Melvin Douglas Smith, the firstborn child of Carl and Agnes Smith, was raised in Alamance, North Carolina, a small village near Burlington. Doug, along with his three sisters and one brother, always loved the beauty of water and he grew up swimming and fishing. After leaving E. M. Holt High School at eighteen, he followed that love of water to the Navy and enlisted in April 1956.
When he finished boot camp, Doug entered Navy communications school and then returned home on leave to marry Judy Lyon, whom he had dated since she was 16. The couple moved to Puerto Rico in 1959, where they had their first two sons, Douglas and Mark – both born at Rodriguez Army Hospital.
The family later moved to Pensacola, Florida, where Doug served as an instructor at the Naval Communications Training Center Corry Station. He achieved the rank of chief petty officer after eight years.
According to Judy, Doug had always been a reader, and now he devoured “book after book after book on golf.” He was soon shooting regularly in the 80’s.
In May of 1966 Doug received an assignment to sea duty and boarded the USS LIBERTY on May 31, 1966. The family had moved back to North Carolina and there another son, Tim, was born. After the LIBERTY docked on February 28, 1967 and Doug rushed home to see his youngest son for the first time.
Doug’s death on the LIBERTY continues to shiver through the lives of those who loved him. His oldest son, Douglas, wrote a poem for his father, “Epitaph at Sea with Constellation Above.” In the poem, his father disappears, line by line, from the world:
Mariner, descend, and the sea conceal
bird and sky and the drowned father below,
who shall not sing, who shall not rise, but dwells
among the abandoned gods, a body
unfolding dark, restless and fathoms deep.
In October 1967, the enlisted barracks at Corry Station (building 1082) was dedicated Smith Hall in his memory.
27 February 2019 at 17:39
Rest in peace, Chief.
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27 February 2019 at 19:58
This was a puzzling and sad moment in the Security Groups history. I was in “A” school in Pensacola and would graduate from school the day after the Pueblo Incident. My duty station after graduation was Hakata Japan. It was 1968 and a very dangerous year for the Security Group. That year we would lose an EC-121 crew to the North Koreans and one of the crew would be another CTC Smith. We called him “Snuffy”.
William Wilke CTR3
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27 February 2019 at 21:30
Chief Smith was one of my Basic instructors in Pensacola in ’63. Very skilled operator.
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2 March 2019 at 03:16
RIP my friend, hope Judy an family are doing well. Was with Doug an Judy in Sabana Seca PR.Joe Jordan ctrc ret.
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8 March 2019 at 15:39
As one of the survivors and the POIC of body recovery after the attack, this is the first I have seen about Chief Smith. I really thought he was a great guy. I was a First Class CT, and just didn’t have a whole lot of contact with Doug, except maybe for a fantail party or two. The steaks were tough, but good.
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18 March 2019 at 19:30
The Cold war Museum at Vint Hill Farm Station VA has a large display on the Liberty. Display included the names of all the KIA. Come by and see the display. John DePerro curator
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5 August 2019 at 03:14
CTC Smith was my instructor in Advanced Class 23A-65(R) November 1965. Class photo can be found here:
https://www.navycthistory.com/corryadv23A-65(R).html
RIP Chief Smith
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