USS Cabildo (LSD-16 )
   
   
Over the Bar
   
       
 
Ralph Griffen
   
       
 
Onboard the USS Cabildo (LSD-16) 1954
   
       
   
 
       
           
 
Ralph Griffen
     
 
     
         
 
I ran a query to see if any other association members had passed away this year and saw that Ralph Griffen had passed away in May. I was able to locate his obituary on the internet and an exerpt follows.
 
  Warren   
     
 

Ralph Bunyan Griffin age 79, a resident of Nowata, Oklahoma, passed away on Saturday, May 23, 2015, at St John's Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ralph was born on March 24, 1936, to Van Buren Clifton Griffin and Roxie Ann (Holt) Griffin. He was born and raised at Copan, Oklahoma. Ralph's dream in life was to see the world.

 
     
 
Immediately after his graduation from Copan High School in 1954 he joined the U.S. Navy, attending boot camp in San Diego. He spent the remainder of his four years of service aboard the U.S.S. Cabildo, LSD 16, with numerous ports of call throughout the Pacific including Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Philippines, and Honolulu. .
 
     
 
Upon his discharge from the Navy, Ralph attended Coffeyville Junior College, then worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Later he attended Tulsa Technical College, and afterward worked for several years as a television repair man in Tulsa and Dallas. He began working for Phillips Petroleum in Bartlesville in August of 1966, and then upon the formation of Applied Automation, Inc., was officially transferred to that unit as a chromatograph field service engineer. He traveled extensively throughout the United States and to approximately 30 foreign countries. He had walked a portion of the Great Wall in China; seen the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, seen Nagasaki, where the second A-Bomb was dropped; Mt. Fuji in Japan; the windmills of Holland and many more exciting and interesting places.
 
     
 
On August 11, 1982, he married the love of his life, Judy Gail (Stanart-Carter). They lived in Bartlesville, and then in 1985 he was transferred and worked at Phillips Pipeline in Paola, Kansas. He retired in 1996, moving back to Bartlesville for a time, then to Nowata. He and his wife continued his longing to travel and have been to all 50 of the United States and throughout Canada.
 
     
     
     
     
         
         

 

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