Gross, Chester, SCPO

Veterans Affairs Officer, Subic Bay, P.I.

A SHIPMATE TO ALL!!!  Chester touched all of us, whether as the Veterans Affairs Officer in Subic, Shipmates in commands, as well as the VP Chiefs community.  All you needed to do was contact Chester for help and he would figure out how to do it.

I want to fill out his profile with his career information, awards, campaigns, etc.  You all know what I mean.  Chester would be smiling as we complete it in his honor, sitting in "Heaven's Aircraft Hangar" sipping on an iced cold San Miguel, sharing sea stories with past Shipmates.  So dust off those brain cells still alive, look in your old cruise books, and pass on the info to me.  Any pictures or personal stories would provide additional life to the profile.  You can do this by a message to Chesters's profile or my e-mail: vp47cmc@aol.com. 

Now, as we get on with the task ahead of us, you are all directed to find the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water", play it in Chester's memory.  A toast is also in order and you can read this poem by Will Allen Dromgoole, it's fitting for our Shipmate:

The Bridge Builder

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,
"You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way;
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you a bridge at the eventide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him."