Held in person at McKimmon Center: In October 1962, Navy Lieutenant Earl McCullers and his wife Julia were stationed on the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was Fuels Officer for the fleet’s busy training site, and she taught in the K-12 school. Although Americans living at “Gitmo” were confined to an area separated from Fidel Castro’s Cuban mainland by barbed-wire, armed troops, and land mines, most families enjoyed the warm weather and Caribbean beaches. Everything changed when U.S. U-2 planes photographed the presence of missile bases in Cuba built and manned by Russian soldiers. It became evident to President Kennedy that Castro and his Communist ally Nikita Khrushchev were readying long-range missiles capable of killing millions of Americans.  Khrushchev’s and President Kennedy’s military advisors hastily prepared for a nuclear war. Who would make the next move? What would become of the over 2,000 women and children living at Gitmo?  Julia McCullers shares her experiences as a young Navy wife during those tense days in 1962, a time historians have called “Almost Armageddon.”

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