Our motto was "Parati Sumus", and believe me, we all stuck together on the tower.

It was a lonely life for 365 days until we completed our tour of duty (30 days on and 15 days off; 45 on, 15 off & overlapped).

During our tour of duty on Tower #3, sitting out on the ocean, we had a lot of bad weather. Like the fog for weeks at a time. Then we had to put the fog horn on, hoping that no ship would run into the tower. The fog horn would blow twice every two minutes for twenty-four hours a day, sometimes weeks at a time, until the fog moved out of the area.

We would wait for a AKL-17 to come to the tower and tie up to unload his cargo that we had been waiting for. Such items as food, movies, and important items, materials and parts for our equipment. Without the AKL-17 we wouldn`t get the things that we needed. The helicopter only brought personnel and replacements on and off and some movies.

When I was on tower #3, we had two hurricanes and believe me we thought all hell broke loose when they hit. The winds & waves were unbelievable! You had to be out on the tower to believe what happened. It took a lot of guts to see and live through the hurricane. We all gave each other support and came out alive. We couldn`t go our on the top deck at night on a normal night without another person because of high winds. It was feared that if anyone got blown off, it would be goodbye.

A few of us guys started the Texas Tower 3 newspaper that I named "Debris From Three". I also wrote several short items in it. It was filled with a lot of humor that we needed to keep up our morale. I`m not sure what happened to "Debris" after I completed my tour on the tower. As far as I know, it was the first and last paper to be printed there. It`s been over forty years since I was out on the tower, so the memory is fading. A lot of tower vets have left us since then.