Julius Grigore, Jr.,
(Captain, U.S. Navy Reserve, Retired), upon recall to active duty
with the Navy 1968-1972, Grigore served as Officer in Charge of
Shipbuilding, Conversion and Repair at Fort Amador, Canal Zone.
During that period he was also senior Navy technical advisor to the
Latin American navies, commander of U.S. Naval Industrial Standby
Facility – Balboa Shops, and Salvage Officer for Commander, 15th
Naval District.
Before recall to active duty
in 1968, he was Assistant Chief/Acting Chief, Industrial Division,
of the Panama Canal Company’s shipyard complex. He graduated
from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, the University of Detroit,
and Harvard Business School, Advanced Management Program. (He and
then Lieutenant Governor of the Canal Zone and Vice President of
the Panama Canal Company Harold Parfitt, 1965-68, were the only
two individuals from the Canal Zone sent to the HBS.* )
He has authored numerous
articles for the National Transportation Journal, Military
Engineer, Panama Canal Review, and Explorer’s Journal. He
has written seven books and published 57 others as reprints (with
update material) about Panama, the Panama Canal, and the Panama
Railroad (more on the books at his Cristobal Shops on Ebay at
http://stores.ebay.com/CRISTOBAL-SHOPS
and at
www.cz
images.com).
He is a founding member of the Panama Historical Society.
To view his
article The O-5 is Down! (the dramatic rescue and salvage of the U.S.
Navy submarine O5 that sank in Limon Bay at the
Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal in October 1923 after
collision with a ship), published in the U.S. Naval Institute
Proceedings, February 1972, GO TO.
------------------------------------
* Parfitt was later
the last Canal Zone Governor/Panama Canal Company President,
1975-79. Parfitt's daughter Karen Parfitt Hughes was
Counselor to President George W. Bush in his first term and
appointed Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
in the Department of State in July 2005.
THE
AIR MAIL HISTORY OF THE CANAL ZONE AND PANAMA
(1918 THROUGH
1941)
by
Julius
Grigore, Jr.
Grigore recently completed
his Air Mail History of the Canal Zone and Panama (1918 through
1941) monograph, an 18-year research and writing
project, consisting over 1,000 pages and over 900 color
illustrations. It will shortly be offered on
Ebay.com.
The theme of this book
centers around three Canal Zone Roosevelt Medalists# who were
involved in the evolution of air mail service into the Panama
Canal Zone -- Crede H. Calhoun, Director of the Canal Zone
Postal Service; Stacy C. Russell, senior inspector of the Canal
Zone Postal Service; and Gerald D. Bliss, Postmaster of the
Cristobal Post Office (on the Atlantic side of the Canal
Zone). Bliss's Cristobal Post Office in the late 1920s
became the center for dispatching air mail to and from
Panama and throughout Central and South America, Mexico, Cuba, and
the West Indies via France Field, the U.S. Army Air Corps airfield
near Cristobal.
Postmaster Bliss was the focus in the air mail history of the
Canal Zone and Panama. He was so essential and prominent in
his position that the U.S. Post Office Department, in conjunction
with Pan American Airways (the chosen airline of the United States
Government), delegated him to personally visit every postal
administration in Central and South America and the Caribbean to
make the air mail system more effective and efficient. Bliss
was associated with at least 67 air mail first flight
occasions that occurred to and from the United States and various
Latin American and Caribbean destinations. No
other air mail history equals the number of signed air mail covers
appearing in this monograph -- mainly by Postmaster Bliss, Charles
Lindbergh (then technical consultant to Pan American Airways and
various air mail pilots (including three Medal of Honor
recipients, two of them being Francis
Edward Ormsbee, Jr. and Charles
Lindberg), according to the author.
In his capacity as
Postmaster, Cristobal Post Office and as an aside from his air
mail affairs, Bliss was commemorated on a Pitcairn Island stamp in
2004.
The principal airlines
involved in this air mail history (and in the book) were Pan
American Airways (under Juan Terry Trippe, its president), Panagra
(Pan American-Grace Airways), and SCADTA (Sociedad Colombiana,
Alemana, de Transportes Aereos). The book also includes
other airlines involved.
This book also includes many
anecdotes about the pilots who, as heroes of their day, flew the
mails over treacherous Caribbean and Central and South America
routes, even when only a few letters were
aboard.
--------------------------------------
# 7,399
persons were awarded the Roosevelt Medal while employed by the
Isthmian Canal Commission during the construction of the Panama
Canal by the Americans, between May 4, 1904 - December 31, 1914
(source: Julius Grigore, Jr.)
SCROLL