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Interview #759: Theoryland: An Hour with Harriet McDougal Rigney, Entry #6
Matt Hatch
What was it like to be the daughter of a Navy admiral—and you said Commandant, also—what was that like?
Harriet McDougal
Well, I didn’t have a whole lot of experience of that, because he retired when I was about six. He would say, “Clear the decks!” (laughter) There was another admiral in the extended family, and they kept running into each other because they got out of the Academy at the same time, so they’d end up at Coronado, more or less, and Uncle Benny was at Pearl Harbor too, and his stuff can be read online—his memoir of the attack—and he was prone to say “Late hammocks this morning!” And the children knew what it meant, but I didn’t have that—”late hammocks” means you don’t have to get out of bed at the usual time—but these guys sort of didn’t notice they weren’t hammocks; they were actually beds. And there was a floor, not a deck!
My father had a very hard decade, really; he had an older brother who died of tuberculosis during the war; the family big house—he was a Yankee, and it was in Ossining, New York, site of another Big House —but the big house burned down during World War II, so here he is, watching the world fall apart, and fighting across the Pacific, and at home everything is pretty much falling apart, too. I think he had struggles with depression…and, he was old when I was born—he was probably close to fifty—so what do you do with a rugrat? (laughter)
Matt Hatch
What do you recollect, then, most about that? What is it about your father from when you knew him—
Harriet McDougal
Distance, sorry to say.
Matt Hatch
And you think that was a product of what you just said?
Harriet McDougal
It was a very hard time for him. He was decent to me. I mean, he fed me and clothed me, and never abused me, but it was not what you call a warm relationship.
Footnote—Maria Simons
“Uncle Benny” was Robert Bentham Simons II—I’m married to his grandson, Robert Bentham Simons IV, and mother of his great-grandson, Robert Bentham Simons V. Harriet’s aunt married his brother Albert. He was the captain of the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor.
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