William Marvel: Powder Point

In his long life, my father had only two encounters with people who later became famous. One of them he thoroughly disliked, and the other he long denied having known.

Sometime around 1937 his ship docked in Tsingtao, China, where he ran afoul of a U.S. Navy lieutenant named Hyman Rickover, who was later recognized as the inspiration behind our nuclear Navy. Rickover was apparently quite a martinet. My father went aboard Rickover’s ship on some errand, and betrayed the more causal demeanor that apparently prevailed on his own ship. Rickover took note of it, and his response led my father to ever afterward question the respectability of Rickover’s maternal line. Rickover was mentioned frequently on the radio or television while I was growing up, and if my father heard it he always suggested a number of first names for the admiral, but none of them was “Hyman.”