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DC2 LEONARD J. NEEDHAM – 25 February 1951 to 52

I Leonard J. Needham “Len” was born 10 November 1929, at Monona, Iowa. I had brown hair and blue eyes. I enlisted in the Navy at Des Moines, Iowa on 9 September 1950, and went to boot camp at USNTC San Diego, California.

I left Philadelphia Damage Control School in December 1950 and went on board USS FRANK E. EVANS (DD 754). She was at sea off Wonson, Korea. I was transferred from the tanker USS CIMARRON (AO 22), it was 25 February 1951. I left FRANK E. EVANS early in August 1952 with orders to Washington, D.C. for USS WILLIAMSBURG (AGC 369), the presidential yacht, as recommended by Captain Salmon. Also, I wrote the test for 1 class, which caught up with me in October 1952. I enjoyed my time on FRANK E. EVANS more than any station or ship I was on.

In regard to our skipper, CDR N. D. Salmon, he was a special sort of a captain. One time in Formosa, we had the stern cable from a buoy get jammed in the strut of the port screw. I went down under the stern and plugged a marlin spike in a loop on the cable and when they cranked forward, all was fine. Captain Salmon hooked me up and handed me a $5.00 dollar bill and said, “That’s diving pay, and you’re qualified in your records, but I am entering a recommendation for diver’s school.” Just one of the events that do stand out. I am proud of the time as a member of FRANK E. EVANS’ crew.

BM3 WILLIAM A. MATHENEY 14 May 1951

I William A. Matheney “Bill” was born 29 March 1932, at
Chattanooga, Tennessee. My hair and eyes are brown.I enlisted in the navy at Birmingham, Alabama on 4 January 1951 and went to boot camp at Great Lakes, Illinois. On 14 May 1951 I reported for duty aboard USS FRANK E. EVANS (DD 754), to 2nd Division, where I eventually was promoted to Boatswain Mate third class. EVANS was my only duty station. I left her in 1954.

It was a great honor to have served in the navy and my country. During the four years in the navy I saw parts of the world that otherwise, I would have never seen I know it made me a stronger and better person.

Bill currently resides at 1803 Ragsdale Road NW, Cullman, AL. You can reach him at 256-734-7353.

BT2 DAVID L. MARSH 15 September 1950-54

I David L. Marsh “Dave” was born 4 April 1933, at Akron, Ohio. I have light brown hair and blue eyes. I enlisted in the navy at Seattle, Washington on 4 May 1950, and went to boot camp, Company 119, at USNTC San Diego, California. I went on board USS FRANK E. EVANS (DD 754) 15 September 1950, to B Division where I served as a Boiler Tender 2 class. nd

“Dave” currently resides at 1111 Archwood Drive SW #268, Olympia, WA 98502-5667. You can reach him at helenkortegard@comcast.netor 360-866-9525.

HARLEY BRUCE MARKHAM, JR. 3 May 1952 – 1953

“Harley Bruce Markham, always known by his middle name, was in the
class before mine at Notre Dame. He and Charley Magnus were in the
Naval Hospital, Kobe, Japan recovering from minor surgery when I
first reported aboard. Harley was transferred to shore duty in San
Diego after about 18 months in FRANK E. EVANS.”

-LTJG Douglass Legg

Harley Bruce Markham, Jr. was born in 1930 in Fort Collins, Colorado. In this first year of the great depression both jobs and money were scarce and the Markham’s moved to Fort Worth, Texas. For business reasons, the family moved to Casper, Wyoming. In 1933, Bruce made his third move to a new town in as many years. During the next seven years, the family lived in several rental units until, in 1940, they moved into their first family home. Bruce attended three different elementary schools before entering the town’s only junior high school in the 8th grade. Bruce was qualified with a push broom and worked in the family sign shop at various other jobs during World War II years. He gained experience in construction, bill posting and sign-painting. He attended Natrona County High School as a Freshman and Sophomore where he participated in the ROTC pro-gram. At 16, he acquired his airplane pilot’s license.

Academically, Bruce was lucky. School was always relatively easy and required little effort beyond attending class and handing in assignments. This did not produce the highest grades, but kept him in the upper percentages, qualified him for the National Honor Society and seemed to satisfy everybody.

In the fall of 1948, Bruce enrolled in Notre Dame University’s College of Commerce pursuing a major in Marketing. Religion was a required course for the Catholic students who made up the vast majority of the student body but, Bruce, as a Methodist, was exempted from these studies. At the suggestion of one of his working friends, Mr. Bill White, Bruce became a member of the Masonic Order during his first summer home from the University. He may not have been the only, but was certainly among the few, 32nd degree Masons attending Notre Dame University. After his Sophomore year, Bruce attended a summer session at Mexico City College where he earned sufficient credits to enable his graduation from Notre Dame in three years. To replace the academic hours, Bruce took a number of classes in English Literature and, upon graduation, received a second major in that subject.

After the summer of 1950 the United States, under the sponsorship of the United Nations, was deeply involved in a brutal war on the Korean Peninsula supporting South Korea against the aggressions of the North Koreans and Chinese. All young men at that time had a seven-year military obligation and, after graduation from Norte Dame, Bruce applied for the recently re-established U.S. Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. After passing the entrance examinations in Chicago, Bruce reported to Newport in October 1951 and, after completing the course in January 1952, joined the Pacific Fleet which was deployed in the Western Pacific.

Bruce was transferred via high-line to USS FRANK E. EVANS (DD 754) in early March 1952. FRANK E. EVANS was a 2200 ton destroyer built in 1943, which had seen significant service in the Pacific before being moth-balled after World War II to await commencement of the Korean hostilities. As a shinny new Ensign, Bruce was assigned to the Gunnery Department which was responsible for deck duties as well as the armament aboard FRANK E. EVANS. During his tour, he also served as 1 Division Officer and ultimately Gunnery Officer. FRANK E. EVANS was rotated between the U. S. and Westpac where she saw duty with the carrier task force anti-submarine screen, the bombardment group along the Korean Coast, with the Formosa Patrol and on various other screening duties, usual for the destroyer force. While on board FRANK E. EVANS, Bruce was good friends with ENS Chuck Magnus.

The day the cease fire was announced in 1953 Bruce was detached from the ship and transferred to Seattle. During the leave between assignments, Bruce married Mary Alice Collins of Dallas, Texas. The new couple drove to Seattle where Bruce took up his duties in the Office of Public Information on the staff of Rear Admiral Allen E. Smith, Commandant Thirteenth Naval District and Commander Western Sea Frontier.

The U.S. Navy, like its predecessor the British Navy, believed that a line officer was capable of discharging any duties to which he was assigned; no matter what. Bruce turned in his gunnery officer duties for new tasks involved in managing a live 30 minute musical variety show on King TV every Saturday night. He was also assigned the management of U.S. Navy band attached to that command and ran the photo shop and film library while participating in the other duties of the office, including press releases and letters for the Admiral. When Bruce completed his active duty tour, they moved to Pocatello, Idaho.

Bruce was an extremely successful businessman. He spent some 35 years developing the family’s outdoor advertising business. During those years he enjoyed family life with his children and stepchildren residing in Aspen, Colorado. Bruce sold the corporation.

While residing in Tucson, Arizona he then embarked on a second career in California’s famed Napa Valley. Once again a change in residence was necessary to begin as a grape grower providing estate grown grapes to Robert Mondavi and Beaulieu Vineyards. In 1977 he acquired the Little C0-OP historic wine facility and founded Markham Vineyards. Markham’s first vintage was in 1978 and received critical acclaim for the wines produced from his 250 acres of carefully tended vines. Those wines continue to receive acclaim today under the Markham name and his personal concept that wine making begins in the vineyard with diligent attention to detail. In 1979 he married Kate Fowler who was also an active participant in the daily management of the winery. Ready for retirement in 1988, Bruce sold the vineyards and winery to a large international firm and moved to Lake Tahoe, Nevada to once again enjoy skiing and golf in the mountains. When warmer climates began to beckon in 1998, he moved back to Tucson where he had lived in the 1970’s.

Harley Bruce Markham Jr. passed away in Tucson, Arizona on 13
November 2001. He was 71 years old. He is buried in Highlands
Cemetery, Casper, Wyoming.

LTJG DONALD MANION 51-53

“LTJG Donald Manion and I shared a stateroom for two years. LTJG
Manion was a practising attorney before going on active duty, He
had a terrible fear of EVANS hitting a floating mine in the middle
of the night while he was sleeping down forward, a premonition that some 15 years later proved correct.” -LTJG Doug Legg

ENSIGN CHARLES MAGNUS 52-52

“Ensign Charles Magnus was jokingly labeled ‘Magnus the
Magnificent’ after a paper back title by Ed Cazier. He never lost
that nickname.”

Lenz, Carl

My name is Carl Lenz Jr. I served aboard USS FRANK E. EVANS from 1950-1953.

While in Wonsan harbor, we fired at targets of opportunity. On one session, we fired a 5″ round every 11 minutes, day and night. Of course, they used to mount 53, where most of us engineers bunked. It’s hard to believe, but we did manage to sleep with that mount firing. Here was the sequence you would hear: opening the breech, loading the powder case and projectile, closing the breech and BOOM! Then the powder case came out the rear of the mount, hit the deck with a clang, and rolled around, until quiet. After 11 minutes, the forgoing would be repeated. Every time they fired mount 53, spun glass insulation would sprinkle down and you could hear shower shoes hit the deck. A lot of us with wooden shower shoes stored them overhead, which is what made the noise when they hit the deck.

Between the 11 min ordeal, and some of the battles from ship to shore, the projectiles burned the paint off the gun barrels.(see photo).

We had a fire control man by the name of Zorro He was extremely accurate. I always felt that is why we were assigned to shore bombardment, so often. We were very lucky to have not taken more hits from shore batteries. Quite often, they had us pretty well bracketed.

It wasn’t battle stations 24-7, so checkers, chess and card playing made for good pastimes (see photo). The lid off somebody’s foot locker improvised for a table.

We lost one of our chess boards and the chess men when shore batteries opened up on us one afternoon. The chess board was blown over the side from explosions, probably our own 5″ guns. One gun was manned 24-7 while we were in the combat zone. I found out what it was like being forward of a 5″ gun when it was fired; it almost blew me over the side. BJ Davis was directly in front of a 5″ when it was fired. I heard it knocked him silly. Speaking of BJ, the poor guy suffered from chronic sea sickness. I felt sorry for him when he came back aboard, just out of the hospital. I don’t know if he ever got over it.

On our second trip overseas, we experimented in how to blow up a Chinese junk and all its occupants. Planes fired rockets at them and we fired 5″ projectiles. We inspected the junks after each demonstration, with the damage being minimal. Then we tried the coup-de-gras, a depth charge set to go off very shallow. The results were fantastic. There are dummies in these crafts and you can barely make them out after the depth charge did its dastardly deed.

Fast forward to 2008… B. J.’s activities have been cut down after a heart attack before the first Missouri reunion. He hasn’t been able to travel much since then. He is the shipmate who cut out all the little wooden animals we have had in the Ship Store. BJ enjoyed working in his workshop for hours-on-end before his health problems.

MM2 Dietz and MM2 Tokar, were two WWII reservists called into service during the Korean conflict. None of the guys called back into service was happy about it; however, they were the men who taught us the ropes, so to speak.

LTJG DOUGLAS REID LEGG – 26 July 1952 to 1955

I Douglas Reid Legg, “Doug” was born 1 July 1930 at Portland, Oregon. My eyes are brown and currently my hair is grey/brown. I went through the NROTC program at Notre Dame, Indiana and became an Ensign on 1 June 1952. Six weeks later, in late July 1952, I reported to USS FRANK E. EVANS (DD 754) in Task Force 77 off Korea.

Not surprisingly, there was rapid turnover aboard FRANK E. EVANS as she was in mothballs when Korea began and her recommissioning crew was built around a large percentage of recalled reservists plus several men fresh from boot camp. I kept a diary for most of my time aboard her. I have a full, I hope, record of the officers from October 1952 through August 1954.

While onboard USS FRANK E. EVANS (DD 754), I had a number of successive billets associated with 1, 2, 3, and O Divisions. Ist nd rd started off as Assistant 2 Division Officer under Don Manion. Then, after a two-month ASW Officer school at Point Loma, San Diego, I relieved Ed Cazier as ASW and 3 Division Officer. I rd later relieved “Buck” Bennett as First Lieutenant and 1 Division st Officer. Prior to deploying to WESTPAC in 1954, Captain Chase appointed me Gunnery Officer, where I remained for most of my final deployment.

I spent time ashore in Korea as an FAO (Forward Artillery Observer) spotting gunfire for FRANK E. EVANS and the cruiser USS BREMERTON in support of the Sixth ROK infantry division. In September 1952, three of us from FRANK E. EVANS went ashore, Pitzer, Blankenship, and I. We wore Marine greens that were used with the ship’s landing force. However, we didn’t have green skivvy shirts, so we wore the standard Navy white issue. But when we got to the front, the Koreans immediately realized that we weren’t Marines and wanted to know who we really were.

After my relief came aboard, I reverted to First Lieutenant. As a Regular officer, I expected to be reassigned after almost three years aboard the same ship. Our then XO LCDR George Wadleigh personally phoned BuPers to find out where I was to go next, but they’d “lost” my records, at which point, on St Patrick’s Day 1955, I reverted to USNR and applied for release from active duty.

One night in’54 I was CDO checking out the quarterdeck watch when one of the men in my division came back from liberty totally sloshed and with his forehead cut open down to the skull pan. We quickly summoned the duty Corpsman and went to Sick Bay where the Corpsman sewed up the sailor’s head with a needle and thread. I talked to the sailor, hoping to distract him from the pain, and then realized he was so intoxicated that he didn’t feel much of anything. Afterward, the Messenger o the Watch took the man down to his rack. The next morning at Quarters he couldn’t remember what had happened, or why his forehead was all stitched, or why his jumper was blood soaked. I gave him some strong suggestions about getting in bar fights involving broken beer bottles, but my comments obviously didn’t trigger any memories.

I served in her until five of us were released early from active duty as DESRON 13 was going out on Operation Wigwam, which involved the first testing of a nuclear depth charge. No one knew how long it would take for just the perfect weather for that test, so they release anyone whose “enlistment” was up thru the first week in June. I departed the ship in late April 1955 as LTJG. After being released from active duty in early May 1955, I did 20 years in the Naval Reserve and retired as a Commander on 1 July 1990 my 60th birthday.

I returned to Notre Dame where I completed a two-year research Master’s Degree in History. After that, I spent five years at the Universities of Oregon and London. The year in England was a wonderful experience which I repeated again in the late ’60s. In 1962 what was then Southern Oregon College in Ashland hired me for its History faculty, where I remained handling a variety of teaching and administrative posts until retiring 1 July 1990, my 60 birthday.

Somewhere amongst the huge collection of “stuff” I’ve accumulated over the past 40 years, there is one of the original ship “patches” in mint condition. There was a competition aboard FRANK E. EVANS for an appropriate design, and a GM1 submitted the winning design. I can’t remember his name, but I do remember that a couple of the CPO’s were outraged that someone could make PO1 on his first enlistment, with about nine months left on a four year “hitch.”

Running through the Association’s roster and checking out the names of shipmates from ‘52-‘55, I was struck by the fact that some names drew a blank. I still have several of those small green memoranda books that we kept all sorts of miscellaneous information in.

I have a couple of division rosters, those in the duty section I usually had when CDO, and the list of those men on the same life raft, #4, as me: Riley FN, Taylor FN, Garstang FN, Brenner FA, Anderson FN, Johnson FN, Marsh & Speirs both BT3, DaRe FA, brother of movie star Aldo Ray, Roy, Griffin, and Rodger, all FA’s.

Terry Opdyke who I worked with closely while Ship Secretary, actually phoned after the previous roster was circulated. Looking back over a half century, I’m still impressed by the quality of people I was fortunate enough to serve with in FRANK E. EVANS.

Doug currently resides at 585 Terrace St., Ashland, OR, 97520-2003. You can reach him at drlegg@msn.com or 541-482-4936

BT3 CARL J. JUNGJOHANN – 12 October 1950 to 1954

I Carl J. Jungjohann, “Jungle Jim” was born 16 January 1932 at Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I had brown hair and hazel eyes. I enlisted in the Navy at San Diego, California on 20 July 1950, and went to boot camp at NTC San Diego, California.

After boot camp, I went aboard USS FRANK E. EVANS (DD 754) as a Fireman, FN. I was aboard Frank E. from 12 October 1950, until my discharge at Mare Island, California on 14 May 1954, as a BT3. My work station and battle station was the After Fire Room.

MM2 MARVIN DALE JONES 19 October 1952

I, Marvin Dale Jones, was born 4 October 1931, at Rural Linwood, Kansas. My eyes are blue and I have brown hair.

I graduated from Linwood Rural high school in 1949 and went to Kansas State University for two years.

In 1952, I enlisted in the Navy. I went to boot camp at NTC San Diego, then reported for duty on board USS FRANK E. EVANS (DD 754) 19 October 1952, at Yokosuka, Japan. Shortly thereafter, she departed for home in Long Beach. I was assigned to the engineering division where I worked in the forward engine room. I was promoted to Machinist Mate second class, and eventually was made “top watch.”

My most memorable experience was the time FRANK E. EVANS was ordered out to assist a merchant ship foundering in a typhoon in the South China Sea. We struggled out into the storm for a day and a half. It was a real experience being on the throttle, trying to keep up with all the orders from the bridge. We had to brace ourselves to stay upright. The twin screws would come out of the water and rev up, then the fantail would slam down and shake the whole ship. Part of the time, FRANK E. EVANS would slide sideways and tip back and forth until she righted herself. Trying to stay in your bunk was a real struggle too. We’d brace ourselves by hooking our arms and legs around something and just hang on. Nobody was hungry as all the pitching and rolling made us queasy. And to top it all off, just when we were getting close to the ship in trouble, we got a message that another ship had gotten there first. We were ordered to turn around and go back through the typhoon in the other direction!

Our oldest daughter was born in 1954 while I was overseas in Korea. I received notice of her birth through the Red Cross. In February 1955, I drove home from Long Beach to Kansas. Bud Hacker rode with me and then caught a plane on to St. Louis, Missouri, his home.

After the Navy, and thanks to the GI Bill, I finished college at Kansas State University with a BS degree in Animal Science. For several years I was a purebred beef cattle herdsman. Later, I worked for Farmland Industries, retiring in 1995.

I was married in 1953. We have 3 children, 11 grandchildren, and 6 great-grand children. Marvin currently resides at 23061 Hatchell Road, Tonganoxie, KS. You can reach him at djjrmandm@myvine.com or 913-845-9939.