At Diabetes Relief, our patients develop friendships while taking our patented treatment together. Many form lasting bonds as they get to know each other during their two or three hours in the Infusion Room. Recently two Navy veterans reunited after 49 years! What a story about how this happened!
Gordon Branin was an electronics technician in the US Navy, Petty Officer Second Class. Bailey Dunford was a D3 and the were both among the crew of the U.S.S. Queenfish, a Sturgeon-class nuclear attack submarine, on an important mission to the North Pole in July-August 1970. Now 49 years later, Gordon and Bailey are both receiving treatments at Diabetes Relief’s clinic in Layton, Utah! (See video at www.diabetesrelief.com.)
Gordon had started treatment for his diabetes at the Layton clinic outside of Salt Lake City, and at some point had told Dallen, a clinic employee, about his trip to the North Pole. A few months later Bailey, who has Parkinson’s, began the treatment and sometime later he also told Dallen about his trip to the North Pole. Dallen replied, “I’ve heard this story before!”
Gordon was in for his treatment on a Wednesday after the Monday Bailey had told Dallen his North Pole story. Gordon called Bailey, and the two got back together–49 years later at Diabetes Relief! Their story is both informative and moving. Read on.
They had left Hawaii in July 1970 for Nome, Alaska, and headed to the North Pole from there, taking the exact trek of the U.S.S. Nautilus, America’s first nuclear-powered submarine, 20 years to the day after. Different from the Nautilus, the Queenfish surfaced at the North Pole, where every crew member got to go out and stand at the exact position of the North Pole, photographed with their state flag.
The voyage was not without its pitfalls. At one point they were stuck in an ice canyon, and “submarines don’t back up very well,” said Gordon. They also had problems while there, with the ocean floor, the ice cap, and ice ridges that would come down, sometimes very close to each other, and “we had to go through it,” Gordon told us, “but we managed to sneak through.”
The submarine normally had a crew of 105, but they had about 140 on this trip, with added “spooks” and scientists, with lots of special equipment to measure the difference in the ice and the ocean floor since the Nautilus went up. Diabetes has posted a short video of the interview with these two veterans, at www.diabetesrelief.com.
Two books have been written about the mission of the U.S.S. Queenfish: Unknown Waters: A First-Hand Accounty of the Historic Under-ice Survey of the Siberian Continental Shelf by USS Queenfish (SSN-651), by Alfred S. McLaren and William R. Anderson; and Silent and Unseen: On Patrol in Three Cold War Attack Submarines, by Alfred Scott McLaren.
Gordon operated the SINS (Ship’s Initial Navigation System), and “it was the first SINS to make it to the North Pole and back without crashing,” Gordon said. He added, “about 80 percent of the crew got some kind of medal, because it was that important of a trip.”
Bailey told us: “I’m reminded of many stories from that trip, and they’re still classified.” He also added, choking up just a wee bit: “There are so many people out serving their country, some of them dying, many coming back maimed, so many giving all they have, to make sure this country stays safe.”
Diabetes Relief thanks all veterans for their service to our country.