Veterans I Know and Have Known

So much heard lately about the really rotten treatment many veterans receive in our country.  Made me think about all the veterans I know.
The first veteran I ever knew was my Pop.  He was in the infantry in WWII.  He spent two years slogging around the Pacific.  He never wanted to talk about it much.  He admitted to me once that he had to kill a man with a knife once.  It bothered him a lot.  Never mind that this was war, and the guy he killed had already killed a lot of our guys.  Taking a life that way takes something out of you, wounds you.  It certainly stayed with Pop, though it didn't surface often.  He only told me about it one evening shortly before my wedding, when he was talking to me about what it meant to be married to a military man.  He wanted me to understand that there might be things Matt would never feel able to share with me.
Even so, Pop was proud of his service, and he did enjoy a few benefits of being a veteran.  He got a low interest mortgage, and the house I spent the first part of my life in was built with that money. We had to move when I was 14.  The neighborhood was no longer a safe place.  (Compton, CA.  Need I say more?)
Other vets I have known include a neighbor we met when we first moved here.  Don was a B-17 pilot in WWII.  He said he landed more than one time in an aircraft that shouldn't have still been flying.  He later became an officer in the Air Force and after retiring from the Air Force, he worked as a mail carrier for many years.  He was a good neighbor, and I was very proud to know someone who was able to bring all of his crews home in more or less one piece.  That Air War in Europe was very costly to us in terms of bomber crews.  He died several years ago, and I still miss him.  He used to come in the library all the time and take the free computer courses we offer.  He was so proud of me for getting a job there.  He was one of my references.

Many of my coworkers are veterans.  Julie, she who is our branch's corporate memory, (I call her Julie All-Knowing and All-Wise)  was in both the Air Force and the Navy.  She is the wife of a retired Navy man.  (So in her, I get to claim two vets that I know, herself and Ralph.)  Julie is very conscientious about her job, she is a loyal friend, and one of the funniest people I know.  She and Anne and I can not be in the same room for very long without very noisy hilarity erupting. (Even as old as we all are these days!)

  Anne, who now works at another branch, is a retired Major.  She was in the Air Force at a time when there were few women in the service, and very few female officers.  She was on a high-security air crew as a communications officer, and often had challenges when they had to get quarters on some bases.  There just weren't any visiting officer's quarters or crew rest facilities for females.  She has many interesting stories about her service.  She is a uniquely dedicated and persistent worker.  If Anne is on the job, it will be done, done right, and in a timely manner.  Some think she is a little brusk, but her laugh is often in evidence, her sense of humor one of the better ones I have known.  She came to sit with me in the hospital when Matt had his surgery.  She made me get up and walk around, made me drink something so I wouldn't dehydrate, and stayed much longer than anyone but our good friend Michael.

There is another coworker I must write about.  He works at the Library Service Center, and I mainly work with him through phone calls, notes, or email, as we both work on Inter-Library Loan  materials.  He is a Marine.  He retired as a Gunnery Sergeant.  After he retired, he worked as a corrections officer, and then he came to work for the library system.  Roger is grumbly and gruff, Mr. Tough Marine at first glance, but soon you see the warmth and the humor.   He is a stalwart presence among us, and we are proud to know him.  Another Old Marine I knew, Father Stan Donham, when I asked him to pray for Roger when Roger had surgery, said, "Oh, Gunnery Sergeants aren't born or made.  They are issued directly from the Quartermaster."  Of course he prayed for Roger, Marines stick together.  Father Stan lost his own fight with cancer while Matt was still in the hospital after his surgery. We were unable to go to the funeral.  Father Stan was a fighting Marine who served on Okinawa in WWII.  Father Stan was also the first among the clergy at St. Paul's that we met.  He welcomed us, and spoke with us, and introduced us to people, and we ended up in  the choir and helping with any number of other things.

I have an email friend who is a vet.  She was in the same career field as Matt when she retired.  She stayed in longer, got more rank, but also had to go remote to Korea for a year, and then got sent to Afghanistan.  She retired after she got back stateside.  She suffered an injury over there, and it did lots of damage.  Roxie is tough, though, the fighter pilots she used to work with called her "The Hammer", so you know she's not a marshmallow.  Roxie has gone back to school, gotten her degree, and is now working to help other vets.  She has faced cancer, and won.  She is a tough cookie.  She is also amazingly dedicated and caring in her work with her fellow vets.  She told a story today on Face book about an elderly gentleman who came in to get eyeglasses.  She called his name, using his rank of "Chief", and he didn't realize she was calling him.  He told her no one had called him "Chief" in more than 3o years.  She said that was wrong and a shame, because he worked hard to earn that rank, and that title, and he was entitled to be addressed by it.  He is 86 years old.  From the way she told that story, I don't know who made whose day.  Maybe Roxie made the Chief's day, but just maybe he made hers.  Respect.  It costs so little, but it is worth so much.

I have a cousin who is retired Air Force, my late Uncle Mickey was a retired Navy man, Uncle Wallace was retired from the Army,(he served in Viet Nam) , and my husband's nephew David is a veteran of three tours in Iraq and has a bum leg because he was injured over there.  He is out of the Army now, and was going to school.  We haven't heard a lot from him lately, so I hope he is OK.  He is married and has two little ones.  He was two the year Matt and I got married.  David used to escape from his kindergarten class when I was subbing at the school he went to and come find me when I was out on yard duty.  He doesn't remember doing that, but he sure did.  Secretly tickled me that he would do that just to see Aunt Katie.  I always took him back, and the teacher never seemed to get after him too bad for it.  She knew where he went, after all. I told him he shouldn't come out without asking first, though.
His mother, Matt's sister Carol is also a vet.  She was in the Air Force for awhile before Matt enlisted.  She got out when she was expecting her oldest. (In those days, they'd give you a discharge for being pregnant.  No more.  )

Of course, the vet I know best is my husband.  He served 20 years in the Air Force, most of them as an aircraft loadmaster.  He flew on C-130s and C-141s. He was deployed in 1990 for Desert Shield and stayed through the end of Desert Storm.  He ended his career as an Operations Resource Management Specialist.  He was the NCOIC of the Operations Resource Center for the 966th AWACS Training Squadron when he retired in 1998.  He served with great dedication, really enjoying his job and the many experiences it gave him.  He traveled all over the world, got to see all sorts of amazing things, got to drop some interesting things out of his airplane, and won recognition for the outstanding way he performed his job.  (He has lots of "confetti" on his dress blues.  Never mind that he hasn't had to wear them for about 15 years now.)


I know a number of our library customers are veterans.  A lot of the people who live in this area are.  Tinker is a large base with a nice commissary and a nice Exchange, and a very nice new clinic.  The community is very supportive of the base, it is the largest single location employer in the state.  Many military retirees live here, because the cost of living is pretty low, the quality of life is pretty good, and there is such a nice base here.  The retirees are also an excellent resource for the military because many of them volunteer on base and fill jobs that are needed but not funded.  They work in Morale and Recreation activities, they work in the pharmacy and clinic, all over really.  We are family.  If you are military, you are one of us.  We will care for you, stand by you, because we've worn those boots ourselves, or stood those lonely vigils waiting for a loved one to come back from a deployment.

My own life is made richer by the presence of so many veterans in it.  I bet if you think about it for awhile, you will find that you know a number of veterans yourself.  We owe these men and women our respect for the job they were willing to do so that we would have the life we enjoy now.  I am so proud of my father, my uncles, my cousin, my friends and my husband for difficult things they have done with grace and with valor.  I am, I must admit, a bit proud of myself for staying alone when Matt was away, even in a pretty bad neighborhood in San Bernardino, and for seven months in a foreign country.  My parents couldn't believe it, I've always been such a chicken, but if Matt could go off  and face unknown dangers (many missions were those that we were never sure if it was real or an exercise), then I could keep the home front running smoothly until he got back.
I pray our Congress would remember what we owe the men and women who were willing to give so much of their lives to the service of this country.  They have faced dangers most of us cannot imagine.  They deserve to have decent benefits for their service, and those who stay in long enough to retire should have more security than they do now.  Pensions are small, and the kids today will get even less if they stay in for a whole career, and we pay premiums for our medical benefits.  (Admittedly, they are a LOT less than anybody else would have to pay, but there was at one time the promise of free medical care for retirees.  That went away even before Matt retired.)  Vets and military retirees should not have to fear the loss of the benefits that they quite literally fought for.  That so many are without basic necessities  is shameful.

A Valentine For The Man I Love

 This post contains a LOT of pictures.  This is a love story about the most patient, kind, talented, and unusual man I have ever met.  My husband  Matthew.  The picture above this paragraph was made on our wedding day in 1984.  Our expressions may look like true love, but it is really relief because we are standing over the air conditioning vent.
We met in a Star Trek fan club that I had joined, and his mother and sister had joined.  They were campaigning for more members, so Matt's mother convinced him that he should join.  At the "launching party" for our new chapter of the club, Matt kept ending up next to me, and he started calling me after the party to talk  We talked almost every day.   He made me laugh.  Sometimes so hard that I'd cry.  His sense of humor is even more evil than mine.
He was active duty Air Force when we met.  A Staff Sergeant (he made rank early) and an aircraft loadmaster on C-141s.  He was stationed at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, CA.
We dated for about three months before we knew it was love.  He asked me to marry him on my birthday in 1984.  My engagement ring has an amethyst in it because that is my birthstone, and also because he wanted to continue making house payments.  When he got a big re-enlistment bonus, instead of buying a car, he bought a house.  (He had his Mom and Sister and nephew living with him when I met him, one reason he had bought the house.)

Here are a few more wedding pictures.  I think we were a pretty cute couple.

 After we were married, he taught me how to ride a bike again.  He had ridden with a minor racing team in Panama when he was a teen growing up in the Canal Zone.  He had also ridden track.  He could track stand a regular road bike longer than almost any other human being I have ever seen.

He has the patience of a saint.  He put up with more whining and complaining, and me almost dumping us both off our tandem bike, and he still loves me. 
 (And I still love him even though I SWEAR he ran over every bump he could find on that tandem just to launch me off that back seat.)

He got to go back to Panama once in a while on air drop missions.  This picture is him pulling in the jump platform on a C-141 after the jumpers have all exited the aircraft. 

I have always been so proud of him and his dedication to his service to this country.  It was a job he loved, and he did it well.    I never minded the late night trips to the base to either drop him off or pick him up.  It was worth it.  He was worth it.  I loved going out to the base with him to watch the planes coming in or doing pilot training.  Some nights he was at the squadron waiting to find out if the airdrop birds had in fact dropped, and whether they needed to go help unload, or at the very least retrieve their CDS  buffer board.  I sometimes took dinner in the crockpot to share with whoever was waiting with him.  His nickname was Army-N-Stead, and they all called me Mrs. Army.  I was always proud to be his, I know he was well-respected by the guys he worked with.

You can tell he was still active duty in the picture at my mom's house where he was carving the turkey.  (After my Pop died, Matt got to do that job when we were visiting, unless my brother wanted to.  )
Matt has always taken such good care of me.  He worried about leaving me alone in San Bernardino, but he made it as safe as possible.  He used to leave me love notes scattered around the house before he went TDY.  He'd hide them in my dresser drawers, in the spice rack in the pantry, in my books, anywhere I'd come upon them unexpectedly.
And every time he came home, it was a very romantic occasion.  Sometimes I miss those days, because we were both a lot more romantic, and I think we were both more aware of the fact that life is short, and you really aren't guaranteed a tomorrow.  Every time I dropped him at that squadron, it could have been the last time I ever saw him.  That was always in the back of our minds.  Even in peacetime, flying airdrop missions as he so often did is not exactly the safest game in town.  His squadron lost a crew to a crash while we were at Norton.  They flew right into a mountainside during a low level training  mission.

 Here is our house in San Bernardino where we lived for the first five years we were married.  It was small, old, and had interesting wiring.  But it was enough for us.  We were very happy there, and when we got orders to go to Germany, we worked hard to fix it up and sell it.

 Here at the right is a picture of Matt on a C-130.  He cross-trained to C-130s before we went to Germany.  He has so many hours in both C-141s and C-130s, that for awhile, it seemed he had spent  most of his life in flight.    I always enjoyed working with him when the squadron needed spouses to support air show activities, and even once to pack some CDS kits for the squadron in Germany because they were so short handed.  Matt had a whole system set up for packing the kits, with detailed instructions.  Two of us packed, and an airman inspected the finished kits to make sure they were all right before they got put on the shelf. 

While we were in Germany, Desert Shield and Desert Storm happened.  Matt had to leave on rather short notice, and there was no way of knowing when (or if) he'd come back.  Those seven months were nerve wracking.  How the folks survive the long tours in Iraq and Afganistan is beyond me.  I know we were blessed in that I was out on a farm with wonderful German landlords who more or less adopted me, and Matt was on Cargo aircraft, which because of their size and tendency to fly slowly, were always kept at bases farther to the rear of any action until and unless troops and/or cargo needed to be dropped. 

It still thrills me to hear a C-130.  It reminds me of the day he came home from Desert Storm.  The whole SKY was full of C-130s coming home, and on the ramp, all us wives and the Germans were cheering non-stop.

The photo above left was made when he got to come home for Christmas during Desert Shield.  His crew drew the straw that let them bring the airplane back that was scheduled for maintenance at that time.  (With C-130s the age those birds were, maintenance was religiously observed.  It was the only reason they were still flyable.)


After the Gulf War,  Matt cross trained to Ops Resource Management.  His shoulder had been messed up one too many times by getting rammed into a pallet that got stuck when they were loading it.  He didn't fly any more after that.  He still got to work 12 hour shifts in Current Operations at Rhein- Main Air Base, where he was NCOIC of the Current Operations office until we PCSed to Tinker in 1993.

He was in the Ops Resource Center at the 966th AWACS training squadron here at Tinker until 1998 when he retired.  He was NCOIC of the section when he retired

.
We have been through a lot in our almost 29 years, and though things occasionally get tense, we are still just as much in love as we were then.  Though the spinal cord surgery he had eight years ago has affected many things about him, like made him gain a ton of weight and made it hard to get off, and  reduced his mobility in some ways, he still keeps going, works hard, and does so many nice things for me.
He now works for the Postal Service as a contractor for OU.  He works at the Training center putting courses online so fewer people have to travel for necessary training, and they can train more people at once.  He is putting all his hard won computer expertise to good use.
He takes good care of me still, and he still puts up with my quirks even though he no longer has the respite of going TDY.
He is still funny, and he can still make my knees weak. 


The picture below was made on Christmas Day 2009.  We don't have any really good pictures of us together that are more recent.

My darling Matthew, there can never be another that can make me feel the way you do.  Right from the start, you got me.  You understood, you never belittled my fan interests, you shared some of them, and you have always encouraged me to try new things, to find my strengths, even when I am sure I will fall spectacularly on my face. I think the true testimony to our love is that we are both still here.  We haven't killed each other yet!  I know both of us are too stubborn to ever contemplate divorce.  We made a promise before God and our friends and families, and we both honor our promises.  You have certainly loved me and put up with me, and cared for me, in situations that could not have always been easy for you.  Thanks for a great life, and here's hoping for at least 29 more years!

Laundry and Other Weekend Chores

Today has been laundry day, as my Saturdays all too often are lately. I don't mind too much because I have a nice washer and dryer right here in my house. Whenever I am tempted to feel grumpy about having to get up and run deal with another load of laundry, I remind myself of what a drag it was (literally and figuratively) to have to go to the laundromat. I only had to do that for a little while, when we were in Germany because the part for the washer we had was being sent from Stuttgart, and it took its sweet time getting to the greater Frankfurt area.
My current washer and dryer were also made in Stuttgart, by the same company, but are sold in this country by Sears. I love my front load washer and the large capacity dryer. They use less water and less energy than my old machines, and yes, they are very conveniently located in my laundry room down the hall from the bedroom.
This was also lawn mowing day. This chore has usually been mine instead of my husband's because for a lot of our marriage, he just plain wasn't home. (Do you speak Air Force? Can you say TDY? ) He'd be home long enough to wash all his clothes and be gone again. (Cargo haulers have such a glamorous life!) So, yours truly became the lawn and yard care crew. I can clip hedges and mulch lawns with the best of them. These days, Matt will help with the edging and etc, but I'd rather keep him away from the dust and pollen. His allergies are so bad that he won't be able to sing on Sunday if he works in the yard too much on Saturday.
Anyway, all that is to get me to this point. I have been incredibly dense where my convertible lawnmower is concerned. All the years we've had it, I haven't liked using the bagging mode (necessary in Fall for leaf control) because you have to dump the bag out through the same place it goes into the mower (Or so I thought) and it takes forever because it clogs up. Well, today by chance I noticed that the back (read large) end of the bag opens for emptying. Gee, that sure is easier to deal with! How come I never noticed this before, and how come I don't remember seeing anything about that in the manual? (I ALWAYS read manuals for machinery and appliances. Life is much easier when you know the directions.)
We also washed both cars today. They really needed it. They are supposed to be white, but they had become that shade I can only describe as "Oklahoma Beige". It is what happens when a fine layer of red Oklahoma dust is deposited on a white surface. I always think of my Focus station wagon as a small car until I have to wash it. It is so much taller than our Escort wagon was. I have to stand on a stool to wash the top.
At least now it and the Taurus are white again, and I don't need to be afraid to get too close to the car when wearing my good clothes.
At any rate, my dryer is imperiously requesting my presence in the laundry room, so I guess that will be all for today.