Roger Benninger in my BOQ room, Minot AFB

Here is Roger,  the Wisconsin Badger, sitting on my single bed.  That may be Tom's legs in the foreground.

The afghan on the bed was made by my Grandma Sanchez not long before she died.  I was still stationed in Minot when she succumbed, visiting my Uncle's family in Mexico and was buried there.

Here is the poem I wrote for Roger, Tom and Larry, all T-33 pilots living in the BOQ.  All four of us met on Sunday mornings and made eggs with cheese and hot Pillsbury cinnimon rolls.

The T-33 was a target aircraft, playing the part of a Soviet bomber, which the ADC unit's F-106's sought out and attacked.

T-33 -- 5th Fighter Interceptor Squadron
            (target aircraft)

                                                  For Roger, Larry and Tom:  In
                                                  friendship, admiration and envy.


(What radar fails to sweep)
There!
A gray motion crossing the noon sky--
A reflection,
crying for all to attack,
in sight and then in scopes.
Locked in the dual vision, as in love,
when we see and then we feel.

In short, slow turns against the sun that shadows,
skill escapes.
Tightly together targets and attackers move,
wise to the way each eludes.

But these missions,
simulations for some effect,
end in no conclusions,
just results.
And targets return in two's.

Above the base, they turn nearly as one.
I watch them as parallel;
almost bound together.
Knowing each pilot grips tightly to this formation,
this joyous discipline to perfection,
just beyond the point of contact.

It is like that with my love,
as in this tension.

Holding firmly in the seconds of eternity
it takes to land, we touch ground.
Never too close to collide
or crash.

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