Roger Maloof

On the same day I started, the Alvin group also hired a mechanic, Roger Maloof. We sat across from each other in the Personnel Office early that morning frantically signing all the paperwork needed to become employees so we could dash down to the dock and get aboard the Lulu which was sailing in a couple of hours.

Roger was a few years older than me, maybe 30 at the time. He was about my build with dark hair, glasses and a quick wit to go with his easy sense of humor. We both shared one thing in common on that first trip on the Twin Tubes of Terror, we were both sick as dogs.

Don Carlos would be Rogers’s immediate supervisor in the mechanical department. Dave Sanders and Jim Hardiman would fill out that crew. Don liked being in charge and kept the boys busy even if it was make-work. Maybe a month into the job Don had Roger scrape the paint off the Mahue oil pump and repaint it. The pump looked fine. Maybe just a little rust here or there. This was finally the last straw for Roger. He threw down his paint scraper and went into a rant about how he didn’t hump a radio up and down the hills of Vietnam and then go to graduate school for a Masters degree just to do shit jobs for some self important asshole! He ranted and raved to the point where he said “Fuck you! I quit!”, Got himself a resin chair and sat up on the bow. That was one thing about the Lulu; you couldn’t get more that 50 feet from some one if you tried.

Ralph at this point had to get involved. There were a couple of radio calls back to Barrie on the beach and soon enough Ralph got us all together and announced that Roger was now Barrie’s liaison to the mechanical group at sea. Unknown to us Ops. Monkeys, Roger had a deal with Barrie that he would go to sea with us for three months to get the lay of the land so to speak. He would then be the resident mechanical engineer back in the office. We thought he was just one of us, not future office scum.

Roger was a good guy and none of this had an effect on the group dynamic. He and Don got along well. He was a good engineer and came up with top-notch ideas and solutions to the mechanical problems and modernization of the sub. I came to call him “Roger Maloof, Liaison to the Elite”.