Parker Gutzmann
Allison Wagner
Charles L. Olobri
US Navy
Final Charles L. Olobri
Raised in an Italian neighborhood, Charles Olobri was sheltered from the facts of the world. Because of the culture of his little Italian community, Mr. Olobri was never sure with what was going on as a child. He attended Brown University in Providence for 4 years on a football scholarship. He had played football all four years in high school and another four in college; his parents never saw one of his games (they were both immigrants from Italy so there was a difference in culture). Afterbeing team player, studying Italian, and majoring in psychology, Olobri had a good life ahead of him. He graduated in 1960.
Once grown up, a friend suggested he try Navy ROTC in college. Mr. Olobri’s time of service was in between wars. He did ROTC during peace time, while there were no active wars, and luckily never saw combat. Even though there was no fighting, tension was very high between the Soviet Union and the United States. Olobri went straight into the Navy as an Ensign (first level of officers in the Navy) with one stripe. Although he was in the Navy, - he never was assigned on a boat and the only time he was on a ship was when he went on a cruise for one week in ROTC. He was shipped to Sicily Italy, which was rather lucky on his part because he happened to be familiar with the language and the culture, being Italian himself.
Their Naval base was located outside of Catania and served as a base for patrol planes, the pilots flew P2V’s. Here, the Navy monitored submarines and aircraft. Planes would strategically fly close to the ocean and their devices would pick up signals from submarines in the Mediterranean. The planes would then follow the submarines. This was how the American spy planes would keep up on the Russians activity. Each officer had one day of Crypto duty. His loyalty and background were checked to receive Top Secret Crypto Clearance which was needed in that duty. During Crypto duty he was given secret messages to code and send on. He had such a high clearance, not even Olobri could always read the messages. Even though American spy plane pilots often gave Olobri already coded messages for him to code again. Not even Olobri could know what they said. Besides coding messages, Olobri had other duties. He was in charge of multiple things including the Barracks, Post office, leadership and education at the naval base.
Olobri’s life on the base wasn’t all work and seriousness; he also had some fun, interesting, spontaneous, and humorous moments. Once, an Admiral from Naples came to inspect the base and the division. The morning after Olobri arrived to the base he had been put in charge. Having little knowledge of what was going on, he had no clue what to do, why he was there, or what to say, all he was told was to wear a white uniform, have a sword and go out in the morning to meet the chief. Once the admiral came, he was supposed to salute with his right hand and then say “two”. Olobri, being assigned this task at the last minute, didn’t even know what his division’s job was, what “two” meant, or what the Admiral was expecting. The Admiral came;Olobri had his outfit on and saluted with his right hand. Everything was running smoothly. The admiral asked how many men they had and Olobri said, “134 men assigned, 112 present, 22 excused.” The Admiral asked where the excused men were. Answering honestly, Olobri admitted that he,“did not know sir’”. The admiral looked at him, and walked away. One of the men in the division, with his hand still ready at a salute, got Olobri’s attention. Olobri said “oh! Two!” and the men put down their hands.
Another time while Olobri was on base, he met the Governor of Catania and accompanied him and his family to the opera. They sat in a box right next to the royal box. After the opera, they went to a cocktail party where he met the Prince of Savoy. Being enlisted also gave him the opportunity to go on many vacations, such as Paris and Germany. Olobri said, “I got to see so much and learn so much on this wonderful tour of duty.”
Once, Olobri decided to jump on a free flight and take a vacation. Somehow, the flight he got on ended up going somewhere other than where he said he was going. At that same time, after a shift that Olobri was assigned to in Crypto, a device had gone missing. This strange situation ended up causing a Captain from Naples to interview Olobri the next morning.
Another time Olobri was put in a spontaneous situation started when the local villages invited the captain of the base to a party. He didn’t want to go so he told the commander to go instead, but the commander didn’t want to go either. The commander told the lieutenant commander to go, and the lieutenant commander’s wife said she wanted to go. The lieutenant commander didn’t want to go so he told Olobri to go and to take his wife to the party with him. Olobri looked for whoever was the next in line so he could pass down the invitation and found that it was a man named Cerudi. Word got out that Olobri was looking for Cerudi so he hid from him for a couple of days and Olobri was forced to go to the party with the lieutenant commander’s wife. The members were expecting the captain of the base to attend, so when Olobri, a young Ensign, stepped onto the red carpet it is easy to imagine that many of the hosts were disappointed and insulted. He sat at the head of the table next to a General and a Cardinal. Someone told him to ask the General’s wife for a dance in order to be polite so Olobri ended up dancing with her. That was one of the many situations Olobri was put into.
Another crazy thing Olobri had to do started when the captain of the base called Olobri the day after Christmas and told him they had a problem with the postal clerk. The postal clerks name was John Kennedy. The captain then showed him the newspaper which read “some people celebrate Christmas with a tree, others with a Yule... John Kennedycelebrated it by firing a pistol in a club, causing patrons to seek shelter under tables.” He was then ordered to pick up and bail out John Kennedy from the Catania jail.
Olobri was raised in an Italian community, then as a young adult was shipped overseas to Italy, and then went back to the base in Italy with his family in 1978. Throughout the years he grew very familiar with the Italian culture. In Sicily, while in the service, he met a girl. He asked to take her to a movie, and ended up sitting in the theater with the girl and the rest of her family. That was the way of the Italian culture at that time. There were no such things as dates, where a boy and a girl were alone. It was not accepted. But as the years went on, Olobri noticed a major change in culture. While in his room he heard a noise outside his window. When he went to look outside, he saw a boy on a motorcycle and a girl hopping on with him. Within 15 years, he watched the culture move from being conservative to open and updated.
Now that he is out of the Navy, Olobri has settled down with his family. He started law school at age 44 and became a lawyer at age 48. He has been a lawyer for about 25 years now. Olobri said, “The more education you have, the more powerful you are.” Before becoming a lawyer, he worked for an insurance company. This insurance company had a bowling league, and Olobri joined. They had invited an ex-employee back to the league. Her name was Ingrid, and she ended up marrying Mr. Charles Olobri. Ingrid and Charles went on to have children, and their children had children of their own. Now Olobri enjoys living his life in Anaheim and taking mostly injury cases.
Olobri’s family is very important to him. His father in law, who is German, spoke no English, so Olobri, who had learned a bit of German from a Bertlitz book, would do his best to keep up with him in conversation. Once, while in a conversation with his father in law, he tried to keep up but his father in law sped up and Olobri got lost and no longer knew what his father-in-law was talking about. Olobri figured he could just smile and nod and get through the conversation but then his father-in-law looked at him like he was crazy. Olobri had to call his wife from the other room to come in to ask her father what he had just said. To Olobri’s surprise, he was smiling his way through a conversation in which his father-in-law was talking about someone who had died.
Charles Olobri felt three things: his service in the military was rewarding, we have a lot of time on this earth, and education is important. If he could do it over, Olobri said that he’d of been more serious, and would have asked to be on the ship, to get a taste of the real Navy world. When talking about his education (law school) he mentioned that often times we don’t realize how long life is. We have so much time on Earth and should use it wisely. Olobri stated, “you can mess up in life and if you’re lucky, and a good person, things will work out.”