When I pull into the commissary parking lot on the Submarine Base, I often notice a large crane on lower base. And when I head down Rainville Avenue on my way to classes at Avery Point, I see an enormous crane towering above the buildings in Electric Boat’s south yard.

That sight brings back memories of my early college years.

Like many young collegians in the 1960s, I had a variety of part-time and summer jobs. The best places to work were Pfizer and EB because they paid more than most other employers. Thus, it was on a summer day in, I believe, 1968, I saw a crane operator get an ovation from dozens or more yard workers for his skill in operating that huge machine.

It seems that a fellow who was working on a missile submarine had a heart attack while inside the vessel. To remove him from the boat would have meant strapping him into a Stokes stretcher and then hauling it up two or three ladders, a difficult and risky task.

Instead, it was decided to remove him from the boat horizontally through a hull opening. The patient was strapped into the stretcher and the crane operator lowered a chain down into the boat. The chain was attached to the stretcher in such a way that the device remained level.

My understanding at the time was that the patient was removed through a missile tube. The stretcher would have fit if the sealing ring at the top of the tube had not yet been installed. A docent at the Submarine Museum agreed that it was possible, though there may have been another opening in the deck at that point in the vessel’s construction.

In either event, bringing that stretcher from the sub to the shore was a very delicate procedure.

By this time quite a crowd had gathered, and an ambulance was on the pier. We saw the stretcher slowly emerge from the boat and be raised into the air. At one point the victim regained consciousness, looked around, and passed out again. One can only imagine what was running through his mind!

Very gently the crane operator lifted the stretcher so that it would clear the edge of the pier, and keeping it perfectly level, sat it down about two feet from the rear of the ambulance, at which point everyone watching applauded his skill. I certainly hope he got an “attaboy” from his boss.

I saw one other incident, this time involving a mobile crane, that happened just outside the foundry. The crane was rolling along while at the same time the operator was turning the superstructure of the machine, the bottom of which was about head high. Three men in suits were walking past the foundry and didn’t see or hear the crane coming up behind them.

I shouted “duck!” and they avoided being hit in the head by the underside of the crane.

Somebody told me that the next time he saw the fellow who had been operating the crane, he was steering a different type of transportation device – a wheelbarrow!

Robert F. Welt is a retired Groton Public Schools teacher who lives in Mystic.