THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Wednesday, February 5, 1997           TAG: 9702050647
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS           PAGE: A6   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY 
        STAFF WRITER 
                                            LENGTH:   44 lines

IN THEIR PART OF NORFOLK, HE'S KNOWN AS "HIS HONOR"

Norfolk Mayor Paul D. Fraim has unofficially ceded part of his job to a sailor.

The duties fall to Command Master Chief Robert R. Hallstein, the carrier Enterprise's highest-ranking enlisted sailor, who to many on the ship already held the title.

It all started when Hallstein, 38, on deployment in the Persian Gulf last year, agreed with a reporter from near his hometown, Lansdale, Pa., that his duties in overseeing the needs of enlisted sailors on the Enterprise were something akin to being mayor. The story made it all the way to the Pentagon - and quickly back to the Enterprise.

The crew lost no time in having an engraved plaque placed on his office door and addressing him as ``mayor'' in the ship's corridors.

Last week, while the Enterprise went to sea to transfer weapons to the supply ship Seattle, Captain Michael D. Malone had a big surprise for Hallstein at the ship's regular crew awards ceremony, sent out to TV sets around the Enterprise.

It was a proclamation signed by Fraim with plenty of ``whereas'' clauses, saying that Hallstein has performed his job ``with flourish, most notably during the carrier's deployment to the Mediterranean Sea'' in 1996, ``a period during which he helped maintain the ship's can-do spirit by inspiring, counseling, instructing, and entertaining the thousands of sailors in his purview.''

Fraim therefore proclaimed that Hallstein be made honorary mayor of ``that portion of Norfolk defined by the 4 1/2-acre flight deck of the carrier USS Enterprise and the decks, compartments and passageways attached thereto.''

A beaming Hallstein accepted the framed proclamation and deflected some of the kidding by saying that if he was going to be mayor of the Enterprise, then Malone would certainly be governor. ILLUSTRATION: STEVE EARLEY

The Virginian-Pilot

Capt. Michael Malone, left, reads a proclamation from Norfolk Mayor

Paul Fraim naming Robert Hallstein, the Enterprise's command master

chief, honorary mayor.