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grandfather’s death, and surely Halsey had gotten over his grief by then. I suspect that the commissioning had prompted a great tide of memories that overwhelmed the admiral. As old men do, Halsey could not think of a departed friend without evoking the memory of all they had gone through together. For Halsey, the memory of my grandfather’s friendship conjured up all the grim trials and awful strain of combat, the losses they had endured, and the triumphs they had celebrated together as leading figures in a great war that had changed the world forever. The recollection had stunned the old man and left him mute.
    I met Halsey that evening, at a reception after the ceremony. He asked me, “Do you drink, boy?”
    I was seventeen years old, and had certainly experienced my share of teenage drinking by then. But my mother was standing next to me when the admiral made his inquiry, and I could do nothing but nervously stammer, “Well, no, I don’t.”
    Halsey looked at me for a long moment before remarking, “Well, your grandfather drank bourbon and water.” Then he told a waiter, “Bring the boy a bourbon and water.”
    I had a bourbon and water, and with his old commander watching, silently toasted the memory of my grandfather.

          CHAPTER 4          
    An Exclusive Tradition
    In 1936, while commanding the naval air station in Panama, my grandfather was introduced to me, his first grandson and namesake. My father was stationed in Panama at the same time, serving aboard a submarine as executive officer. He had brought his young, pregnant wife with him. I was born in the Canal Zone at the Coco Solo air base hospital shortly after my grandfather arrived there. My father was transferred to New London, Connecticut, less than three months later, so I have no memory of our time in Panama.
    My mother has fond memories of the place despite the rough living conditions that junior officers and their families suffered in prewar Panama. Among those memories is an occasion when my parents left me in my grandfather’s care while they attended a dinner party. My mother, mindful of my father’s concerns about coddling infants, instructed my grandfather to put me to bed in my crib, and not to mind any protest I might make. When they returned they found me sleeping comfortably with my grandfather in his bed. Admonished by my mother for pampering me, he gamely insisted that the privilege was only fitting. “Dammit, Roberta, that boy has the stamp of nobility on his brow.” Had he lived longer, he might have puzzled over my adolescent misbehavior, lamenting the decline of his once noble grandson.
    My parents were married in 1933 at Caesar’s Bar in Tijuana, Mexico. They had eloped. My mother’s parents, Archibald and Myrtle Wright, objected to the match. For months prior to their elopement, my grandmother had forbidden my father to call on my mother, believing him to be associated with a class of men—sailors—whose lifestyles were often an affront to decent people and whose wandering ways denied their wives the comforts of home and family.
    My mother, Roberta Wright McCain, and her identical twin, Rowena, were the daughters of a successful oil wildcatter who had moved the family from Oklahoma to Los Angeles. Wealthy and a loving father, Archie Wright retired at the age of forty to devote his life to the raising of his children. The Wrights were very attentive parents. They provided their children a happy and comfortable childhood, but they took care not to spoil them. And in their care, my mother grew to be an extroverted and irrepressible woman.
    My parents met when my father, a young ensign, served on the battleship USS
Oklahoma,
which was homeported at the time in Long Beach, California. Ensign Stewart McAvee, the brother of one of my Aunt Rowena’s boyfriends and an Academy classmate of my father’s, also