Fond memories of a lifetime of service with the US navy

73 year-old Lexi Stewart, Chairman of the Glens Community Association in Limavady has spoke about his fond memories of a dad who was awarded two prestigious plagues for serving over 36 years service as the navy's head groundsman in the city. Lexi's father Alec, who lived in the Nelson Drive area of the city, was in charge of maintaining the grounds of the Clooney base right up to it's closure in 1974. Lexi, who moved to Limavady over 40 years ago, still holds the distinguished plaques paying tribute to his father's loyalty to the American navy.

"As far as I am led to believe he was the longest serving civilian member of the navy employed at home or away." Lexi told the Sentinel,

"A million pound wouldn't get me to part with those plagues, which have been awarded for service in Ireland and Ulster. He was given the last plague for 36 years, and then eight years later the base closed."

Just two weeks ago a similar plaque that adorned the front of the first US Naval Operating Base in Europe which happened to be in

Londonderry, went under the hammer at McAfee Auctions, Ballymoney for an undisclosed sum. The plaque and those belonging to Lexi's father, are original relics of a time when almost 6,000 US Navy and Marine Corps personnel, based at Clooney and Rossdowney, mixed daily with Maiden City men and women during WWII. Alec was proudly one of them.

"I was seven when my father joined the navy in his post and I can remember him so clearly going to work and coming home. He worked at Rossdowney as well and seemed to like his job, he always was a gardener. He was the heads grounds man there and looked after the land there. They took a big interest in outdoor bowling there and he built them a pitch, he was into all that."

Lexi described how his father Alec's long service with his American colleagues rubbed a bit of US culture onto his family life.

"The thing that stands out in my mind is every fourth of July, the American Independence Day, all the Americans would have a BBQ, and our father would take the whole family out for the day. He would have brought the American fellas home as well and he loved the Bourbon, an American whiskey. He'd bring it home in a glass jar and he use to smoke the Camel cigarettes. The Americans were good to him."

Lexi continued: "In the last few years my father had very bad health. After the last big operation he had, he wasn't able to work and I remember one day a big swanky American car drew up at the end of the drive the Captain of the base came in to the house. He said to my father, 'Alec you will have to work to safeguard your pension.' My father told him he could hardly walk and the Captain replied; 'well, we know that but we will send a car for you every morning at 10am and we will bring you home again.' He was well thought of."

After a bout of ill health Alec sadly passed away in 1978, though his time in the Navy will live on through the special plaques which Lexi keeps in his Glens home.

"Those will be in my house forever more. He lived in Nelson Drive right up to he died in 1978. My father was 75 when he died.

"About eight months after he died my mother, Bella, rang me and said she had had a visitor. It was the ex-captiain of the base. He had told father that if he was ever over in Ireland on holiday he would call. He called but my mother told him that my father had died. It was very nice of him to do that."

Lexi continued: "He was originally from Creeslough, Donegal. My granda had to move and then they came to Londonderry. They moved 13 times before they finally settled in Irish Street. Then he moved to Nelson Drive in the Waterside. He was a great gardener, I have some good photos of his gardening."

"He was just a dad that would have done anything for you. I never heard him criticise anybody, He always had bad health and used to sit in front of the fire with his hands out. When we arrived in he would be asking us how we were doing, and that would've been it. And if someone had've been talking about somebody, somebody you would've clipped very easily, he would have just said nothing. You wouldn't have got any of that out of him. He was a great man."