Costa Mesa Seaman Geoffrey Scott Schelin, RIP

This blog covers our town, the people who live here, and our connections through the arts. We often go to museums to see art, and we here on Goat Hill have the Orange County Museum of Art nearby. When we want exposure to history and other cultures, Bowers Museum is just up the freeway. But southern California has museums dedicated to our history as Americans; this blog post is about one of them.

We recently visited the U.S.S. Iowa  (http://www.pacificbattleship.com) at its new home in San Pedro. What an impressive museum. The best kind. Lots of hands on, get up close and personal things to see. The docents are knowledgeable, entertaining and very approachable. (A great day trip is a visit to the Iowa followed by a trip to Fort MacArthur, just up the hill. There you can see the coast artillery post that defended our coast from battleships like the Iowa. Just outside the Fort there's a terrific park that overlooks the ocean. It has picnic tables and a lighthouse you can visit.)

Walking around the deck was an amazing experience. We stood next to the Iowa's immense gun turrets and tried to imagine what it was like to be aboard when those big guns fired. The videos they showed were impressive, but could not recreate the way the ship itself reacted to the forces released.

As we rounded the turrets the words "Costa Mesa" on a plaque caught my eye. Of course I stopped to read the whole thing. The subject was the explosion in Turret 2, which is closed to visitors. On April 19, 1989, USS IOWA was conducting a firing exercise approximately 260 nautical miles northeast of Puerto Rico when 47 sailors were killed in an explosion in the Turret 2 Gun Room. This tragedy remains the largest post-World War II peacetime loss of life in U.S. Navy history.

One of those sailors killed was Geoffrey Scott Schelin, 20, seaman, from Costa Mesa, and it was his name that caught my eye. I cried. I come from a military family, and the loss of this young man, and all the others, in a peacetime accident is just too sad. All their names were on this plaque, and I read them all. And I remembered Rochester Street, near my house in Costa Mesa, was named for a local man killed in Europe in World War 1.

I remembered the explosion on the Iowa, and the subsequent investigation. The whole family read "A Glimpse of Hell," by Charles C. Thompson and watched the James Caan movie based on the book. As we went through the ship, I looked for other signs of the explosion. The gift shop did not sell Thompson's book, which I found interesting. 

Once we were home I dug through the bookshelves to find our copy of Thompson's book, and googled the explosion to find out what happened to the survivors in the 20 years since his book was written. The Senate Armed Services Committee had called for an investigation by independent experts, and the man who lead that team had written a book, "Explosion Aboard the Iowa," by Richard L. Schwoebel. So I immediately ordered it from Amazon. It was as interesting as Thompson's book, maybe even more so because the author merely discusses the technical investigation and experiments his team conducted.

The ancient Egyptians believed that as long as a person's name was preserved somewhere, the person would survive in the afterlife. The brave men who died on that battleship deserve to have their names preserved forever, so here they are, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Adams, Tung Thanh, 25, fire controlman 3d class, Alexandria, Virginia

Backherms, Robert Wallace, 30, gunner's mate 3d class, Ravenna, Ohio

Battle, Dwayne Collier, 21, electrician's mate, fireman apprentice, Rocky Mount, North Carolina

Blakey, Walter Scot, 20, gunner's mate 3d class, Eaton Rapids, Michigan

Bopp, Pete Edward, 21, gunner's mate 3d class, Levittown, New York

Bradshaw, Ramon Jerel, 19, seaman recruit, Tampa, Florida

Buch, Phillip Edward, 24, lieutenant (jg), Las Cruces, New Mexico

Casey, Eric Ellis, 21, seaman apprentice, Mount Airy, North Carolina

Cramer, John Peter, 28, gunner's mate 2d class, Uniontown, Pennsylvania

Devaul, Milton Francis Jr., 21, gunner's mate 3d class, Solvay, New York

Everhart, Leslie Allen Jr., 31, seaman apprentice, Cary, North Carolina

Fisk, Gary John, 24, boatswain's mate, Oneida, New York

Foley, Tyrone Dwayne, 27, seaman, Bullard, Texas

Gedeon, Robert James, III, 22, seaman apprentice, Lakewood, Ohio

Gendron, Brian Wayne, 20, seaman apprentice, Madera, California

Goins, John Leonard, 20, seaman recruit, Columbus, Ohio

Hanson, David L., 23, electrician's mate 3d class, Bison, South Dakota

Hanyecz, Ernest Edward, 27, gunner's mate 1st class, Bordentown, New Jersey

Hartwig, Clayton Michael, 25, gunner's mate 2d class, Cleveland, Ohio

Helton, Michael William, 31, legalman 1st class, Louisville, Kentucky

Holt, Scott Alan, 20, seaman apprentice, Fort Myers, Florida

Johnson, Reginald Jr., 20, seaman recruit, Warrensville Heights, Ohio

Jones, Brian Robert, 19, seaman, Kennesaw, Georgia

Jones, Nathaniel Clifford Jr., 21, seaman apprentice, Buffalo, New York

Justice, Michael Shannon, 21, seaman, Matewan, West Virginia

Kimble, Edward J., 23, seaman, Fort Stockton, Texas

Lawrence, Richard E., 29, gunner's mate 3d class, Springfield, Ohio

Lewis, Richard John, 23, fire controlman seaman apprentice, Northville, Michigan

Martinez, Jose Luis Jr., 21, seaman apprentice, Hidalgo, Texas

McMullen, Todd Christopher, 20, boatswain's mate 3d class, Manheim, Pennsylvania

Miller, Todd Edward, 25, seaman recruit, Ligonier, Pennsylvania

Morrison, Robert Kenneth, 36, legalman 1st class, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Moses, Otis Levance, 23, seaman, Bridgeport, Connecticut

Ogden, Darin Andrew, 24, gunner's mate 3d class, Shelbyville, Indiana

Peterson, Ricky Ronald, 22, seaman, Houston, Minnesota

Price, Matthew Ray, 20, gunner's mate 3d class, Burnside, Pennsylvania

Romine, Harold Earle Jr., 19, gunner's mate 3d class, Bradenton, Florida

Schelin, Geoffrey Scott, 20, seaman, Costa Mesa, California

Stillwagon, Heath Eugene, 21, gunner's mate 3d class, Connellsville, Pennsylvania

Tatham, Todd Thomas, 19, seaman recruit, Wolcott, New York

Thompson, Jack Ernest, 22, gunner's mate 3d class, Greeneville, Tennessee

Welden, Stephen J., 24, gunner's mate 2d class, Bethany, Oklahoma

White, James Darrell, 22, gunner's mate 3d class, Norwalk, California

White, Rodney Maurice, 19, seaman recruit, Louisville, Kentucky

Williams, Michael Robert, 21, boatswain's mate 2d class, South Shore, Kentucky

Young, John Rodney, 21, gunner's mate, Columbia, South Carolina

Ziegler, Reginald Owen, 39, gunner's mate, Port Gibson, New York