Ann & Mark were separated. I remember that when I had to start telling everyone that I was gay and had to resign from the Air Force, it was Mark who delightedly called and told mom before I had a chance to tell her.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Me in mom's apartment at Harbor Towers, San Pedro, Christmas 1978
As you can barely see in the background, mom always taped all of her Christmas cards to the back of the front door. Every year she had tons of cards. These days, I don't think most people send nearly as many cards as she sent or got.
Of course, for me most of those who used to send me cards are gone.
I look at that Pendelton shirt and recall that, a year later when I was looking for a job, I did not own a suit to wear to job interviews. Not knowing that might have prevented me from getting some jobs, I wore that shirt over a dress shirt and tie. It was the best I could do with no income.
Mom's apartment, Harbor Towers, Christmas 1978
I had not intended to return to Southern California for Christmas vacation when I was teaching at the Academy during the break of Christmas 1978. However, one of my students from San Diego urged me to drive so that he could hitch a ride as far as Tucson--he would help with the driving on the way.
We took I-25 south through Albuquerque. Before we reached El Paso, we turned West and continued across southern New Mexico and Arizona until Tucson. I dropped him off at his parents' house and stayed at a Holiday Inn in Tucson before driving on. I believe we stopped somewhere along the way near Santa Fe the first night and had dinner at a motel restaurant. He found a hair in his food.
After my motel stay in Tucson, I continued across to San Diego and turned north to San Pedro, staying with mom and visiting friends and family.
Unfortunately, I had to drive back to Colorado Springs by myself since the cadet found another way to get back to the Academy. (He may have flown from San Diego.)
The drive back was rather boring. At the New Mexico-Colorado border, Raton Pass, the roads were very icy and the drive a bit treacherous in a car with rear wheel drive and me without chains. But I made it back home all right.
Me at Doherty High School, Fall 1978
John took this of me.
I would actually return to Doherty High School when, in 1988-9, I returned to college for secondary teacher certification. I never found a public school teaching job, so instead when a tech writing job became available in the Denver Tech Center first, I commuted for a few months in the Spring of 1990. And then the IBM job became available in 1991, so I moved to Denver permanently.
I actually did some student teaching for a few weeks at Doherty High School in the fall of 1988.
Two more pics of the gymnastics meet at Doherty High School, Fall 1978
The left pic is of the gym during the meet. The young woman on the right was a well-known female gymnast, but I no longer recall her name.
Hot Gymnast Bob Desiderio at Doherty High School meet, Fall 1978
I had John take this picture for me. He did so, but he also took, for himself, pictures of female gymnasts or young women in the audience who appealed to his tastes.
Olympic Gymnast Kurt Thomas, Doherty High School, Fall 1978
In the fall of 1978, my friend from Minot and the BOQ, John Ng, got tickets for us to go to Doherty High School, to see a gymnastics exhibition and match. Olympian Kurt Thomas was there not to compete but to ensure a full house.
Here are two pictures of him just showing off.
John Ng had moved to Colorado Springs after Minot the same summer. When my money ran out and I was about to either sell or lose my house, he offered to let me live in his basement until I worked something out. Fortunately, I was able to get a job at Kaman Sciences in the Spring of 1980 and keep my house.
I would run into John for years afterward. I had bought at least two Sony Betamax video recorders when we lived in Minot. He continued his independent electronics business for a few years until he left the Air Force, always wishing that he could have given me his commission instead of just resigning it.
Me on the back patio, late Spring, early Summer 1979
Inadvertent as it may have been, this could have been the last photograph taken of me before I learned that Cadet Bostic had turned me in to the OSI and my career was effectively over.
I cannot even say who might have taken this picture of me on my back patio, except that it might have been one of the two gay Cadets, George or Bill.
The young couple next door with the infant were building that tall fence. It was too tall and rather ugly, and so I was happy when the next owners, not that long after, moved in and tore it down, building a lower fence that restored the view from my back patio.
The patio chair I was lying on I believe I bought in Minot.
I would drive in that final innocent morning with Bruce Degi, with whom I shared a cubicle. I was to attend Air Command and Staff College in the fall and he would attend in the Spring. That's why we were sharing the same cubicle.
I had finished up my summer course for students who had failed the freshman English course during the Spring. I was speaking with a couple of other officers in another cubicle when Colonel Shuttleworth stuck his head in and told me that he needed to see me.
On my walk with him toward the department conference room, I had a developing sense of unease. He said nothing at first, but I knew something was very wrong. Before we reached the door, he told me that there were two gentlemen to see me, he may have even said that they were from the OSI. That's when my heart seized up in terror. There was nothing good about a visit from those scoundrels.
We might have been in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, and I was being told that the KGB needed to question me.
They were in civilian clothing so that no one would know their actual rank. The first words out of their mouths as they opened the brief case on the long table was, "We have the letters."
There inside were every one of the six letters I had send Cadet Bostic while he was on leave, the leave in Maryland that I had gotten for him. To say I was stunned would have been insufficient. Paralyzed was a better term. My mind was racing, wondering what had happened. Had his parents discovered the letters and demanded that he turn me in? Had something else totally inexplicable occurred?
I could not suspect that he had done all of this on his own. That he had lied to me and lied to others, to end my career so viciously.
They then launched into complete BS by attempting to get more out of me, "If you know any others, we need to know their names." They explained that every homosexual was susceptible to blackmail, so they needed their names, as well. I was too paralyzed to say anything, but I certainly was not going to rat on anyone else, on my friends. George, Bill and Dan were all gone. Only those few instructors such as Gina and Arlene (the Army Captain) were left to turn in at the Academy.
When they realized that I was not going to offer up anyone else's name, they then finally told me that I was allowed to have an attorney and pushed across the name and phone number of one at Peterson Air Force Base.
They, of course, claimed in their report that they had offered the legal help BEFORE asking for any information from me. That was--entirely--a lie. They could not even do their jobs without being devious and dishonest. "I will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate among us those who do." That was the Academy motto, and these two, who may have been officers or may have been enlisted, lied in their report.
When I was also given their report, which contained the minutes of all of the meetings between Cadet Bostic and the OSI, I was further slugged in the stomach. I had not been able to reach the Air Force attorney at Peterson, so I did not know what to do next. Colonel Shuttleworth suggested that I see someone else in the Academy Law Department. It was this officer, a major, I believe, who poured over the OSI's report. It was only then that he confirmed that Bostic had been reporting to the OSI for two months, almost from the beginning of our association. I quickly realized that he went after we had met and gone to the Overlooks to talk, where I warned him that he was being too overt in displaying his interest in me. We then drove to my house. I had given him the choice of my driving him back to his dorm or to wherever he wanted to go otherwise. He told me that he wanted to go to my house.
I now believe that I may have mentioned to him that I had discussed him with George, Bill and Dan. Keith had already known about Dan and his situation. Their investigation had long ago concluded when Dan agreed to resign and just accept his diploma and leave at the end of the spring term.
Perhaps he thought he would somehow become entangled in that investigation, and his going to the OSI a first strike on his part, to prevent his being thought of as gay and come under investigation. However, what he did and, further, what he said to the OSI simply implicated not just me but several others. Furthermore, he pretended to continue to be attracted to me and to visit my house. But every time he left my presence, he went to the OSI and made yet another confession. And he lied. Repeatedly.
After that, I had no other course of action to protect myself and others but to turn against him and expose his lies. As weeks passed, other cadets came forward and told their stories, stories that corroborated my information. Soon enough, I had another Air Force lawyer, one in the Law Department who assisted with the lawyer from Peterson AFB, and a civilian attorney who had helped Dan, Mr. Boomes.
When two other cadets in Bostic's Squadron 15, who knew about Bostic and were forced to admit that he had also told them he was an orphan with adopted parents who paid someone so Keith could use their dead son's identity to get into the Academy, my Law Department attorney proclaimed in derisive laughter, "Now everyone has an attorney!" Bostic had lied to both of my Air Force attorneys when they questioned him since they knew everything that I had told them about him.
He did not have a chance. They trapped him in every one of his lies.
When the cadet honor system OIC took a look at the charges against him, that officer knew that they could not even allow a cadet board to investigate these charges. The whole incident was much too sordid.
All of that time and energy and those resources that the taxpayers funded to investigate and kick out gay officers and cadets was an incredible waste. So many lives had been ruined thereby. For an institution that promoted honesty, they had created an environment that promoted lies and dishonesty. For a system that valued security, they had fostered insecurity and fear.
Congress finally ended all of that just a couple of years ago. We are all the better for it. The nation is the better for it. As Dalton Trumbo had proclaimed about the McCarthy Era and the communist witch hunts, "It will do no good to look for heroes and villains. There were none, only victims." (I first heard this narrated by Henry Fonda in LIFE GOES TO THE MOVIES; however, I cannot find it elsewhere--but it reflects the antigay witch hunts equally well.)
Me at Pikes Peak, and the Navigator's retreat, Spring 1979
Obviously, Roger took the picture of me with Garden of the Gods in the background.
The photograph on the right is of the Navigator's retreat. This castle was built by General Palmer for his wife. If I recall, she never really liked living there and spent most of her years back east.
Sometime after General Palmer died, his house and grounds were donated to the religious group, the Navigators as a conference center and retreat. It's not always been easy to get to see the grounds as they began to require reservations and usually well in advance.
When I see myself smiling in that picture, I realize that only a couple of months later, and my career would effectively be over. In about seven or so months, it would officially be over.
One of the officers in the department would tell Gina Martin that I ought to move to some city like Denver where I would be more tolerated than I would in Colorado Springs. If I had not already intended to remain in my home, whatever the cost, this surreptitious remark, probably not meant to reach me, maximized my determination to remain.
Roger Benninger, Spring 1979, with Pikes Peak in the background
Here Roger is, again in Garden of the Gods, with Pikes Peak in the background.
Besides Mike Mebs, Roger is my oldest friend (or friend whom I have known the longest) since our days at Minot AFB. I have no idea what happened to Dave Moore or Randy Bancroft from our days at Yorba Junior High School. Dennis Zito's wife did not friend my request on Facebook, so I don't know what they are up to these days. They were from my Marine OCS months and beyond.
But, off and on, Roger and I have kept in touch over the many years in between Minot and now.
It's always valuable to have friends who can remind you of you were a long, long time ago, when you were both younger than words can now describe.
Those who know you now can sometimes barely discern that it is you in those old photographs from long ago and, usually, far away.
What happened to the clothes we wore then? Or the hair we used to have so much more of?
We could not often define how our lives were going to turn out. When we would lose our parents along the way and other family members or friends.
On the phone a few weeks ago, Roger told me that he finally looked up the accident report for Tom Brundige back in the early 1980's. It seems that an inch or so of his parachute fabric, as it was being deployed after Tom bailed out, caught on the ear piece of his helmet and, when it yanked, broke his neck on a bailout that otherwise would have been survivable.
His friend was gone because of something so minuscule, made significant by something that should not have had any significance at all. You lose a friend over an inch, or fraction of an inch, of material that was intended to help save your life.
Fractions of an inch in combat are often the difference. But his death was in peace time. Or the remaining few years of the Cold War if you would have it.
It was not as if it were decades in between my resignation and the time when everything related changed so dramatically and, we hope, forever.
Roger Benninger, Garden of the Gods, Spring 1979
The Spittin' Kittens ADC unit that Roger piloted T-33's for often flew into Peterson Air Force Base. In the Spring, he was another of those who visited me.
We went to the Garden of the Gods, among other places. We also had dinner at a restaurant in one of the islands along Academy Boulevard, near the intersection of Palmer Park Boulevard. Roger used to remember the name of that restaurant and the great meals we each had that night.
Bruce Kelz was another visitor who came by for a few days that Spring.
6555 Palmer Park Blvd. late Spring 1979
The top photograph has Bill Ryder's Pacer in the driveway. You can see aluminum foil in the bedroom window to help block out the morning sun. Those cheesy, thin curtains hang in the closet window over the garage and the front room window.
In both photographs, you can see the lawn that the builder had installed the previous year.
In the bottom photograph, you can see the aluminum foil in the family room window.
On google maps, I saw my house as it is recently. The lawn was devastated and almost entirely gone all the way around the house.
I lived at this address, as I have said, from the Summer of 1978 until the Spring of 1991. I sold my house in 1994 or 1995, after renting it out to three different tenants. Once you rent out a house, you never really feel the same about it after that. When my friend Roger's friend and his boyfriend lived there for several months, I still would spend a random night sleeping in the spare bedroom when I drove down there. And in between renters, I would return to fix up or paint one room or another.
Yet when it looked as if I would never return to the Springs to live, and after I had become exasperated with renters who did not take care of my house when they lived there, I finally decided that I needed to sell it. It was too difficult to rent in Denver and rent out my house in the Springs.
I did have my RAoF characters show up in the backyard to bury the cremated remains of Schnozz, my cat. Pictures of her here in Colorado Springs will show up soon enough. And the move to Denver would be a decade away after I got her as a kitten from someone at work. That was my homage to this wonderful residence on the hill, overlooking so much of the city and the mountains beyond.
These photographs become signposts of where we were and where we are no longer. Of those whom we knew and now longer know, or those with whom we were friends and family whom we no longer experience among us.
They are little portals, tiny windows into our past lives and past experiences, some of which we treasure more than gold or jewels. Places where we spent so much time, or very little precious time, only to find that those times are gone forever. They exact a twinge of our souls when we linger over them and pull from our dusty thoughts a bright memory that does not ever seem to fade.
Selectively pulled out from our pasts, like a dentist might remove a tooth, we might not be exactly who we are now, to our detriment.
Bill Ryder in my family room, Spring 1979
While George labored in the kitchen, Bill Ryder, the third friend of the Academy gay trio, was shining his shoes, I believe, in my family room.
Bill had had some minor medical issues that Spring, but I think his main problem was that, discovering the bars and bathhouses of Denver, he partied way too much that Spring. He failed enough courses that, meeting an academic board, he essentially flunked out and never graduated. Like Dan, he was not even commissioned. Instead, he was required to serve out his required time as an enlisted man.
The last I had heard was that Bill was stationed at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California. He met a guy and they settled in together. Whereas George had probably been a bottom, as had Dan, Bill was exclusively a top. That and his relationship probably prevented his getting HIV.
After Dan moved from Denver, I never heard anything further about what happened to Bill Ryder, the only other survivor of our little group.
You can see that I went with chrome furniture and chrome lamps. That couch and chair looked really nice; however, the fabric shed a lot when it was new. Also, the fabric supports for the cushions tended to tear with repeated wear, especially with the larger, three-cushion chocolate fabric couch I bought for the living room. I was always having to order replacement support pieces, take the couches apart, and fit them back together after the replacement.
The little stools were part of a set of four that came with a game table that I had bought. I used a stool to set a plate on when I was eating and watching TV on my large Advent 6-foot TV that I bought on credit that Spring.
In the window behind the couch, I had to put aluminum foil and heavier currents to block out the brutal afternoon sunlight that faded the picture of the projection TV had I not done so.
The family room, and other rooms in the house, would feature prominently in many photographs in the decade of the 1980's after I was forced to resign from the Academy.
I was able to get just under $10,000 as severance pay for having a regular commission. That allowed me to buy some bedroom furniture, two dressers and a night stand and headboard, which I still have. The headboard and night stand for the spare bedroom I sold off or gave away when I moved to Denver in 1991-2.
George Gordy in my kitchen, late Spring 1979
George was one of Dan's two gay friends from the Academy. Here he is working in my kitchen, preparing dinner.
The Academy staff always encouraged us instructors to invite cadets over to our homes. I had many cadets over during my first, and only, year teaching there. Chris Keener and Vivet Mirage and her boyfriend stayed at my house over Spring break that year.
I feel saddened when I think of George and this picture from 1979. A decade later I was at a party in Denver. Dan was also there. I had heard that George was taken off flying status because of a positive drug test for marijuana. But at the party I also learned that, while he had married a woman--and what that was about I still am not certain--he was also diagnosed with HIV.
In some ways, George reminded me of myself. I believe he was the romantic sort who was always looking for love but never really found it--perhaps that it why he married a woman, finding at least companionship. Once when we met for lunch at the cafe in the academic building and I was talking a bit indiscreetly, he warned me that I might get in trouble because he sensed that others were listening to our conversation.
George would die that same Spring of 1989, as would Dick Tuttle, in April, I believe.
You can tell from just these few photographs just how devastating AIDS was to the gay community. By 1989, George and Dick were dead from our little group of five men in 1979. By 1995, Dan would also be dead. Three out of five were gone.
I still have that set of aluminum mixing bowls in the photograph. You can also see that the appliances in my kitchen were almond colored. That was the color in the late 1970's.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Dan & Dick at home, early summer 1979
This weekend just after graduation that I spent with Dan & Dick at the townhouse on Pennsylvania in Denver, CO, was significant for me.
Several weeks earlier, I had made contact with Dan in his squadron. In some small way I had wanted to make contact with him, having heard enough of the rumorsm and express my support. I called his squadron and asked for a student of mine whom I knew I could trust. He got Dan for me, and I told Dan that I had heard about what he had been going through and wanted to express my support for him. It was then that I learned of his deal with the Academy. I told him how sorry I was that it had come to that.
After we hung up, he called his two cadet friends, to let him know that I had called.
That call completed a circle. His friend Bill Ryder, who was Jewish, had chatted up a woman Army officer who also taught in the English Department. She was one of the lesbians in the department and had been at the Jewish service where she met Bill Ryder. Now, we all knew one another.
When I met the other two cadet friends of Dan, Bill Ryder and George Gordy, they told me about Dan's partner, Dick Tuttle. When I finally met Dan & Dick together and spent the weekend at their town home, they were the first gay couple I had known in my life.
Dan had not bothered to attend the graduation ceremony but had packed up this possessions and moved in with Dick in Denver. Dick would help to get Dan a job after graduation, and the two of them would remain together for the remainder of Dick's life, another ten years.
They would have their difficulties over those ten years. Dan almost left Dick for another man in San Francisco. But when Dick became ill, Dan called off that relationship to be with Dick. Dick told me, and everyone else, that it was liver cancer. That's what many were saying when they became sick during the 1980's. But it was AIDS. Dan would eventually be diagnosed, too.
After Dick died, I met Dan at their townhouse a couple of weeks later with a classmate and squadron mate, Willie, who was still in the Air Force. Dan gave me a small ceramic owl that someone had given Dick so that I had someone to remember him by. Dick loved owls. He'd even had a white one stuffed that he'd found dead on a fence in the country.
I would meet up with Dan in Hawaii one Christmas vacation in the 1980's where he would vacation over the holiday week. I would also meet up with Dan's new partner in San Francisco after he'd packed up the townhouse and sold it.
When I first stayed with them that weekend, they took me to dinner and later breakfast at the Governor's Park restaurant, not far from their townhouse. We debated the 1980 election that next year, during another dinner at the restaurant, and Dick informed me that he was voting for Reagan. I quietly warned him that he may live to regret that vote. When he was sick and staying at home, I came to spend a couple of different Sunday afternoons with him so that Dan could attend Broncos games with friends. I reminded Dick of my earlier warning, and he explained that I was not the only friend who had said Reagan would not be that friendly toward gays and lesbians. Reagan had failed to mention AIDS during most of his term, and his administration was not spending enough funds to help with research or help the victims.
Dick said that he was going to write a letter and demand to know why Reagan had not mentioned the disease nor provided sufficient support. Dick said he would no longer donate any more money to the Reagan library if he did not get a satisfactory response. I don't know if he ever did.
I soon felt a huge hole in my life when Dick finally died and Dan sold the townhouse and moved to San Francisco. Dan would die of AIDS in 1995, outliving Dick by six years.
Dick had told me on a couple of occasions that they had an open relationship. He explained that he realized if he required Dan to maintain a monogamous relationship that Dan might leave him. Dan only met with other men when he was out of town or Dick was out of town.
Only once, when I was at a birthday party for Dan, was Dick openly involved with someone else in front of Dan and all of their friends. It was an Air Force enlisted man whom he had met and became infatuated with. That relationship was perhaps why Dan was prepared to leave Dick and move in with the new guy in San Francisco.
What none of us knew in the late 1970's and early 1980's was that AIDS was on the horizon. Having an open relationship was not the most advantageous situation for anyone who did not exercise caution.
Dick Tuttle, early Summer 1979, Denver, CO
Dick Tuttle was a kind and generous man. He knew so many people in Denver. Whenever he and Dan would have a party at their home, the townhouse would be packed. I met him one weekend when I was invited up to Denver, and I would remain friends with them both until Dick died in April of 1989, the same month that my Grandma Breeze died at 86.
Dick at the time was a co-owner of The Ballpark, the Denver gay bath house. He admitted me one evening for free just so I could see what a bath house was like. When he finally sold his share in The Ballpark, he made a small fortune.
It was he who recommended a civilian attorney, to keep my Air Force attorneys honest during the investigation of me.
Cadets were able to purchase a display cadet sword and have it engraved. Dan bought one for Dick that read, "To Dick from Dan, thanks for everything."
The letter from the Canadian attache was enough to find Dan guilty of associating with known homosexuals. What his civilian attorney was able to do was to make a deal with the Academy. In exchange for his resignation at the end of the school term, Dan would be allowed to graduate but not receive his commission. He would owe the Air Force no enlisted time either. He would get a diploma from the Air Force Academy and then move on with his life, out of the service.
Former cadet Dan Stratford in Denver, early Summer 1979
Stories alleging homosexuality involving a senior cadet in Fifteenth Squadron began to circulate around the Air Force Academy in late winter and early spring of 1979.
The Latin phrase Plus Oultre was his squadron's motto: Best of the best, I believe it means.
But now some fellow cadets were sarcastically referring to that squadron as "Queen" Fifteen. This cadet was also rumored to have at least two gay friends, one each in two other squadrons. So, one was now referred to as "Rebel Eleven, homo heaven". I no longer remember the squadron number and name for the third cadet, but its new nickname was equally scurrilous and mean spirited.
The late Randy Shilts would interview Dan Stratford for his book CONDUCT UNBECOMING about homosexuality in the military. A sub chapter would be about Dan. I would also be interviewed and a my story, although not my name, would be included in Dan's passages.
When I learned the truth about what had happened and how Dan had been exposed, I was livid. Two proselytizing Christian cadets, the kind who would have prayer meetings in their dorm rooms and have other cadets on their knees, praying in their rooms, became convinced that Dan, a fellow senior, was gay.
While he was away on leave at Christmas, I believe, they went through his personal belongings for any evidence they could find, proving that he was, in fact, gay. Now, of course, going through a fellow cadet's belongings without permission was not authorized. They would further compound their misdeeds and lie during the investigation, claiming that they had only been looking for a physics paper that Dan had written and that they needed.
When Dan's attorney questioned them as to why they believed Dan was gay, their evidence was that he traveled to large cities such as New York and Dallas whenever he was on leave. That Dan also dressed stylishly.
What they did find was a letter, written by a Canadian attache to Dan. It was obvious that the letter was written by a homosexual man to Dan. With this evidence in their hands, the OSI began its investigation of Dan Stratford and his two friends. For, you see, associating with "known homosexuals" could also be in violation of Academy regulations regarding bringing discredit upon the Academy. Presumably, if you were cavorting with "known communists," that could also get a cadet expelled.
And what of the two, lying, deceitful Christian cadets who had found the evidence? They were no longer bothered. They'd found evidence of homosexuals at the Academy. Time for a witch hunt.
Dan had been dating an older man (Dan was 21 and his BF in Denver, Dick Tuttle, was 42) at the time. Dick would eventually help Dan financially with the investigation. His name would also come up during the investigation and he was approached, at work, by the OSI about what he knew about Dan. He would throw them out of his office at the famous construction firm Stearns-Rogers.
Dan would go on seeing Dick, but they would have to meet surreptitiously. Dan would drive to Denver and park his car in a mutual friends' garage. They'd close the garage door. Dan would get out of his car and then crawl onto the backseat or flooring of the passenger's side. They would pull out of their garage and drive to Dick's townhouse on Pennsylvania Street in Denver, driving into Dick's garage and parking. Down the door would go and out Dan would crawl, spending the rest of the weekend with Dick.
I wrote a poem about Dan and his experience at the Academy
Plus Oultre (Spring 1979)
For Dan Stratford
Backed against the eastern slope
to revive the remaining fear,
we cast him outward,
at once graduated and then expelled,
with no resurrection.
Where bound decisions
always bind us to misjudgment.
Washing with the past
without compassion;
absolving ourselves in precedent,
in committee.
Secretly unable to swerve
from practicing precision.
No courage to tolerate now
what will be accepted
in the months when we debated,
when we cared.
So we turn now in farewell,
knowing when we'll each forget.
Who were those before?
Who after?
Ignoring strength,
advancing on one.
In one of the vicious twists that life produces, "Who after?" was going to be me, in just a few weeks.
I always wondered if Dan would have stayed had he been able to. Had he been at the Academy now, with DADT overturned, would he have graduated rather than move in with Dick, if either choice was possible? Or would he have returned to the Air Force, had he been able to? He was supposed to head to pilot training after the Academy, as his friend George Gordy would.
Dick Tuttle once thought I was being way too optimistic that the ban on gays would be overturned in the next 5-10 years. DADT was at least a minor change, but that occurred in 14 years. So I was off by a few years. And I wonder, had they both lived, would they have felt some kind of vindication that DADT was overturned and gays could serve openly starting in 2011? I think Dick did not believe it would occur in our lifetimes. I certainly did not in his.
Col. Shuttleworth awarding me the Air Force Commenadtion medal, Spring 1979
Before it all fell apart a couple of months later, I was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal for my years of distinguished service in Minot as a missile combat crew deputy and missile combat crew commander.
I should have known better that nothing good lasts.
After I got my regular commission and captaincy in Minot, a disgruntled deputy made negative allegations about me to my Squadron Commander--what he specifically said I never was told--when we had a disagreement on alert one afternoon. I had told him that if he was not happy with me as his crew commander, he should ask for a new crew pairing.
Rather than simply do that, he told the new squadron commander and operations officer all kinds of nasty things about me--things nobody else had ever accused me of. Rather than ask me my side of the story, or if the allegations were even true, whatever those allegations were, I was called into the new squadron commander's office and told that I would likely not even get my assignment at the Academy if those at the Academy knew what I was really like. What the heck that meant, I had no idea. I was so stunned that anyone, knowing me at all, would ever make such a remark about me, I never did ask what the heck that deputy even alleged to be true about me.
Now, after I received this award at the Academy, and was chosen to be an instructor for the prestigious Blue Tube television course in the fall, Cadet Keith Bostic went to the OSI and told them that I was this predatory homosexual officer who was making unwanted advances toward him, a straight cadet, when exactly the opposite was true.
As I have maintained, about a third of his allegations in the OSI report were outright lies. One third of what he claimed about me were significant distortions regarding what actually happened between us. Only one third of what he said about me and other gay instructors or cadets was true. But rather than question what he told them, they wrote it all down, lies and all; and I was under secret investigation for a couple of months when I had no idea that the investigation was even going on.
Meanwhile, he continued to come over to my house and visit me in my office and ask for academic favors from me as his humanities advisor, including not having to take a failed spring course over the summer and get leave to go home to Maryland instead.
The day before he left, having no proof as yet of what he claimed to be true about me, the OSI had him write a note to me, providing his address in Maryland in the hopes that I would write to him over the summer. The OSI sneaked into my cubicle and left the note on my desk.
Foolishly, I did write to him. He kept the letters and turned them over to the OSI when he returned from leave. He then promptly left for an Air Force training camp at Fort Carson later in the summer while expecting that I would be charged, resign, and leave in disgrace, presumably without going after him for all of the lies he told, and not just about me.
He misjudged the type of man, and officer, I was. Because not only had he implicated me, but he implicated other cadets and officers whom I knew. Unless I discredited him and what he said, others might be accused of being gay and be investigated and forced to resign, as well.
For the next couple of months, I found cadets who were able to corroborate what I knew about him, what he had told me about himself. If true, he never should have been accepted to the Air Force Academy in the first place. If not true, he should have been tried and convicted of repeatedly lying while an Academy cadet and been forced to resign from the Academy.
That, of course, was what eventually happened. One week before I left the Air Force, he resigned in disgrace and left for lying to Air Force authorities, and my Air Force lawyers, repeatedly. A fitting end for such a scoundrel and cheat. But, of course, I was forced to resign because I was gay.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Front porch, 6555 Palmer Park Blvd. Winter 1978-9
From 1978 until 1991, I had to shovel those steps every winter, as well as the driveway.
When I think of all of the people, friends and family and one night stands, who climbed those steps and entered that front door. So many of them are now gone.
My grandfather visited one year. My mom came several times over the years.
Colorado Springs was a wonderful vacation destination.
Front 6555 Palmer Park Blvd. Winter 1978-9
Nothing ever stays new, no matter how hard you try.
That year I did buy an Advent projection TV for the family room--with a huge 6-foot diagonal screen on two legs. The projection tub sat a few feet away and projected the image onto the separate screen.
The so-called drapes throughout the house were cheesy and cheap. And I did not have any real furniture anywhere. But I did have a great sound system and television.
That's all that matters, right?
Oh, and I did buy two queen-sized beds, one for my room and one for the guest room because, that first year, I did have several guests visit.
I believe the first to arrive were the Schurrs in the fall. I woke up one morning and found their small RV in the drive way.
I was only able to wave at them as I pulled out of the garage on my way to work. I left them a key so they could enjoy the house while I was gone.
6555 Palmer Park Blvd. Winter, 1978-9
The back of the house and the east side under new snow, the first winter I spent in my new house.
That first year, I had a plague of black widow spiders all along the edge between the brown siding and the stucco side of the house, especially before the stucco was applied. I also that first year or two had black widow spiders in the basement of the house.
This being fields before the houses were built, that wasn't surprising.
View from my back patio, 6555 Palmer Park Blvd. circa 1978
Using two photographs, shoved together to create this panorama, and you have the view from my back patio on Cimarron Hills. Pikes Peak and Norad are particularly prominent.
Looking directly south, you could see the Spanish Peaks on the Colorado-New Mexico border on a clear day.
Needless to say, I loved living in that house, living in Colorado Springs, and teaching at the Academy.
It's rather a sad thought that, at the age of 28, except for a boyfriend, I literally had it all. All that I had ever wanted professionally and, to some degree, personally was in my grasp. However, in my anxiousness to acquire that final goal, a BF, I lost everything except my house.
The Academy planetarium, Summer 1978
One year, and it's probably been done since, the cadets, for a prank, used black-died sheets and turned the exterior dome into a giant 8 Ball.
More pictures of the Academy grounds, Summer 1978
There are many places around the Academy grounds to take spectacular photographs, almost on a daily basis.
That first summer, we new arrivals were given an extensive orientation of the facilities.
The Human Relations officer said something during his presentation that wasn't really accurate. He spoke of gay personnel. I no longer remember the exact words he used, but they really would not apply until over thirty-two years later.
Perhaps he was just trying to think ahead. Unfortunately, for me, it was too far ahead to impact my career.
One of those on the tour was a new law instructor for the Law Department. In less than a year, he would be selected to defend Keith Bostic, the cadet who would ruin my career, as well as his own.
When the English Department found out that I had been the Squadron supply officer at Minot, I was given the same job there. Most of that time it required my picking up new IBM Selectric typewriter balls for the typewriters that all of the department secretaries used.
Most of them seemed to like me quite a bit because I took care of what they needed promptly. And most seemed very saddened when I was forced to resign.
Summer 1978 Thunderstorm over the Academy
As you can tell from several photographs I took that summer, the film I used and/or the f-stop I utilized contributed to tinted, almost sepia, colors.
Regardless, these two still showed how powerful and dramatic thunderstorms could be over the Academy grounds.
I definitely reached back into this first summer at the Academy, and perhaps these photographs, when I wrote some of the passages in Chapter Twenty-one for RAoF: A Mile-High Saga:
"The hills roll massively upward at a slow grade until, finally, Rampart Range rides straight up to the sky. One can almost hear the ancient, volcanic eruptions that pushed these heights up through the Earth's crust to where they now reside, triumphant.
"Yet the stillness of an airless moon envelops this entire locale. Dark clouds can mass silently behind this protective range until the heady gray formations push themselves over the tops of the various peaks, and a thunderstorm, fully unfurled, rages on an otherwise peaceable summer's afternoon."
Monday, December 17, 2012
English Department picnic, Summer 1978
The top photograph is Jay Gaspar and his wife on the right side.
The middle and bottom photos are of Colonel Shuttleworth playing base and my department sponsor playing guitar.
It was my sponsor, who when leaving the Academy the following year asked me to take over academic advisement of a Third Class Cadet, Keith Bostic. Had he handed over Bostic to someone else instead, anyone else instead, my Air Force career would likely have gone on indefinitely.
Gina Martin, Greg, Murphy & Clover
Although these two photographs were developed in Oct 1979, and we're skipping ahead here, this is my neighbor Gina Martin and her dogs Murphy and Clover. I used to take Clover for a run in the neighborhood. She was the large Irish Setter.
I found out only later than Clover actually belonged to Gina's ex, and after that first year or so, she eventually arrived and took clover with her. Murphy would eventually be plagued by back problems and would pass some time in the 1980's, after Gina left the Academy early and took a different assignment.
Gina could be a very stubborn officer, with very strongly held convictions; and she managed to make a few enemies at the Academy in the English Department. After only about two years there, she and they agreed to part ways and let her continue her career elsewhere.
It was Gina who let me know that some members of the department were back stabbers and very malicious toward me, even before the scandal erupted in the summer of 1979.
I suppose that what I learned about others disillusioned and disappointed me somewhat about the environment at the Academy. The department, in fact probably all departments, were filled with highly competitive and even cut-throat individuals, looking to advance their careers, even at the expense of others. Our small incoming group of instructors was probably more unfortunate than others. I was forced to resign after one year. Gina left after two years. John Dubler decided to leave the service and become a minister. Because of that attrition, one of those remaining, Bruce Deggie, was the one selected to get a Phd and return to the Academy to teach for a much longer time. That, more than likely, would have been me had I not screwed it all up.
6555 Palmer Park Blvd. late Summer 1978
I took a week or so of leave from the Academy that summer before my house was completed. When I returned, they'd painted the exterior. I suppose I was surprised because I did not realize that the colors that it looked like in the first couple of photos were not the colors the house was going to have when they were done.
The little girl in front and the little boy standing on the patio in back were children of the Fedrizzi's.
It would never be easy to mow the lawn. That first year my next door neighbor Gina Martin and I hired a lawn care service to mow. But after that first year, it got to be too expensive, so I finally bought a lawn mower and did the work myself.
It took a lot of effort to not only mow but water and fertilize the lawn, too. Plus, for a few years, I could not afford to install the rocks to keep the soil from erodiing when we had terrific summer thundershowers from the west.
Eventually, the subsequent set of neighbors who moved in on the right of the top photo, pushed me to finally install rocks and railroad ties. We even built a support wall toward the bottom so that the slope was not so severe. Rock was also place around the house itself and the bottom and side fences.
The house itself commanded a spectacular view, as you will later see. I could look outside and gaze far to the south, or at airliners landing at the Colorado Springs airport. Even from the basement window, just visible in the bottom photo, a couple of yards to the right of the back door, you could see Pikes Peak.
Academic Building USAFA, Summer 1978
These are the first two photographs I took of the Air Force Academy academic building from the faculty parking lot. The lot was on a hillock across a bridge from the building itself. In winter, it was chilly walking those sidewalks to work after parking. Heads of departments and a few others did get to park just outside the building or underneath in the parking garage reserved spaces. Those of us regular instructors had to park on the hill. But, as you can see even from these two photos, it was beautiful when the weather was glorious and warm, as it was much of the year.
Having spent my first four years and more in North Dakota, and often underground, working at the Academy was incredible. I cannot even impart how exhilarated I felt working there every day. The daily drive alone was immensely enjoyable. I felt as if I were working at Valhalla.
I know it would all be over much too soon, but I was thrilled to be there while it all lasted. Regardless of the backbiting and politics that seems a part of academia, I still tried not to notice, even when I was hearing the gossip and the complaints about my own joy of just being there amid like-minded colleagues. Or so I thought they were like-minded.
The several departments were on the top floor. The English Department offices were on the far right end of that floor, just before the gap that existed between the academic departments and the Cadet Library, visible in the top photograph.
Colonel Shuttleworth, the Department Chair, had his office in the very northeast corner. No one who had an office by the window had anything but a remarkable view. The new instructors got our offices on the aisle way, two offices in from the windows. We had no view, but we could always walk over and take a long look whenever we wanted to.
I would not learn until later that the woman whose cubicle next to mine, toward the windows was also lesbian. In fact, of the four women in the English Department, all but one was lesbian. I, however, was probably the only man who was gay. When I was forced to resign, I was replaced by an officer who was so obviously gay, it was rather ridiculous. This was long before Don't ask; don't tell, but he told with every utterance and every movement. Even I, who was often oblivious as to who was gay or lesbian and who was not, was fully aware that he was gay.
First photos of 6555 Palmer Park Blvd, Summer 1978
I don't believe that our houses in Tampa, FL, or Santa Ana, CA, were brand new when we moved in in the late 1940's or early 1950's. Our house on Foxley Drive in Whittier was definitely new, as was the triplex in Orange, CA.
But this was my own first new home. I realize now that this might be the only new home of my own.
Although it was quite far from the Air Force Academy complex on the north side of Colorado Springs, there were few signals between my home and the Academy when I first moved in.
However, that was not to last. During that first year on living on Cimmaron Hills at 6555 Palmer Park Boulevard, I counted approximately 13 new signals going up that year. In later years, long after I'd been force to resign, traffic on Academy Boulevard would increase until such a drive would be a long one.
But that was all in the future.
Late that summer my house would be completed and I would move in. My interest rate was 9.5 percent. I was house poor and would be for quite some time. Furniture would come later, sometimes a few years later. Several years later, I would be plagued by the poor piping they used for the plumbing--it was plastic and deteriorated over time.
This tract of homes, as were several all over Colorado Springs, was built by Gendron Homes. They provided a certain amount of sod for the lawns. I managed to get away with not putting up fences since my neighbors all around installed them.
I would also discover that my neighbor below me was in the English Department, as well. She had picked an even bigger home from Gendron, specifically this far away from the Academy to have some privacy since she was lesbian. She was very disappointed to discover that I lived above her home. But we eventually figured out that we were both gay, so her privacy remained intact.
Crew photo 1977-8, Minot AFB
These color photos replaced the B&W photos in the crew lounge. I took this with me the day I left Minot. The 235 alerts were over. The late night training rides and standboard evaluation rides in the trainer were over. Seven highly qualified ratings and two qualified ratings and no busts helped my career immeasurably. I had three commanders, Bill Graham, Dan Gurganus, and Tim Sholtis. I had three deputies: the guy I cannot remember from Oregon, Pat "PJ" Johnson, and Jake Gladden.
When I left, I drove south from the base, through the town of Minot toward Bismark. I listened to Jimmie Rodgers "The World I Used to Know" on my car cassette recorder. I took the highway across the lower part of North Dakota, turning south to pass through the eastern edge of Iowa and Nebraska until I finally arrive in White Cloud, Kansas, to spend a couple of days with Grandma Breeze, Uncle Robert, and Uncle Hap and Aunt Doris.
I then drove across Kansas toward Colorado, arriving at the Fedrizzi's house late one afternoon in Colorado Springs. I checked in at the Academy the following day.
There was, of course, no way to know what lay ahead, that my career had little more than a year and a few months left. But that I would remain in Colorado for the next three decades and more. That I would live in Colorado Springs until jobs took me to Denver and then to IBM, north of Boulder. That would eventually force me to sell my house in the Springs and live in Denver permanently.
We almost never have the luxury of living our lives over at any stage, undoing our mistakes, or at least one major mistake. For years I would imagine myself returning to teach at the Academy--I had no idea under what circumstances or when. I certainly never imagined that I would have two opportunities to apply, but be turned down both times, in 1994 and then again in 2011.
You sort of have to learn to defer your dreams not just indefinitely but often permanently.
I wrote the following in the first RAoF book, A MILE-HIGH SAGA:
"Greg occasionally wonders if he might ever have the opportunity to lift himself up above his existence and look at the entire span of his life. Would he, in fact, be viewing a complex maze, one with several, built-in possibilities he'd never noticed? Or would he see but a single path possible, circuitous perhaps, but puzzling only in its direct simplicity, like some grand connect-the-dots drawing? And what kind of picture would his life's efforts reveal when all of the dots are conjoined? Right now, however, the image seems incomplete, unfulfilled. Several dots must still be out there, lying unconnected, he believes, waiting for him to make the junction."
Getting a congratulations handshake for making captain and getting a regular commission, December 1977
Academy graduates automatically received a regular commission upon graduation. The rest of us had to earn one, and it was a small percentage of officers who did so.
This was one of the high points of my career at Minot. It would deteriorate after that before I finally left for the Academy in a few months.
Captaincy and regular commission at Minot
This was likely in the late fall of 1977, four years after I graduated from Air Force OTS. Not only did I make captain, but I also earned a regular commission, rather like tenure. All of the hard work and study and seven HQ ratings as a missile combat crew commander paid off.
What I did not realize at this happy moment when Lt. Col. Glazer had us recite the oath of office was that this ceremony would at least entitle me, almost two years later, to almost $10,000.00 severance pay when I forced to resign.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Christie Durr in her Easter rabbit costume, circa 1977
A color slide of me with Christie Durr when she was in the Easter rabbit costume that Debbie made for her. We are in a chair in the living room of their family housing quarters at Minot. Possibly circa 1977.
Christie Durr's 2nd birthday party, Minot AFB, circa 1977
These two are likely from Christie Durr's second birthday party in Minot. Probably 1977.
