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.

---

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

I never got around to visiting the Academy planetarium during the seventeen months I was stationed there.  I believe that Colonel Shuttleworth also enjoyed astronomy, but I never managed to go.

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."

---

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.

---

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.

---

Mike & Christie Durr at the 1977 742nd SMS picnic

As I have written before, the Durrs became very good friends after the Schurrs left the Air Force toward the end of my assignment at Minot.  Mike and I played and coached a number of the teams and we spent many hours on courts and on the playing fields for our squadron and for our wing.

 

That's how you survived, and thrived, in Minot, because of good, good friends.  The Durrs would also end up in Colorado Springs for a few years before Mike left the Air Force to return to Seattle, WA, where he grew up and where his and Debbie's families lived.

 

We even got together one afternoon in Denver when I lived here and Mike was in Colorado for Boeing Aerospace.  I also visited with him and his boys when they showed up at a Barnes and Noble bookstore in Seattle where I did a books signing for the RAoF series.

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Still more pics from the 742nd SMS picnic, 1977

The top picture is Jeff Fedrizzi (in the hat and sunglasses) sitting next to Debbie Durr at the picnic table.  I would spend a few weeks staying with the Fedrizzis when I transferred to the Academy before my house was finished.  It was a difficult few weeks for me and probably for them.  His wife could be difficult though Jeff and I got along fine.

 

The bottom picture is Terry Stahl on the left and Mike Durr, holding Christie.  Terry's wife would kick him out on Christmas Eve because she found someone else whom she would soon marry.  That officer would leave his wife and kids for Terry's wife.  A few years later, I would meet that other officer's wife when she also worked for the same company I did in Colorado Springs after I was forced to resign from the Air Force.

 

I suppose it wasn't all that surprising that during a somewhat isolated assignment in North Dakota that some marriages would implode.   Many of these men and women met while they were in college, and this was the first time they'd been seriously exposed to other potential partners elsewhere under the pressure of being a military family.  The one officer who would later marry Terry's wife was an Academy grad who only married his first wife because neither thought they'd find someone else to marry.

More pics from 742nd Squadron picnic, Summer 1977

I believe that the guy in the top photo to the left is Dan Gurganus, my last crew commander before I upgraded to crew commander myself.  The guy with the glasses talking to him was my flight commander, whose name escapes me.

 

The bottom picture is of my first deputy and his wife on the swings.  She played for the wives volleyball team.  Both their names escape me at the moment.

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742nd Squadron Picnic, Summer 1977

The top picture is of squadron buddy Terry Danford.

The bottom picture is of Dan Ramage, consoling his son.

 

Terry and his wife later moved to Colorado Springs.  Dan Ramage played the lead character in a squadron play we put on that I wrote--a crew member parody of The Headless Horse, called the handless crew member.  Or maybe it was a parody of A Christmas Carol.  I played the ghost of Christmas future.

 

I was asked to put on a few plays during my tenure.

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Greg in the Coliseum, August 1977

The top picture is undated, but it's probably from 1975 or 1976, taken in mom's apartment in Harbor Towers where she lived from the later 1970's until we moved her out in the spring of 2002.  Behind me on the wall is the Magnolia pastel that mom acquired from the artist back in the 1940's.  It was on the wall of several of her residences over the decades.  The woman artist, mom told me years ago, had died of cancer.  Ann got the picture after mom died, but I believe that she disposed of it a few years ago.

 

The bottom photograph was also from mom's camera and is dated the same as several others, August 1977.

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August 1977 photos of Ann & me, and me

Both of these photographs, taken with mom's camera, were developed in August 1977.  The one with Ann and me is probably Belmont Shore.  The other could be on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, near Marineland.

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Mom at Ports O' Call Village, circa 1975

This is mom on the same day at Ports O' Call in San Pedro.

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Another picture at Ports O' Call Village, circa 1975

At first I was not sure where this was taken. Then I recognized that this is the parking lot of Ports O' Call Village.  I am also wearing the same clothes as in the previous photograph, on the same day.  In addition, my new Canon camera is slung over my shoulder.

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Greg at Ports O' Call Village, circa 1975

Mom certainly loved living in San Pedro, CA, from 1976 or so until we were forced to move her to an assisted living facility in 2002, a couple of months before she died.

 

One of the places she especially enjoyed visiting and having coffee was Ports O' Call Village, only a few blocks away.

 

She made friends with a woman who worked at a shop there, Wings.

 

Before she was hit by a guy riding a bicycle on a sidewalk in Long Beach, she also used to ride her own bike down to Ports O' Call and visit other friends she'd made there.

 

I always made sure, especially around Christmas time, whenever I visited, that we stopped into Ramona bakery to buy baked goods for the holiday season.

 

Some of the ships with masts and rigging are in the background in this picture.

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Mike, mom and Lida in Resida, CA, circe 1975

Likely the same year, either 1975 or 1976, that I took the pictures at the Madura's house, or Ann & Mark's house, I took these and Mike & Lida's house in Resida, CA.  I believe they, too, were renting this house until the purchased one not long after living here.

 

In those, with so many friends and family members living in Southern California, when I did go home on leave for a week or two at a time, I had so many people and houses to visit.  My leave was often taken up by all of the visits, I didn't do much else or go anywhere else.

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More from Ann & Mark's rented house in Belmont Shore, circa 1975

At the time, being newly married, they didn't have much furniture.  A dining room table, but only folding beach chairs for the living room.

 

We all had several years ahead of us, but Mark would be the first to pass from that motorcycle accident several years after he and Ann had divorced and he'd remarried.  A rain slick Long Beach freeway was the cause, and likely that he was driving too fast for the road conditions.  Mike Mebs found the article in the paper and relayed the information to me and I to Ann.

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Ann & Mark's rented house, Belmont Shore, CA, circa 1975

From these and the next three, taken the same evening, mom and I had dinner with Ann and Mark in their rented house in Belmont Shore.  Perhaps it was 1975 or it might have been 1976.  I am wearing the same white-and-yellow striped shirt that I was wearing in the photos at Dennis and Linda Madura's house.  Likely, this was later that same day.

 

I remember that this was probably the house they lived in when they got married.  During the ceremony, the nervous preacher said, "Put her finger on the ring."

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Mike Mebs, and Linda and Dennis Madura at Mike and Lida's house in the Valley, circa 1981

I included this photo here because it and one other, poorly lit, were the last two that I have of Dennis and Linda Madura.  The back of the photograph indicates it was developed in January of 1981, after I was out of the Air Force; so this was probably taken during the Christmas holiday week of 1980.

 

I had begun working at Kaman Sciences in Colorado Springs in June of 1980.  They typically gave their employees the Christmas to New Year's week off, so that, unlike my years in the Air Force when it was difficult to get leave that week, it was often the time I visited California and all of my friends there.

 

As with the Zito's and the Schurrs and the Durrs, I wonder how Dennis and Linda are doing these days and how their children have grown since they were very young when I last saw them in the early or mid 1980's.

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Dennis, Linda and Greg in the family room of the South Gate house, circa Christmas 1977

Whomever they had bought the home from, this family room was an addition to the back of the house.

 

As you can see, an undecorated Christmas tree stands behind us in the bottom photograph.

 

Since it was often difficult to get leave during Christmas itself, I would often travel a week or more before Christmas.  The photo album states that this is Winter 1977, the year before I left Minot for the Air Force Academy.

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Linda Madura with their puppy, circa 1976, South Gate

Here Linda is, cradling their new puppy, in the backyard.

 

One of the reasons that they moved from South Gate is that they were having a family and the house was not large enough.  In addition, it must have been nearer to his job.

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Dennis and Linda Madura in front of their South Gate home, with the Camaro circa 1976

Here they are standing before their home in South Gate.  To the left is Dennis's prized 1973 Camaro, which he bought about the same time that I bought my '73 Camaro, at the same dealership off the San Diego freeway, Cormier Chevrolet.

 

His was more of a muscle car version than mine with the top.

 

He eventually sold his before I did, after he and Linda eventually moved inland from Oceanside, CA, not far from Camp Pendleton.  At that time, he worked for one of the large, California aerospace companies.

 

I once visited them there, it seems around Christmas, in the mid 1980's.  After that, we seemed to have drifted apart.  I was open then about being gay, and I am not sure that sat as well with Linda.  She was a more religious person, and after they married, she and Dennis, who never had been a church goer, attended church regularly.

 

They had a couple of kids at that point, as well.

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Greg in the Madura's South Gate garden, circa 1976

Here I am displaying, or being shocked by, the produce from their backyard garden in South Gate.

 

I believe this was the day I had stopped by the Carson Mall on my way, intending to buy some candy in a sweet shop there.  I ordered two pounds of white chocolate, not know how much that actually would be.  The sales girl made a snippy remark about the quantity, but, in a huff, I confirmed, "Yes, I want two pounds." 

 

I ended up with more white chocolate than I could ever hope to eat, so I shared some with the Madura's when I got to their house.

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Dennis and Linda Madura, circa 1976, South Gate, CA

I no longer remember how Dennis and Linda met.  She was from Idaho.  Mike, Lida and I drove up to Boise for their wedding in 1973 or 1974, before I entered the Air Force.

 

After they were married, they lived in South Gate, renting half of a duplex not far from where I used to live in South Gate.  However, after a year or so, they bought a house in South Gate.

 

The photograph above is the two of them playing "American Gothic" in their back garden.

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Dennis Madura, mid-1970's, South Gate, CA

I met Dennis Madura in 1968 or 1969 through Mike's eventual wife-to-be, Lida, at East L.A.J.C.  She and Dennis went to school together at Bell High School, the town on the other side of the unincorporated berg of Cudahy from South Gate, just over from Huntington Park.

 

Dennis drove a hot 1967 white Chevy two-door.  He had an awesome sound system for 8-track tapes.  He also bought a Roberts 8-track tape recorder.  Until I bought one for myself, I would drive over to his house and we'd make 8-tracks tapes of our own to listen to in our cars.

 

Whereas Daylin and I might drive to West Hollywood to the Pickwick Book Store, Dennis and I would head there to the Tower Records store.  We also enjoyed planetarium shows at the Griffith Park Planetarium (hence the picture of Dennis and Ann inside the planetarium theater post earlier).

 

Dennis's dad ran a Richfield gas station in Bell, which Dennis worked at much of the time.  It was later converted to an ARCO station when they changed the brand.  Dennis's parents were also divorced.  We were friends from the late 1960's until sometime in the 1980's when we just sort of drifted apart.

 

The photograph above was taken in the mid-1970's, possibly 1976 or 1978, when Dennis and his wife, Linda, bought a house in South Gate, not far from where the Butlers lived, south of Tweedy.

Grandpa Sanchez relaxing at home, Yucaipa, CA, circa 1975

While Grandma Sanchez had probably less than two years remaining of her life, Grandpa Sanchez would live for another 12 or so productive years, surviving those two more wives who are buried next to him in the cemetery by the freeway just east of Yucaipa.

 

We visited the cemetery a couple of years ago, me for the first time.  An unusually cold and strong wind blew, making the visit uncomfortable.  One of his wives, probably the last one, has her name on his headstone.  However, his other wife probably occupies the space next to his grave, but she has no headstone.  I thought that sad that perhaps she had no children or friends living who would get her a headstone, to mark at least the beginning and end of her existence of earth.  She might have been the third wife, who died not long before he did, so he was unable to provide one for her either since he was also dying.    

 

Accompanying dad, we would see Grandpa Sanchez five days before he died, upon the advice of his doctor who told dad that his father had only a few days to live with his kidneys failing.  Grandpa Sanchez was certain that he was 95 about the time he died, but dad was able to figure out the year he was born in Spain and that he was just shy of that age, 94 years old instead.

 

I look back at the arc of their lives and realize how very little I know about how Grandpa came to America after WWI, in approximately 1919.  Why had he decided to leave Spain as a teenager and come to America alone?  He had no other relatives here that I am aware of.  We met his sister and her husband when they visited us in Orange, CA, in the early 1960's; but I don't recall anyone discussing the particulars of their lives in Spain in the early 1900's, when they were children together. 

 

Grandpa Sanchez, in leaving Spain when he did, was long out of the country by the time Francisco Franco and the Nationalist forces initiated the bloody Spanish Civil War--nearly three years long from 1936 until 1939--with the help of the Nazi's.  They were attempting to oust the elected Republican government, and they succeeded. 

 

Grandpa was also not in Spain during all of those oppressive years of Franco's dictatorial rule, the General having long outlived those other extremist dictators, Hitler and Mussolini, by several decades.  He lasted in power for 36 terrible years until he finally died in 1975, then becoming the long-running news joke on Saturday Night Live:  "General Francisco Franco is still dead."  An ironic epitaph if there ever was one.

 

As I said, I don't know how Grandma and Grandma Sanchez met since her family lived in Montana and dad was born in Martinez, CA, in 1920.  So they must have met in California, but how Grandma or Grandpa got there, I do not know.  How they sctually met and fell in love, I also do not know.

 

I suppose no one really talked about those sorts of intimate moments and memories among their generation, nor shared them with their offspring.  I certainly have no idea how Grandma and Grandpa Breeze met, fell in love, and married; and they were from that same generation.

 

Grandma and Grandpa Sanchez raised two boys, George and Leon, while owning a grocery store.  They had had a daughter who died in infancy, though I do not know what she died of or what her name was.  Dad died in 2002, Leon two years later.  Dad had me, Ann, and Lorri with two different wives.  Leon had five children with his first wife, kept a mistress, finally divorced Lourdes, whom I have never met, and then married another woman late in his life whom I did meet when dad was dying in April of 2002 in an emergency room in Orange County.

 

Dad was a bombardier and an officer, as well as a P.OW. in Germany, the country from which Grandma Sanchez's family came perhaps 100 years ago; and Leon left the U.S. for Mexico before he could be drafted and serve as an enlisted man in a war that killed so many countless men and women on all sides.

 

Among Ann, Lorri and me, we have no offspring.  Among our cousins in Mexico, I have no idea how many of them married or have offspring.  Jose died childless.

 

It's all a rather strange situation that we kids never asked about so many details of their intimate lives, and they never really told us much either.  Perhaps they thought we wouldn't be interested.         

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Greg, Grandma and Grandpa Sanchez, circa 1975, Yucaipa, CA

Grandpa and I seem to be thoroughly enjoying ourselves, but Grandma was caught with a profoundly forlorn and faraway look. 

 

Basically, she died of old age, as far as I can tell, at 77 years old or so in 1977,  perhaps 1978 (I know I was living in that end BOQ room when I got the call from Ann). 

 

The same happened to Grandpa Sanchez at 94 when everything began breaking down all at once.  The same also happened to dad at 81 when everything with his body had failed or was failing.

 

Not really cancer or heart disease, just total system failure, primarily the kidneys, but mostly because of old age with everything giving out at almost the same time.

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Ann and Greg at Grandma and Grandpa's circa 1975

An even better look at the garish trousers, and I had forgotten all about those white slip-on shoes with the gold buckle.  Ah, 1970's fashions!

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Ann, Grandma and Grandpa Sanchez, circa 1975

When I think back, I realize that we have those B&W photographs from mom of Grandma and Grandpa Sanchez in Newport when they owned the house on the water and the sailboat.  I have those very few photographs taken before my graduation or Ann's graduation.  And these.

 

I do have a couple of Grandpa Sanchez when he remarried a couple of years after Grandma died and we visited them in the same trailer, but they are fairly blurry.

 

In fact, Grandpa Sanchez remarried twice.  His second and his third wives also died before he did at the age of 94 in a nursing home in Yucaipa that Ann and I visited five days before he died.

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Ann, Grandma Sanchez, and Greg in Yucaipa, circa 1975

I'm wearing my usual dark blue dress shirt, and this may be the only time I was photographed wearing those red, white and blue bell-bottom pants.  I bought them before going into the service, from that same clothing shop that Daylin told me about in South Gate.

 

Fortunately, despite the fact that they were rather garish, in retrospect, I was slim enough to wear them.  Bell bottoms were not for the overweight. 

 

The three of us are sitting on their couch in the living room of their long trailer.  When we did visit them in the 1960's, Ann slept in the main trailer.  I was relegated to sleeping in the Airstream trailer in the storage lot.

Grandma Sanchez, Ann, Grandpa Sanchez, Yucaipa, mid-1970's

When Ann and I lived with mom, the summer of 1964, we spent the better part of a month staying with Grandma and Grandpa Sanchez at their trailer park in Yucaipa, CA.  We road down with them to Ensenada, to a trailer park there in their Airstream trailer.  I slept in their station wagon. 

 

They spent the remainder of their years either living in one or another trailer park in Yucaipa, or taking their Airstream down to Mexico to see the cousins in Mazatlan, the children of Leon and Lourdes, living there.  I have never met nor corresponded with Jose (when he was alive), Lourdes, Bennie, Malou, and the final cousin of whom Ann does not remember the name. 

 

Frankly, I am not sure how often any of them visited the United States.  And I have never visited Mazatlan.  Ann, however, has been there a few times back in the 1980's primarily, so she has at least met them at one time or another.

 

As I look over my collection of photographs, and the ones I inherited from mom's collection, we have so few of the Grandparents Sanchez.  While Grandpa Sanchez would live into the late 1980's, Grandma Sanchez would die in 1977, but managed to drag herself to Mexico and died there, where the requirement is to bury the dead within 24 hours of passing.  There was no way either Ann, dad or myself could have gotten there for the funeral.  But Ann has always believed Grandma Sanchez wanted to be buried in Mexico near her grandchildren there.

 

So the following photographs we took on the patio of their trailer and inside the trailer are the last I have of Grandma Sanchez.  These are probably taken just a couple of years before she died, possibly in 1975.

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