When I first arrived at Minot in January, I was told that, after missile school, my first crew commander would be Steve Schurr. I soon met Steve and his wife Elaine. They had me over for dinner, Elaine was a wonderful cook, and we quickly became good friends. Unfortunately, while I was at Vandenberg I learned that the squadron needed to upgrade Steve to commander earlier than expected. He was crewed with someone else.
However, Steve and Elaine remained good friends for the entire time that they were in Minot (I think Steve took one of the early-out programs--he was from Kansas and Elaine was from Nebraska). They rather adopted me. So that for holidays, which was usual, when I could not be in California with my family, they invited me to their house to celebrate. Or for dinners or picnics, I was always a part of their family. I watered their plants at the garden space across the highway from the main gate that the Air Force leased from local farmers. (This wasn't easy. They had given me the keys to their Pinto station wagon and provided me with a huge container of water which I had to fill and haul by car over to the garden plot and pour out by hand. There was no water source there--you had to haul your own.)
Their house was just inside the housing area, almost at the end of BOQ parking lot, across the street, and about three houses down on the right. It was within easy walking distance. The picture above was their son (he was not named for me, just a co-incidence) when we all went to the Minot Zoo together that first summer. We would continue to be friends after I moved to Colorado Springs and the Air Force Academy. One morning my first summer in Colorado, I awoke in my new house, looked out at the driveway below, and there their camper was parked. They had come to visit for a few days and see the area.
Steve was with the U.S. weather service in Topeka, Kansas, since that had been his first Air Force assignment. I visited them in Topeka on a couple of occasions, en route to White Cloud, Kansas. Elaine was a nurse. They eventually had a second son.
I look at pictures like this, and ones later when Den and Beth Zito began having children, or Mike and Debbie Durr; and I realize that all of those offspring, who were far younger than five in the mid-1970's or had not been born yet, are all in their mid-30's or even older now. Of course, I was in my mid 20's or so when all of this happened.
Resolve
Lenthening the
hours of the years we monitor missiles and wait.
I see no change.
Only defeat seems the end of distrust.
The launchers will never dismantle
before they rust,
unless some new device,
some great outmoding force,
appears to replace.
No comments:
Post a Comment