"For nearly 50 years, it has been my privilege and pleasure and honor to have been a mentor and close friend to DJ. After a stint in the Air Force, a couple of semesters of college, and a dead-end job in a warehouse, throwing boxes into the back of a trailer, DJ thought he'd take a stab at a local shipping agency, since his dad had worked in admiralty law.
They brought him to me, and i taught him the basics of agency work.
He was a quick study, a hard worker, and after only a few short years,
Donald was given my position when I left for another job.
DJ grew and blossomed into a creative, brilliant and innovative steamship agency man. From the small kernel of knowledge i gave him, he took a hide-bound port of New Orleans agency model, and turned Bluewater into a leading, world renowned Steamship Agency.
There have been many agencies since that have copied his brilliant model, but none have managed to match it.
A few months after DJ opened Bluewater, he asked me to rejoin him.
For the next 27 years, i held him firmly by the ankles, holding him down while he tried to fly to the stratosphere. Don was a visionary,
dreamed of things that had never been done, and constantly reached
for the stars. I was the nuts and bolts to his high flying goals and dreams; together we made a good team.
Now he's gone, a bright light that has been extinguished, plunging those who loved him into darkness. But with time, and memory of the good days that we had with him, we'll get thru...
There's a large hole in me right now, but i feel in time we'll meet again on the other side.
I love you, my brother - I'll be seeing you again soon...
Frank J. Hogan
