Click on the yellow box below to go back to the main page of the Range Rat Introduction page where you will find information about downrange people, where they worked, where they are now, their email address (if they wanted it published), what stations/ships they worked on, and news about those who have died etc etc.

I now have a Range Rat Sign-in book, to be used exclusively by Range Rats (and their famlies) that you can leave a comment of your experience on the range, where you worked, etc, etc. (See the other entrys in this book for examples, if you leave a comment or message not relating to the range the entry will eventually be deleted, for instance a "Howdy" does not qualify as an entry!). You can give your email address (its not required but its requested) so that other range rats can contact you.

Please do NOT use my "GUEST BOOK" to sign in, that book is for collectors who visit my website, and that is why I made a seperate book for use by Range Rats, called the Range Rat Sign In Book.

Perhaps you are looking for someone who you used to work with that you lost contact with, you could include it in your message in the sign-in book, or better yet send me an email and I can include it on this page.

• This is what Lt. Col. Bob Hawthorne wrote in part in the Range Rat Sign-in Book 16 Oct. 2009, which is worth repeating here:
  "Hello...I'm Bob Hawthorne and I served as the Commander of Grand Turk Air Station, 1982-83. We not only supported launches from the cape, but also hosted a team of DEA and US Coast Guard contingents and other US gov't agencies visiting Grand Turk. One of our major accomplishments was selling fuel, electricity, water, road and runway support services to the island, making us a 'no cost' station to the air force... We also got the USO to do shows at the Conch Club. The Conch Club made enough money to put us in the black where we were able to support our PAN AM and RCA families, and other charitable events. Captain Mike Nova followed me as the last Grand Turk Station Commander ... leaving behind a small FAA and Smithsonian presence."
  

  After Lt. Col. Hawthorne signed the Range Rat Sign-In book I emailed him and learned a bit more about him and the base, this is what he wrote:
  "When first assigned at Grand Turk, I was a captain, and I was promoted to Major while there --- and subsequently retired as Lt Colonel. Colonel Ken Carnahan who lives in Sattellite Beach was our Det 4 FTD commander --- Ken when he retired as a full Colonel --- went back to work on the range ships --- he was smart --- he was working into his 80's!!!
  I worked hard for Cape Canaveral --- but also other agencies, State, DEA, IRS, etc... I haven't been back to Grand Turk but I enjoyed the work for both the range, and the locals.... I enjoyed the Turks Head Inn --- Ed Russell, John Houseman (the author who was cremated and buried under the table in the courtyard of the Turks Head inn --- where we played liars dice till the wee hours of the morning --- and enjoyed Pauli Girls!!!" (Editors note: that's a name of a BEER).

• 25 MAY 2008: A PARTIAL LIST OF GTK BASE COMMANDERS:
• I went through my old downrange travel orders (yes, I am a packrat) and came up with these names below, the dates are from the travel orders, so they may have served earlier or longer than noted.
  
  Maj. Charles C. Maddox, July 1958
  Capt. Sheril D. Huff, Nov. 1958 - Mar 1959
  Maj. T.A. Jankowski, Aug 1959 - Jun 1960
  Capt. Alvin R. Garner, Aug 1960 - Nov 1960
  Capt. Donald A. Kaehlert, May 1961 - Oct 1961
  Capt John P. Portasik, Nov 1961 - Apr 1962
  Major Bob Hawthorne, 1982-83
  Major Michael R. Nova, 1983-84


• I would like to add more names to this list, to make it more complete, if you can remember who the base commander was when you worked at the Grand Turk base, send me an email, with the years that you can remember.

Last Day Cover of the USAF Base at Grand Turk Island
Cover has special space related stamps associated with the base: a
15 cent stamp showing the splashdown of John Glenn's
Mercury space capsule in Grand Turk waters and a
5 cent stamp showing a remotely located radar station on Grand Turk.

• I have always tried to keep abreast of any news about the downrange stations after I left the range in 1972. I don't recall where I learned that the GTK base was going to be closed, but when I did learn of the fact, I wrote a letter addressed tho the Base Commander (who it was at the time, I didn't know). I requested that I would like to have a memento of the base closing. I requested that on the envelopes I sent him (a few for me and a few for his own use), of which I had already affixed Turks & Caicos Island stamps, and asked him could he put any base markings on the front of the envelopes and have them mailed on the last day of operation of the base. (And then prayed that my request would be honored). Later that month I received my envelopes back as you see above, the Grand Turk postmark in illegible however Major Nova did put a rubber stamp date of 29 FEB 1984 above rubber stamp impression of the Eastern Space & Missile Center logo, also a small impression of a space shuttle and then his rubber stamp address which reads: "Michael R. Nova, Major, USAF, Commander Grand Turk A.S."

• On occasion I do hear from a few Navy people who were assigned to GTK, although they are not Range Rats like we are, I guess they could be "related" to us, don't know if they would like to be called a RAT or what!
  in Jan. 2009 I heard from George D. McCoy, now living in Laplace LA, he was an engineman who worked on the diesel engines that supplied the electricity for the entire GTK NAVFAC. He wrote: "I was in the US Navy and served on Grand Turk around 1963 to 1964. I was walking down the hill when I was told that President Kennedy had been shot." I corresponded with George some more and he snail mailed me some photos of the GTK Navy Facility (NAVFAC) taken when he was there. It would have been nice to make scans of them but the definition of the photos is poor. George said they had the only fresh water swimming pool on the range. When I was on GTK in the late '50 an early '60, I did get near the Navy Base but never went on the base proper. It might have been off limits to the range personnel. Does anyone out there know?
• Another GTK Navyman, Richard G. Fekula from Bethlehem PA, emailed me in May 2009 with a good report of his recent visit back to the island, this is his report:
  "I was stationed at the Navy base on the other end of the Grand Turk island in 1960 to 1961 time frame. I just completed a cruise on the Crown Princess this April 2009 and rented a car to travel across the island. During my original stay there was only one major road between the bases, now it is a little harder to navigate. I did get to the navy base and took some pictures. As you probably know it is now a Community College. I walked around the base and felt deep emotions as I looked for things I could remember. I had other pictures from my first stay and was able to identify many of the buildings or what was left of them. Our swimming pool is no longer there. While stationed on the island I played softball against the Pan Am guys but I don't remember any of them. We always envied the Pan Am guys because they had better diving gear. The best we had was snorkling glasses, tubes and spear guns. It looks like the Pan Am base is still operating but I did'nt have time to make that determination. My wife and I did see some of the damage done by Hurricane Ike. The donkeys are stil roaming about and some of the shacks stil exist with minor improvement. I guess I expected major improvements. Margaritaville is beautiful but evidently they built some type of sewage processing facility at the south point which blows in some awfull fowl smell.

  Do you remember when Bob Hope, Anita Bryant and Zha Zha Gabor visited the Navy base per USO? I have some pictures I took and developed then.

  I stil have fond memories of the pristine waters and some of the friends I found there. Bill Wilson, a fellow sailor, was a very close friend that I have lost contact with. I also remember the two bars downtown that we frequented - only places that had generators for light and refrigeration to keep the beer cold. We did shots (blastoffs) with a countdown as per the rockets at Cape Kennedy. I brought the Limbo to town and remember some kid that would say here comes Fekula, get the Limbo stick."

  Thanks for your website. (signed) Rich Fekula

By going to the following link you will see an ariel photograph of the NAVFAC GDT (I imagine GDT is the Navy's terminology for GTK) looking southwest, and you can click to see other GTK NAVFAC photos, the Grand Turk lighthouse, one of the islands famous donkeys, etc. To the right of the photo you will see the satellite view of the island, and you can see the entire island by scrolling and also enlarging the image for an expanded view. When you get down to the south end of the island you will see where Margaritaville is located by the new wharf built so that the cruise ships can come in close to the shore. click here for the photos & satellite tour..

Can you identify anyone in this photo?

• Carl Abbott (better known as "Barney Oldfield" the go cart racer on Grand Turk) sent in this photo, which was taken in 1961, saying it was a baseball team. I can't remember a ladies team on GTK. Can anybody identify anyone in the photo. (I think one woman looks like Schribers wife).

• In Sept 08 I received an email from Ron, who now lives in Columbus OH who wrote: "Hi Joe, In 1960 and 1961, I was chief of the water distillation plant, Grand Turk guided missile station. I propbably met you if you were there those years. I was an original member of the diving club initially established there. On of my diving buddies, (name not recalled but might have been Carlos), had dove with Jacques Cousteau. The maintenance supervisor at the time was Mr. Stoneburner. That was a most memorable time in my life. One of the RCA techs spoke about seven languages and wore a different colored sock on each foot all of the time. Do you know him?"
  I wrote back the following about that question: "The RCA tech that you were inquiring about was my roommate in A barracks, his name was Bert Berthelsen. He's been dead a long time now. He used to say the reason he wore different colored socks on each foot was so that he could tell which one was the right foot and which one was the left foot. He also wore a different cap each day too, and also wore those farmers bib overalls the kind that had two straps over the shoulders and buttoned on to the front bib. Remember his white beard that he once tinted it light blue. He was also a world traveler and was a member of the International Bar Flies Club. He was married to a russian princess too. I still have the book he wrote, and signed for me, called the "Tin Can Man", is about his life in the Navy many years ago."
  Ron has not signed the Range Rat Sign-In Book yet, so if you are reading this Ron, why not sign in?

Click on above image for an expanded view

• This photo was in the uprange files, probably taken by an RCA photographer to show the various Grand Turk telemetry positions, when the files were being cleaned out years later, someone who knew this photo was of me send it back down range to me. This shows your webmaster testing the Ampex 7 track tape recorders, it looks like I am performing a drag test of the reels. I believe the photo was taken in the early 1960's as I recognize some of the Project Mercury equipment that is situated at the extreme left of the expanded view. The equipment in front of me was for additional testing of the Ampex recorders. In the expanded view at the extreme right was the patch board rack and directly behind me was the telemetry receivers and the Sanborn recorders. Behind me was the other part of the building which we shared with the communications receivers section.

• When Don Halter signed the Range Rat Sign-In book on 03 May 06, he made a comment that he was looking for another down ranger, Hank Taylor, who was his best man when he got married. I knew both Don and Hank when I also worked at Grand Turk back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Although Hank Taylor hadn't signed the RR Sign-In Book, I did some super sluething on the internet and "found" Hank's current address and phone number, (Isn't the WWW great!) and passed this info. back to Don. Needless to say, these two old RR's got connected.
  This past June (07) Don sent this email message: "I went to Fla. last week for a family reunion, and at the same time went up to Melbourne to visit with Hank Taylor. It turned out to be his 47th wedding anniversary so we went to dinner to celebrate his and mine at the same time, his was June 11 and mine was June 15th (44years). Had a great visit, and he said that he would sign the RR Sign-In Book, but I don't know if he will remember, but I will keep bugging him. Had a great visit, and here is a picture of the two of us, I'm on the left, Hank is on the right."
• 15 DEC 2009, MORE INFO ABOUT DON HALTER... Don relates how it was that he was "assigned" to Grand Turk.
"When I was in the Navy (1950-1954) my squadron used to make yearly trips to the Dominican Republic. It was a great place to go then. Not spoiled by tourists.. When I joined RCA (1955), I was told that I was going to be assigned to the Dominican Republic. Great rejoicing!!!!
However, as I was on the plane and we stopped at Grand Turk, I was taken off the plane and told that I was being reassigned to Turk!!!!! It turned out that, that was OK, as I had a great time while I was there. But sometime during my Turk days there were several of us that took a ride on a native supply sailboat out of Turk to the Dominican, sailed all night, landed on the northeast coast, don"t remember the little town, but it sure was nice and the people were really nice to us. Spent two days there and then sailed back to Turk. What an experience!!!!!"
• The above account was taken from the Topica Message Board for Range Rats, Oct 2009. If you would like to join this message board, check out their webpage by clicking here.. By clicking on that link you can also just read the messages if you so desire. Try it out.

• Last year Dale Beadle of Louisville KY (who was a PAN AM Air Traffic Controller at Turk from 94-97) wrote and told me to check out the Margaritaville.com website. He said Jimmy Buffett and Carnival Cruise Line now have a huge facility on Grand Turk, where the old PA AM base was.
  Click on this link to go directly to the Margaritaville Grand Turk page: It's a direct link to the Grand Turk pages and can be found here. When you get there, you will find a "Grand Turk's Photo Gallery", unfortunately the photos are too small and I don't see a way to enlarge them.
• Grand Turk was never like this when I worked there in 1958-63, I much prefer it the old way! It now looks like something out of Hollywood.
• UPDATE 15 DEC 2009, From my observations of the satellite view of the island it looks like Margaritaville was built south of the old Pan Am base, where the old troposcatter installation was, and NOT on the base proper. On a website I found about Grand Turk it stated this: "The former air force base is now island administrative offices." Today many of the Grand Turk government officials have an address of "South Base", which was what the PAN AM/USAF base was called when it was operational. Who else can verify any of this? It would be helpful if someone from Grand Turk could email me to verify this.

• Charlie Zoranski commented that he was the last Base Manager on Grand Turk and Russ Reed was the first Grand Turk Base Manager! Charlie was also Base Manager at Antigua during the 70’s & early 80’s besides being BOM twice at Grand Turk.

• Jim Regan ( njseabee7@aol.com ) from Toms River,New Jersey wrote: "I was stationed on Turks with Mobile Construction Batallion Seven (US Navy Sea Bees) from about March of 1958 for 14 months. We are the group that built the entire Naval Facility at the other end of the Island from the RCA/PAA site. We also built a base on San Sal, and a Coast Guard LORAN station on South Caicos.
• Jim wanted to share this interesting story that happened while he was at GTK. He said: "It was about one of our walk-in reefers at the SeaBee base. Evidently there was something wrong with the motor on the compressor that interfered with your tracking of the missiles fired downrange, and they notified us every time there was to be a launch, so we could shut down that reefer until the missile had splashed down."
• Jim asked if I knew a guy named Curry, that worked at the Grand Turk base? Curry lived with his family with Rev. David H.K. Sherif & his wife & son." Can't say that I do remember anyone by that name. Does anyone remember Curry and the Reverend? No doubt Jim visited the Conch Club while he was on Turk, so maybe someone out there knew him too. It's always good to hear from anyone who helped construct the bases on the range islands, even tho they weren't range rats. Its good to give credit to the Sea Bees for all the construction work they did on the islands.

Another early Grand Turk RR now found...... Don Halter made an entry in the Range-Rat sign in book on 03 May 06, and inquired about another RR by the name of Henry "Hank" Taylor and wanted to know his whereabouts as Hank was best man at his wedding. Well I knew both Don and Hank from my late 1950's Grand Turk days, and with a little computer sleuthing I was able to locate Hank who is still living in Indialantic FL and so Don was able to make contact with him. So far Hank has not yet signed the Range Rat book, but maybe after this entry he will.
Now about the tombstone... When I arrived at Grand Turk in 1958 my two bosses at telemetry were Bud Hollenbeck (Manager) and Hank Taylor (Chief Technician). One day while I was checking out the telemetry grounds I found an unusual tombstone under the wooden tower that held one of the telemetry antennas.
Evidently someone thought a lot of my two bosses to make this tombstone for Bud and Hank...

Can anyone provide any additional info. on this tombstone?

In an email from Fred Perkins last year, he wrote: "I was thinking about when you and I were on GTK in the 58-60 timeframe. I remember doing the "Turk Times" newsletter there. Aided and abetted by Bert Berthelsen, he of the different colored socks. I remember signing up to go on the Mercury program, which had a tracking station in Zanzibar, where they spoke Swahili, and Bert was teaching us a class in Swahili. RCA wound up not getting the contract for the land stations, and I wound up working on the USNS Coastal Sentry, the Indian Ocean Ship of Project Mercury. Those were indeed fun times Joe."

Well this is one email I overlooked answering when received, so I will answer it here since other Range Rats might find my reply of interest: Fred: Since I am a packrat from way back I went thru my storage boxes and located some of the "Turk Times" newsletters, including the first one issued. The first issue is mimeographed and wouldnt take a good scan but here is the front page of Volume 1, No. 7 from 31 Oct 1959. The front page contains 3 articles:
1. Article about the Garden Club activities of Bob Husby, Dave Atha and Bob Ellis, (all of PanAm Supply), and Red Richards of Plant Maintenance. The Base Commander Maj. Ted Jankowski was also mentioned.
2. Article about former BOM Rawleigh Tremain who designed new Turks and Caicos postage stamps for the islands new constitution of July 4, 1959.
3. Article about a 5 foot shark killed by skin divers: Jack Little, Ron Ramey, Bob Rouse, Walt Bloomquist and Al Fraga.
How many of these names do you remember?
If you know where these RR's are please let me know,
and why not contact them and tell them about my Range Rat Info. Page? To read the front page of this copy of the "Turk Times" Vol.1, No.7 click here.

• How many people remember old timer Ralph N. Cron, who worked in RCA/Timing at Grand Turk, and before that at St. Lucia (I knew him at both stations 1956-70's). Ralph also worked on the USNS Coastal Crusader (see his picture on the "Range Rat Ships Page", its a group picture added 03 May 2007).
  
  Did you know that his son also worked on the range at the same time, I dont recall the son's name but he was a Cron, and pretty much looked like his father, with the red hair and freckles except he was a lot thinner. Does anyone know the son's name and his present location? Here is a space envelope prepared by and signed by Ralph for the Apollo 13 flight at Grand Turk:
  
  Ralph Cron serviced collectors envelopes for the Apollo flights when he was stationed there, the above one is with a special design.
  Does anyone know of other range rat families that worked on the range at the same time, that they would like to report? Like father/son, mother/daugher, husband/wife, cousins, twins, etc. (Course in my days on the range there weren't many females working the range, like there is today, so I only know of the two Cron's personally).

Range Rats Friends that I have contacted by email long before I started this Range Rat Information Page, plus a few I've added since then, (Grand Turk is listed here, please note that this list may now be incomplete):

• GTK - Grand Turk
• Glenn Brown
• Marvin "MO" Calvert
• Dwight "Speedy" Collier
• Jay Grimes
• Chuck Hewett
• Larry Wenger
• Dave Thompson

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POSTAGE STAMPS ABOUT THE RANGE
The left stamp issued by the USA on the day Astronaut John Glenn successfully splashed down in Grand Turk waters.
The middle stamp issued by the Bahama Islands shows a radar antenna. Grand Bahama Island, Station No. 3, had a radar station.
the right stamp issued by the Dominican Republic shows the Mercury capsule orbiting earth. There was a tracking station (No. 8) in the Dominican Republic, at Sabana de la Mar, in 1956, however (DOM) closed in 1957 long before the Mercury flights of 1960-63.

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