I Have Regrets, Part Three

When I was forced to endure the humiliation of being fingerprinted and investigated and eventually forced to resign from the Air Force and the Academy in the summer and fall of 1979, I experienced some situations that surprised me and others that deeply disappointed me, as you might expect.

One day, when I was required to visit Harmon Hall, the administration building, I decided to walk across the Terrazzo level from the academic building. I got no more than a few yards across when several former students noticed me, saluted, and stopped to talk. Soon, others joined them and there was a crowd. When some were forced to leave, others took their places. Most knew what had happened and were, I suppose, showing their support. Eventually, I had to leave to make my appointment. When I got to Harmon Hall and spoke with the officer with whom I was required to meet and told him what had happened, he said, "I hope the commandant [of cadets] didn't see that."

Soon after all of this occurred, someone higher up in rank decided that I should not be sitting in the English Department each day that I was required to come in. I suppose they felt that they were somehow showing support for my situation and so I was transferred to Harmon Hall on an editing project, just to get me out of sight and out of mind. I used to drink milk in those days and bought some from a vending machine in the building. I lifted the carton to my lips and drank deeply. It was badly spoiled and I nearly gagged. That felt like one more humiliation on top of so many others.

On my last day in the Air Force, I was finally allowed to remove all of my possessions from my former office, all of my books and other personal property that the OSI had sifted through for more evidence of my perversion. These items had been boxed and set aside. Nobody helped me, but I had already gotten used to being shunned by my former colleagues because they had good reason to keep their distance. (A few of them had taken me to lunch at the golf course cafeteria, to show their support, soon after the OSI appeared with their accusations and proof in the department on that fateful day. Across the dining room this noon time, I noticed the same two OSI agents having lunch and mentioned it to the others. That was the last time I ate there with any of my former colleagues. I had been banned from eating in the cafeteria in the academic building since cadets occassionally ate there, so I would have to get into my car and drive to the golf course to eat lunch every day. I didn't want to get the others in trouble or have them be accused of being gay since the military often covered someone under a dark cloud of suspicion for merely "associating with known homosexuals".)

On one of my last trips up the elevator from the parking garage below, the elevator stopped between floors and the door opened only slightly--not enough for me to even think of trying to get out. I could see people's feet walking past and that was about it. Even trapped for a few minutes (it eventually continued its lift upwards and then fully opened), I kept thinking that the building itself didn't want to see me go. But I eventually took the last box out, said goodbye to a few of the others, including the secretaries who seemed saddened by my departure, and I left without any ceremony and drove home.

It had been on my 30th birthday, a Sunday, September 23rd, 1979, that one of my military attorneys called to say that my forced resignation had been approved. I supposed that happened that way because fate wanted me always to remember the significant phone call and that day and date forever.

When I first arrived at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota in January 1974, I needed an alarm clock and bought one at the base exchange my first week there. I used that clock to wake up for the next four years at Minot until I left in June of 1978, for my Air Force Academy assignment. I took it to Colorado Springs and used it there until my forced resignation was approved on October 12, 1979. Less than one week later, I awoke in the middle of the night and heard that clock laboring to keep time, whining and throwing an electric fit. Needing sleep, I got up and unplugged it. The next morning, hoping that those rude noises were a temporary glitch, I tried plugging it back in. It was dead. I liked to think that it had performed its mission while I was in the Air Force and since my Air Force career was over, it had no further need to function properly.

I still have that clock among my possessions as a souvenir of those terrible times. So anyone who sifts through my things, tossing out what they deem useless, or should they wonder why I kept this non-functioning alarm clock, they'll know why. If they do decide to toss it out then, they will at least be aware of its significance. It won't be like Rosebud in CITIZEN KANE and go to the raging furnace without a second thought.

More than two years later, not long before his graduation, I saw one of my former students at a retail store on Academy Blvd. He was with his girlfriend and told me they were planning to get married soon. Tragically, a few years later, I discovered that he had been killed in a plane crash. His name was on a memorial plaque affixed to a boulder off of the main, paved path between the Goldwater Visitor's Center and the Academy chapel. (Ironically, it was Goldwater, a retired military officer and former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate in 1964, not long before he died who wrote an editorial, supporting the right of gays to serve openly in the military.) Don certainly knew what had happened to me, but it didn't seem to matter to him as we spoke and then wished one another well when we had to leave.

Along with my roommate at the time, Gary, I went back to the Academy in June of 1982, for the graduation of those who had been my students in the academic year of 1978-9. I remembered them all, those many who had persevered and completed their four years. Except for Don, I don't believe there were any others who had died while on active duty. In 2002, they would have been eligible for retirement. Again, I don't know how many of them stayed in the Air Force long enough to retire, but the numbers are typically high for Academy graduates. They were 17 or 18 years old when I was their instructor. I was 28-29, not that much older.

It was a long time ago. And we were all so much younger then. The first day I walked into my first classroom to begin teaching I don't even recall. But I do remember several of my students, and several of the moments in those nine classrooms where I taught in the fall and spring and the one summer makeup class, as well, before my military career ended.

And I remember the lyric from the Air Force song that they always sing at graduation. It seemed to apply to me especially: "We live in fame or go down in flame. Hey! Nothing can stop the U.S. Air Force!"

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I Have Regrets, Part Two

I never entirely abandoned my search for a teaching job once I moved from Colorado Springs in 1991.

In 1992, I believe, I was between my second and third assignments at IBM (not knowing that I was going to be hired for a different project after six weeks away). I began applying for several different jobs during my time of unemployment. One propect would have been at Hewlett Packard, just a few yards west, across an open field, from where I had worked through most of the 1980's, at Kaman Corporation, on Garden of the Gods Road in Colorado Springs. I still owned my house there and would simply have moved back in, perhaps to the delight of my cat, Schnozz. But, again, as with the Pikes Peak Community College (PPCC) teaching assignment, I was second to a younger woman whom they hired instead.

An even more unlikely prospect was back at the Air Force Academy itself. I have written about this before, but they were mandated to hire several civilian instructors to augment their previously all-military faculty. I knew this was not going to happen, given my previous history. But I was better prepared to teach, after having been a part time college instructor at PPCC, and having been a technical writer and editor from 1980 until then. I had also gone back to college in 1988-9, to get a secondary certification to teach English. But with 100 applicants to choose from, I was not hired, and I was certainly not surprised.

At the same time, there was an English Department opening at the Community College of Denver. I was among 20 preliminary finalists, and we all met at the college one afternoon. The department chair was a man, but most of the preliminary finalists were, again, younger women. They chose seven finalists from among us. Curiously, I was not one of them, even given my extensive, and recent, teaching experience. When the names were released, I believe that all of them were women. I had experienced something similar when I was fresh out of teacher certification in Colorado Springs. The high school where I had an interview for an opening had all of the current faculty meet with me for the interview. The head of the English Department was a man. However, all of the other teachers were women, mostly older women. I was not hired even though I would have taught the very students who had been my students during my student-teaching at the feeder middle school.

Just last year, I learned of one opening each at two Denver-area community colleges. Not only had I been a technical writer and editor in the work force for nearly 30 years at that point, had that teaching experience from 1978 until 1991, and had the student teaching experience in English, I now had published ten novels, in addition to three volumes of poetry I had written from the late 1960's until the early 1980's. However, from one job prospect, after sending in a lengthy resume and curriculum vitae, as well as transcripts, I heard nothing. From the other, I received a negative response, telling me that the finalists whom they selected more completely fit their needs. A generic reply if ever I heard one.

I wondered if I was not a finalist because of my age, and/or the fact that I had not been in the classroom for 18 years, though I did include the fact that I always trained the new hires at my current IBM assignment. Having direct work place experience as a writer and editor, as well as being a published author, in addition to my years in the classroom, I figured the applicant whom they finally did choose must have been one, incredible teacher. (I suspect, as with PPCC in the late 80's, they probably chose a person whom they knew and who had been a part time teacher for them as I had been for PPCC. Why choose a man in his late 50's who had been out of the classroom for 18 years, whom you do not know? Besides, I had been in the military. With all the returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I thought that might be a plus. However, for those from the post-Vietnam era, it could just as easily be a negative.)

For that same Denver-area community college the previous year, I had applied for a part time teaching position in history. But I was, again, not selected. I wasn't even able to get my foot in the door so that they would know me personally the next time a full-time position came open.

Elsewhere around the country, because of budget cuts, teachers at all levels are being laid off. I suspect that many are attempting to find jobs in other states like Colorado where there is at least limited hiring. It's a bad time to be out of work or to be trying to find a job teaching, I suppose.

At 60, with retirement looming in the next decade, I think back and realize that, instead of attempting to join one branch of the service or another in the early 70's, I ought to have stayed in college, gotten my Master's Degree, and then began an earnest effort to be hired at one of the many community colleges that were established or opening in Southern California in the 1970's, when education was expanding.

I would have had a safe, secure job all of these years. Of course, I never would have experienced the Marine Corps and the Air Force. Would never have lived in Minot, North Dakota, and been a missile combat crew commander. Would never have lived in Colorado nor taught at the Air Force Academy. Would not have been forced to resign for being gay. Would not have had any of the many experiences I have had or met all of those whom I did meet all along the way and who have remained friends to this day.

And, most important, perhaps, I would certainly not have written and published the Rainbow Arc of Fire series of novels.

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I Have Regrets, Part One

Something about reaching the age of 60 has made me reflect all over again about the path that my life has taken since I was forced to resign from the Air Force and teaching at the Academy in Colorado Springs.

If my life's journey were a stream, I feel as if I have gotten caught in one of those edges of the stream where the water flows in a circle, off from the main current. It essentially stagnates. Perhaps it is merely gathering strength before moving onward or forward. Or perhaps this is merely a pause in the continued and downward path to mortality.

Sadly, though not morosely, this is a time of one's life when a person realizes how many of one's contemporaries are gone or going fast. Many of those icons, or simply those whom one remembers from before, TV and film stars and personalities, wind up in the obituaries. And you realize that many of them are not much older than you are, especially when only a decade or two separates you from the age that they are when they die.

This is also a time in which one realizes one's mistakes from the past that have severely impacted where one is right now. Frankly, this is not where I thought I would be. Or, rather, and more specifically, this is not where I intended or hoped to be.

I have a job but, working for IBM as a consultant, it's not all that secure, and certainly not for the next decade, especially when I have worked there for the past two decades, since 1991. Unfortunately, I am one of those who did not plan for his retirement. I used the retirement money I'd earned from teaching part time from 1980 until 1991, to publish volumes two and three of Rainbow Arc of Fire back in the late 1990's. Any number of financial advisors would have told me that $17,000 of teacher-retirement pay should not have been touched, and certainly not have been used to pay for self-publishing two more volumes of a series that had not showed the first volume to have any legs.

I was still in my 40's at the time I used those funds; and 60 years old seemed far away, and retirement at 65 or 67 or 70 a long, long way off. But now retirement is less than five, seven or, more likely, ten years away.

Besides the fact that my pay was cut by 20 percent over a year ago, on January 1st 2009, and won't be restored any time soon, and that my job is not at all secure, my medical benefits have also been eroded over the past several years. What's left would not cover any kind of significant injury or illness. So, while in the early 2000's, I might have felt a bit more secure regarding my overall financial situation, now it's gotten much more unstable and likely to get even worse. (I know many people are in worse shape than I right now.)

Where did I go wrong besides spending my retirement pay foolishly and prematurely on my books? And where did I imagine myself, ideally, at this time in my life?

Teaching, actually.

I had always imagined myself as a teacher. When Spock tells Kirk in Star Trek II that being a Starship captain was his first, best destiny, I knew whereof he spoke. Teaching was my first, best destiny. At the Academy in the beginning, of course. Then in evening classes for Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs. After nearly nine years of teaching part time, the college had an opening in the English Department. But I came in second. They hired a woman whom they knew better. She had been teaching part time on the main campus while I had been teaching at Fort Carson and Peterson Air Force Base. Frankly, and not at all bitterly from my perspective, they'd rigged the selection criteria so that she would get the job. I was told that she had taught a few more English classes than I had, so she was hired instead of me.

What they failed to take into account were the nine English classes I had taught full time at the Air Force Academy from 1978-9. What they also refused to count were the dozens of humanities and communications and history classes I has also taught for Pikes Peak College at Fort Carson and Peterson Air Force Base in the previous few years.

As I said, they'd rigged the selection criteria so that she would be hired instead. I still have no problem with their hiring her and not me. As I said, they knew her (they never came over to Fort Carson to see me teach, BTW), they must have liked her and favored her, and they clearly wanted to hire her as a permanent colleague. My only problem was that their selection criteria was so obviously rigged as to be rather silly. Had they come to me and told me that they wanted to hire her instead, regardless of the reason, I would have had no issue with that decision.

The problem was that by not hiring me--and the fact that there were no other openings in any other department at Pike Peak Community College while I lived and worked in Colorado Springs from 1980 until 1991--I had no other choice but to move to Denver when the IBM job was offered to me. My further mistake was not to realize that the teaching situation at Pikes Peak would not always remain so static. After I had moved, the population of the region almost doubled over the rest of the decade. I didn't realize that the college itself grew substantially. They even opened a northern campus not far from the Air Force Academy, just across the freeway.

Had I paid attention to what was happening, had I not become so wrapped up with writing and then publishing Rainbow Arc of Fire, I would have been aware that there were likely several openings in all academic departments for which I might have been considered and hired, given all those years of teaching so many classes for the college.

I would have had a permanent teaching position with a much more stable salary and benefits. I would not have had all of these regrets anyway.

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