The pair diverged as they drove through New Jersey and reached New York. Coleman took a ferry to Manhattan after stopping off to visit his wife in New Brunswick. Hiestand rode a ferry from State Island, riding over the renowned Brooklyn Bridge and connecting with his friend on Long Island. From there, they took another ferry to New London, Conn. and then biked to the town of Bedford, Mass.

Hiestand's wife Carol, however, chose to fly to New Jersey, where she met up with Coleman's wife, Ruthe.

From New Brunswick, the two women drove to Cambridge. The couples were reunited Wednesday in Badford with Hiestand and Coleman arriving-by bicycle 20 minutes before their wives, who came by car.

"His wife didn't want to do it alone, so I was his babysitter," Coleman joked.

The two friends talked to reporters after completing their last leg of the journey, coming down the Middlesex Trunpike and driving into the parking lot of the Stouffer Bedford Glen Hotel, where his reunion activities are centered.

The 50th anniversary reunion that begins this week includes an array of alumni from the naval training program, including the Rev. Raymond C. Baumhart, the president of Loyola University, and William Dearden, chair of the Hershey Foods Corporation. The mid-officer class also included two current U.S. Navy rear admirals, Edward Renfro and Bernie Browning.

Two Wars

Hiestand spent a year at Harvard, from March 1944 until March 1945.

The first four months the training class served as navy midshipmen and learned the ins and outs of naval supply procedures.

Because his training ended only two months before V-E Day and just six months before Japan's surrender, Hiestand did not see combat directly. He served as an assistant supply officers in the Pacific on a CVE III aircraft carrier dubbed the Vella Gulf.

But the carrier did skirt the fierce battle for control of the island of Okinawa, and Hiestand was present in Tokyo Bay as diplomats signed Japan's unconditional surrender.

Hiestand is a native of Pasadena, Calif., where he grew up and went to high school. He attended Pasadena City College for two years before enrolling at Occidental College. There, he needed only a year to complete almost all his bachelor's requirements. "They were accelerating everything then," he said.

"Most of weren't full graduates," he said of his naval training class. "For that matter, I still don't have a college degree." Hiestand never actually received his bachelor's because, he said, he did not want to take a remaining half course in religion.

Following the war, Hiestand became a recalled for the Korean War, however, and served as assistant to the supervisory cost inspector for the 11th naval district.

But he calls his military position in that conflict "the easiest job in the world." Hiestand remained in the States during the Korean War, and built in Los Angles during the period. Following the conflict, he began a small practice in Pasadena.