By mid 1955 he had upgraded from his first small bike to a powerful Triumph and had effected a transfer to shore duties where he was working as a despatch rider attached to the naval base in Norfolk. His one passion, other than girls, was for motorcycling. He would fill the long hours on board by singing and strumming his guitar but only for relaxation and never with any thoughts of fame and fortune. After basic training, he was assigned as a deckhand on USS Chuckawan and in time upgraded to become a boiler man. He enjoyed an unremarkable childhood and never progressed beyond an eighth grade education, eventually dropping out and enlisting in the navy at nearby Richmond, Virginia on 19th February 1952 at the age of seventeen.
Nothing was quite the way it seemed and even the simplest things had a habit of ending up in dispute. Craddock and although 11th February appears on his birth certificate, his mother continually claimed that it should have read 17th, while his sister Evelyn favoured 22nd. Actually the precise order of his forenames has been the subject of some discussion over the years, and when Gene filled out his application for a social security card, he gave his name as Vincent E. Eugene Vincent Craddock was born on 11th February 1935 in Norfolk, Virginia.
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