WESTLEY BURNHAM • COLD WAR
Westley Burnham, 77
Essex, MA
Born: November 6, 1954
Born/Raised: Essex, MA
Service: US Navy
Rank: EM1-SS (Electrician’s Mate First Class – submarine service)
Ship: Submarine USS Tullibee (SSN-597)
Dates of Service: 1973-1979
“I don’t like heat, don’t care for jungles and I’m allergic to lead.” This line of thinking, along with a lottery number of 14 led Westley Burnham, of Essex, to join the Navy in 1973. Two years of classroom work to learn to operate a nuclear power plant, he trained as an electrician’s mate. He was assigned to the USS Tullibee, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine. Westley would spend more than four years at sea, or rather, under it. “I got a hell of an education.”
Westley lives on land in Essex that has been in his family since the 1600s when three Burnham brothers arrived from England aboard the merchant ship, Angel Gabriel, which was lost off the coast of Maine in 1635. His parents, Everett and Ann Burnham, ran the family business, a service station, in Essex. His father served in the US Army at the end of WWII during the occupation of Japan. He has two brothers, Dana and Michael, Westley is the oldest.
As a student at Gloucester H.S., Westley was a four-year member of the Grenadiers ROTC rifle team. He graduated in 1972. Also graduating in 1972 was class president Dawn Addison who, after attending the University of Maine and returning to Essex as an elementary teacher, ran into her old schoolmate Westley at the Bunghole Lounge. They married in 1977, though Westley wouldn’t be done with his enlistment until 1979. They have two children, Kelly and Erin, and four grandchildren.
Westley returned to Essex, at first, he worked at the family’s gas station, but the training he received aboard the Tullibee soon turned into a position at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant where he worked as a senior reactor operator from 1985-2014.
He also learned about service in the military. He became a member of the Essex volunteer fire department as a firefighter/EMT for 46 years. He served as an elected member of the Essex Planning Board for 28 years and currently serves as a Department of Public Works Commissioner, a seat he’s held for more than four years. He’s a member of the Essex Legion Post 231.