Oral History Interview with Alf Klaveness, April 16, 2004 Page: 1 of 15

                                
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KLAVENESS, Alf
NAVY
Walker, Tracy
April 16, 2004
May 20, 2005
Terry Moore
World War II; Commanding Officer, destroyer USS Benham,
South Pacific

Today is Friday, April 16, 2004, and I'm with Mr. Alf Klaveness at his home in
Houston. The address is    Taylor Crest. My name is Tracy Walker, and I
just need to ask you a quick question to make sure that you're aware the
conversation will be recorded and that the tape and transcription will be placed in
the Lee College library. Do I have your permission to do that?
Yes.
Thank you. I have some questions that I've tried to think of ahead of time, but of
course feel free to say anything you want to add. First I'd like to ask some simple
questions as to where you were from and how you came to be in the Navy. Did
you enlist?
My parents came from Norway, and my grandfather was in the shipping business
with a steamship company. He had sent my father here to charter oil tankers to
John Rockefeller in 1910 or 1911. Dad came to Galveston, opened an office
there, and chartered what were whaling process tankers for John Rockefeller and
the original Standard Oil Company for carrying crude oil. He started out in
Galveston and then moved his office to New Orleans, which was a larger seaport,
and remained there. He was with them until World War I, and many ships were
lost. They did recover and replaced the ships that were lost and had a company of
10 to 50 oil tankers shipping crude oil mostly from Mexico and Venezuela to
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at the Humble refinery, then also to their refinery in
New Jersey.

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