Island Icon: The Professor

Spring 2002:

He catalogs his collection by geographic origin—country or continent. Methodically, deliberately, and almost fervently, Mel Moore researches new collectibles—cameos, Chinese snuff bottles, mabe pearls, Asian porcelain, or antique marbles. “I get interested in one particular thing and pursue it to the ultimate and then, the next week, I’m into something else. It keeps me out of trouble.” Mel can wax authoritatively, albeit somewhat esoterically, about the origins of his ceramics and keeps abreast with his board activity at the San Francisco Ceramics League, which meets monthly at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. He acquires his treasures and artfully displays the pieces around his simple fishing cabin on Bethel Island in the Delta region of the San Francisco Bay. A native of northern California, Mel takes great comfort in the familiar surroundings of this remote town, a place he spent summers as a youth with his high school friend’s family, fishing and “chasing girls.”

“I found this place and love it ‘cause I can be isolated, but if I want to go someplace, I can go a reasonable distance…Being independent and reclusive is not one of my… well, I don’t have any problems entertaining myself.” Is he reclusive? “Some people would consider [me so,] but I don’t think so at all. But I tend to mind my own business, let me put it that way.” Is he a hermit? “Not at all. There are too many things I enjoy going out and doing.”

“Most of my time [in captivity] was isolated—twenty-two months solitary confinement, sixteen months straight—or with one or a few men…longer than most, but not as long as some.” And, yet, Mel now seems to relish his self-imposed solitude. He retreated to this peaceful and rustic spot twelve years ago. He lives alone and keeps himself occupied researching, acquiring, and cataloging his collections.

Did his penchant for academic and solitary pursuits help him survive the extreme isolation, or did his extended time “in jail” form habits that are hard to break? He thinks the fact that he is quite content by himself did help him better cope with the extended periods of solitary confinement in Hanoi. “I have always been a loner.” In contrast, he said there were men who succumbed to the conditions and just died. What makes him different? His ingenuity.

Educated at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of San Francisco, the Naval Postgraduate School, USIU, and National University, Mel is a natural intellectual and studies problems like he studies his collections—turning them over, looking at them from all sides. While in captivity at the Hanoi Hilton, he could hear Ben Pollard in a nearby cell crying out in pain from severe injuries and calling for his wife, Joan. He was black from his waist to his knees from internal bleeding and, according to Mel, “was out of his head ranting.” Mel looked at the situation practically and intellectually. He figured his captors had a severe problem on their hands: a hallucinating man. So he took a chance and asked an interrogator if he could be put in a call with Ben to help him. This type of request was unprecedented, but it was granted. Mel had the solution. As Ben recounts, “Mel started to take care of me. He said, ‘You walk or you die.’ There was no doubt about it. He saved my life.”

Brilliant in his knowledge of history and art, and professorial in his pursuit of antiques and collectibles, Mel is surprisingly unreflective about his personal life, other than when asked who his best friend is, without missing a beat, he says, “Chloe.”

While many fighter pilots are known for their social excesses, Mel channels this proclivity towards his collections. He has been sober for fifteen years and displays his Alcoholics Anonymous pin prominently, along with his distinguished naval service mementos. He says he loves life and doesn’t miss drinking at all. In fact, he says he enjoys social gatherings more since he has been sober.

He tempers his philosophical outlook with a strong dose of reality. He is politically conservative, but this is tempered by personal testaments to the horrors of war. “Once you’ve been involved in killing someone…and you know it…it makes you come to grips with reality. I tend to be a

philosopher and interested in…what causes us to fight each other.” Ever didactic, he pauses for effect. “People don’t understand how grim war really is.”

*This profile is excerpted from the exhibit Open Doors: Vietnam Fifty Years of Freedom, © Jamie Howren and Taylor Baldwin Kiland, currently on display at the Coronado Historical Association, 1100 Orange Avenue. Mel and Chloe Moore lived together on the island and Chloe was at his side when Mel died at age 91.