Bob Schultz Post 9-11 Luncheon

Bob Schultz '71, Atlanta Chapter President, Presents Program at September 2001 Luncheon.

No guest luncheon speaker was scheduled to speak at the Chapter September luncheon. Instead, I took it upon myself to prepare a program appropriate for the previous week's events.

I think that its fair to say that the events of the past several days are unprecedented in American history. Most of us have had nothing else on our minds since the Tuesday, September 11^th, terrorist attack on America.

In light of these events I prepared a program for the luncheon that included:

A personal coping strategy story
A reading of the Leonard Pitts article in the Miami Herald
A brief Memorial Service with the reading of the roster of our Fallen and Missing Shipmates
Close with the singing of Navy Blue & Gold

I had noticed that people everywhere were developing their own coping mechanisms for dealing with the events of the past several days. By the Saturday after the attack I just couldn’t watch any more TV coverage nor sit alone with my thoughts. Neither was working for me. I had to do something else. Get outside and work with my hands. I call my “something”…

Bob’s Quest for a Flag

By the weekend of September 15th and 16th there were no U.S. flags to be found anywhere. Any store that did carry them, were sold out. People had flags up everywhere... on houses, cars, lawns, even baby carriages!

I had to have a flag to raise! Then I remembered that somewhere in amongst boxes of old Navy stuff in my attic, was a 5 foot by 10 foot regulation United States flag that had never been out of the box. The quest was now on to find it and mount it to the side of my house.

After 45 minutes of searching through boxes in the attic, I found the flag. The label on the box was a sure clue that it was government issue:

Flag, National, USA (50 Star)
Heavyweight Nylon, Type I, Class I
5 Ft. x 9 Ft. 6 In.
1 Each

So, my project was now underway in four phases:

The Design Phase
The Supply Phase
The Installation Phase
The Stunned Neighbor Phase

The Design Phase

The design specifications were to pole mount the flag on the side of my attached garage and position it so that the top of the flag pole was at the necessary height to keep the bottom edge of the flag above the top opening of the garage door. (This to keep my wife's SUV from snagging it and pulling it down off the pole!)

The design task was therefore to determine the length of the flag pole, the angle of the flag pole to vertical, and the height of the entry point of the flag pole into the siding in the gable of my garage to meet the design specifications.

This, Lord help me, would require the application of the Pythagorean Theorum to find the length of two hypoteni (plural of hypotenuse?) - one of the diagonal of the flag pole holder, and one which would determine the length of the flag pole itself that must extend outside of the house. A third hypotenuse was actually needed, the diagonal dimension of the flag itself, but I could just measure that one, thank goodness.

For the next 30 minutes I sat at the kitchen table with CRC math tables, calculator, graph paper, ruler, and mechanical pencil in hand… much to the amazement of my wife who thought I was just going to go outside and install the flag with no proper prior planning at all! "What are you doing honey?", she asked. "I'm putting up the flag, dear", I replied. "Don't you have to be outside to do that?", she said. "I have to design the installation first, honey" I responded. "Oh!"

With the design complete, I was on to the next phase.

The Supply Phase

I now had a lot of material to round up. After an early morning Home Depot run, I returned with the following:

12-foot long 1-1/4” OD wooden pole
Can of antique mahogany shellac/stain
4-foot long 1-1/4” ID white PVC pipe & pipe cap
Assorted flag pole hardware (pulleys, eye bolts, & hooks)
Two 8-foot long 2 x 4s
50 feet of Ľ” nylon line

(Total bill: $56.00. Money was no object - I was on a mission!)

The Installation Phase

The design phase had solved the problem of not wanting to have a 12 foot pole permanently sticking out of the side of my attached garage. It was time to install the flag pole holder!

The flag pole holder installation required mounting the 4-foot PVC pipe inside the garage attic using two cross member 2 x 4s, with pre-drilled 1-1/4” through holes, to provide a proper anchor for the permanent PVC flag pole holder at the required 30 degree angle.

Note that this phase actually consisted of over three hours of measuring, cutting, drilling, sweating in the attic heat, and occasional use of a variety of foul language. The latter being a direct result of a flagrant violation of the “measure twice, cut once” rule of carpentry.

After attaching the flag pole hardware to the pole, and attaching the flag (carefully held off of the ground my wife, Linda), I climbed up the ladder and inserted the bottom 4 feet of the pole into the PVC flag pole holder.

The Stunned Neighbor Phase

With now what was arguably the biggest personal flag in Peachtree Corners mounted on the side of my house, it didn’t take long for my neighbors to comment.

My neighbor from two doors up stopped by Sunday afternoon to admire the flag and made the following comment: “My God, Bob, if a stiff breeze ever comes up your entire house is going to change heading!”

Upon heading out to church Sunday morning my wife and I heard the following comment from two of our church-going neighbor ladies across the street: “Good Lord, Marilyn, look at that big-ass flag!”

So…Mission Accomplished!

Old Glory is flying strong and free over the Schultz household!

That was my personal coping mechanism for the weekend after the attack. I’m sure that many of you had your own unique ways of dealing with your grief, and sorrow, and concern for those who were lost.

Leonard Pitts Article - Miami Herald

By now hundreds of thousand, if not millions, of words have been written both describing, and in response to, the September 11^th attack on America. Like most of you, I’ve read many of them.

One of the best that I’ve read is an article published in the Miami Herald on Wednesday, September 12^th, that was written by columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr..

The article is titled…WE’LL GO FORWARD FROM THIS MOMENT.

(Click the link above to read the article.)

Memorial for our Fallen and Missing Shipmates

The approximately 40 alumni and guests attending the luncheon stood in silence with bowed heads while Chapter President Bob Schultz read aloud the list of our fallen and missing shipmates; their names, graduating class, and company.

The list, at that time, included fourteen of our shipmates. You can check the updated list on the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association's National web site, at WWW.USNA.COM

Navy Blue & Gold

The memorial service was closed with the singing of Navy Blue and Gold, followed by a hardy "GO NAVY" cheer at end (instead of the standard Beat Army) for our shipmates who are now being deployed to the Middle East.

The following pictures were taken at the luncheon.

Click on a thumbnail image below to see a full-sized picture.

Early arrivals at check-in.

Noon meal is served!

Chapter President Bob Schultz '71, in front of his flag!

Capt. Bill Garrett, Commanding
Officer NAS Atlanta, addressed the alumni regarding the readiness, quality, and morale of the troops.