Today I am continuing to paste the short vignettes that I included in my memoirs.  I am only one story, and it is entitled "My Date With Betty".  After reading this story, I am sure that you will think that I am 1 beer short of a 6-pack.  Not the swiftest kid on the block.  I hope you enjoy reading it.

MY DATE WITH BETTY (1961).  In late 1961, I was a member of Sigma Nu fraternity.  During the fall, we would have football rallies ending with a bonfire.  I owned the cutest little car, an Austin Healy Sprite.  During the parade to the bonfire, I was in the parade with my Sprite and 2 girls sitting on the back.  The parade had stopped stopped,  and I heard a girl standing as a spectator say, “Hi, Sam”.  I looked and there was the cutest little redhead smiling at me.  She looked familiar, but I didn’t know who she was.  The parade continued on to the bonfire.  While there, the same redhead came up to me, and we started talking to each other.  I didn’t know her name, and at this time, I didn’t have the nerve to ask her.  In our conversation, she mentioned that someone had referred to her as “Betty”.  Hurray!  I now knew her first name.  I asked her to come back to my fraternity and join our party.  She did, and we had a great time.  I asked her for a date for the next night after the football game, and she said yes.
I laid in my bunk that night thinking about how well this had turned out.  Then a horrible thought truck me!  I didn’t know her last name!  How was I going to pick her up at her dormitory?  The policy at URI was to go to the dorm, go to the front desk, and ask for the girl you wanted to see, by name.  I knew that the dorm she resided in had several hundred residents.  I only knew her as Betty.
The next day, I frantically started to call my high school friends to see if anyone knew her.  After many calls, one, my good friend Hank Dugan,  said it could be Betty Brousseau, but he wasn’t sure.
That night, I went to her dorm to pick her up.  I went to the front desk and asked for Betty Brousseau.  The lady at the desk said the only Brousseau living there was named Elizabeth.  Betty could be a nickname for Elizabeth, and I asked the lady to call her.  You can’t imagine how nervous I was when I saw the legs of a girl appear on the stairway coming down.  Much to my relief, it was my Betty.  Hank, bless his heart, had been right.
Betty and I dated several more times during the fall until the Christmas break.  We were hitting it off pretty well, and I know we enjoyed each other’s company.  We only lived a few miles apart in our hometowns away from the university.  I asked her for a date during the upcoming Christmas break.
The date night was during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.  I went to her house to pick her up, and I met her father for the first time.  He strongly instructed me to bring Betty back by no later than 11:00.  I believe that he was an officer in the air force, so I said “Aye, Aye, Sir”. 
The horror movie “Psycho” had just come out and was scaring the pants off movie goers all over the country.  I took her to see Psycho, and we both had our pants scared off.  We arrived back from the movie close to her house at about 10:00.  I knew of an abandoned mill close by that was down a small dirt road.  That, combined with the movie we just saw, afforded us a scary place where we could “talk”.  At about 10:45 or so, we knew that we had to leave to get her home before the 11:00 deadline.  What I had not considered was that the dirt road had a thin layer of ice on it, and it had a slight grade downward toward the abandoned mill.  My little Austin Healy Sprite had no weight in the back, and therefore, it had little traction on the icy road.  I tried to turn the car around to go up the hill.  But the rear wheels spun, and I skidded off the road.  I tried all kinds of things to get the car realigned on the road.  I found wood boards to put under the wheels.  I used sticks and branches as well.  Finally, I got the car back on the road and headed in the right direction.  But the rear wheels would only spin on the ice.  I asked Betty if she knew how to drive a stick shift car.  She told me the answer that I did not want to hear.  “No”.  I gave her a quick lesson on how to use the clutch and to shift gears.  When she was ready, I got in back of the car to push and told her to drive.  We did get the car moving slowly.  With the tires spinning wildly, it moved and finally hit ice free dirt.  On the ice-free dirt, the Sprite suddenly lurched forward at a high rate of speed.  With Betty behind the wheel, the car sped up the remainder of the dirt road and went flying across the ensuing paved road.  The car hit the opposite curb and stalled.  We were both catatonic at this point, especially Betty.  Her house was less than 5 minutes from us, but by then it was about 12:30.  I was and hour and a half past the deadline given to me by her scary father. 

Figure 21.  1958 Austin Healy Sprite (See figure 21 below).  I had many adventures in this car.

When we arrived at her house, her father greeted us at the door.  We told him that we had a flat tire, but he bought none of that lame excuse.  He told Betty to go to her room, and he saw me to the door.
When we returned back to URI the next week, I called Betty to ask her for a date.  She said that her father had forbidden her to see me again.  I said that he was back in Lincoln, R.I., and we were here in Kingston, 30 miles away.  But she was obedient to her father, and we never dated again.  Our paths did cross several times on the campus, and I knew she was sorry about how things had turned out that fateful night.

FIGURE 20.  1958 AUSTIN HEALY SPRIT

Chapter 6 of my memoirs is a compilation of very short stories of events that happened to me during my life.  Most of them are humorous because they are events which I would rather forget, but my children and grandchildren just will not let me forget.  They are stories which I have told them numerous times and will I probably will tell in the future.  The 2 stories I post today are entitled "Dropped Off Into the Woods", and "The Fart And Burp Chart".  I hope you enjoy them.

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The following stories are short accounts of little things that have happened in my life.  They are the most often-requested stories by my 2 daughters and my 6 grandchildren.  Most are humorous in some way, at least to us.  Some bring back memories that give us warm feelings of our lives together; and in some cases, memories that I would like to forget.  They are included here primarily for my family’s enjoyment, but I hope any others reading them will enjoy them as well.
DROPPED OFF INTO THE WOODS (1960).  In the spring of 1960, I was a freshman at the University of Rhode Island (URI), and I had accepted an invitation to join Sigma Nu fraternity.  One evening during spring break, I was at the frat house watching TV.  Several fraternity brothers came into the room where I was.  I said hi to them and continued to watch TV.  Suddenly, they jumped me and dragged me outside where they blindfolded me and threw me into a truck.  We drove for about 15 minutes.  When the truck stopped, they pulled me out onto a dirt road and took off my blindfold.  They then said, “Good luck” and drove off.  I looked around and saw that I was on a dirt road, in the woods, at about 9:00 at night.  It was very, very dark.  All kinds of strange noises emanated from the woods, and I was scared.  The truck had gone off in one direction.  I wondered if I should start walking in that direction as well.  Something told me to go the other way.  They may be trying to fool me.  So, I went in the opposite direction. I had only been walking for a minute or two when I heard a large truck motor by.  I picked up my pace and soon came to a state highway.  I had made the right decision.  I immediately started to hitchhike in the direction I thought was right.  Unbelievingly, the first vehicle that came by, an 18-wheeler, stopped to give me a ride.  The driver asked me where I was trying to go, and I told him the university.  He said that he was going right by there and would drop me off.  Again, I had made the right decision.  Five minutes later, he dropped me off only a few minutes from the fraternity house.  When I went inside the house, I saw that the TV was still playing, so I sat down to watch.  A few minutes later, the guys who had abducted me walked in.  When they saw me sitting there, they couldn’t believe their eyes.  I had beaten them back!
This is one of Stephanie’s favorite stories.  Whenever I tell this story, she bursts into uncontrollable laughter.
THE FART AND BURP CHART (1959).  During my freshman year at URI, I lived in a university dormitory.  My roommate was one of my best friends in high school, Eddie Anderson.  Although we were very close friends, we had our little disagreements.  Eddie was constantly complaining about how often I would burp.  Well, I would fire back at him that he farted more than I burped.  This battle went on and on, and we finally decided to develop a “Fart and Burp Chart” and settle this issue once and for all.  Every time I heard him fart or every time he heard me burp, we would enter that onto our chart.  After a week, we would count up the incidences and see who did what the most.  The problem was that when we were making the chart, we couldn’t agree on how to spell fart.  I said it was spelled “Fot”, and he said it was spelled “Faht”.  My reasoning was how we New Englanders say fart.  We drop the “r” and say “Fot”.  I can’t for the life of me remember Eddie’s argument, but I am sure that it didn’t make any more sense than mine.  We asked several of the other dorm residents how fart was spelled, and it was amazing how many didn’t know how to spell it.  I mean, we were only 18 years old at the time.
You are probably wondering who won the contest.  Well, after about 3 days, Eddie ripped the chart down from the back of our room door.  The score was something like 62 Eddie farts to 2 Sam burps.  I would catch him in the mornings when he would just get up, and he would run up a string of farts.  He maintained that it wasn’t fair because he wasn’t fully awake in the mornings.  How did we ever graduate to our sophomore year?

In today's post, I include the last 3 of my testimonial stories.  My testimonial stories are events in my life which I relate to people that I am witnessing.  Witnessing is when I tell people how my life has changed once I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.  In today's first story, I present the last of the several times that I had a direct interaction with the Holy Spirit.  The second story is an event which happened during a reunion I attended with my old Naval Oceanographic Office Buddies that I  worked with for many years.  The third story shows how powerful prayer can be.  I hope you enjoy the retelling of these events which I have been blessed with.

​HOLY SPIRIT FOR THE FOURTH TIME.  I am not sure when this next event took place, but it was in the summer of about 2005.  My daughter Monica, my son-in-law, Bob Smoot, and my 3 grandchildren, Karlen, Rowan, and Liana were visiting us for a week from Austin, TX.  This was always a special treat for us when our Austin family visited us.  During this visit, about mid-week, a bizarre thing happened to me.
I had to go to the Bi-Lo grocery store for a few items.  I backed out of my driveway and headed down the street.  I saw Monica walking back to our house from the beach.  She had gone there to take photos of the wildflowers growing in the sand dunes.  I put my window down and asked her if she needed anything from the store.  She smiled and said, “No.  I’m good”.  I said OK, closed my window, and began my short drive to Bi-Lo,  I went about 10 feet or so, and a wave of love for Monica swept over me.  I can’t describe how intense this feeling of love for her was. The next thing I remember was that I was parked in the Bi-Lo parking lot, and I was crying actual tears.  I do not remember driving there.  I was totally shaken.
The rest of the day and that night, I kept thinking about what had just happened to me.  I knew that my love for her was no stronger than what I have for my youngest daughter, Stephanie, or for my wife, Sylvia, or for my mother for that matter.  What was this all about?  The next morning, I was lying in bed still thinking about this.  Then, the voice mentioned in the 3 stories presented earlier in my memoirs, that of the Holy Spirit, said to me these words, “Now you have some idea of the love the Father has for each and every one of you”.  These are the exact words I heard.  I remember them clearly.  It is interesting to note that the words “some idea” were used and not the word “know”.
Why did the Holy Spirit give me this message?  To this day, I have no idea. The message is certainly an important one, but why me?  One thing that I do know however, is that this episode has been the last time the Holy Spirit has communicated with me in this way.  Of course, I am constantly being given guidance by Him daily on what I should or should not do.  But the guidance is more of a feeling than the loud, clear messages given to me by the Holy Spirit as described in the stories I have posted.
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THE NAVOCEANO REUNION (2013).  In October 2013, my buddies from my early days at the Naval Oceanographic Office had a reunion on Hilton Head.  My Pueblo friends, Dunnie Tuck and Harry Iredale, were the primary planners of this event.  We rented a large 7-bedroom, 7-bath house to accommodate the approximately  20 people who attended.  Sylvia and I housed 2 of the couples in our home which was 2 streets away.  During the first night, I was inside taking pictures when I noticed that the men were all outside on a porch talking and drinking beer.  I went outside to join them.  As soon as I walked onto the porch, one of the guys said, “Here’s Sam.  He’ll remember that joke”.  Well, I had been the master of the “dirty” joke in my NAVOCEANO days.  But now I looked at them and said, “I’m sorry guys, but I don’t talk like that anymore”.  As they say, the silence that followed was deafening.   I explained to them that since moving to Hilton Head, my Christian values had grown, and I just stopped using foul language or telling dirty jokes.
The next day, several of the guys and their wives came up to me to tell me that they were believing Christians and were thrilled to know that I was one as well.  At the evening meal, we asked the others if they would mind if we asked the Lord to bless the food for our use.  No one objected, and we thanked God for providing us with the food we were about to enjoy.  We said the blessing for each meal that followed.
An interesting note to this story is that the people who first approached me were Dunnie Tuck and his wife, Vi.  Dunnie, as you now know, was one of the 2 civilian oceanographers onboard the USS Pueblo when it was captured by N. Korea (the other being Harry Iredale).  Vi told me that during the 11 months of captivity in N. Korea, Dunnie had been the spiritual leader of the American captives.  In this role, he kept the morale of the men up and helped them get through their terrible ordeal.  I had no idea of the spiritual strength of Dunnie Tuck.

THE POWER OF PRAYER (2005).  In January of 2005, my father suddenly became seriously ill.  He was, at that time, living in the same nursing home as my mother.  He had gone into a coma and was unresponsive.  I went to the hospital to visit him and to talk to his doctor about his condition.  The doctor gave me the bad news that my dad’s kidneys had shut down and that he had 3 or 4 more days to live.  Palliative care was the only thing we could do until the end.
Now, I had the unenviable task of telling my mother that her husband of almost 65 years was going to die.  I had no idea of how I was going to do this.  My head was swimming in confusion.  I went to Burger King to have lunch and to try to sort this dilemma out of how I could break this news to my mother.  I came up with no clear plan.  I left Burger King to go back to the nursing home to tell my mother what she had to know.  On my way to her room, I had to pass by the nurse’s station.  The nurse at the station saw me and asked, “How is Mr. Tooma doing”?  I started to tell her, but my voice broke, and I could not speak.  The nurse saw this and immediately rushed to me to give me a hug and say how sorry she was.  How was I going to tell my mother the bad news when I could not even tell it to, essentially, a stranger?  My mother’s room was near the end of a long hall, and I began my walk down this hall.  As I walked, I began to pray for help.  I prayed for the words I would need so that my mother would understand and accept the situation without breaking down.  Somehow, when I walked into her room, I had a new-found feeling of confidence of what I had to do.  I don’t remember my words, but I do know that my mother took the news calmly.  Somehow, I had delivered my message in a way that she accepted without breaking down.
How did I go from a man who could not even talk to a stranger about what I had to do to being a man who was cool, calm, and collected? All within a few seconds!  The only answer that I have is the power of prayer.

Today, I continue to post the events in my life which I include whenever I am witnessing my Christian walk with others; believers and non-believers.  As I said in my introduction to my previous post, these stories often are received with disbelief, both by believing Christians and non-believers.  But they did happen to me, and I present them without shame.  I hope you enjoy the 2 stories I present today.

HOLY SPIRIT FOR THE SECOND TIME (2002).  In August 2002, I was very enthusiastic about the renewal of my faith.  It was a time that I was beginning to really get interested in the Bible.  However, one thing that I did not want to do was to burn myself out in this area and begin to lose interest.  I had 3 options of Bible study  to choose from which were all going to begin in early September; Community Bible Study (CBS) which was going to begin study of Galatians and then Hebrews; a Bible study of Romans offered by St. Luke’s; and a very small, small group which was going to study the Essentials of Discipleship.  I only intended to select one of these options, and I was pretty sure that I would select Essentials of Discipleship with 2 other men, George Irwin and Jim Way.  However, with decisions like this, we Christians are always asked to pray on it in order to see what the Lord says.  So, dutifully one morning, I prayed to ask the Lord’s advice on which study I should take.  With my mind already made up, I was not expecting an answer.  I was shocked when the same voice as in the story I related earlier this week, the Holy Spirit, said clearly into my head, “Take two”.  That’s it.  Only 2 words; take two. But those words were more of a command and not a request.  I said aye, aye, Sir, and I signed up for Essentials of Discipleship and CBS.
Two of my dearest friends, Karl Meyer and Tom Gaffney, were extremely happy that I elected to enroll in the CBS class.  Karl had been badgering me for almost a year to join the CBS studies, and Tom was the Teaching Director for the Hilton Head evening chapter of CBS.
It is interesting to note that I only wanted to take one study so I would not burn myself out with Bible studies.  Well, I not only did the Essentials of Discipleship study and the CBS study of Galatians and Hebrews, but 3 weeks later, I joined my wife in her study of Romans at St. Luke’s church.  The Holy Spirit certainly knows what He is doing.

HOLY SPIRIT FOR THE THIRD TIME.  In October 2003, we had a tragic event occur in our lives.  Chris, a boyfriend of my youngest daughter, Stephanie, died from a drug overdose.  We did not know that he used drugs, and we never found out if his death was accidental or self-inflicted.  Stephanie and Chris were not in an active relationship at the time, but they were still good, close friends.  We knew little about Chris’s family, other than his mother lived in Florida.  After his death, there was no one to make any kind of arrangements.  So, Sylvia, Stephanie, and I took on that responsibility.  Through one of his friends in Florida, we were able to contact his mother and break the sad news to her.  She was very poor, and in very poor health. Chris had been in the navy, so we arranged a military burial ceremony for him and located a Potter’s Field in Florida for his burial place.  This whole event was very sad for us because Chris was fun-loving, so full of life, and had been part of our family for many years.
One Sunday, a few days after the death but before the burial had occurred, Sylvia and I were sitting in church, and I was thinking about what we had to do with the arrangements for taking care of Chris’s body in Florida.  Then, loud and clear, I heard the same voice that I talked about in both the testimonial stories I've posted.  There was no mistaking that it was, once again, the Holy Spirit.  It was a simple message, “It’s a blessing”.  I could not understand how this tragic event could possibly be a blessing.  A young man in the prime of his life had tragically died.  I pondered this message from the Holy Spirit for many months.
Needless to say, this happening was devastating to Stephanie.  She blamed herself for Chris’s death and was suffering greatly.  Several months later, she and I were sitting and talking in my car outside of the nursing home where my mother was living.  She opened up to me and told me of how crushed she was about Chris’s death.  She told me that she had tried to contact several self-help groups that were made up of people who had experienced similar tragedies in their lives.  Not one of these groups got back to her.  Stephanie then told me that she finally turned to Jesus Christ for help.  Where human beings did not help her, Jesus did.  Stephanie told me that without His help, she wasn’t sure that she could have gotten over what happened to Chris.
How is this a blessing?  All I know is that Stephanie became a believing Christian soon thereafter.  She eventually married Jordan Sturm, brought him to the Lord, and is raising her 3 children with strong Christian values.  This is certainly a great blessing to me and Sylvia.

In today's blog, I will post the first of 6 stories that have to do with my Christian walk.  I include these 6 stories whenever I am sharing my Christian life experiences to fellow believers and to non-believers.  Often, eyes grow wide or body language tells me that the audience does not believe what I have just related to them.  But, I assure you that these events happened in my life and are reported here just as I have remembered them.  The first story is the first time the Holy Spirit interacted with me in a direct, unambiguous way.  This audible contact with the Holy Spirit blew my mind then, and it still does now when I think of it.  I have called this story Holy Spirit For the First Time.

I have many faith-based stories of events that have occurred in my life, and I will provide some of them below.  However, I have already included other testimonial stories in Chapter 4.  Miracles because I felt that they were so miraculous that they belonged in the miracles chapter.  In any event, I still feel that the following stories are miracles in their own right.  Hopefully, you will agree with me.

HOLY SPIRIT FOR THE FIRST TIME (2002).  I started the renewal of my Christian faith in 2001, right after we moved to Hilton Head in February 2000.  We joined St. Luke’s Church, and we began to study the Bible and to join church small groups to study Christian-related topics.  In one of my first small group study lessons, we were discussing the temptation of Jesus Christ by Satan (see Matthew 4).  I was familiar with this story since my childhood years.  I had always wondered why this particular story was so important and why it was so widely discussed.  I understood that Jesus was fully God and fully man at the same time.  Therefore, being fully human, he was subjected to the same temptations as we all are.  Yet, he thoroughly rejected the temptations that Satan threw at him.  I thought, Jesus was also fully God, so what is the big deal here?  Defeating Satan would be a piece of cake to Jesus.  So, at this time, I missed the lessons learned from this story in the Bible; that Jesus is the perfect role model for us to follow in dealing with the many temptations of life and to use Scripture to defeat Satan, as Jesus did.  I did not have these lessons learned in my data bank at the time.
One night, I was lying in bed thinking about the temptation story.  I had my eyes closed when I heard a clear voice in my head say “What does this story mean to you?”  I opened my eyes and looked to the side of my bed fully expecting to see someone standing there.  That’s how clear the voice was.  There was no one there, of course.  I was shook up, but I realized that the Holy Spirit had just asked me a question.  I put my head back down on my pillow and pondered His question.  I answered, “To become more like Jesus?”  He said, “That’s true, but think deeper”.  After a short time, a vision appeared in my head.  The vision was a 45-degree line from the lower left going up to the upper right.  At the top right was Jesus, all that is good.  At the bottom left was Satan, all that is evil.  Near Satan were evil people that would kill their own grandmother if they thought it would benefit them.  As you went up the slope toward Jesus, the more good you became.  It then became clear to me what the Holy Spirit was trying to teach me.  I told Him that although I could never reach the top of this line where Jesus is, I should try to become more like Him each and every day.  He answered me, “You have it” and was gone.
This story almost seems like a fairy tale.  But it did happen to me.  This was the first time that I had a direct interaction with the Holy Spirit, but what He taught me that night has had meaning for me ever since.  My goal in life is to become more like Jesus Christ every day.  Another huge benefit of this experience with the Holy Spirit (and more were to follow) is that whenever little doubts of my Christian faith creep into my mind (and they do to all of us), I just remember what He taught me that night, and the doubts just go away.
An important sidebar to this story is that for 37 years I functioned in the scientific community.  In this world, you cannot say “Trust me”.  To succeed, you have to prove everything you say.  At this new time in my life, I had to think differently and trust what the Bible was telling me.  The Holy Spirit, in His infinite wisdom, knew that I would relate to a continuum line stretching from Satan to Jesus.  He taught me an important lesson that night in a way that I would understand.

In today's post, I conclude my chapter of miracles by including 2 events.  The first is my selection to attend the Navy War College located in Newport, Rhode Island.  This year at the War College was a significant point in my career.  It opened many doors for me and gave me incredible credibility when I was dealing with high level military personnel.  The second is my escape from serving on the maiden voyage of the USS Pueblo, the navy spy ship which was captured by North Korea in 1968.  I hope you enjoy these two stories.

SELECTION TO THE NAVAL WAR COLLEGE (1978).  The navy moved the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) from the Washington, D.C. area to the Mississippi/Louisiana gulf coast in 1974.  At that time, the R & D portion separated from NAVOCEANO and became the Naval Ocean Research and Development Activity (NORDA).  I remained active in sea ice research, but I expanded my area of interest to include mine warfare (see the miracle of Davis Strait and COMINEWARCOM presented in earlier posts).  Also, in 1976, I was actively involved with Dr. Ralph Goodman and his Assistant Secretary of the Navy-directed assessment of the navy’s exploratory development research program (also discussed earlier).  Following the latter, I was assigned to Dr. Goodman’s staff, and I was tasked to became familiar with all the R & D programs being conducted at NORDA.  In 1978, another opportunity fell into my lap.  I was asked to throw my hat into the ring and apply to attend the U.S Navy War College located in Newport, R.I.  The Navy War College offers advanced programs for leading officers of all the military services (including the Coast Guard), civilians from various government agencies, and for selected officers from international navies.  To graduate from the Navy War College’s 1-year program is a career enhancing event for our military officers.
When I looked into this opportunity, I found that the Chief of Naval Research (CNR), an admiral, had one billet allowed each year to attend the Navy War College.  Again, as with selection to the NSAP program discussed earlier (and which occurred later in my career [1982]), I felt my chances for selection were slim.  CNR had hundreds of senior scientists/managers which would be more qualified than me.  However, I felt that the opportunity would be very career enhancing if I were selected.  So, I applied.  I was still a GS 13 at the time.  This grade is equivalent to a junior Commander in the navy, and all the military officers at the War College would be senior Commanders and Captains (Lieutenant Colonels and Colonels in the other military services (See Appendix C)).  Even if I were selected, by some miracle, I would be a very junior student.  I considered this before I sent my application to CNR, but I felt that I was worrying for nothing since I would not be selected.
        Well, somehow, I did get selected.  I never found out how many applicants there were for that one billet, but I have always felt that Dr. Goodman may have had some influence in the selection process.
The year I spent at the Navy War College (August 1978-August 1979) had a significant impact on my future career.  I became friends with a fellow student, CDR Paul Gaffney, who later attained flag level (i.e., an admiral) and eventually became the navy’s Chief of Naval Research.  I also got to know several other naval officers who would later reach the rank of admiral.
I remember on one occasion, I was giving a talk on the environmental effects on mine warfare at a primarily military conference held in San Diego, CA.  When I walked into the conference hall, I noticed that an admiral was surrounded by several officers of lower rank.  This is normal because admirals attract people like bees to honey.  I further noticed that the admiral was one of my fellow students at the Navy War College.  When our eyes met, he immediately excused himself from this entourage, came over to me, and gave me a big hug.  We had a lot to talk about.  I could see the other officers looking at me and wondering who I was.  My credibility skyrocketed, and my talk was highly successful.  I’m sure my talk was more successful because I was a “buddy” of the admiral.  Whenever I was at a gathering of military officers, I was taken more seriously when they discovered that I attended the Navy War College.

THE USS PUEBLO.  In the near-death chapter, I presented the story when the USS Banner (AGER 1) was purposely rammed by a Soviet derelict ship.  As I mentioned, the Banner was the first of a class of spy ships outfitted to conduct oceanographic research as a cover for the primary objective of its missions.  The second ship of this class was the USS Pueblo (AGER 2).  I was assigned to be the oceanographer on board for the Pueblo’s first deployment.
God then changed my life once again.  My wife, Sylvia, became pregnant with our first child, Monica.  Monica’s projected birth date was late February, well within the scheduled deployment of the Pueblo’s mission.  Sylvia asked me to leave the Banner/Pueblo program so that I could be with her during the pregnancy and the birth in February.  I put in a request to be transferred out of the program, and the request was granted.  My two great friends, Dunnie Tuck and Harry Iredale were assigned to the Pueblo.
The rest of this story is in the history books.  The Pueblo was assigned to conduct a spying mission off Pyongyang, North Korea.  On January 23, 1968, the Pueblo was attacked by N. Korea, seized, and towed into port in the Pyongyang River.  One Pueblo crewman was killed during the attack, and Dunnie and Harry, along with the other 80-plus crewmen were held prisoners for 11 months.  They were beaten and tortured, both physical and mentally, during the 11 months of captivity.
In the famous photo below (Figure 19), Harry is the second from the left on the back row.  I feel badly for Harry and Dunnie, who had to suffer through 11 months of hell.  However, I can’t help but thank the Lord for the pregnancy of my first child that saved me from that ordeal.

     FIGURE. 19  Famous Photo of Some Pueblo Captives Giving the Glad-Hand Signal

I'm continuing to post the miracles that I have been blessed with throughout my life.  Of all the stories in my memoirs, this is, perhaps, my favorite.  I have titled this event  "My Mother's Rebirth".  This miracle of my mother coming to the Lord Jesus when she was over 90 years old is truly a miracle.  In fact, this story is made up of 4 separate miracles.  Whenever I think of this event in my life, I still shake my head in amazement.

MY MOTHER’S REBIRTH (2008).  This next story seems out of place.  All the stories in this chapter involve episodes in my professional career.  This story could also be included in the next chapter where I relate stories that are in my full faith-walk testimony.  However, the story of my mother coming to the Lord Jesus has to be included in this chapter of miracles.
My mother and father moved from Rhode Island to be with us on Hilton Head in 2003.  They moved in to a 2-bedroom condominium.  Soon thereafter, their health began to fail, and my dad passed away in January 2005, one week short of his 90th birthday.  Soon thereafter, my Mother had to have her gallbladder removed, and her health began to worsen.  Before long, she was in a full-care nursing home.  Her ideas of God and faith had deteriorated over the years, and I began to fret over her eternal future.  I began witnessing her in earnest.  I tried to talk to her about the beauty of the Christian faith and that eternal salvation was available to her if she accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior and gave her life over to Him.  I went over our weekly Community Bible Study (CBS) questions and commentaries, I took her to church, and read daily devotionals to her.  All to no avail.  This went on for several years, and as I saw her health continuing to fail, I started to panic.  Then, the first of several miracles happened.
I did what I should have done in the beginning; I prayed for help.  Soon, one night I was lying in bed thinking about what I could do.  Then I heard the Holy Spirit in a very clear and concise voice.  [This was not the first time that this had happened.  See my chapter on Testimony Stories].  He said, “Ask your mother questions about our faith and see what is troubling her.”  I immediately got up, went to my desk in the bedroom, and began writing down questions fundamental to our faith.  This was a strange occurrence to me because it seemed like an out-of-body experience.  I actually saw myself from behind writing at my desk.  When I awoke the next morning, I rushed to the desk to see if I had been dreaming.  There, on the desk, were two pages of questions written in pencil in my handwriting.  The first question was very basic, “Do you believe in God”?, and they got progressively more specific about our faith.  I shook my head. It had not been a dream at all.
The next day, I visited my Mother and got her out of her bed and into her recliner.  I then told her that I would ask her a series of questions about the Christian faith, and I wanted her to give me a truthful answer; not one she felt that I wanted to hear.  She agreed to do this.  I started with the belief in God question and worked my way through the others.  Her answers were very encouraging to me.  Her answers were what I had hoped to hear, but she did have some caveats.  But as I progressed through the questions, I got to the one on the virgin birth.  Her answer was a very definitive “Absolutely not!”  This took me by surprise since she had done so well to this point.  I asked her why, and she said it was impossible for a virgin to get pregnant.  I used all the standard arguments like, if God can create the universe, then getting a virgin pregnant should be a piece of cake.  All to no avail.  She was immovable on this issue.  Then, the second miracle took place.
At this time, at St. Luke’s Church, I was responsible for calling people who were new to Hilton Head and had attended the church Sunday service.  I would welcome them, tell them what the church was all about, and answer any questions they may have.  I called a lady who had filled out a visitor’s card.  I remember her name.  It was Mary Pryor.  I don’t know if Mary had ever attended St. Luke’s more than once.  In fact, I never met her.  Then, weeks later after our phone conversation and about 2 days after I asked my mother the questions, I received an email from Mary Pryor.  The subject of the email was “The Virgin Birth.”  Well, this caught my immediate attention, and I read her email.  It was a daily devotional on how important the virgin birth is to our faith.  It talked about how Luke, a physician, had probably talked to Mary, the mother of Jesus, about her experience.  And if anyone understood the process of conception, it certainly would be Luke.  If he bought into the idea, it had to be true.
I could not believe what was happening.  This little devotional seemed to be just what the doctor ordered.  That day, I rushed to see my mother with a copy of the devotional along with a version of the sinner’s prayer.  I read it to her and gave her more information on Luke; the writer of the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, a highly intelligent Greek, a thorough, careful historian, and a traveling companion of the Apostle Paul.  I asked her to read the documents several times and think about them.  Two days later, I visited my mother again, and I asked her if she had studied the devotional.  She said that she had.  I then asked her if she had a love for Jesus.  She said that she did, and it was growing every day.  I had to pick myself up off the floor.  I could not believe what I had just heard.  She had also prayed the sinner’s prayer and had committed herself to Jesus.
Now it is time for miracle 3, the clincher.  About a month or so later, Sylvia and I were eating dinner.  I was just about to put some food in my mouth when Sylvia asked me. “Sam, have you noticed how much your mother has changed lately?”  The food never reached my mouth.  I put the fork down and said, “Yes I have.”  I could not believe what I had just heard.  Before, my mother would constantly complain about her roommate; how she bothered her all the time and complained about everything.  My mother hated the nursing care staff and said how they were always making fun of her behind her back and laughing at her; how the food was bad and she hated it; how she could not sleep at night.  She complained about everything.  Now, after she came to the Lord, I asked her about her roommate, and she said how her roommate had no family, was lonely, and that she (my mother) was all that she had.  One day she asked me if I could buy a blouse or something for one of the nursing staff.  She said how much the nurse had been tending to her needs.  She also said how much fun they were by cracking jokes all the time.  I asked how the food was lately.  She said that it was still bad, but she added how difficult it was to prepare food for so many people at once.  She also told me that she was sleeping better.
Once, not long before this happened, I had told my mother about the Holy Spirit; that once you accept Jesus into your life, you are given this wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit, and how the Holy Spirit can change your life.  I remember what she told me, “How can I change?  I’m over 90 years old and living in a nursing home”.  Reread the paragraph above, and you can see what the Holy Spirit can do.
There is one other aside which I feel is important to this story.  I call it miracle number 4.  I mentioned that I had never met Mary Pryor.  After this miracle of my mother’s conversion, I called Mary, and I asked her why she had sent me the virgin birth devotional.  I had never told her about my mother’s hang-up.  She said, “I don’t know why.  I just thought that you might find it interesting”.  Isn’t that interesting?

     I am continuing in the posting of the miracles which I have been blessed with in my life.  Today's post titled "MY MOTHER'S REBIRTH (2008)" is, perhaps my favorite story in all of my memoirs.  There are 4 separate miracles in this story.  Look for them and be amazed as I still am.

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MY FIRST WEEK AT CONSUBPAC (August 1982).  I arrived with my family in Hawaii in early August.  I started working with Dr. Kranz right away.  He introduced me to numerous military members of the staff as well as several other civilians also assigned to COMSUBPAC.  These civilians were not part of the NSAP program but were on temporary duty from the Naval Undersea Systems Center (NUSC).  During this first day of Joe showing me the ropes and the many introductions to the staff members, the thought of failure haunted me.  What especially created knots in my stomach was when he told everyone that I was Dr. Janota’s replacement.  I know I cringed in horror each time he did so.  (Read my previous post to see why being compared to Dr. Janota made me ill.)
Then, the first of many miracles happened.  It was about mid-morning on Tuesday, only my second day on the job.  Joe and I were talking at his desk when a young lieutenant came into our office looking very agitated.  He said “Joe, you have got to help me.”  Joe asked what was wrong.  Here is what the lieutenant said.  At the morning operational briefing to the admiral, the admiral announced that the Governor of Hawaii had asked him if he could help him with supporting the OTEC program (I will briefly describe OTEC below).  The admiral asked how he could help.  The governor said that engineers designing the seafloor portion of the OTEC system needed to know what the seafloor looked like so they could have a better idea of how to design the system.  They asked if the admiral could make the DSV Turtle available to them to visually inspect the bottom where they wanted to place the structure.  Well, the DSV Turtle was designed to be a rescue vehicle (for the submarine crew) in case a submarine had a tragic mishap.  The admiral did not know that if he granted this request if he would be providing a joy ride for these guys at the navy’s expense.  He then turned to the young lieutenant and tasked him to look into this and report back to him by next Friday’s morning brief.  Well, the lieutenant had no earthly idea of how to answer the admiral’s request.  After listening to this story, Joe told him that he didn’t have a clue of where to begin either.  I had been sitting there quietly, and then I said, “Maybe I could help”.  The lieutenant, who had not yet even looked at me, turned to me and said “Who are you”?  Joe introduced me to him.  I told him and Joe that I had been recently working with scientists from LSU and Texas A&M on placing oil rig structures on the bottom in the Gulf of Mexico.  I could ask them and see what they think.  The lieutenant said, “You can do that?  Can you have something by Friday morning?”  I said that I would try.
At this time, I think it would be valuable to know something about OTEC.  OTEC stands for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (See Figure 17).  To be honest, I had heard about OTEC but knew little about it.  It was technology that had been around for many years, and it involved creating cheap energy by exploiting the temperature differences between the ocean surface and the ocean floor.  Hawaii is an ideal place for this technology to be exploited.  Huge water depths are close to the Hawaiian land mass (hence the necessary temperature differences are available), and a minimum of cabling to shore is needed because of this proximity. 
                       
                Figure 17.  Schematic of OTEC Concept

      SEE FIGURE 17 BELOW

In addition, outside of windmill farms and solar paneling, the oil resources necessary for Hawaii’s energy needs have to be transported by ship to the islands and is expensive.
As soon as the lieutenant left, I phoned Dr. Joe Suhada at LSU.  There was a 5-hour time difference between Hawaii and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but he had to work late that day and I caught him still at his office.  I explained the situation to him and asked what the oil companies would do.  Joe said that he would call Dr. Bill Bryant at Texas A&M and discuss it with him.  Before noon on Wednesday (the next day), I had a response from Dr. Suhada.  Essentially, he told me that the oil companies would never send people down for a visual inspection.  They had much cheaper, less dangerous, and more effective ways to get the information needed.  They would use high-resolution photographic cameras, high frequency side scan sonars, and sub-bottom profiling systems.  Well, I took this information and wrote up a 1.5-page report for the lieutenant recommending that the admiral not honor the governor’s request.  The lieutenant was extremely grateful for what I did.
Later that day, an enlisted yeoman came to my desk and asked if I was Dr. Tooma.  By now I was getting tired of correcting them about being a doctor, and I said that I was he.  He then told me that the admiral wanted to see me at 3:30. I showed up on time and was invited into his office.  ADM Bernard Kauderer immediately got up from his desk, walked over to me, and shook my hand.  He asked me to sit on his couch so we could talk.  He commended me for the work I had done on the possible use of the DSV Turtle.  The lieutenant had told the admiral that I had prepared the report.  Once again, someone had passed the credit to me taking none for himself.  ADM Kauderer welcomed me to the staff and was very gracious.  In fact, he told me that he was having a “little” party at his house on Saturday, and he hoped that Sylvia and I could attend.  This was pretty heady stuff to me.  Here was the commander of all our submarines in the Pacific asking me to attend a party at his house.
What just happened in the first week of my assignment at COMSUBPAC?  I was convinced that I offered nothing at this new job.  I felt that in short order I would be sent home packing with my tail between my legs.  But through some miracle, a very unique and specific opportunity was dropped into my lap.  It was just what I needed to get my confidence up and help me be productive.  In the next few days. I was constantly approached by military staffers and the civilians on the staff asking me for my advice on environmental matters.  It was soon thereafter that I was the Environmental Advisor to the admiral and not “just” the Acoustic Advisor.  If this story does not fit into the miracle category, then nothing does.  In the next two years at COMSUBPAC, God continued to watch over me in unbelievable ways.
As an interesting aside to this story, I found out that ADM Kauderer had honored the request by the governor.  I couldn’t believe it.  Hadn’t I recommended that the admiral say no?  I was told that admirals get the big bucks for making decisions like these.  They have to make hard decisions.  By granting the governor’s request, ADM Kauderer was putting his career on the line.  If a submarine went down and needed the Turtle for rescue when it was supporting a civilian need, it would not have been good for him.  But often politics drive decisions.  Since the state of Hawaii strongly supports the US military, ADM Kauderer felt it was worth the risk.

TWO YEARS AT COMSUBPAC (1982-1984).  Instead of being a horror story, my two years at COMSUBPAC turned out to be extremely exciting and unbelievably rewarding.  Again “coincidences” and “just so happens” continued to occur.  For example, the Soviet submarine threat in the Arctic Ocean was growing at that time, and countering that threat was a high priority problem.  Environmental issues abounded.  I had a very strong level of experience in the arctic.  In fact, I had co-authored a classified paper on detecting submarines in contact with the underside of the ice.  When I showed the intelligence officer on the SUBPAC staff my test results, he immediately wanted me to show the data to his superior, the Third Fleet intelligence officer.  Soon I was designing a 2-submarine test in the arctic for an upcoming deployment.  This test involved 2 nuclear submarines, a remote sensing aircraft, 2 manned camps on the ice, and a Coast Guard icebreaker.  Wow!  I was working with several other agencies in designing this test, but I was the guy on the SUBPAC staff coordinating the test.

SUBMARINE MINE AVOIDANCE TEST (1984).  Another important program that I got involved with was submarine mine avoidance.  Sea mines are a serious threat to a submarine, especially in narrow straits.  The question put to me was how can we avoid mines in a minefield?  How we addressed this question is presented below.
        Whenever you can utilize systems that are already onboard a naval ship, that is a great plus, especially on submarines where space is just not available for a new system.  To detect mines in the water column, a high frequency, high resolution system is required.  It just so happens that the nuclear submarines in the US Navy all have such a system; the BQN-17 secure fathometer.  The thought was that this system could be trained to look forward (instead of downward) and possibly “see” mines.  To test this theory, we used the USS Houston, an SSN often used for research projects.  We established a dummy minefield in the test area near Pearl Harbor, and we conducted a series of runs through the minefield.  We started the test around 9:00PM.  We knew exactly where the mines were located (geographic location and depth) but we could not detect one mine with the BQN-17.  We ran lines with all kinds of tactical changes but could not detect the mines.  We were totally discouraged.  At about 7:00AM, we decided at the last minute to do one more run.  Near the end of the run, we heard a weak sonar return.  We all stood up and wondered what that sound was.  Was it a mine?  Or was it something else?  Before the run was over, we received another blip, and both were right where the mines were located.  We were all very excited and began to plan another track line.  On our next series of runs, we detected more and more of the mines with clearer and louder sonar returns.  Soon, we were able to navigate around the mines with ease.  The BQN-17 worked!
During analysis of the test results, we found out that another oceanographic test was being conducted close to where we were operating.  We requested access to their data.  Upon analysis of their data, we found that they had collected samples of the Deep Scattering Layer (DSL).  The DSL is a layer of very small fish that have swim bladders which scatter sonar energy.  This layer is shallower at night and deepens during the day.  What was happening during our test was that during the night, we were operating in the DSL, thereby rendering our sonar useless.  When daylight occurred at dawn, the DSL deepened so that it was below us.  As it deepened, our sonar performance got better and better.
We now had something to report to the admiral.  When we told him of the affect the DSL had on the sonar, he asked the question that admirals seem to ask.  “How can I tell if I am in a DSL or not?”  He then said, “I won’t take my submarine into a minefield unless I know the answer to that question.”  Well, the answer to that question is another story which I was not involved in.

I need to add here that this mine detection experience plays an important roll in my first book "The SOOF" which is due out on 5 June.  Be sure to purchase a copy to find out how I used this experience in my book.

I included this last story, not because I was near death or because it is humorous in some way. [ But the coincidence that another agency was conducting tests near our area and just happened to collect the DSL data we needed to solve our problem, seems like a God-incidence to me.  Also, our last minute decision to make one more run seems like a miracle to me.]  But it does show what kind of issues I had to deal with the 2 years that I was assigned to COMSUBPAC.  Those 2 years, August 1982-August 1984, were the most exciting and rewarding years of my professional life.  Upon my completion of my 2 years at COMSUBPAC, I was awarded the Meritorious Civilian Service Award from ADM Austin Scott, who was COMSUBPAC when my tour ended.  This award is the second highest award a Rear Admiral can bestow upon a civilian.  And to think that I was sure that I would be an utter failure back in 1982.  God does work in mysterious ways.
 

     Figure 18.  Receiving the Meritorious Civilian Service Award from ADM Austin Scott

     SEE FIGURE 18 BELOW
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     Figure 17.  Schematic of OTEC Concept

     Figure 18.  Receiving the Meritorious Civilian Service Medal From ADM Austin Scott.  That is Sylvia, my proud wife.