April 22, 1998, I answered the phone in my home at Lake Tahoe, Nevada. “How would you like to be catapulted at sea?” asked the stranger at the other end of the phone.

At my age I thought I had heard every line in the book, but when the authoritarian male voice with the New York Bronx accent said, ”I’m a trial lawyer.  Don’t worry.  I’m not going to sue you, I just need your answer.”

I realized this was one line I had not heard.

“Excuse me," I said, "but I don’t think I understand the question.”

"Are you the 1962 Miss America, the one from North Carolina?” He asked.

“Yes, but does having won a contest as a teenager become criteria for being catapulted at sea?” 

(I really thought I had a nut on my hands…I could feel my ego’s sarcasm, soft spoken though it was, creep into my voice.)

“Good question,” he chuckled good naturedly. “Actually, let me start all over again. A mutual friend recommended your name. She insisted I contact you and gave me your phone number. Oh, by the way, my name’s Art Lienwohl and I’m also a retired Navy Captain and I defended the Black Panthers during the seventies. By the way, how do you feel about the aircraft carriers?”

I glanced across the room at my red-headed sister sending me impatient looks as she paced the floor.

“Would you mind explaining all of this in a letter? You see, I’m distracted right now.  I’m on my way down the mountain to see my mother.  She’s dying in a Carson City hospital and I’m just walking out the door.  As a matter of fact, I only picked up the phone because I thought it might be the hospital calling.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Please accept my sympathies. Of course, I’ll put it all in a letter.”

Margaret asked me who it was. "No one," I said, "probably just some salesman." I thought I had gotten rid of him. Thank God I had not. I hung up the phone that day without recognizing I was about to be offered the opportunity to indeed be catapulted at sea off the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. The other gift, without my recognizing it at the time, was my mother’s death later that night - God released her from the pain of her cancer and osteoporosis.

Twenty-one months later, on the twenty-seventh day of January, 2000, one hundred miles off the coast of California, I sustained several G’S doubled over in a ball, strapped and harnessed in my seat, as the C2 in which I was ‘imbedded’ decelerated in 6 seconds from 127 miles per hour to zero onto the USS Abraham Lincoln. Our tail hook caught the 3rd of 5 rubber bands as I call them. 

Over the next 30 hours, I learned that this 7th Nimitz Carrier was commissioned in Norfolk, November 11, 1989. The USS Abraham Lincoln, longer than 3 football fields, displaces 102,000 tons of ocean fully loaded. The Lincoln reaches a maximum speed of 30 plus knots, and accommodates a complement of 3,184 personnel in ship’s company, (with 203 officers); including 2,800 air crew (with 366 officers); and 70 flag personnel (with 25 officers).  In addition, there is one very delightful, handsome, with personality plus, brave Captain!