I did it! I was there!!
Last week ( June 2023) the family decided to go to Boston to see the historical sites. The first site we visited was the USS Constitution museum, were we had the opportunity to board the ship and see most of it, they won't let you go to the lowest level and the captain quarters, unknown to me, my cousin, who knows about my admiration for the ship, had made the proper arrangement to take a private tour ( You can go to their website and request a private tour, but it may take a couple of months to get it which means that my cousin was working on this surprise for 3 months). Up to this time I was not aware of the surprise, every one in the group was aware of the plan except my wife and me.
So we went back to the ship late in the afternoon with the excuse that my cousin had forgotten something and needed to go back to retrieved it. When we arrived, there was this seaman dress in a uniform of the era(The Constitution is a duly commissioned US Navy war ship so all personnel are US Navy personnel). He introduce himself and started the tour, at this time, like an idiot, I started to think “Why we have to go trough this just to retrieved my cousin item”
In this tour we were allowed to seen the entire ship, including the areas that we could not see in the first tour.
The Constitution fires one of its cannon, early in the morning, when rising the flag, and in the afternoon when they lower it, to my surprise the seaman approached me and said “sir, you have been selected to fire the cannon” my answer was “You are kidding me” the sailor answered “ no, sir, we want you to fire the cannon to celebrated your service to this nation while in Vietnam”.
Well, I got to fire the cannon, and I own all of this to my cousin who expend 3 months arranging it.
You could say that I had a very good time.
Joe