TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

There is considerable background noise periodically during the interview. Also, Mr. Dorival's microphone was muffled for most of the interview. John Muriello, transcriber. 3/22/1996

LEVINE:

Janet Levine for the National Park Service. And I'm here today at Ellis Island in the studio, with two gentlemen who were in the Coast Guard, stationed at Ellis Island at varying, for varying lengths of time. So it is May 18th, 1994, and I'll ask each of the gentlemen here to introduce themselves, and then we'll take it from there. Do want to start, Mr. Rubinsky?

RUBINSKY:

Yes. My name is Ludwig Rubinsky, or Lud as they call me. And I live in Niantic, Connecticut.

LEVINE:

And when were you here at Ellis Island?

RUBINSKY:

I arrived at Ellis Island on September the 18th, 1940.

LEVINE:

And what were, what was your capacity at that time?

RUBINSKY:

Well, I enlisted at the barge office in New York in the morning. And I was told to report with a toothbrush and little toilet article kit. And in short order I was put on a ferry, and I arrived at Ellis Island, I guess it was if I remember correctly early in the afternoon. And so began my indoctrination into the Coast Guard as an apprentice seaman.

LEVINE:

And how long were you here for that stint?

RUBINSKY:

I was here for three or four months. I'd have to check my records, but I'd say under four months. And after I completed my training as a recruit, I was transferred overseas on a, on a boat called the Chauncey de Pugh , which since became pretty famous, and is now I think in moth balls down in Chesapeake Bay. But this was a, an excursion (unintelligible) that they commandeered, I guess, to bring military personnel. And I was transferred down to Sandy Hook, and I went down halfway on the Hook to a station called Spermaceti Cove, which is the sight of one of the first Coast Guard stations in the country.

LEVINE:

And when was that?

RUBINSKY:

That was in late 1940. Still in 1940.

LEVINE:

Still 1940.

RUBINSKY:

Yes. Yeah.

LEVINE:

And then you came again to Ellis Island. What was that specific circumstance?

RUBINSKY:

Well, the next time I came to Ellis Island was during, let's see. I guess we decommissioned a ship in New York Harbor. I was on the U.S.S. Cepheus at the end of the war. And when the ship was decommissioned in Red Bank, I was then had a letter to proceed to Ellis Island. It was then a receiving station. And that was my second stint, you might say, here at Ellis Island.

LEVINE:

And how long did you stay at that time?

RUBINSKY:

I think I was only here a matter of weeks. And we were quartered, we ate and just sort of passed the time until things began to settle down. People were transferred and reported here, you know.

LEVINE:

And where did you go when you left here that time?

RUBINSKY:

Let me see now. (he pauses) I guess I was transferred to St. George, one of the, the time after that. And I went on several units. I was on the cutter Rush for a while. I was on the Galatea, I think, for a matter of weeks. But we operated out of St. George Base. It was a big Coast Guard base there. And then I went on I guess to, let's see. (he pauses) I'm having a hard time getting my facts straightened out.

LEVINE:

Yeah. Okay. I'm going to...(break in tape)...Okay, we're resuming now. And you, you had been here at the receiving station in 1943...

RUBINSKY:

That's wrong.

LEVINE:

And then the next...

RUBINSKY:

No, that's wrong.

LEVINE:

Oh. Okay.

RUBINSKY:

Most definitely. I, I reported here to the receiving station in '45.

LEVINE:

Oh, in '45.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

Okay.

RUBINSKY:

Because I had, I had gotten orders, see in the interim I got transferred to the Academy. I was still an enlisted man. But I got orders, I was transferred to the Academy, and they had some kind of course of instruction, and I got a commission. And then when I got, completed that course at the Academy, I got transferred to the U.S.S. Cepheus. And that was a Coast Guard manned attack transport. I proceeded from New London, Connecticut to San Francisco to report to this U.S.S. Cepheus. So when I got to San Francisco it started sort of a saga of going like half way around the world chasing this ship for at least three or four months. And I had something like twenty-nine endorsements on my orders. I travelled all over the islands in the Pacific. Manila, Japan. All over the Pacific. And then I had received, I word that the ship was docked at the terminal Alameda, California. And about four months later I flew back to Alameda, and there was the ship at the same dock that I started out at. (he laughs)

LEVINE:

This is the Cepheus?

DORIVAL:

Yeah.

RUBINSKY:

Cepheus, yeah.

LEVINE:

How do you spell that?

RUBINSKY:

C-E-P-H-E-U-S. That was the A.K.A Eighteen, see. So, anyway, we stayed, I stayed with the ship, we made some trips around, and then we had orders to go through the canal, and proceed to New York Harbor to, actually to the Red Hook section of Brooklyn where the ship was decommissioned. And I was one of the two, last two people left aboard as decommission detail. So when that was, my duty was completed, I had orders to report to Ellis Island. And that was the next I reported to, as a receiving station.

LEVINE:

Okay.

RUBINSKY:

And I was here for I guess a couple of weeks, just sort of living and waiting for orders and eating.

LEVINE:

And, and then there was a third time.

RUBINSKY:

Well, in the ensuing years after that I was here again on a, on, between assignments. And by that time I had gotten malaria, so I had all three kinds of malaria I remember. And I was sent home from the south Pacific to San Francisco, and I eventually would up in, in this area. And I had to report to the Marine Hospital a couple of times for treatment.

LEVINE:

Do you remember what year that was?

RUBINSKY:

That is very hazy in my memory. So I'd have to consult my, my log, my memoirs, or whatever. (he laughs)

LEVINE:

Okay.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah. Yeah.

LEVINE:

Okay. Well. So, we'll delve into all of that in a while.

RUBINSKY:

Okay.

LEVINE:

Why don't you introduce yourself and say when you were here? Or were you here more than one time?

DORIVAL:

I was (unintelligible) here about four times.

LEVINE:

Oh, good. Okay.

DORIVAL:

My name is William Dorival, and I enlisted in the Coast Guard, in the regular Coast Guard in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was shipped to Omaha, Nebraska. They lined us up and they said count off, one, two, one, two. All number ones will step forward, all numbers will step back. All number ones will go to New York City, and all number twos go to Port Angelus, Washington. So our detail, part went west and part went east. I can remember the first time I hit New York City was, we came off the Pennsylvania Railroad and got in the, on the subway, and it's an experience for the first time a rural boy coming from Minnesota, hearing this roar coming down these subway tubes. Seeing this thing come out of the tunnel, and you get on it and you, you went down to South Ferry, then walked across the street, and got on a ferry boat to take us over to Ellis Island, and which was supposed to be our boot camp. Well, when we got here to Ellis Island, the war had broken out.

LEVINE:

Now, what, where...

DORIVAL:

This was December, 1941. And they gave us an issue, what issue of clothing they could give us. They had no seabags. They gave us a mattress cover, and we dumped our stuff in a mattress cover. And I was here until, well, they were supposed to have a boot camp here, but everything being so hectic in the latter part of December, '41, kind of boot camp just fell apart, and the first thing we knew, I think about the 3rd of January, '42, we were shipped across over to Ellis Island, over to Seaman Church Institute. That was the old building down on South Ferry, where they had a tower. Not, they made a new Seaman Church Institute over to the other side of the port. But this was the old building. And we were stationed there for about a week. And all I can remember is that each day they'd give us a, a strip of, of five cent meal tickets. And we'd go downstairs in the cafeteria, and breakfast would cost us maybe five tickets, and lunch would cost us seven tickets, and supper would cost us ten tickets. And we were there for about, oh, I'd say about a week before we got orders to go out. And I was sent out to Napeague, out on Long Island, which was a Coast Guard short station. And I was there, actually I got my, more of my boot camp there, and learned how to go out through the surf and come back through the surf. And we did quite a few rescues on the east coast off of Long Island where the ships would be stuck out there in '42. And then I was also involved with the submarine, the German submarine that came in on Long Island. Indirectly. I reported a submarine that night and went to sleep, and slept through the whole darn episode. (he laughs) While everybody else was up and down the beach chasing the submarine, I was sound asleep. And I think I came back to Ellis Island in September. I had requested quarter master school, and recommending officer okayed the order, and I came back to Ellis Island in September of '42 to go to quarter master signal school here on the island. I was here in signal school for maybe, oh, maybe a couple weeks. It was supposed to be I think a twelve week, sixteen week school, or something like that. And coming back from liberty one Friday night on the old ferry boat, I ran into an accident. Somebody pushed me down the ladder and I sprained my ankle. And next day on the bases, Saturday is always inspection. And Saturday in the receiving station here was always corn bread and baked beans and coffee. There was something the cooks would make up the night before, clean up their galleries, and go for inspection the next day. So I had corn bread and baked beans that morning. I went over to sick bay, because my ankle had swollen up. And they said, "Get out of here. The inspecting officers are coming now. You can't, you can't hang around now." And so I hobbled out, I hobbled out right in the path of the inspecting officers, and they said, "What's the matter, sailor?" And I said, "Well, I think I sprained my ankle." And he said, "Well, you get back there in sick bay." And I think I didn't make very good friends with the, the, the pharmacist's mate. But they shipped me over to the hospital, the Marine Hospital on the other side of the island. So I was there till, oh, I guess for a week or so.

LEVINE:

This is September, '42?

DORIVAL:

Now I'd say probably I'm in October, '42. And I was there for a while. And then they shipped me down to they, they didn't know whether it was, actually broken or not or whether it was sprained and they shipped me down to Stapleton, Staten Island. Stap, yeah. The Marine Hospital down there in Stapleton. And I was there for four solid months. And, and they finally, well, I went in, and they, I had, the doctors gave me a physical down there, and I ended up with a tonsil, tonsillotomy [sic], tonsillectomy. And so they took my tonsils out. And then they said, "You've got a double rupture." And I says I've never had a double rupture before in my life. (he laughs) Says, "Well, you're going to stay here for your rupture." So they, they, that's why I stayed four months in that hospital. And I finally came back to Ellis Island, was then shipped out to Shortbeach on Long Island, and was there for maybe a month.

LEVINE:

This is now early '43?

DORIVAL:

It'd be early '43. Still equesting quarter master school, so they shipped us up to Bridgeport, Connecticut to a quarter master school up there. And we lived in a mansion up there, which was one of these beautiful estates up on top of the hill overlooking Long Island Sound that the government had taken over. And we got quarter master school up there. And I was shipped back to Ellis Island for assignment. Was assigned to Pier Nine, East River, which at that time was a Coast Guard base. And the small boats, they used to keep the small boats there. And we were on a signal detachment in New York Harbor here. We had a signal tower at Seaman Church Institute, guard's office, Statue of Liberty, Staten Island out at St. George, and then Bush General in...

LEVINE:

Brooklyn.

DORIVAL:

...Brooklyn. And I was on that detail, oh, for I guess about four or five months.

LEVINE:

So you were a signalman.

DORIVAL:

Yes. I was at that time a quarter master. And we worked, you know, you get the same rating quarter master signaling. You were Q.M.Q.S. or Q.M.Q. And I asked for a transfer because I wanted to get back out and get some sea duty in like a damn fool. (he laughs) So I came back our to Ellis Island for, for orders and was shipped then to the west coast to pick up a ship. And that's the last I saw of Ellis Island.

LEVINE:

So when was that last time when...

DORIVAL:

I was, probably it'd be '44 I was out here last.

LEVINE:

Okay.

DORIVAL:

And, but I have a friend of mine that shipped in with me that stayed here on the island the whole, whole enlistment. But, and so when I came out of the service, I was discharged out on the army base out in Tacoma, Washington. And, Fort Lewis.

LEVINE:

What year was that?

DORIVAL:

That was the latter part of '45. And so I came back, came back to New York City to meet a, to renew a couple old, old female, you know, girlfriends I had out here. And I came over the island to see my buddy who had, who had stayed the whole enlistment here at Ellis Island as a yeoman. And I came back to see him. But, but that's, that was '45. That's, that's almost fifty, forty-nine years ago that, fifty-one, fifty-one years when I was last here, but forty-nine years from my last visit.

LEVINE:

Wow. Okay. Well, why don't we start by saying when you first joined the Coast Guard, do you remember what the impetus was for you to join, what you expected or how you felt about signing up with the Coast Guard.

RUBINSKY:

Well, mine, it's hard in retrospect now, because when I enlisted in September, 1940, obviously when you review history, we were on the brink of war. But I sure as heck didn't know it. And I had been going to Stephens Institute of Technology. And I went there for two years. Then I decided, I always evidently had a bending for sea, seafaring in my heart. So I announced to my parents that I wanted to enlist in the Coast Guard. So I'm sure that kind of thoroughly broke their heart, but at that time, you know, there was no, as far as I knew, you know, there was no emergency. Well, actually, there wasn't. So...

LEVINE:

Do you know how you had that bent for going to the sea? Do you know where that came from?

RUBINSKY:

Well, I'm a, I'm a New Yorker born and bred, but evidently it, it was from a very young age. I used to, I was very good friends with a school mate of mine. His father was superintendent for all the sailors in our garment buildings down in Greenwich Village. And they owned a...

DORIVAL:

He probably got it from riding the subway. I mean the ferry back and forth across New York Harbor. (he laughs)

RUBINSKY:

Right. But I never got seasick on it. (they laugh) Anyway, I have snapshots of myself. You know, we were teenagers. Tender teenagers. And we'd go out to Southold, Long Island, and, and his father owned a little cabin cruiser, a thirty foot cabin cruiser, and we would spend our summers out there. We'd ferry people in and out to fishing boats, and we had a great time. So that was it. So I announced my decision, and, and that's how I decided on the Coast Guard. Well, anyway...

LEVINE:

How you felt about it. What you, I guess the country was on the brink of war, but you were...

RUBINSKY:

But it had nothing to do with my feelings or my actions, believe me. That I'm so positive of. And when I completed my training, can I back up to my...

LEVINE:

Sure.

RUBINSKY:

...some of the things I forgot?

LEVINE:

Let me take this off you.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah. So it won't rustle. That happened to me, when we, when I reported here to boot camp, your anecdote sort of re, jolted my memory. We arrived here on the island, and of course, we were, I was a raw kid. I didn't know what to expect. I have a lot of memories there. But very short...

LEVINE:

How old were you?

RUBINSKY:

About nineteen.

LEVINE:

What's your birth date, by the way. I wanted to get that information.

RUBINSKY:

Two, seven, twenty. (he whispers to Mr. Dorival) Give yours.

DORIVAL:

Mine is one, thirty-one, twenty-two.

LEVINE:

Okay, so you were nine, around nineteen.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, when, when I arrived at the island here, and we were kind of kicked around with a couple of tough, old master arms. I remember the name of Archie Weeks. He was a skinny, salty looking dog. He was a boatswain mate. And he would go through the barracks with his club. He'd carry a club in his belt, and he'd rap the steel bunks, and, "Get up, sailors. Daylight the swamps," you know, and a few other vulgarities. And, but in the middle of our training we used to muster out on this field, back of this porch I was telling you about. (he indicates) That's where we did all our drill and everything else. Well, one day they lined us all up, and by the numbers, you know, we'd play one, two, you step back, and three, four, you step back. And they took half the detail and transferred to, to, transfer them to Algiers, Louisiana. So just on a fluke I escaped that fate, while these fellows were transferred down there. And they opened another boot camp there, and I'm sure we got the better deal.

DORIVAL:

Yeah.

RUBINSKY:

Then when I finished my training as I said on this Chauncey de Pugh, we went to Sandy Hook, overseas. And we trained at this station. And that is where also I got this terrific training which has stood me in good stead for the rest of my life. Every day of the week, winter, summer, we would launch a boat, a pulling boat through the surf here on Sandy Hook on the ocean side. We'd have a wagon we'd pull down, take the wheels off, launch it, jump in and start rowing. And, boy, there was some pretty healthy grousing about that. But it was training that I will never forget in my life. Well, when I finished there, I got transferred to Atlantic City. And Atlantic City if you could picture this at that time was a little home town. There were fourteen coast guards were there. Later on I think they established a signaling school and a few other...

DORIVAL:

Yeah.

RUBINSKY:

But there was just a lifeboat station. So that was pretty interesting duty. And they built the, the new lifeboat station on the other side of the inlet. And we used to commute back and forth and stand watches there. Well, I was standing on, on watch there one night in the boathouse, and the teletype machine began to clatter. And I watched my name come out. By then I made third class, I was a cox. And I watched my name come out, and it was transferred to naval operating base, Norfolk, Virginia, like, the next day almost. So this was on the 4th of December. So we reported in I guess it was the 5th. And we went to this big barracks in a naval operating base there. And I went home on liberty to New York. And I was home in the dining room. My folks, my sister were having breakfast on December the 7th when news came of Pearl Harbor. So they said, you know, all personal report back to the, to their stations. So I went back to Norfolk. And all that day, Sunday, you know, planes would be shipped down the streets of N.O.B. with their wings folded back, and they were loading them on the aircraft carriers. And then a couple days later I had orders to report to this U.S.S. Alhena, which was also an A.K.A. It was an A.K.A. Nine.

LEVINE:

How do you spell that one?

RUBINSKY:

A-L-H-E-N-A. Now we just had a reunion two weeks ago in Fall River. And I mean, we had quite a, quite a gathering. It was something else. People I hadn't seen for some fifty years.

LEVINE:

Okay, well, let's...

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

...have Bill catch up to his.

RUBINSKY:

Okay.

LEVINE:

Do you remember how you felt about going into the Coast Guard, what were the circumstances in your life?

DORIVAL:

I grew up in Minnesota. Graduated in 1940 from the public high school there. Went to, at that time there was a government program called N.Y.A. which was long before your days, I know that. And it was a, a training program that the government had. And I went and took up aviation machinist mate. And I had about a four month course in that.

LEVINE:

What was the N.Y.A. standing for, do you...

DORIVAL:

National Youth Recovery Act. Remember that, that, like W.P.A., only it was the young...

LEVINE:

Younger people.

DORIVAL:

Younger. So I had, I had this training, and we repaired aircraft engines. So I thought that this would be a good time to go to Canada, because they went in the war in 1939. And I joined the R.A.F. up there. Well, I was underage, they stopped me at the border, shipped me home. I applied with the Chinese government to go with the Flying Tigers. I got as far as Chicago with the Chinese government. The police stopped me and shipped me home again for the second time. My folks said if you're so anxious to join the darn service, we'll let you join the Coast Guard, because the Coast Guard is a nice, peaceful operation, and you'll be in, you'll probably be stationed at Flint Rock Lighthouse up in the north coast of Superior, Lake Superior. Or you'll be in some nice little receiving station along the coast, and you will be, you know, not, not afraid of what, you getting into trouble. So they signed the papers for the Coast Guard. So that's the reason that I went into the Coast Guard. Not that I had anything against the Coast Guard. But I was, and then when I got in the Coast Guard, they looked at it, and says, oh, you're, you're qualified aviation machinist's mate. I said, "But I don't want to be an aviation machinist's mate. I want to be a quarter master." So why I went to quarter master school.

LEVINE:

So was that the common, sort of folklore, or whatever you want to say about the attitude about the Coast Guard, that that was a safer branch...

DORIVAL:

Well, there were a lot of people thought that was a lot safer operation.

RUBINSKY:

No, I'd say that was an official attitude, because while I was, as a matter of fact, like making the landings on Guadalcanal, friends back home in New York were telling my parents, well, Lud is in the Coast Guard. You know, you really don't have to worry. He's guarding the coast...

DORIVAL:

Yeah.

RUBINSKY:

...and my folks could become quite wound up.

DORIVAL:

You know, he's talking, he's talking about he received a commission in, in the Coast Guard. I went, after I got out of the Coast Guard I went to university, and got my degree, and applied for a Coast Guard commission. In the meantime I had joined the Naval Reserve. Why? At that time there was no Coast Guard Reserve in the area. So I joined the Navy Reserve. And it was, in going to school at the time it was that extra amount of money that gave me some money that, that gave me some beer money, and, and a movie once in a while. And so you took the blood money from the government. (he laughs) And then, then along comes, I got married in the meantime. I'm at work one day and my wife called up, she's all in tears. She says, your navy pay came today, and also a big, fat envelope from The United States Navy. Greetings. Come back in the Korean War. So I went back in the Korean service. In the meantime I applied for a Coast Guard commission. So I reported to New York City. I had an order of change, because I could report to New York City, because my wife was a New York City girl. So she went home with her mother and father. I reported to Brooklyn Navy Yard for assignment. I got assigned to the U.S.S. Wright aircraft carrier which was stationed in Pensacola, Florida. I go, in the meantime my Coast Guard commission came through. I go to my commanding officers, and I said to him, I said, "I'd like to get a discharge." He said, "Wouldn't we all." (they laugh) I said, "But I got a commission." He said, "Well, when the Coast Guard give you your commission I'll have to release you." They won't give me a commission when I'm in another military service. So it was one of these "catch twenty-two's." So we argued back and forth for about six months. In the meantime my Coast Guard, my navy reserve enlistment was running out. And I said to the guy, I said to the commanding officer, "You can keep your Navy. I'm not going to accept the Coast Guard commission. Soon as I get out of this bloody service I'm going to go home." (he laughs) Because at that time if I had accepted the commission I would have had to put another two years in. And I, and I, this was in 1951. So I would have been another two years with the Coast Guard, which carried me to '53. So I said, well, if you won't give me a discharge so I can accept the commission, I won't take the commission, I'll finish out my Naval Reserve time, and I'm going to kiss you all good-bye. And that's what I did.

LEVINE:

Where were you when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and did that effect you, in your...

DORIVAL:

Somewhere between Minneapolis and Omaha.

LEVINE:

And were you, did you, were then you, were you dispatched to...

DORIVAL:

Well, then I, we were shipped here to New York City for boot camp. Boot camp in New York, in Ellis Island was supposed to be a, we, we went out in front, in the grassy area in front of the building there. And we had a navy chief out there. Or not a navy chief, a Coast Guard chief. And, and he was instructed to guide us through walking, marching. And I had two left feet. And he finally told me, he said, "Why don't you go and sit down in the grass over there and watch for a while." (he laughs) END OF SIDE ONE, TAPE ONE BEGINNING OF SIDE TWO, TAPE ONE

DORIVAL:

Next day they went out marching, I went in the barracks and went to sleep. (he laughs)

LEVINE:

Well, now what else was, what else did boot camp consist of?

DORIVAL:

We did some rowing here in the harbor. Long boats.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

I remember the first time we went out there, they said, ship oars and toss oars, and guys immediately throw out the oars. (he laughs) It didn't make our boatswain very happy. I don't know whether he was here when there was a German U-boat commander stationed here on the island that served in World War One in the German navy, and comes to the States, joined the Coast Guard, and was stationed here on the island. I cannot for the life of me think of his name.

RUBINSKY:

I, I thought it was something like, couldn't be. It was a German name?

DORIVAL:

German name.

RUBINSKY:

As I, I've been trying to recall that, but I can't.

DORIVAL:

But, he was a character. He was really a character. He spoke with a...

LEVINE:

He was in the Coast Guard...

DORIVAL:

Yes.

LEVINE:

...and not, in the U.S. Coast...

RUBINSKY:

Yeah. Yeah.

DORIVAL:

Yeah. But he spoke with a real thick German accent. "Achtung." (he laughs) That type of thing. And it was, but we used to have some fun here on the island. It was, our liberties to, to Manhattan, coming back at eleven o'clock at night. If we missed that ferry boat at eleven o'clock in the night, that meant that you spent the night in the park bench over in Battery, over in Battery Park.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

And, because the next boat didn't come till about seven, seven-thirty in the morning. And some of the nights were cold. I remember doing guard duty here on New Year's Eve, 1942 on the north sea wall. And it was, I had every stitch of clothing that the government gave me. Sweater, jumper, p-coat, I think I even had a, probably a double jumper on. And it was cold. It was four degrees above. And I didn't see, we had a that time interned some Japanese internees that was quartered in those buildings back of the hospital units. And they had guard duty on those. I don't know where the guys would gave gone if they, if they decided to go out of the building. But they couldn't get off the island.

LEVINE:

So these were people that were Japanese Americans who, who were being detained here...

DORIVAL:

Probably so.

LEVINE:

...and then they were probably shipped to...

DORIVAL:

Probably so.

LEVINE:

...camps?

DORIVAL:

Probably so.

LEVINE:

Uh-huh.

DORIVAL:

There was maybe a half a dozen of them.

LEVINE:

I see. Did you, could they, did you speak to them?

DORIVAL:

No, we weren't allowed to speak to them.

RUBINSKY:

They, they were, I guess the Coast Guard had an armed guard detail or something. They seized, at one time they seized all the merchant ships in the port of New York. Italian...

DORIVAL:

German.

RUBINSKY:

...German, Japanese, things like that. But see, my, my memories, you have to understand, at Ellis Island were strictly, during that original stint, were strictly peacetime. There was no air of any kind of emergency at all. We drilled. We had close order drill where they'd say they were the rear march. Everybody would pile up in the heat. (Mr. Dorival laughs) We had a...(a mic is dropped)...things like that. But basically, you know that was it.

DORIVAL:

I got more, I got more boot camp out at Napeague, out at Amagansett, Long Island.

LEVINE:

Than you did here.

DORIVAL:

Than I did here.

LEVINE:

Yeah. Uh-huh.

DORIVAL:

Because we, once the war broke out, we were, they just farmed us out as fast as they could. Because they had thousands of kids coming in right behind us. And at that time I guess Curtis Bay...

RUBINSKY:

Curtis Bay, Maryland.

DORIVAL:

Curtis Bay, Maryland began to open up. And also Cape May was probably opened up...

RUBINSKY:

Right. That's right.

DORIVAL:

...as a, as a receiving station, a training station, boot camp.

LEVINE:

What was the relationship between the detainees due to the, due to the second world war who were here and the Coast Guard. Did, was there any connection between the deportation or immigration...

DORIVAL:

I'd say...

LEVINE:

...aspects of the island and what you were doing?

DORIVAL:

I just think that they were stationed here because there was a, some place to put them. Instead of putting them in a jail in New York City, they, the, the, I don't know whether at that time Governor's Island was, was First Army, and I don't know whether they had facilities to, to hold Japanese people or not. I, so I guess we just inherited the, the Japanese. And as I said there was only about six of them that I, that I understood...

LEVINE:

That you had ever, where there more than that, Mr. Rubinsky?

RUBINSKY:

I, I don't, I don't know. I wasn't involved with any of that. But I do, you know, I heard that at that time relations were pretty friendly between the Coast Guardsmen that were on this armed guard detail and the...

LEVINE:

Detainees?

RUBINSKY:

...detained merchant seamen. They were pretty friendly. The Italians have a, are noted for being very friendly and whatever, and so it was a jovial relationship.

DORIVAL:

We used to, when I was stationed here in, in the, in the signal school, they would ask whether we'd be off duty on the weekends or if there'd be some time we'd have some free time. And we used to bum rides on the picket boats. We'd go down to Cayman Point to the ammunitions people down there.

LEVINE:

What's a picket boat?

DORIVAL:

Thirty-eight quarters. The small, at that time, the standard at the time Coast Guard vessel was a harbor vessel, diesel powered, thirty-eight feet long. It usually had two or three men assigned to it. There was usually a boatswain and a couple seamen. And we'd get a ride down to Cayman Point. I remember one day they closed the school up, and they loaded us all up on a ferry boat. I don't think it was, maybe it was a ferry boat that was operating back and forth. But I don't remember that. But they took us down to Bayonne on the U.S.S. Randall. Eighty-one sixteen...

RUBINSKY:

Sixteen is right.

DORIVAL:

...would be in, was in dry dock down there. And it was, it was a Coast Guard manned, it was to be a Coast Guard manned transport, and you had to bring all the supplies aboard. And the, the supplies go aboard, (unintelligible) lugging them aboard. And so they took about fifty guys off the island and put them on this, I think it was probably a tug boat that took us down there. But we went down there to, to Bayonne and worked all day long carrying boxes of groceries, and spare parts, and whatever needed to go aboard that ship to, to put it in commission. And then we thought, well, maybe we'll get assigned to the Randall, because you're looking for crew members. But we didn't. (he laughs)

LEVINE:

Well, let's see. So is there anything about Ellis Island that you recall from the times that you were here? Either what it looked like, or what, anything.

DORIVAL:

I can remember when we were stationed here at Ellis Island, we used to walk up to the old, at that time the old immigration building, which was opened. It was filthy. Probably two inches of dust on the floor, papers spread all around, chairs turned upside down. It looked like a deserted old building at that time. But we used to, we knew that was the immigration, and we'd come up and stick our nose in the door and look around.

LEVINE:

Did either of you by any chance have immigrant parents who came through Ellis Island?

RUBINSKY:

I, my father was born in Russia. When he was six months old he came to this country. But on my mother's side of the family, yes, I imagine they came through. I, I never really checked on it.

LEVINE:

Uh-huh. So was that any kind of a feeling you had for the place because of your own family?

RUBINSKY:

Not really. No, I didn't at the time.

LEVINE:

Uh-huh.

DORIVAL:

No. I had, my folks came pretty much through New England.

LEVINE:

I see.

DORIVAL:

Of course, my great grandmother came through, came into New York in 18', early 1830's. But I don't think she, she came in from Santo Domingo, and I don't think that she ever went an immigration. I think she got on a boat, came in the harbor, got off the boat, and...

LEVINE:

Went about her business. s(he laughs)

DORIVAL:

Went about her business. I, I don't think in the 1830's that they...

LEVINE:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

...if I could go political for just a second, I, I, I think they ought to reopen immigration island, the immigrant, Ellis Island up for immigrants, and make everybody that comes in this country come in legally and go through an immigration. Because we are taking immigrants now with no rhyme or reason.

LEVINE:

Where did your family come from, when they came...

DORIVAL:

The Dorival part came from France, and the, well my, I'm a hybrid. My father is French and English basically. And my mother is Scotch-Irish and Dutch. And, so that I imagine my mother's side of the family came through Pennsylvania on, on, out to Iowa that way. And the, the French came into New York City, and then the English part came in from Boston...

LEVINE:

New England. Uh-huh.

DORIVAL:

...Connecticut, on across the country. I, I have a hobby in genealogy.

LEVINE:

Oh.

DORIVAL:

And I could talk for hours on that.

LEVINE:

Okay. Let's see. So, so, anything else about Ellis Island. Do you remember anything that struck you about the island itself when you were here?

RUBINSKY:

Not really. I remember, I have, you know, flashes of memory. I remember going down in underground passages, like to get over to the other side of the island and under the hospital. You could look, or walk for miles and there were tunnels with huge steam pipes in there. And this is how you could get from here to there without going outside. But it looks like things have very much changed right now.

LEVINE:

Well, now, neither of you were, were housed or had meals or anything in, what this major building that's been restored, called the Great Hall...

DORIVAL:

Well, that was not, that, the Coast Guard didn't have that.

LEVINE:

Okay.

DORIVAL:

(he refers to a map) The building I think that we used, which is marked on the map, and from the shape of the building must be this (unintelligible) in, in, one of the baggage and dormitory.

LEVINE:

Hmm-hmm.

DORIVAL:

That must have been the, the building that we were housed in, because as I visualized it, we came in from, we'd come in and go through the ferry terminal, and then come around and walk around this way. And as you came into this building it was a open building. As you came in there was a first aide area along your left hand side. The Master at Arms shack there. Then the rest of it was the dining area, table, and on the far right would be the kitchen area. Then you kind of went through some, a low passage way, a low partition, and that was the berthing area. Double deck bunk. And he was talking about the guy coming through at five o'clock or five-thirty in the morning with the stick, and then going down the bunks, and going rattle, rattle, rattle right on the bunks. And another thing that they used to do, the guys would come in drunk. And we had lockers, standing lockers, the old navy, the old navy, high school type lockers. So wide, so tall. (he indicates) He'd come in and they were not bolted down. And if you gave them a good shove they'd act like dominoes. And they'd go crush, crush, crush, crush. And everybody's shaving lotion and everything else would be broken, and the place would smell awful. (he laughs) And the boatswain mate would come running in, and we'd do push ups, run arounds, out there in the middle of January...

LEVINE:

For doing that as punishment?

DORIVAL:

Well, it wasn't everybody.

RUBINSKY:

Everybody.

DORIVAL:

Everybody.

RUBINSKY:

Everybody. Up and Adam.

DORIVAL:

Up and out. And you'd come out there in underwear, shorts and t-shirts, they wouldn't let you put shoes or socks on, or, or, clothes on. And you're out there in, in, in middle of January doing some run arounds or push ups.

RUBINSKY:

If there was an unruly incident, and you could be an angel and fast asleep, they would, his description of the layout is, that's the way it was. There's no question about that. If you were unruly or something happened, they would turn on all the lights...

DORIVAL:

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. (he laughs)

RUBINSKY:

...and there were these huge reflector lights all over this barracks, and I mean, it was like daylight. And then they would start screaming, all right, sailors, you know, out. And you'd have to get up, your bunk, outside and do push ups or some punishment like that. That's the way it was.

DORIVAL:

Oh, yeah. And how those lights, they used to, oh.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

It's like, imagine you had an upper bunk. (they laugh)

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

You're laying there, and these lights would come on.

RUBINSKY:

Well, that's, that was reveille every morning, too, because, you know, when you're not used to that and you're a young lad, and you're sound asleep, and then all of a sudden daylight with these glaring lights, and then this bugler, get up and out, get dressed, you know. It was, it was different.

LEVINE:

How were treated by the, by the high ranking officers when you were here?

RUBINSKY:

I don't remember being maltreated. I know all the young, like a lieutenant became admirals and all that. And this, this Captain Risatta who was in charge of the receiving station, I don't know if you remember that name or not. But he, he was stationed in Atlantic City. He, he was officer in charge of the group there. And, you know, we were, we were pretty well treated. I have no complaints.

DORIVAL:

I don't think we saw too many officers.

RUBINSKY:

No.

DORIVAL:

The officers were in their, the enlisted men stayed over here in this, this, this building. Your chiefs were, I don't even know if the chiefs lived on that floor or not, or whether they had some other place. I can't remember the chief being there. Most, mostly the officers lived over on the other side.

LEVINE:

The other island? There's, like, this is called island one, then there's two and three.

DORIVAL:

I think they were probably in two.

LEVINE:

Uh-huh.

DORIVAL:

And that was were the office, the, the officers were. (Mr. Rubinsky coughs) The, the only thing I can remember, when I was here for the first time for quarter master school, they had a change of command. And they filed everybody out on the, the field. And I, and I can't, I don't know where that field was, whether...

LEVINE:

I think I, we'll pass that when we go for the walk on the...

DORIVAL:

Yeah. Well, we lined out there, and this, this, this, I'm, I'm a year ahead of myself, because this was the following year. This would be in '4-, '42. Yeah, it was '42. Yeah. I'm quite sure it's '42. They lined us all up, they mustered everybody out, and we all fell out for, for changing of officers. And we stood out there for about a half hour. It always, it seemed like they always have to have you stand out there for a half hour while he was down chatting with the, somebody else, before he finally makes his presentation, and comes down, and then there's a rigamarol of one saluting the other, and here's the keys to the place, and you're now in charge of Ellis Island. And the other guys says I'm off to Timbuktu. But...

RUBINSKY:

I remember a little more about things now. When you came off the ferry and you walked up the ramp and into the building, there was a long, wooden desk with a little rail around it. And that's where the quarter master used to check in liberty party. As you went in it was in the left hand corner. That's where this quarter master, who I can remember as if it were yesterday, his last name Carl Ludwig. And he wore a watch cap all the time about a quarter of an inch over his eyebrows, a real salty character. And then there was a personnel officer here named Sam Swick [PH]. And of course, that's was name I remember. As a matter of fact, I've looked him up and I've called him a couple of times, and we've reminisced about Ellis Island, things like that. See, he was a, I think he was a, an ensign or a J.D. or something like that, and I was, he was an apprentice seaman. But I've kept in touch with him.

LEVINE:

Hmm.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah. But he's up there. See, this Captain Risatta unfortunately has died, as a matter of fact. And I tried to contact his widow who is, you know, up there in years. And they, I tried to get some memorabilia out of them. Of course, I imagine he's got quite a collection. But it's all sort of sealed up in their house. And his, the daughters want no part of, you know, going through anything. So..

LEVINE:

Hmm-hmm.

RUBINSKY:

...I told her if she ever, I told her I was coming here, you know. And it kind of got a glimmer of excitement. Said, you know, let me know, write her a letter or something (unintelligible).

LEVINE:

Uh-huh. Good.

DORIVAL:

Well, the, I, I, I think probably my, my stay in Ellis Island, either coming in as a receiving station or as a training school, was, was a good experience. I, I said the Saturday morning breakfast because it, the selection was always corn bread and beans. But the rest of the meals were fairly decent meals, G.I. issue. It wasn't like, it wasn't home cooking or anything like that.

RUBINSKY:

See, they really had regular wooden tables that folded up, with steel legs, then two benches were on each side.

DORIVAL:

Yeah. On each side.

RUBINSKY:

Every once in a while a bench would go down, collapse, and everybody would go sliding off, and there would be a little furor about that.

DORIVAL:

And, and there was always those bleach benches...

RUBINSKY:

Right.

DORIVAL:

And beach, bleach tables.

RUBINSKY:

Everything was washed down with bleach.

LEVINE:

Bleach.

DORIVAL:

Shh.

RUBINSKY:

The canvas rubbed down every night. Things like that. Yeah.

DORIVAL:

Had a little edge around it. It reminded you, that they got it on the ship. They used to have, especially on the smaller ships, I don't know on the bigger ships, I served time aboard sea-going tugs. And we would have, our mess table would have foul weather boards that would be put over your, your table. And they'd have cut-outs. There'd be a cut-out for your plate and a cut-out for your coffee. And you set your plate and your coffee there, and no matter how bad the ship rolled or tossed or turned, you plate would go sliding down into the next guy. (he laughs) (to Mr. Rubinsky) You guess, you maybe had boards like that, too. I...

RUBINSKY:

Yeah. I remember I, I was introduced to my first movie on the mess deck one night at boot camp, called "The Perils of...

LEVINE:

"Folly?"

RUBINSKY:

"Sexual Diseases."

LEVINE:

Oh. (they laugh) Which left, which left, which left evidently an indelible mark on me, because I was a pretty square shooting kid, I'll tell you that. (he laughs)

DORIVAL:

They used a kid, they used a kid to, well the, all the armed forces. Towards the end of the month, every facility got an allotment of money to buy food or (unintelligible) people from the bus. Towards the end of the month they'd start running low on food. Low on allotments. And so that they'd be cutting back. Now, the only way you'd be cut back is not to get the people to eat as much. So they show these V.D. movies right before mealtime, which would turn your appetite. (they laugh)

RUBINSKY:

Yeah. They were pretty, pretty stark.

DORIVAL:

Awful. It was awful.

RUBINSKY:

The Coast Guard ran a lot on, on, they call it computed rations, where you got a dollar per man per day. And at these surf stations, I don't know what, at yours, but I was at some pretty, like if you close your eyes you'd think you were down in Chincoteague, or the Outer Banks. They were all outer bankmen there.

DORIVAL:

Oh, yes. Yes.

RUBINSKY:

And they, we subsisted on, I don't know, maybe twelve dollars a month. And then we kept the eighteen. And that was almost equal to my salary because my salary was twenty-one dollars a month. And at Ellis Island I had my first paycheck, which was a dollar, because I had eight dollars and ninety-five cents insurance. Even as a kid I had a little brain, so I took out a government insurance policy. And, but you got paid every two weeks. So my first paycheck was one dollar. And, of course, I brought it home, showed it to my father, and says, "Can you cash if for me, Dad?" And of course he cashed it, and gave me five dollars for liberty that stint home. But he evidently kept, kept that check. And I brought a copy of that. That was my first paycheck.

DORIVAL:

Twenty-one dollars a day once a month.

RUBINSKY:

Once a month. Yeah. (he laughs)

DORIVAL:

We used to get paid twice a month, first and fifteenth. And we'd get, at the receiving station, when I was out in Napeague, we, we'd get paid, they'd take out insurance, fifty cents insurance, or some darn thing was our insurance.

RUBINSKY:

It was, it was savings bond.

DORIVAL:

But, that receiving station never gave you the, you were, they gave you an allotment. And it seemed, like as he said, every one of these people, there was a, there was a time when the Coast Guard had what they called surfmen. And you, the, the Coast Guard is made up of about four different branches. There was the revenule service, there was the surfmen, there was the cutter service, and then they joined all these things into one organization and called it the United States Coast Guard. And so we had, a lot of our people were North Carolinians.

RUBINSKY:

That's what I tried to say.

DORIVAL:

South Carolinians. Nobody that had anything but a pair of boots to their name. (he laughs) And they, they joined the Coast Guard. And they manned most of these stations along the coast that those days as surfmen. And when I went out to Napeague, our chief was an old time North Carolinian. And he was a surfman. And you were more or less inducted into the, the United States surfmen operation, not the United States Coast Guard. Because you learned how to reach, how to use a breeches buoy. You know what a breeches buoy is? Well, a breeches buoy is to rescue ships staying close by the shore. And it's a box with a series of pegs in it. And, and your, your line is flaked in this way and then this way, this way, this way. (he indicates) And it's probably a thousand feet of line. Rope to a layman. And then you had a little brass cannon. And you had a sixteen foot, sixteen pound projectile that would be put into this cannon. And the end would have a rope tied to it, and it would go into, feed into this box. And you then fired this cannon. And I can't remember how it, whether it was a shotgun shell or what. But it was projected...

RUBINSKY:

No, it wasn't. It was a, it was a shell in top of the cannon with a lanyard

DORIVAL:

(unintelligible) Yeah.

RUBINSKY:

You're making a long thing out of this, you know. She doesn't even know what you're getting at yet.

DORIVAL:

Well, they would shoot this projectile out to the ship that's stranded off of the coast.

RUBINSKY:

Yes. (he laughs)

DORIVAL:

And it would carry this line with it.

LEVINE:

Oh.

DORIVAL:

And once it got there it usually would go over the ship, they would grab the line, pull the line in, and then we'd, would fasten a heavier line to the light line that went out, and that would be, and there would be a tripod put up on the beach. It raises line up off the water, off the ground. And then we had a bucket seat on a pulley that we could pull ourself out to the ship and rescue the people from the ship by the breeches buoy. And...

RUBINSKY:

It brings them ashore one, but only one at a time.

LEVINE:

One at a time.

DORIVAL:

That's right.

RUBINSKY:

But what he's, is trying to tell you, like every week, at least once a week you had this drill, a simulated drill where they had a, what they call a, a, like a yardarm. And you fired a cannon over that and practiced the steps.

DORIVAL:

Oh, yes.

RUBINSKY:

But we came, became pretty proficient.

DORIVAL:

And then they'd...

LEVINE:

Did you use that much?

RUBINSKY:

Not really.

DORIVAL:

We did in '4, '41. '42. When they had the sinkings off the coast. That, we didn't use the breeches buoy as much as we used the longboat tugs.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

And we went out in the longboats. And there's an old Coast Guard saying, you have to out but you don't have to come back. And...

RUBINSKY:

See, that was really for sailing ships back then. But most of the time, as he says, we used the longboat, you know, if there was an airplane crash off the beach, something like that. We'd launch the boat, you know, the way we did every day, you know, and row and pick everyone up, and bring them back in. Or the picket boat that was standing at the station. Yeah.

DORIVAL:

But, you know, there was a coxswain, usually a coxswain who was in charge of the longboat. And he would have to count the waves coming in. And as you came back in through the breakers, you didn't want to get, you didn't want to go in like a surfboard. (he laughs)

RUBINSKY:

(unintelligible) headed for the boat, you know...

DORIVAL:

You had to count your waves, and come in behind the waves, you wouldn't come tearing in. And it was, it was up to the coxswain to, to call out his commands and to say to roll or to hold or, because we came in a couple of times (unintelligible) (his mic knocks)

RUBINSKY:

Especially if you had waders on. They'd let you wear waders, you know, the high boots.

LEVINE:

Oh.

RUBINSKY:

With little scraps of, boy, if water got in there you were in big trouble. But, you know, another interesting thing. See, like, his, his era is a little bit after mine in this respect also, that the recruits from Ellis Island that went to these stations were actually the first wave of a very, very kind of shocking thing along the coast of this eastern part of the United States. Because they were all staffed by Chincoteague (unintelligible), people like that. They had a, a boat house or a station house. And then they lived in little huts, little houses around. There would be like at Spermaceti Cove there were eight little houses where they all lived around. There were grays, aubrey gray and...

DORIVAL:

Gray was a favorite...

RUBINSKY:

...whatever...(Mr. Dorival laughs)...fulcher [PH]. Things like that. They were all related there, see.

DORIVAL:

Fulcher. Orchid. Gray.

RUBINSKY:

Anyway, when, when this wave of new recruits hit these life stat, lifeboat stations it was like to us, it was like a new world, or maybe a glimpse of the old world. And it was kind of shocking to, to the present inhabiters there that were pretty hard headed people. And, you know, there was a little friction, but we kind of got acquainted with each other. But when I got rated coxswain, this was a third class petty officer, then we got into big trouble, because there was a chief boatswain mate who was surfman, take charge of the station. And there were like eight, ten, twelve surfmen. And they were non-rated men. So all of a sudden here's some punk kid arriving at the station...(Mr. Dorival laughs) END OF SIDE TWO, TAPE ONE BEGINNING OF SIDE ONE, TAPE TWO

LEVINE:

...ginning now tape two. And we were talking, Mr. Rubinsky was, was talking about, you were a first wave coming from Ellis Island, and there's this punk kid coming, tell the situation again.

RUBINSKY:

Well, we arrived at this lifeboat station, a surf station. And the one I went to first was the one that, as I said before, was Spermaceti Cove, which is halfway down on Sandy Hook. At the time the, we ate and slept in the boat house, or the main building. But there were eight little cottages or huts around, surrounding the station, and that's where the surfmen lived who came, who had been there for years. And when we arrived, we were seamen, there was a little friction between us. But we got to know each other a better, and finally sort of got acclimated. But then when the time came that I made a rate, I became a third class petty officer, a coxswain, I suddenly became the second senior man at the station. And, of course, as you can well imagine that didn't sit too well with the rest of the troops. So I was transferred out of there. (he laughs) I guess it coincided with the onset of the war, but that's how they took care of that.

LEVINE:

So you, they were the ones that took such pride in their...

RUBINSKY:

Well, they were a close-knit people, they lived on a beach all their lives, they were Coast Guardsmen, oh, I'll say surfmen.

LEVINE:

Surfmen.

RUBINSKY:

See, it used to be know as the Lifesaving, U.S. Lifesaving Service. And as he said before the three branches more or less merged. And I was fortunate in sort of getting a good taste of all branches. Even I, like I was commanding officer of a lot of buoy tenders. And that, you know, I can, counted people from the old lighthouse service. And there was a little bit of getting used to each other then, see, because I was considered, well, I was a regular Coast Guardsmen, you might say. But we, we got acclimated, and everything worked all right. But we met, one of the joys of coming to this receiving station at Ellis Island was it was like, at some times it was like old home week. You'd meet people that you hadn't seen for, for years, or you would, you know, meet people that were stationed at some Coast Guard station someplace else, you know, and they would all meet here at Ellis Island. But...

LEVINE:

So Ellis Island had a good reputation...

RUBINSKY:

Oh, yes.

LEVINE:

...as far as being sent here in the Coast Guard?

RUBINSKY:

Marvelous rep, yes. Yeah.

DORIVAL:

There was, there was no other place along these coasts that was the, well, kind of the, the, the, the hub of the Coast Guard...

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

...on the east coast would be Boston, New York, on down.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

And all your orders, all your movement of personnel came through the Coast Guard station here.

RUBINSKY:

See, the district office was right across at 42 Broadway. So that was close by, too, you know, and you would get orders from there and then proceed to Ellis Island. And, and you, the reason that I showed up at Ellis Island a couple of times was that, see, during the war and shortly after when I got a commission, it, it was definitely a commission for temporary service. So when, when, a year after the war's end, and I felt pretty comfortable in my commission, I got notice that I was reverting to my permanent status of chief boatswain mate. And I, I have a, a set of orders and a, and a discharge, and certificate right here, Receiving Station, Ellis Island. So I was discharged and then reenlisted, and then appointed an ensign or a J.G. for temporary service, I forget which. So this went on and on until finally I made a permanent boatswain, and, and then eventually it wasn't till I was up at the Academy in, in '63 or something like that that I finally got a permanent commission as a lieutenant commander. So that was kind of a joy in our household. (he laughs)

LEVINE:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

He's talking about the, the Coast Guard, third Coast Guard district was up here on Broadway. And we had a, probably had a lieut, vice admiral, lieut, he wasn't a full admiral. He (unintelligible), I'd say he was one large stripe and one, probably a thin stripe. What's that? Rear admiral.

RUBINSKY:

Rear admiral, yeah.

DORIVAL:

Well, I was stationed, after I came out of the signal school I was stationed over here at Pier Nine, East River. And we were, we ran the, the signal tower on Seaman Church Institute, which was a, on a tower. In fact they built a wooden shanty on, on the, the catwalk around it. And they put in a door here and a door there, and we had (unintelligible) we could look over New York Harbor. And one day I'm up there with my, my cohort. And somebody tries to come in one of these doors, one of the side doors. Now, this is a restricted area. And I quickly went over, shoved my foot against the door, slammed it shut, and said, "You can't come in here." He says, then he backed off. When he backed off, he had no shoulder boards on, but he had the striping on, and he said, "I can go in there. I'm your boss." So now I don't know what to do, because we had orders not to let anybody in that wasn't (unintelligible). So I says, "I'm sorry, sir, you can't go in. You'd better go down to the barge office." So he went down to the barge office, and we had a lieutenant in charge of our detail. And he went down there storming mad about couldn't go into the signal towers. Well, the lieutenant says this is, our orders come straight from Commandant Thirt, Commandant Nineteen's Coast Guard, and you have to have a special pass. Now if he's not going to have a special pass to go up in the signal tower, we'll issue one, and we'll, so he went storming out. (he laughs) I don't think he ever got a special pass. And about five minutes later, I got a call from my lieutenant saying, you did right. Because if you hadn't you're the one that would have been hung, because he had no authority there. He would be, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, he had no authority in those signal towers. And...

RUBINSKY:

You know who spent some time here that I had forgotten about was Alex Haley.

LEVINE:

Who is that?

RUBINSKY:

And he got his early start writing, you know, right here, yeah. But he was, he was a journalist, a third class journalist. I guess he...

LEVINE:

Huh.

RUBINSKY:

...went progressively on.

LEVINE:

Were you here at the same time?

RUBINSKY:

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

LEVINE:

Do you remember anything about him partic...

RUBINSKY:

Just, I remember, as a matter of fact, see, he was also, he was, worked down at the district office there, the third district office. And I'd spent some time there. You know, I knew him and all that, but I never sort of, you know, with all his pain and whatnot, I'm sure he wouldn't remember me. But he, they had quite a collection...

LEVINE:

I don't know about that. He probably some similar memories to you with the Coast Guard.

DORIVAL:

Was the barge office here at that time?

RUBINSKY:

Yeah. That's where I enlisted.

DORIVAL:

But it was the old barge office. That's...

RUBINSKY:

Oh, the old barge office. Yeah.

DORIVAL:

...it wasn't the...

RUBINSKY:

No, it was that ramshackle old hall there.

DORIVAL:

Yeah.

RUBINSKY:

And Lieutenant Butcher. Chief, excuse me. Chief Boatswain Butcher had my orders. I have a copy of my original orders, you know. And I was going to look him up. I get a retired newsletter, you know, every month. And I was going to call him and get to him, and then next thing I read the page, you know, cross the bar, and it was too late. That's the kind of sad part of it. There are so many...

DORIVAL:

Yeah.

RUBINSKY:

...people are gone.

LEVINE:

Yeah.

RUBINSKY:

Sort of a point where you, actually there's no one really to talk to anymore, you know, about things like that.

LEVINE:

Well, I think maybe it would be good on this tape to dispel the myth of the Coast Guard as being a very safe, would you talk to the issue of really what, what is it like being in the Coast Guard.

DORIVAL:

Well, World War One, the Coast Guard suffered the greatest casualties of all the armed services, percentagewise. When the (unintelligible) went down. Remember when the...

RUBINSKY:

Yeah. But see, this rivalry goes way back. You know, like, we used to go down Sand Street when I first came in the service. I mean, you were called hooligans. Well, if you weren't smiling there'd be a free for all. And, you know, they'd say, "Step aside, shallow water, and let the deep sea roll in." Well, that's pretty stupid, you know, in this day and age. But at the time, you know, that was it. And for some reason or another, on these ships, some of the ships were Navy, like the Alheda I was on was Navy and Coast Guard manned, and there was some bitterness there. We were so adept at handling boats. And we handled landing boats. That was our job on these big transports. And, of course, the crew was a little envious. There were some hard feelings. They transferred the Navy boys into the boats, lots of accidents, then we'd go back to the thing. But by and large this, this always existed. And it still exists today. Like they, they, on, on this Combat Veterans Association...

DORIVAL:

Yeah.

RUBINSKY:

..you lose, I, I still, and this is a hang-up I have on it, I still resent the term "Coastie." To me that's like a cold cereal. And I'm a Coast Guardsman, you know. But that's become popular, and it's supposed to be an endearing term, maybe, but I resent that to this day. But it just, you know, the Coast Guard fought in the wars, they took risks more so than, than probably anyone else. Maybe that accounted for the close bond between marines and Coast Guards, because the marines got ashore on the shore on the islands of the Pacific with Coast Guardsmen handling the landing boats. Out friend there, Douglas Monroe, the signalman, gave his life to, to...

DORIVAL:

First, first protection.

RUBINSKY:

...get the marines, yeah. Yeah.

DORIVAL:

(unintelligible) in World War Two.

RUBINSKY:

So it's just, it's one of those things. But I think you'll find that in everything, you know.

DORIVAL:

I think it was the Navy, I, I can give you a couple examples. And he said, the United States Coast Guard manned boats going through and back and forth through surf. So when they came along for invasion, who would they go to but the Coast Guard, because we new how to get boats back and forth through the surf. So then we went down to Little Creek, Virginia, and showed the Navy how to, how to do that, because the Navy (unintelligible), oh, you know beach boats, you put boats in the ocean, you know. So we showed the Navy how to do this thing. I think the, the greatest thrill I ever had is when we took a Navy destroyer in tow and took it into Jacksonville, Florida. Coast Guard cutter. And, and those guys in the boat, on the destroyer, the Navy destroyer we red-faced when they went into Jacksonville pulled by a little, tiny Coast Guard cutter, you know. So, so that we stick the needle, too, why, they stick the needle in. But if you go back into World War Two, to the early, early part of the convoy duty, in the north Atlantic, the Coast Guard ran an awful lot of combat patrol vessels, con, convoy vessels. The cutters and, and the cutters were some of the best cutters in the world, some of the best boats in the world for, for convoy duty. Your Campbell, your, your, the way the (unintelligible), some of those big cutters were the best cutters in the world. Because when your Navy destroyers would go boom, boom, boom, your cutters went through the waves a lot better. (he gestures) They're built for this type of service. We did an awful lot of convoy duty in World War Two. We lost an awful lot of our men in convoy duty. I, I don't think the, and another thing is I think right now we have our own uniforms. For years we always wore a Navy uniform with a Coast Guard shield on it. We now have a uniform that's a little bit more distinctive. It still looks Navy, looks marine like, seaman like, but it's still a different uniform than the Navy.

LEVINE:

Well, you were actually in the Navy.

DORIVAL:

Well, I was in the Navy, too.

LEVINE:

So you know the difference...

DORIVAL:

I, I was called back in the Navy...

LEVINE:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

...and so I, and don't you think I got kidded, too, for being a hooligan.

LEVINE:

Oh. Uh-huh.

DORIVAL:

But I didn't mind it. I didn't, I, I, your expression, "Coastie," I didn't get that so much as I got hooligan.

RUBINSKY:

Well, that's a present day thing, that "Coastie."

DORIVAL:

Oh.

RUBINSKY:

You didn't hear that back during the war.

DORIVAL:

No.

RUBINSKY:

This was somebody...

LEVINE:

Oh.

RUBINSKY:

...somebody dreamed up, you know, fairly recently. Or the lighthouse people, you know, the lighthouse guys are called "woofies."

LEVINE:

Oh.

DORIVAL:

Oh, yeah.

RUBINSKY:

I was, when I was out in Napeague, being with the surfmen out there we wore a surfman uniform. We didn't wear a Coast Guard uniform, we wore a surfman uniform. Of course, it was a khaki uniform with a kind of a garrison hat, a single breasted jacket, not the double breasted that the, the officer's wore, with a Coast Guard emblem off of each (unintelligible). And if you were the rated man, you wore a patch on your arm. And (unintelligible) New York City with a surfman's uniform, I got picked up by the Shore Patrol because they didn't know how I was. (he laughs)

RUBINSKY:

And that caused a little hard feelings, you know, that we got, I wore my regulars blue all the time. But, you know, if they saw a surfman or something like that then they would get some hazing from the Navy, you know, stuff like that. It was a...

DORIVAL:

I told you that I indirectly was involved with that, the German U-boats that came up the coast and landed the saboteurs out at Long Island. And we, we did watches. We did shore patrol. And we'd walk four miles, five miles down the beach and walk five miles back. And we give us four hours to walk that, walk that. It usually was a two and a half mile one way and two and half miles back. And the night that the Germans came ashore, I had come in from Hither Hills, which is all the way out on the island, back toward my station in Napeague. And as I'm coming up the, along the beach there, you'd walk, you'd walk, because of the loose sand you'd walk as close as you could to the ocean. You would have, you got your feet wet because the sand was hard there, and, and it would be a lot easier walking. And we, I was walking up, and for the two and a half miles that I was walking back towards my station, this U-boat was right along side me all the way up. And (unintelligible) (he laughs) And I come back and crawl up to the signal tower that we had on the beach there. I hollered up, I said, "You still got it off the shore there?" And he says, "Yeah, I got it reported." I says, "Well, good. I'm going to hit the sack." And so I went up and, that was midnight then, and I went up and hit the sack. And along about an hour or so later my roommate, who was a, later became a policeman out in Detroit, Michigan. He woke up, I was woken up, and, and when he got up he turned the lights on. And he says, "Oh, go on back to sleep. They're calling some of the guys out. That's all." So I went back to sleep, and they got everybody up along the whole coast. Collins, who was the, John Collins, who was at the next station up from us in Amagansett, was the one that ran into the, the saboteurs when they came ashore. And he took their money and went back to the station and luckily reported it to the chief. And the chief puts a call into the, the next station up. There was a lady, a regular telephone system all the way along the coast there. And so that they called the Army out of Riverhead, and the Army came down, and every Coast Guardsman on the island came out, and the, I'm, here I'm sound asleep up, oh, I was sleeping through all the excitement. (he laughs)

RUBINSKY:

They were the only people executed by the United States for the whole war, those four saboteurs. They caught them. And they were other...

DORIVAL:

Were they executed (unintelligible) out of Florida, too.

RUBINSKY:

I don't know about that. I just read it in a Newsweek magazine, that was over in the Coast Guard library...

DORIVAL:

And they're buried in an unmarked grave.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah. Yeah.

LEVINE:

Well, it sounds as though you, you felt you had good training...

RUBINSKY:

Oh, yeah.

LEVINE:

...as a Coast Guard.

RUBINSKY:

Oh, sure. Oh, there's no question about that. Yes.

LEVINE:

Well, how do you, this is a very broad question, but how do you think being in the Coast Guard influenced your own sense of yourself or your identity or who you are?

RUBINSKY:

Enhanced it? (he laughs) Is that...

LEVINE:

Well, it could have enhanced it.

RUBINSKY:

...some sort of, because, I mean, it's, it's very hard to explain, but, I mean, all my, as I told you early on I had a bent for this seafaring life. And then the Coast Guard gave me the opportunity to really become experienced. And then after I decided to remain in the service, why...

LEVINE:

(a mic is being jostled) Do you know what your, what you were making that decision based on, what, why it was you'd make that...

RUBINSKY:

It was based on, I'll tell you, as a matter of fact that's a very, that's a very good point, because to digress again to Ellis Island, I met my wife in 1953.

LEVINE:

Why don't you say your wife's name and maiden name.

RUBINSKY:

My wife's name is Jean Hightone [PH]. She met this Coast Guardsman. My wife is from Iowa. She met this charming, handsome, dashing Coast Guardsman. (he laughs)

LEVINE:

Yes. s(he laughs)

RUBINSKY:

And, you know, she knew from nothing about the Coast Guard. She was from Des Moines, Iowa. Well, I gave her a education. I showed her some books and whatnot. But we went together for a while, and then she decided she was kind of leery about marrying a sailor. Well, we, I went off somewhere and I got transferred, and I met her again, and we fell in love and we got married. Well, somehow or other, either I intimated or she assumed that I was just sort of in the service because of the war. See, again, she didn't know much about the conditions in this country during the war. She was in college at the time. Well, after things calmed down and, you know, maybe in the '50's or whatever my enlistment was up. Again, see, I had to served on enlistments. I'd be a lieutenant J.G., I'd revert back to chief boatswain mate, and then I'd reenlist. Well, when it came time, we had, we had our first house, and we had one child then. And she was literally shocked to find that I was going to reenlist. She always assumed that I would get out of the service and find a job somewhere. But I had a lot of, I remember, soul searching. And I faced the prospect of, she worked at an advertising agency in New York City. And, you know, I didn't know what to do. I spent two years in college learning how to be a mechanical engineer, or some kind of engineering, which I, you know, stood me in good stead and my wife, too. But my heart was set on the Coast Guard. And I announced (unintelligible) I'm going to stay. She was stunned. But she very shortly got over it. And it was just based on what I really felt in my, my heart and soul. That's how it was. That I had, you know, all kinds of ships. I had some really interesting jobs. Every ship I had, you know, I, I made some mistakes. I had a buoy tender in (unintelligible), I had a buoy tender in Baltimore for three and a half years. And I didn't want to move my family around, you know, a typical military family. So for three years I commuted between Yonkers and Baltimore. And that was tough. Children, tough on our marriage and everything else, but we survived. And then, you know, from there on it sort of became easy.

LEVINE:

Yeah. Well, how about you...

DORIVAL:

I met wife in '43 where I was stationed here in New York.

LEVINE:

What's her name and maiden name?

DORIVAL:

Pauline Ferrier.

LEVINE:

What's her last name?

DORIVAL:

Ferrier. F-E-R-R-I-E-R. She was a local girl here in New York City, worked for one of the engineering firms in the city when she got out of high school. She, we dated while I was stationed around this area. And then I went, when I went overseas, we corresponded back and forth, and nothing serious. I, I keep kidding her, because she chased me, and till I finally said I'd marry her. But that isn't the way she says it. After I came out of the service in forty, latter part of '45, December, '45, I came back to New York City, and looked some of my old flames, and she was one of them, and, and we started corresponding again. In the meantime I enrolled in a university out there in Minnesota. And so I was going to school, and I always had no real desire at that time to get married. I was trying to get through education and college. But I guess time went on, and her letters became more appealing. (he laughs) The idea of marriage became more appealing. I guess I finally said, "Would take a ring?" And she said, "I'd be very happy to." So that was, in '47 we got married, two years after I came out of the service. I was married here in New York City.

LEVINE:

Did you, do you think that being in the Coast Guard changed you in any way?

DORIVAL:

I think it gave me more maturity. I think that I had responsibilities that, and when I, you know, the funniest thing is that when I went into the university, the, the, Dr. Wright, the head of admission, asked me what, what my name was, what year did I graduate from high school. And he reached up and he grabbed a book off the shelf. Said 1940, and he looked at it, and he went down the (unintelligible) public high school. "Oh, yes, there you are. And how do you think you're going to do in college. And I see you ranked as, out of your graduating class, I think you were the last one of that class." And I says, "Well." "And then you also failed the Ohio State entrance exam." I says, "Well, Dr. Wright, if you can think back to 1940, what did a, a young kid coming from a rural high school in Minnesota have to look forward to?" You would join the service, get a job or go to college. You know, if didn't have the money to go to college, there wasn't no G.I. Bill or no grants or anything. And, and out of my graduating I think there were two people that went to college. And now coming from a rural town there were no jobs to have, and so you joined the military service. So when somebody came in and offered the Ohio entrance exam, it was a big laugh. It was a big joke in class. Because (unintelligible), these were the answers that we put down. Because we had no hought of going to school. So when I, when I (unintelligible) my folks to get me in the military, and my father said, well, the United States Coast Guard is a nice, quiet organization. We'll sign you up there. I think that I, I, I, I had good experiences in the Coast Guard, I had good commanding officers, and I had some that were stinkos. And then the worse ones were the ninety-day wondersthat we got. That were, I went to, the school that I came out, the quarter master school, they sent us down to advanced navigation school here in New York City. Now we had the same course that ninety-day wonders had. The same course. We was in one classroom, the ninety-day wonders were that classroom, we had the same exam, the same test, the same instructors. They got a commission, we got a rating. And, and, and these were the guys (unintelligible) shipped out to the west coast. I went aboard this ship, Coast Guard was a, was a man who came out of the ranks, was given a commission and given command of this vessel. And he didn't even know anything about navigation. So then he and I probably learned navigation together on the ship. He was, we'd argue. We get up on the bridge and argue about where we were in the ocean, and we, we would finally agree on (unintelligible) until we were there. And sometimes he was right, sometimes wrong. But we, we finally learned navigation together.

LEVINE:

Were you, you said you became more mature. So did your aspirations changed then as a result of being in the Coast Guard after you got out?

DORIVAL:

When I was on, I was on the sea-going tug most of my time on the Pacific. And, and this one commanding officer that we had, I think believed that he was paying a war debt. The year that I served aboard that ship, there was not one man made advancement in rating. And you'd go ashore, you'd talk about going ashore and you're meeting your buddies, and I was third class quarter master, and I'd go on and I'd see, "Joe. Hey I see your a chief now," you know. And he got out of the same signal school I did, and his, his commanding officer moved him along. So in 1945 when they offered me another rating the shipped over, I said, no, I don't want it. I, I, I, I'm getting out. You can have it. I don't need it.

LEVINE:

So you felt that you weren't really fairly ranked...

DORIVAL:

I don't, no, no, I, no. I, I, I think that I, I just had to pick a, be assigned to a ship that as the guy says...

RUBINSKY:

See, that's right. Things like, in life like that can affect your whole future. And what he's saying is so true. And that's not an isolated incident. I mean, I've been on ships where the commanding officer, I was on a great, big attack transport that the commanding was a bona fide maniac. I mean, he was like, like a, a movie. You know, he stuck to his cabin, he never bathed, he smelled. We loathed going down to his cabin and say, "Sir, the chronometers are round," you know, we held our breath. He was a tyrant. And as a matter of fact when I was, I got orders to leave the ship I defended a guy that was unjustly court -marshalled on the ship. And man, they were, he was out to Shanghai me somewhere. And I hid down in the bowels of the ship for a couple of days until he got transferred. So, you know, this can affect your whole career. But, but by the same token, when I got to be commanding officer of ship, I treated my crew like family. And it made a big world of difference. I don't want to, you know, it's not, nothing to do with patting myself on the back, but this is the way I am.

DORIVAL:

(unintelligible)

RUBINSKY:

You wouldn't, I, I refused a commission for the first time because of the reputation that he says of ninety day wonders. And I pooh-poohed, I says I wouldn't serve as one of them officer, you know. This is my mentality at the time. But then I kind of realized that this is a good opportunity...

DORIVAL:

I'm not, don't get me wrong. I don't say all ninety day wonders.

LEVINE:

Right. DORIVAL We needed ninety day wonders. And it was called ninety day wonders because of there were time schedules usually fit into a school when they were jammed full of naval procedures and commission. You (unintelligible) an ensign. And, and, and they needed, they needed the officers to fill in those. But you did get some ninety day wonders that was good. END OF SIDE ONE, TAPE TWO BEGINNING OF SIDE TWO, TAPE TWO

DORIVAL:

Ninety day wonder from, a shoesalesman from New Orleans that got me transferred off the ship, and I was the most happy guy in the world getting off this darn tugboat. He thought he was shafting me, and he was doing me the greatest favor because the next ship I went on, the first day I'm on that ship, the commanding officer calls me up on the bridge and he says, "I've been going through your records here, and I see you've been a quarter master third for the last two years, and we're putting you in for quarter master second right now." So it was, but you see, there again it was, it was too late in the career...

LEVINE:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

...so that, too late in the game you might say. 1945 was there and I had my points to come back home. So I never did get second class. My son right now is a chief in the Navy. And I'd always bugged him because I says, "You should have gone in the Coast Guard." He said, "Dad, I got more opportunities in the Navy." And I guess maybe he does. It's a, a larger organization. He's a chief. He's stationed down in Virginia Beach. He's got eighteen years in. He, he was one of these guys that wouldn't go to school. When he was in high school he was in, in crew. You know what crew is? That's these guys rowing the boats. Their, their, their crew won thirteen straight races. It was given a, a high school jacket with "Champs" on the back of it. So in his second year I'm finding out that he's skipping school.

LEVINE:

Hmm-hmm.

DORIVAL:

So I go to his counsel guide, guidance counselor, and we try to work with the guy. I went to his coach. The kid was just, he just, school turned him off. (he laughs) So I said, "Well, you got one of two choices. You either go back to school, or you go to join the service, or get a job." You know, seventeen year old kid, you're not going to find a job. So the next day he came home with the papers, said sign the papers for the Navy. So he went into the Navy, he's been in for eighteen years now, he's made his chief, he's in charge of their computers down in Virginia Beach, he goes to Washington, D.C. about every month to work with these civilian. He's got it made.

LEVINE:

Hmm-hmm. Let's talk about the sort of social aspect of, of being with, and you're both good examples of men coming from all over the country...(Mr. Dorival coughs)...and having a job to do, and working together, being sort of in that male military society I guess you call it. Or is it like, or is it like a fraternity, or how, how do you feel sort of in relation to this entity that's, that's the military service, or the Coast Guard service, or...

RUBINSKY:

Well, it varies. When I, you know, basically during the war years it was a femaleless [sic] society. And then after the war, you know, why...(Mr. Dorival coughs)...you still, there was no, you know, maybe a few of the officers on the ship or a few of the crew, we'd have ship's parties on the smaller vessels. We had some terrific ship's parties where everybody would come. My wife would come down, crew members would come down, girl friends, wives. (Mr. Dorival coughs) (unintelligible) You know, I spent so much time in the service, you know, and you've got the academy. That was another situation. The Coast Guard wives were up there great, you know what I mean. But again, I was a little different. You know, a mustang among all the academy graduates, but we had no problem. (unintelligible) We had our part of the, and even now, see, this is another advantage. I've been out of the service for a long, long time, but my place is still like a clear, see, I still do a lot of business with the government, Coast Guard, Navy. And people come in, you know, and they see memorabilia and my junk all around, whatnot. And "Oh, you were in the service?" "Yeah, I was." But, it still like a kind of a new...(Mr. Dorival coughs)...but I enjoy it.

LEVINE:

So it's a big part of your life...

RUBINSKY:

It's a big part of my life.

LEVINE:

...having been a Coast Guard.

RUBINSKY:

It's, it's definitely a very big part, and still. And I'll never, I know now, of course, too late, but I know I'll never lose it.

LEVINE:

Uh-huh. Yeah. How about you, Bill? Do you, do you feel like being a Coast Guard is part of your life at this point?

DORIVAL:

No, I can't really say I do, because it's, there is a, a space and time between when I was a Coast Guard and when I was in civilian life. When I came out of the Coast Guard I went to the university. I was, always have been very active in boy scouting. So when I came out of college I applied for a commission in the boy scouts, and was commissioned as the, the executive of the boy scouts. (he coughs) So I worked with the Boy Scouts of America for twenty years. So I've always kind of had a love for the, for the boy scout movement. I still think it's one of the finest movements for youth in the country. I'm not too happy with some of the leadership that we had in the last few years. (he coughs) Pardon me. I think they've taken a, a good program and tried to make it for every boy, and I don't think every boy wants to be a boy scout. I think that what Baden Powell had going for him in 1910 was, was a good program. But try and give it to, give it, I think the opportunity should be given to every boy to join, but I don't think every boy is going to want to join. And the other boys have baseball or sports, gymnastics. And, and they kind of, they, to my way of thinking, when I got out of it twenty years later, they kind of ruined the boy, the program for me, so that I was, I went in the federal service at that point. I, I'd look back as a scout, in, in my time with the Coast Guard, I look back on the good times and the bad times. I, as I say I had some good commanding officers, some good duty stations, and I had some poor duty stations. But I think every G.I. could, can say the same thing. And it's, I have no, no animosity against the Coast Guard.

LEVINE:

Why were you interested in coming today here to talk about this? What, what is that sort of draws you back to...

DORIVAL:

Well, I, I think the main reason I wanted to, my wife and I wanted to come over to Ellis Island and see the, the immigration part of it. But I, I'm not interested in the immigration as much as I am of the other half of the island. I was on this island and off this island and on this island and off this island many times, and it was like coming back for, for new orders or a new assignment or, or coming for training school. And I, I enjoyed Ellis Island. It was, it, to mean it's a historical little island in the middle of, of a great, big metropolis. And I had some good memories on Ellis Island here. And I wanted to see basically when Bob, well, I, I saw Bob's notice in the, in a, in a, in a military magazine I think is where it was, about any, any Coast Guardsman that was, that received his training in signal school or quarter master school at Ellis Island. So I wrote to Bob. And he wrote back and we corresponded a couple of times. And the idea of coming over to see my old stamping [ground was intriguing. I wanted to come back and, not to see the Ellis Island, the immigration part, although I think it's beautiful and what you've done here is great. But I wanted to see the other part of the island, which, which was my home for, off and on for many, many years, and many, many months, many, many days. That I wanted to see. And I, I wanted to renew old memories of (unintelligible).

LEVINE:

Well, how about you? Do you, do you know what drew you to want to come today?

RUBINSKY:

Of course. This, I mean, our Coast Guardsmen, this is where it started. (he laughs) Yeah, I, you know, I have lots of memories, go out there every day, and you know, I meet, I met thirty years of people that have been to Ellis Island. I got all excited when I heard about this trip today. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course, I've been so busy. That's been my problem, you know, and I never take time, as they say, to smell the roses. But, you know, and I thought this was the perfect opportunity.

LEVINE:

Wonderful.

RUBINSKY:

I wouldn't have fight the crowds to get to South Ferry, where do you park and whatever. So when Bob Osmond contacted me through another fellow, he was really playing with my deeply imbedded Coast Guard feelings, why that's how we got together. And when he told me about this I started to make plans immediately.

LEVINE:

Well, now, is there anything else that either of you would like to say in closing?

DORIVAL:

I'm looking forward to seeing this old part of the island. That I, that I'm looking forward to seeing.

RUBINSKY:

I read about, I've got, you know, I kind of clip articles every day that I see on Ellis Island, and I'm not, I, I, not too enthused about the future plans for the rest of the island. It's too bad, but by the, by the same token I realize we can't make this a, a Coast, a mecca for Coast Guards only. I mean, it's, in the entire thing it's really probably a small segment of, of the history of Ellis Island. But I just, I just don't go along with this. I, I, unless I'm wrong, I understand they're going to make condominiums and meeting buildings, hotels, things like that.

DORIVAL:

I think there was some, there was some talk about ripping down your old hospital buildings and...

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

...coming up with conference centers and stuff like that...

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

...which I'm against. I, I realize you, there's, there's, you can't preserve everything historical, you can't keep everything that's old. Newness must come in the picture at some point, but I hope we can still keep Ellis Island as, as, and I think you've done a beautiful job here on the immigration, what I've seen of the immigration building. What, what, it's, it's been a big change since what I saw in 1941, dirty papers, papers going all over, chairs upturned, dirty floor, dirty windows, broken windows, pigeons all over the place. It's been a, it's, it's quite a change, and a change for the better. What you're going to do to the rest of the island I don't know. But I hope it's going to kind of keep the...

LEVINE:

Flavor of what...

DORIVAL:

The flavor of what it was. I don't know what you can do with those, the, the hospital buildings over there. I'm going to, I hope somehow it can be preserved. And I think this is pretty much what you feel. It's, we read these articles about what's going to happened to Ellis Island, and I know that, that for years it was, originally I think Ellis Island was offered to New York City, and New York City didn't want it, and then finally somehow the park commission took it over. But I, I hope the park commission, and I realize the park commission's got a lot of problems. And, and, because I'm a Civil War buff, and I, and I hate to see what's happening to some of our national parks. It was the Civil War part of it, land that's not being, land, and there again I realize land today is expensive. And you can't buy whole counties because there were soldiers that fought there, but...

RUBINSKY:

One of the most disappointing things that have happened here is that poor old ferry boat. That was such a fantastic old ferry boat. And for years that thing made that slip. And I tried to make waves, pardon the pun again, lots of times. I belong to a, a Steamship Historical Society of America, and we talk about it and all that. But to galvanize people into something to try to save that thing. And I just watched it rot, and she sunk right in the slip, and that was a crime.

LEVINE:

Hmm.

RUBINSKY:

It was really too bad, because that ferry...

LEVINE:

It's there now.

RUBINSKY:

Pardon me?

DORIVAL:

Well, they tried...

LEVINE:

It's still there.

RUBINSKY:

Oh, it is? Oh, it's on the bottom. Yeah.

LEVINE:

Yeah.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

DORIVAL:

Well, they tried their best to, I guess, to raise it.

RUBINSKY:

Oh, but it's too late. She's old.

DORIVAL:

It was too late then, yeah.

RUBINSKY:

But ironically in 1976 I think, we have a magazine called Soundings, you know, it has articles and advertising. And I have an advertisement for my business on the bottom of a page. And right over the advertisement is a nice picture of the old tug right in the slip at Ellis Island. Isn't that coincidence.

LEVINE:

Hmm.

RUBINSKY:

I couldn't believe it when I was rifling through my old papers, because, you know, I save everything. And here was this picture. But it, that's too bad, because that played a very important part in the lives of a lot of Coast Guardsmen...

DORIVAL:

Yeah. Your, your liberty, that was, that was your, your gang, your gangplank to Manhattan. (he laughs) It was...

LEVINE:

Uh-huh. So it probably meant more to you as a Coast, to the Coast Guards rather than...

RUBINSKY:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

...than it did to anybody.

RUBINSKY:

Yeah, I think so. Definitely yes. Yes, yes.

LEVINE:

Uh-huh. Wow. Well, I want to thank you both very, very much. This has been...

DORIVAL:

I hope we...

RUBINSKY:

My pleasure.

LEVINE:

...most enjoyable and, and you had such interesting tid-bits...

RUBINSKY:

Well, thank you.

LEVINE:

...and ways of telling...

RUBINSKY:

We got off to a rocky, but I think things sort of came back to me.

LEVINE:

Yeah, they certainly did. Okay, this is Janet Levine for the National Park Service. And I've been speaking with William Dorival...

DORIVAL:

Yes.

LEVINE:

...and Ludwig Rubinsky. And we're here in the studio at Ellis Island. It's May 18th, 1994, and I'm signing off. Thank you. END OF INTERVIEW