Moses Lake man remembers his Navy service with carrier replica

MOSES LAKE — Robin Major enjoyed serving on the USS Bennington.

The Bennington was an aircraft carrier that was built during World War II and served until 1970, which included multiple tours during the Vietnam War. Major went aboard in 1965, working in the galley.

After his service in the Navy and a long career in construction, Major retired and moved to Moses Lake. One of his retirement pastimes is his wood shop, and one of the projects to come out of the wood shop is a wood, plastic and fiberglass replica of the Bennington. It’s not a little replica, either – Major’s Bennington is about seven feet long.

“It took about three years to put this together,” he said. “It’s kind of an ongoing process.” The hull is plastic covered with fiberglass, while the deck is plywood covered with oak.

He enjoyed his tour on the Bennington and enjoyed building the replica. “It was fun, putting this thing together.”

The hull required some surgery. The stern “was kind of short. So I added to it,” he said. The interior has a representation of the hangar deck, accessible by lifting the hinged flight deck. (The hangar deck is where planes are serviced, fueled and armed before being lifted to the flight deck.) He built model planes to illustrate the aircraft that served on the carrier.

Major paid careful attention to detail, adding gun placements, life rafts, a rotating radar installation. “I put a rotisserie in there (the radar installation),” he said. He inset working lights along the flight deck and reconstructed the Bennington’s bridge.

“All this is what I can remember,” he said. Way down by the waterline are two sets of stairs, where sailors came and went from the ship. There are two sets of stairs because one was reserved for the officers.

The difference between officers and enlisted men extended to the dining rooms. “They (officers) had their own galley. Although they came to my restaurant,” he said.

The Bennington’s kitchens were well belowdecks, so the galley crew got very little chance to see daylight. “When we went to work it was three in morning – dark – and when we got off it was dark,” he said. Besides, the galley crew was busy. “I was either in the kitchen or the freezer,” Major said.

Nevertheless, the Bennington was a warship. An accident on the flight deck required briefly storing the victim’s body in the galley freezer.

“I was in the Navy eight years, four months and 26 days,” Major said. He also served on the Oak Hill, which transported amphibious vehicles and landing craft, and was stationed for a year in Vietnam.

After his Navy service he started working in construction. “I founded my own business,” a concrete company in the Puget Sound area. “I operated that for 40 years.”

The Bennington is not the only project to come out of his wood shop – he’s built a number of birdhouses. “A lot of them have a theme,” he said, from flour mills to fire stations to churches. He’s built windmills and outhouses, wishing wells and multi-story houses. The birdhouses are built with the same attention to detail as the carrier, with finished interiors and landscaping.

The wood shop is a way to stay active in retirement. “It actually keeps your brain busy,” Major said.