Senior Chief Chester Urbati has left the building

Attention on Deck!

Sandy and I spoke to Carmen Urbati  in Gulfport this sad sunny Sunday afternoon from our deck.

Chet needed a heart valve and had the operation through the groin in December 2019.

Part of the old valve broke off and did serious heart damage. He needed open heart surgery but the Navy doctor said that he was too old to possibly survive it.

Carmen arranged a drive by via their front porch for Chet's 85th birthday on June 25th. Seventeen cars drove by and the Urbatis truly enjoyed that day.

It seems he did not suffer a lot, but at the end he was ready to go. Chet was cremated along with a Navy Seabee flag.       Shocking!

Carmen met Chet in her native Puerto Rico, at the PX, when he was stationed there. Wish I watched that courtship happening. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary plus six months this year. They could dance Cajun and the four of us did just that at Mulates on the waterfront in New Orleans once or twice.

Carmen is planning Chet's funeral for 2021 in Gulfport. The funeral company is doing a write up on him. I hope they have enough paper to record the many places that he was stationed during his 44 years of service. South Weymouth Naval Air Station, Sicily, Rhoda Spain, Italy, Vietnam, Gulfport Mississippi, Guam, American Samoa, Ethiopia, Puerto Rico, and probably seventeen other places that he forgot to mention.

I met Chet in 1965. He was my section leader in the electrical shop at NAS South Weymouth. I was only 20. We kept  Barracks 76 and the NAS runway and taxi way lights, and the two airplane and blimp hangers lights, on even during the East Coast black out of 1965. We also kept the runways clear during the winter Snow Bill, during twelve hour shifts.  “Snow Bill is In," was the telephone call we would get, calling us back to the base for duty off of weekend liberty. I think it only snowed on weekends.

He totally took me under his wing, as if I was family. As a matter of fact, he even took me to his mother and father's house in Hingham, at Crow Point. They made me feel totally at home. I visited often on my own.

Did you ever see him not happy, or complaining about anything? Or even criticizing anyone? I wish I had his eternal optimism and general happiness. He was always smiling and telling sea stories. He had a way of telling original stories that made you feel you were hearing them for the very first time. I am so thankful and blessed that he was a part of my life.

He sent me a baboon skin from Ethiopia. Has this ever happened to you?

He was dating the Army captain's daughter. It was an Army base. The chief called him in to has office:  “Urbati, do you think as an enlisted man that you should be dating a base commander and officer's daughter?"  It was shortly after that that he was transferred to Da Nang. Who could that possibly happen to?  The one, the only … a true patriot: Chet Urbati.

Bacon R.F. CEW 2  10-93-10-63     United States Navy Seabee     

Mercedes Barcha & Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 

Gabriel “Gabo" and Mercedes met when they were 9 y 14 years young and he knew. She did not. Sandy and I met when we were 14 y 15 and I knew. Sandy did not. I really did. And I didn’t know much, but I knew.

We have to stay married for three more years to tie the Garcia Marquez’s. I have read many of his books. I always wondered why he would take two showers every day. An adventure to Colombia taught me why.

Is theirs a fabulous story or yes?  Sandy, Marnie and I have been to his casa in Cartagena, and even the bar at the El Hotel Santa Clara where he drank.

A friend, Charles Gregory of Albuquerque, New Mexico, pushed the book “One Hundred Years of Solitude" on me twenty years ago. Charles had spent much of his young life in a mission near the Alamo in San Antonio. 

I do not enjoy fiction. I read the whole book on the playa at Na Balam with my toes in the warm white sand. I did not like it. A little too fictional for me.

Years later on Isla Mujeres, Mexico, I found a copy of the novel abandoned at the free book table at “Cabanas" Maria del Mar. That copy sold for $3.95 in 1971. Once again. I reread it, thinking to myself. “Don’t be so serious. Enjoy the words.”  Last night in my casita on the bog, I reread the first three pages -- WOW!

Only 50 million copies sold? Published the same year Sandy and I were married. A coincidence? I think not.    

ja ja      

Have YOU read it ?

su servidor,           

Roberto Francisco Tocino

Follow this link to read Mercedes Barcha's obituary: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/23/books/mercedes-barcha-dead.html