2565 Marion Ave. Bronx

Don Hubbard was born in New York City on January 15, 1926. His upbringing was unusual. For eight months of the year he lived on the top floor of a five story walk-up apartment near Fordham Road, in the Bronx, but for the other four months he lived in a small two-room bungalow that his father built on a small island (High Island) located in Long Island Sound.

The eight months in town were like any other kids. School, Boy Scouts, getting in and out of kid trouble (some essays on that coming up) and generally enjoying a growing kid’s life. The Bronx was a nice looking place then with the usual ethnic areas – mostly Irish-Italian-German-Jewish- scattered about.

Conversely, his annual four months on the island educated him on the things of the sea – boat handling and repair, swimming and water safety, life-saving, digging clams, trapping crabs and catching fish and set the stage for his later self-proclaimed title as a “waterman.”

In 1943, with WWII raging, he enlisted in the Navy as an Aviation Cadet, with the goal to become an Naval Aviator. The Naval aviation program was then one of the toughest in the military. It involved every aspect of military flying including all the basic stuff plus flying on instruments, over-water navigation, formation flying, gunnery and fighter tactics, multi-engine flying in land and sea craft, and carrier operations. There were also extensive ground school courses in dead-reckoning and celestial navigation, meteorology (which later taught as an instructor), engine operation and maintenance, Morse code, blinker, as well as constant physical training.

The war ended while he was still in flight training, but the post-war world was anything but still and soon the Communist regimes of the world were back, rattling sabers and re-emphasizing the need for a strong Navy and military. When he received his wings in 1947, he was assigned to a squadron flying four-engine patrol planes (The PB4Y-2, Privateer) and spent 1947-1950 flying top-secret reconnaissance flights (“Ferret Missions”) around the periphery of the Communist countries in the Baltic and Mediterranean Theater. Less than a month before he was detached from the squadron the Soviets shot down one of his squadrons aircraft in the Baltic (May 1950) killing all ten of his former crew members. Tragically, this was the first shoot down of the Cold War.

Later Don served on aircraft carriers in the Far East, flying the three-engine (two reciprocating and a jet back aft) AJ- 2 “Savage” a high-altitude nuclear attack bomber aircraft. He was a Heavy Attack Pilot during the Korean War; and later flew high-altitude photo reconnaissance flights over Cuba in preparation for the failed Bay of Pigs operation. A year before the Cuban Missile Crisis be was assigned to the staff of Admiral E. J. O’Donnell at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as Air Operations Officer. He served in this capacity for three years during and after the “Bay of Pigs” operation. It is interesting that the Soviet Union’s Chairman Khruschev had a nuclear tipped cruise missile placed 15 miles northwest of Guantanamo to destroy the base if the United States invaded Cuba. Thanks to President Kennedy we didn’t. His 133,000 word historical novel, GITMO:The Missile Crisis (available as an e-book on Amazon.com.) is based on his experiences at Guantanamo. His final station was in Saigon on the staff of General William Westmoreland, the then senior general for the Vietnam War. He flew a twin-engine transport carrying supplies, mail and personnel around Vietnam as a volunteer during this tour Don retired 30 June, 1967, with the rank of Commander, USN.

As an interesting aside, Don has become very well-known as a skilled ship-in-bottle model builder. Don’s interest in ships-in-bottles dates to 1969, when doctor’s wife he knew in Guantanamo asked him to build a bottled ship for her husband’s birthday. He told her he didn’t know how, and she retorted “you navy people know how to do anything.” He built the model and has been at it ever since, so far completing over 80 of these miniature jewels. In 1971, he wrote “Ships-in-Bottles: A Step-by-Step Guide to a Venerable Nautical Craft” published by McGraw Hill in New York. 60,000 copies of the book are in circulation in both the English and German versions. The book is now in its 3rd publication. He has also written many articles on ships-in-bottles for magazines and newspapers.

In 1982, after organizing the First International Ships-In-Bottles Exposition at the San Diego Maritime Museum, he co-founded the Ships-in-Bottles Association of American with fellow ship-bottler, Jack Hinkley of Pennsylvania. (This outfit is still in existence) Don assumed duties of President and Editor of the quarterly journal “The Bottle Shipwright.” By mutual agreement, Jack Hinkley later became President and Don continued as editor as the organization grew. He now serves on the Board of Directors of this unique Association. He was instrumental in having 4 October (Jack Hinkley’s birthday) designated as National Ships-In-Bottles Day by Internationally known Chases Calendar of Events.

After leaving the Navy in 1967 he decided to found a Scuba Diving Company, Ocean Ventures, which eventually employed eight instructors, utilized two specially-configured International trucks and 40 sets of diving equipment. The company offered both Basic and Advanced Scuba training. As the business grew he offered Scuba tours into Mexico’s Baja Peninsula and offshore scuba diving adventures aboard Coast Guard-approved specially equipped Scuba Diving vessels. In total over 5,000 students were certified as qualified divers able to utilize Scuba equipment and enjoy underwater activities. During this period Don accumulated over 1,000 hours of underwater adventures and activity.

Inflatable boats, which he found invaluable in his diving tours, were relatively new in the 1970s, and the commercial possibilities intrigued him. Sensing an opportunity he opened a store in San Diego which specialized in these unique craft. His hunch luckily proved correct, and when he sold the business in 1978 the store was the most complete inflatable boat store on the West Coast and offered seven different lines of these small vessels, as well as Sea Kayaks, canoes and wind-surfers. To this day he still manages to get out on the ocean weekly in his 17 foot sea kayak enjoying the abundant San Diego sea life – Harbor seals, sea lions and dolphins – and during whaling season, intercepting the migrating grey whales as they head south.

In addition to his book about Bottled Ships, Don has written several other published books including The Complete Book of Inflatable Boats; Neptune’s Table: Cooking The Sea Food Exotics; and GITMO:The Missile Crisis.

Here is the book that launched 15,000 ships. In truth, they were tiny ships that fit into bottles, but these ships (or at least their builders) found out how to get them in there from this volume.

This how-to book was one of those impossible things that can happen to an author. Fact is, someone asked me to make them a ship-in-a-bottle and I had no idea how it was done. I scouted around looking for information on technique and all I could find was an article written by an old sea captain in a 1933 Popular Mechanics Magazine. I used this article as my guide and actually produced a bottled ship, but I couldn’t understand why there wasn’t a suitable book or booklet on the subject, so I embarked on the project hoping to get a booklet maker to buy the idea.

There was a well-known booklet maker (Walter T. Foster Art Books) in Tustin, a community on the just southeast of Los Angeles, and in 1970 I trekked up there with my offering to show them. I actually met Mr. Foster, and he just chuckled. He said that his first print run was always 10,000 copies and if anything was hard he would receive 10,000 letters complaining, and my work was too hard. But then he said, “I like the idea, but suggest that you take it to a real book publisher”. He suggested that I dig out a copy of Writer’s Market and look for publishers that do “How-To” books. Following his advice I selected McGraw-Hill and timidly offered them my modest manuscript. To my surprise they liked the idea but wanted more content. To this end they assigned me to an editor (an English guy whose uncle made bottled ships) who now coaxed me through the writing and illustration needed to produce a “real” book.

To make a long story short, McGraw sold the completed book to David & Charles, Ltd, a well know British publisher and they resold the rights to Verlag Delius Klasing, a German publisher who translated it into that language. Altogether McGraw printed 15,000 copies, David & Charles, 15,000 and the Germans another 20,000. Finally, when the rights were returned to me, I published another 10,000. So we know that there are 60,000 copies of this book are out there, and the best guess is that one out of every four buyers built and bottled one or more models- hence my 15,000 ships guess.

If this art-form interests you, get hold of a used (it is now out-of-print) copy of the book through Amazon.com and get busy. The process DOES NOT require patience, since you get too interested to become bored, and only requires minimal tools-most of which you make yourself. If you want to see some examples of others bottled ship go to www.shipsinbottles.org and www.folkartinbottles.com, and you can also join The Ships-In-Bottles Association of America (an application is on the website), an outfit I co-founded in 1982.

Finally, remember, if you do bottle a ship or other object it will probably still be around 500 years from now. What a memorial!

I think we are all curious about why we are here. Was our birth planned or was it an accident?

Of course, few of us ever actually find the answer. Either we never ask mom or pop, or if we do the answer is evasive. Then again, sometimes the answer is not evasive, but it could still be misleading. What parent wants to tell a child that he/she was an accident, so we are always left with doubt. But sometimes circumstances may indicate the climate at the time of conception, and raise hope that maybe, just maybe, you are not the result of a mistake.

Considering that my sister was born in 1917 and I was born in 1926, I am no stranger to this problem. How come nine years intervened before I came along? It always looked like a mistake to me. It would to anybody! But then some information came to my attention that gave me hope that perhaps I really was a planned baby. That hope came from the New Yorker Magazine.

For many years I had heard that my father was published in the first issue of the New Yorker. I never paid a great deal of attention to that since there were other things to occupy my mind like a long career in the navy , moving here and there as part of it, marrying, divorcing, remarrying, raising and educating my children, and later, my civilian occupations. But then things slowed down. I sold my business, remarried for the third time, the kids went on to lead their own lives and like a lot of older folk I began to think about the genealogy of the family and who did what.

Most families pass along folders full of old newspaper clippings, faded photos, hair clippings, first teeth and other little sentimentalities that families like to keep. My parents and grandparents were no different, so I inherited a few cardboard boxes full of miscellany that was the representation of the family past. Going though this stuff is slow work, old papers crumble, semi-identified relatives and friends occupy time to try to re-identify, visiting kids dig in and rearrange things and the stacks are not in any chronological order anyway. Nevertheless the work progressed, and among the documents I came upon a couple of old mimeographed papers upon which my Dad had written, “This shows how Harold Ross was looking about, trying to find the right identity for the New Yorker”. The mimeographed sheets were rough guidelines that Ross was issuing to his editorial staff and to potential contributors. Wow – maybe the stuff about Dad and the first issue of the New Yorker had some basis for fact!

Next step was a letter to the New Yorker. Was my Dad in the first issue? The initial answer was “No, he was not.”, but they sent me a reprinted copy of that first edition and the information that he had four cartoons published in the magazine in the issues of December 5, 1925; January 30, 1926; October 30, 1926 and November 6, 1926. Well that scotched the idea that dad’s work might have appeared in the first issue of the magazine. I forgot about it for a few months but then I began to read through that February 21, 1925 magazine and – Gulp! – there it was on page 11. It was a short, two column article entitled, A Boon to Babbitts, by Ernest F. Hubbard. The New Yorker history folks had somehow missed it.

The old unanswered question crept back into my mind. Was I a mistake? Maybe that article in the first issue New Yorker and the later cartoons had some bearing on my existence? In 1925 my dad was still a young guy working his way up as a writer in a hat magazine. Money could not have been abundant. He was married, had a wife and a young daughter to raise. More income would be needed to increase the family size . Now here was money, New Yorker money. My day brightened. I was born on January 15, 1926, about 10 months after that first article appeared. The folks would have had plenty of time to snuggle up in bed, dreaming about this new source of income and about the future kid. Planned parenthood at its finest.

I gave thanks to Harold Ross. He must have been some kind of guy! But then that lingering doubt returned. If I was here as the result of the New Yorker article and its benevolent editor, how come they did not name me Harold or Ross? Wherefrom Donald? No one will ever know and hardly anyone but me will care. We are back to square one, but Ross Hubbard wouldn’t have had a bad ring to it!