming over the fence at Gitmo,” the sailor yelled to McElveen.
Out there, somewhere in the dark, headed straight for the bay was the Russian freighter.
“It had faked the destroyer that was guarding the area, which was manned with marines and planes,” he explained. “It was positioned to help fortify the inland base.”
The freighter did make it into the bay, and the only thing between it and its objective was the Papago.
“The Papago carried 65 men and officers. It was a small ship, much like a tugboat, and there she sat, facing this big freighter,” McElveen said.
Russian and American sailors on each ship stared practically eye-to-eye across barely 100 yards of ocean.
“It was a very tense situation,” he said. “After all, they wanted in that harbor, and we were blocking their way, not to mention that we had guns and they didn’t.”
“Having those guns pointed at the Russians made the crew of the Papago feel brave.”
“All around us there was dead silence,” McElveen recalled. “It was a stand-off, and the lieutenant gave orders for a dummy shell to be loaded into the cannon.”
Across the quiet expanse of ocean, an echo resounded as the round slammed into the breach. The Russian sailors heard it and ducked down.
“Ever so slowly, the freighter backed up and left the bay,” he said. “They were carrying 100-foot-long tanks, thought to be missiles on the way to Castro’s Cuba.”
Back home in the states, his wife, Frances, heard the breaking news on television.
“I was scared to death, until he could finally call me,” she said. “There was a news blackout for a while, and we heard nothing, but what happened out there that night led up to the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
After that, President Kennedy established the blockade that stopped ships from entering the harbor.
Assigned to the bottom of the world
That wouldn’t be the last adventure for McElveen.
“Later, I was transferred to Boston, and on June 6, I reported, as ordered, for duty aboard the USS Glacier/AGB4, with my sea bag on my shoulder.”
McElveen was assigned as the ship’s journalist. He put out the shipboard newspaper which included reports from the Associated Press, UPI and Reuters wires.
“We didn’t have e-mail then,” he laughed. “We used mimeograph and teletype machines.”
“I remember the Boston strangler was making headlines around that time.”
The Glacier was sent to break ice for a 21 mile long channel so freighters could bring in supplies to McMurdo Station in Antarctica. It was a US scientific expedition that would enable freighters to deliver food, diesel fuel, and water.
“The Glacier was shaped like a bathtub. Its mission, called “ Operation Deepfreeze,” was to break ice 24/7,” he said. “It would constantly ram the ice, then back up and ram it again, and again, breaking off big eight-foot chunks of ice.”
McElveen’s job as publisher of the paper was not as easy as it sounds. In addition to the news coming over the wires, he needed to provide entertainment for a group of sailors who were ship-bound for months at a time.
“They had nothing to see day after day except a vast expanse of ice and some penguins. There was the constant sound of the ship’s engine, and the jarring clatter as the ship hit the ice was nerve-wracking,” he said.
To top it all off, it was always daylight. Only the clock recorded the difference between day and night.
“Back in Boston I had bought a Street and Smith Yearbook, listing all the pro and college football teams, along with the coaches’ and players’ names. I brought it with me when I reported for duty on the Glacier,” said McElveen.
“McMurdo was literally at the bottom of the world,” he explained. “I would go to work at midnight and set up the API, UPI and Rutgers wires, then look through what came in, to see what was worth printing.”
“The main thing these guys wanted to read about was sports, but they would only give the scores, none of the details,” he said. “With no sports coming over the wires except the scores, those guys got bored to tears with the stale numbers. Back then there was no way to get newspapers out there to us, nor were there televisions on the ship.”
So McElveen got inventive.
“I had that Street and Smith Yearbook, and I just made up stories to go with them, gave the scores, the play-by-plays, and they loved it,” he laughed. “It gave them something to talk about and look forward to.”
As with most things, McElveen’s little deception came to an end.
“When we landed in New Zealand for a furlough, I got caught, because stateside newspapers were available. Aside from the scores, the stories obviously didn’t match,” he laughed.
‘Sir, I think you need to see this’
McElveen kept running up against what we now refer to as history throughout his navel career.
In November 1963, he was on duty in the newsroom on board the Glacier. It was a seemingly ordinary shift, with not much to do but make up football plays.
Suddenly, the printer started spitting out paper. On it was printed the word “bulletin” repeatedly.
Curious, he lifted the curling piece of paper to read, “The President of the United States has been shot while on a trip to Dallas, Texas. Details to follow.”
That was how Jim McElveen became the first person on the continent of Antarctica to learn of what happened to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
“It was 1 a.m. my time, and about 1 p.m. in the states,” he recalled. “I tore off the tape and took it to the captain. I woke him up and said, ‘Sir, I think you need to see this.’”
“We walked back to the newsroom together, he and I. The captain was very quiet, extremely intent. He didn’t say anything for a long time. Later, he ordered the ship’s engines to halt, and he announced the news to the men. That bulletin was the first notice to the world that he had been shot.”
McElveen kept the note for years, but at some point since then, it has gotten lost.
“My first thought was utter disbelief, “ he said. “I couldn’t imagine why anyone would do such a thing.”
Sitting in his comfortable kitchen, retelling this story, McElveen — who is, by the way, a history major — said, “We have a revolution every four years in this country. If you don’t like the current politicians, you just vote them out. It’s called democracy.”
In 1962 when Kennedy was elected, McElveen was only 21, not even old enough too vote; at the time of the president’s death, McElveen was 23.
“We held a memorial service for President Kennedy out there on the ice,” he said. “It was very moving.”
Among his fellow shipmates, there was still an overwhelming feeling of incredulity.
“The Commander in Chief who had just faced down the Russians had been killed,” he said.
Riots in the Panama Canal
Life on the ship went on. The men aboard the Glacier had been ship-bound since September, and in December they got notice of their first shore leave.
“As we passed through the Panama Canal on our way to New Zealand, we were caught in the riots over the Panama Canal. There were anti-American protests, and we couldn’t leave the ship.”
“When we sailed into Christ Church, I was the J.V. talker, meaning I passed messages to the naval personnel on-shore,” he said. “I could see over 100 people out on the docks with signs saying, ‘Welcome U.S.S. Glacier.’”
“When they finally let us off the ship, people wouldn’t let us walk. We had been months at sea, and we just wanted to walk around, just to get our land-legs back. But all the local people insisted on stopping and giving us rides. We couldn’t walk even 100 feet without someone picking us up.”
“Finally, somebody took us to the USO, where there was a wedding going on, and they just kept on toasting us.”
“We had to take a cab back to our quarters,” he admitted sheepishly.
Christmas on Ice
When they got back to Antarctica, the Glacier’s crew began the tedious process of breaking ice again, constantly ramming and backing up to smash into it, crashing relentlessly into thick, solid sheets of ice.
“This was actually summer in the Antarctic, and the temperatures were anywhere from 0 to 20 degrees Fahreneheit,”McElveen recalled.
Christmas of 1963 rolled around, and Cardinal Spellman came to perform midnight mass to the crew of the Glacier and the men who manned McMurdo Station.
“Perry Como, who, incidentally, is very short,” laughed McElveen, “also came around that time and entertained us.”
Life after the Navy
McElveen served in the United States Navy from 1959 until 1964, and in that time, he spent two years on active duty and the rest as an active reservist. For another year he was inactive.
While in the reserves, he attended Saint Bernard College, earning degrees in both history and English, with a minor in philosophy.
In 1964 he married Frances Sachs, who was attending Sacred Heart College, and together the couple had two daughters, Victoria (Shaw) and Veronica (Baran) and now have a granddaughter, Mallory Shaw, who is 21, the same age her grandfather was when he shipped out.
In 1995, after 32 years of service, he retired as branch manager of the Cullman Social Security Office.
He and Frances have been married for 45 years. They have traveled here and abroad, and were once in England on Armistice Day. They bought poppies outside a church, remembering the brave soldiers who had fallen in defense of both countries.
The U.S.S. Glacier was decommissioned in the early 1970s, and there is now a move to have it set up as a memorial. It was once home to 340 men, was armed with two helicopters and two five-inch gun turrets.
Today, Jim and Frances McElveen live quietly on a little side street in Cullman. Outside their home is a mailbox, its metal sides covered with the familiar stars and stripes of the American flag.
He often brings retired flags to the local VFW to place them in the proper receptacle for these worn symbols of honor, duty and courage.
He remembers seeing flags like them lifted proudly, flying high above the ships he was assigned to.
They rode the soft breezes over warm Caribbean waters, and snapped sharply in freezing winds high above an ocean of ice at the bottom of the world.
He salutes each one as he reverently places it in the box.
