DATE: Monday, November 17, 1997             TAG: 9711150067

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY IDA KAY JORDAN, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  135 lines

ADMIRAL'S SALUTE TO CHRISTMAS IS SPECIAL ORNAMENTS HANDMADE BY PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL COMMANDER ARE COLLECTABLES

THE TRADITION started when Rear Adm. William R. Rowley was the deputy commander of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

In the fall of 1990, the Hospital Ship Comfort, with 800 Navy personnel aboard, sailed across the world to participate in Desert Shield operations.

Christmas was coming.

``We were trying to do neat things for the families of those on the ship,'' said Rowley, now the commanding officer of the Navy's Regional Medical Center in Portsmouth. ``The Comfort was one of the few operational units we had in Washington, and we wanted to keep focused on those who were deployed.''

Rowley made his contribution - and his first Christmas tree ornaments.

He sketched the Comfort, made copies and hand-colored them. Then he glued them to plywood and cut out the ornaments on a jigsaw. He made a larger version of the ship cutouts as a mobile for Adm. Donald Hagen, surgeon general of the Naval Medical Corps.

Before that year was over, Rowley also had created cards and ornaments featuring several buildings at Bethesda.

``People seemed to like them,'' Rowley said. ``And I thought the command ought to send out Christmas cards, so I kept doing it.''

Seven years later, Rowley is already deep into getting ready for Christmas 1997, and his wooden ornaments have become treasured collectibles.

By the fall of 1991, the Rowleys were in California at Camp Pendleton, where he was commanding officer of the Naval Hospital. Soon he was busy sketching a hospital building for a Christmas card.

A tradition had begun. Back in the D.C. area, he fashioned cards and ornaments of four buildings at the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.

``They were very popular,'' Rowley said. ``So when Adm. Hagen retired as surgeon general, I decided to make one ornament for every camp he'd been at. I came up with 14 duty stations, including a patrol boat in Vietnam.''

Rowley has done the same for his own career.

``The beauty of this is that when you retire, you bring out the Christmas ornaments every year for the rest of your life, and once a year you remember all the things you did in the Navy,'' Rowley said, explaining his motivation. ``I think that's worthwhile.''

The wooden ornaments are cherished by those who receive them.

``I gave three sets of four buildings in Portsmouth to the Oak Leaf Club (a group of Navy spouses) for an auction, and they got $65 a set,'' he said.

Rowley sends ornaments to people in his office, members of the Naval Hospital's board of directors and about 100 department heads.

``I send a few to Washington, but I can't do many more,'' he said, adding that each one may take a half-hour of work, and he has time to do only a few each night. ``I do as many as 200, but if I tried to do more, Christmas would be over before I finished.''

Those who don't get a wooden ornament get a hand-colored card.

``We send a card saying `happy holidays' to many people at the hospital,'' he said. ``It seems like a neat way to thank the staff.''

This year, he expects to send as many as 500 cards. Because he can't use government funds for any of his holiday greetings, he pays for the stamps and envelopes.

``The people seem to like the idea,'' he said. ``And the reason the Navy is successful is that the people work very, very hard.''

Aside from his belief that the cards and ornaments are good for his staff, they satisfy something else in Rowley's life.

``This really is a no-brainer, just a drawing of a building,'' he said. ``But I always wanted to be an engineer and enjoy drawing the structures.''

The Rowleys have lived in Portsmouth on the base since the summer of 1995.

He started with Building One in Portsmouth, the building that housed the first naval hospital in the nation and that still is in use.

``I only finished 150 that time because coloring the roof was very time-consuming,'' he said.

To augment the ornaments of Building One, he did a sketch of Quarters A, the historic home where he lives, and turned it into the annual greeting card.

``I struggled to get it right,'' he said. ``I went out in Crawford Bay in a kayak and took pictures.''

Using the photographs, he sketched the restored home as it appeared from the water.

Last year, he tackled Building 215, the high-rise structure at the medical center. This year, he's doing the new hospital, which will be known as the Charette Health Care Center, that is expected to open just after Christmas 1998.

``It's the Navy's newest and finest,'' Rowley said. The building is the major piece of the $400 million construction project going on at the base near Olde Towne.

Rowley's creations are certainly different from the landscape paintings he did in high school in Owatonna, Minn. A painting from his college days hangs on the wall at Quarters A, and he proudly shows off a model of a Bluenose schooner he made in 1967 during his medical school days at the University of Minnesota.

``I gave it to Eileen (his wife) as a wedding present, so we will always have it,'' he said.

The pen-and-ink drawings he now does really mirror his original desire to be an engineer, he said.

``My grandfather was a professor of engineering. My father was an engineer. And I flunked out of engineering,'' he said.

He explained that he ``did OK'' the first year, but by his third year, he got involved in too many outside activities.

``For the winter quarter, I got an F,'' he recalled. ``I took the classes over and passed the courses, so I stayed in school. Then I decided I wanted to be either a teacher or a doctor. I got accepted at med school, so here I am.''

Rowley received his medical degree in 1970 and did an internship and part of a residency in surgery before joining the Navy in 1972. His specialty is vascular surgery.

``Surgery and engineering are the same,'' he said, jokingly. ``You create masterpieces either way.''

Being a hospital commander is creative, too, he said.

``You create the vision and get others to do it,'' he said. ``They create your masterpiece.''

His philosophy is to let people ``fix up their spaces.''

``That's very un-Navy,'' he confided. ``Usually you can't do things on your own.''

He emphasized that work done in the clinics and offices by the staff is ``strictly volunteer.'' Several spaces in the Portsmouth complex have been made more attractive for both staff and patients because of the admiral's policy of letting people do what they want - things like painting clowns on the walls in the pediatric section or putting Winnie the Pooh wallpaper in the newborn nursery.

In many places, he said, ``a totally different environment'' has been created by staff volunteers.

``I tested the idea first at Camp Pendleton,'' he said. ``I was the boss, and I was 3,000 miles away from Washington. I wanted people to break out of the mold.''

Working on projects to improve their surroundings has a heavy positive impact, he said.

``Staff attitudes about coming to work change,'' he said. ``Everybody feels better, and they give better care. I think working together on these projects really brings people closer together.''

That, in part, is the reason he works for months to create his ornaments and handmade cards.

``It's all about people feeling closer,'' he said. ``If I didn't think it would make a difference, I wouldn't spend time cutting these silly things out.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color Photos

LAWRENCE JACKSON / The Virginian-Pilot

Rear Adm. Bill Rowley cuts out wooden Christmas ornaments in his

basement workshop.

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