Altair Mystery

Greetings Altair Crew. Ernie Forbes sent me an email and here is a copy; maybe a shipmate knows the answer.

"Heres a mystery maybe one of the crew can answer it: The Aberdeen Victory was delivered to Waterman Steamship Lines after launching and was transferred to the maritime commission for use by the Navy, the Navy used it as an AK, AK-257 to be exact after the war it was put in the reserve fleet till it was activated to be used as the ALTAIR. While it was an AK during the war it had a name - WHAT WAS THAT NAME ! ! When I was aboard I did DC work and I used to weigh the CO2 bottle at the fire station at the top of the stairs, ladder, in officers country, at this fire station there was a plaque commiserating USS ?

AK-257 during WW2, the person I was with said it was an Indian area, ? territory, state. I wrote the name down and many years later go tmy letters to my parents. They had saved every one, but it was not in them. I have tried to revisit that day in my dreams and see the name I had written, but I have had no success so far. Maybe one of the crew can recall that name. Ernie"

Best Regards To All.......Charles

Altair Picture Surprise

Greetings to all. I got a surprise in the mail yesterday all the way from New Zealand. It was a CD from Tim Truesdell, SK2 1958-1960 and had 110 Altair photos on it! Tim is currently living in New Zealand. All the pics were in tiff format and about 1 meg. each in size. Tim really sent some neat pics, too.

There is no way to upload Tim's pics even after converting them to jpegs. I also have many many other pics that have not been uploaded to the web site. Therefore, I have decided to use a photo upload service, such as smugmug.com and put ALL the pics that I have into books or albums, etc. There are quite a few hundred pics and I think that this is the only way all the Altair pics can be shown and viewed by the shipmates at their leisure without waiting for the pic pages on the web site to download. Smugmug has no ads and no login is required. The site and/or albums can be password protected if necessary.

Any comments? Any other recommended site instead of Smugmug?

Best Regards To All......Charles

JULY 2006 REPORT by Charles Brecheisen

SHIPMATES: No new shipmates came aboard in July leaving the total at 406.

FINANCIAL: WOW once again. A total of 71 shipmates have paid dues this year. The beginning balance was $1226.64 with receipts of $90.00 and no expenses leaving a balance of $1316.64. The "special fund" remains the same.

SHIPMATE VISIT: Ben "B.X." Wabich and his wife stopped by here a couple of days ago on their way to the Rio Grande Valley. Ben and I served together on the Altair in the communications area 1959-1961; and, Ben looks like he did 46
years ago! Ben retired from the Navy after 30 years of Navy service. Ben and Barbara reside in Algonac, Michigan and own a locksmith business. We had a great visit swapping old sea stories that the other had not heard.

TEXAS DROUGHT: Still no rain and our drought area is still classified as "severe."

All for now. Please contact me with any questions or comments. Again, please do NOT use this email address but use cmbaltairaks32@fastmail.us

Best Wishes to All........Charles