I worked under a few really good chiefs, a lot of decent ones, and one really bad one.
I had some great chiefs...there was one guy, Chief Waters, and we called him “Chief Muddy Waters” due his constant use of Red Man chew and the constant stream of brown spit from his mustachioed mouth. He had a penchant for giving nicknames to people, if I ever thought about it advance, I think I would have hoped I got a good one, but it never occurred to me he was the fountain of a lot of nicknames. One guy he called Stinky, and boy, did he hate that name. Another guy was “Wingnut”, a play on his real name, and he never liked it, though I thought it was a good one. Chief Muddy Waters did like a drink and I was with him several times when he had tied on a fee, he was a funny guy, and wasn’t mean, but I don’t remember him being a good or bad Navy chief or mechanic.
Another one was Chief Moore. Best person I served under, knew his job, knew how to treat everyone above and below him, never ever lost his temper, one of the most even-keeled men I ever knew. Handled the bureaucracy of the Maintenance Department very ably, and was an excellent section chief and jet mechanic. He had black hair and extremely blue eyes. He also dipped constantly (I was a Yankee, and didn’t know a lot of guys who dipped or chewed.) Best story about him involved an extremely angry flight deck officer and some maintenance issue with one of our planes. I was one of the flight deck troubleshooters in my squadron, and there were a few of us huddled there on the flight deck after all the planes were tied town and we were done for the day. Chief Moore was standing across from me, when this flight deck officer come stomping over into the group and starts yelling at Chief Moore. The chief had a styrofoam cup and was filling it with spit, the side of his mouth bulging out unnaturally, as his head would bow imperceptibly at the same time the hand would come up just a little, and a squirt of tobacco juice would come out from under his spiky black moustache and jet into the cup.
Chief Moore just stood there expressionlessly, his bright blue eyes not changing, and the officer is getting madder and madder, just about to come to the peak of his anger, and Chief Moore just tipped his chin ever so slightly, bought the cup up a bit, and spit into his styrofoam cup.
The officer just completely stopped in mid-sentence. To this day, I do believe that Chief Moore was something a cobra sizing up his prey, and knew just what to do at exactly the right time when he spit. Without saying another word, the officer just turned around and walked away.
I sure did admire Chief Moore.
We did have one Chief, I won’t name him, but let’s say he was so universally disliked that nobody would have been surprised if he didn’t show up for work one morning at sea. Pretty amazing one person could alienate so many people, but, he did.
I love stories like this. My dad was never in the military but he told me that from what he had heard, if I listen to my NCO’s I’ll be OK. I can’t begin to tell you how good advice that was. As a 2/Lt at my first duty station they made me the training officer for 400 people. I followed my dad’s advice and backed my senior NCO’s and soon senior officers are saying, “How has that butter bar turned that office around?”