THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 5, 1997 TAG: 9701030240
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Olde Towne Journal
SOURCE: Alan Flanders
LENGTH: 104 lines
An honor guard of Dismal Swamp Rangers, resplendent in their Civil War re-enactment uniforms, marched single file to the grave site.
With military precision, they presented arms.
As a lone drummer marked cadence to verbal commands, they raised their muskets and fired a 21-gun salute. After the sudden stillness of the punctuated silence, two buglers played taps.
``There wasn't a dry eye anywhere,'' said J.D. Ainsley, a veteran member of the Dismal Swamp Rangers and a longtime friend of the man they came to honor and bury two weeks ago in Rocky Mount, N.C. Remembering Alfred L. ``Red'' Taylor, a former general foreman of Norfolk Naval Shipyard Shop 72 (riggers), Ainsely added that ``Red would have been proud of the ceremony.''
The word ``proud'' sums up how many of us fortunate enough to have known ``Red'' Taylor will always remember him.
Even after Taylor lost both legs, his oldest son, Brian, recalls how his father's confinement to a wheelchair did not blunt his fierce competitiveness and pride in shooting contests held by the North-South Skirmish Association.
``Just a couple of months ago, my father was able to balance his distance of 100 yards. He couldn't load his one-shot muzzleloader as fast as the others, but once he took aim, he always hit the target.''
Ainsely, also a participant in Taylor's last shooting match, remembered his marksmanship as a source of inspiration:
``Everyone would look over after he shot and ask, `Who is that guy in the wheelchair? He don't miss!' ''
When it came to shipyard history, ``Red'' didn't miss, either. He was as much a stickler for details and facts as he was for taking dead aim at a target with one of his beloved Civil War-era rifles. I was lucky enough to have met ``Red'' in the early '80s during a stint as the yard's assistant public affairs officer.
You couldn't go asking about history anywhere in the shipyard without hearing someone mention his name. If I heard, ``You better call Red Taylor on that one,'' or, ``Have you met Red Taylor yet?'' once, I heard those things a thousand times. So I finally looked up the phone number and gave him a call. It turned out that he had just retired as foreman of the riggers shop, but before I could say another word, he had me meet him at his former office at building 18 along the waterfront (a pre-Civil War building used during the construction of the famed ironclad CSS Virginia, since torn down.)
``So you want to learn something about the history of the shipyard,'' he started as if there were no other shipyard in the nation, or the world for that matter, like his shipyard - the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. ``Well, let's walk up to Trophy Park, and I'll give you a little tour starting with the old 19th century tar and turpentine sheds and the building ways that launched one of America's first warships, the wooden frigate USS Chesapeake.
``Then there's Hammerhead Crane - built there to lift and lower battleship turrets at the start of World War II. Need to get you up to the top of that thing one day to see the smaller crane that runs along the top.''
It was about 11 that morning, and I started looking at my watch when we got to Drydock One.
``The nation's first and oldest - still in use, too,'' added ``Red,'' as we started climbing over a rail and down the steps of granite into the dock itself to read the historic inscription that ``Red'' knew by heart. I am barely 5 feet, 10 inches tall, and ``Red'' must have been nearly four inches shorter than me, but his hands kept waving and his legs kept churning for the rest of the afternoon as we walked all the way along the waterfront to Drydock Eight.
``See those painted stripes on the sides of the older buildings, Flanders?'' he said as we jogged along. ``They were placed there during the blackouts of World War II so people knew where they were going with a flashlight pointed downward.''
I will never forget his tour of the yard's drydocks and the names of famous ships that nestled into those giant granite cradles without missing a block. I can still hear ``Red'' rattle them off: ``Delaware, Merrimack, Virginia, Raleigh, Texas, Langley, Shangri-La, Lake Champlain, Tarawa and Alabama,'' to name only a few. It was like watching Mr. Chips recall his students from decades gone by - in Taylor's case, he knew something about all the ships built at the shipyard since it began as a Federal facility in 1801 through his apprenticeship in 1941 and World War II to his retirement in 1975 at age 55.
But the day he walked me through the shipyard, he was ageless, one of a rare breed that carries so much knowledge about so much that it defies the natural calendar of aging.
``I met him in 1951 in building 18 while I was working the job orders and other paperwork,'' said Mary Catherine Smith Taylor, his wife for 44 years,'' but when it came to the Civil War or the shipyard, he was like a kid - full of energy and pride.''
I can vouch for the ``energy'' part as well as the ``pride.'' He left me back at my office around 5 p.m. with a, ``Hope I haven't tired you out much - we got to go through the shops tomorrow - but looking at you - expect we'd better begin a little later and go a little slower!''
That's how I came to know the shipyard - through the eyes and voice and now the memory of ``Red'' Taylor. I will never forget his stories about helping remove war dead from the British aircraft carrier Illustrious or how the rebels tied a hawser line from Hospital Point to Fort Norfolk to block the Federal fleet in the Civil War.
He was one of the few men who tell you why there were only seven drydocks in the yard although the last built was No. 8 - it turns out Nos. 4 and 5 were combined, leaving a secret elevator stairwell in the middle that only ``Red'' could find.
Hearing it from ``Red'' was like being there. He took dead aim on his targets and shot straight and true as he lived among us - and always hit his mark. ILLUSTRATION: File staff photo
The late Alfred L. ``Red'' Taylor, a former general foreman of
Norfolk Naval Shipyard Shop 72 (riggers), and a marksman.