Soaring with the Eagles....

The Niceville High School Eagles that is!

This summer in July, my high school senior class of 1977, will be holding a reunion in our hometown of Niceville, Florida. It will be our 30th year since graduating which I have a very hard time comprehending. I've starting working on a Web site for our class, you can visit it by clicking here.

Sometimes it feels as if it was just yesterday when I was walking the halls of NHS, trying to be a very cool student. I relished being a senior, it was my all time favorite year out of the thirteen that I had attended. Being a military brat meant that I went to a lot of schools, some good and some bad - unfortunately most of them were bad. I'm talking about schools with lots of racial violence, crime, drugs, and varying degrees of uninterested and uninteresting teachers. By the time I reached junior high school, I absolutely hated going to school.

Then we moved to northwest Florida during the last semester of ninth grade, which at that time in the mid-70's, was still considered junior high school. Lewis Junior High in Valparaiso (the "twin" city that sat right next to Niceville) was unlike any school I had ever attended. The school was practically brand new, and some of the teaching methods were also new. I immediately fell in love with the school and made lots of new friends and so my interest in attending school quickly improved!

The next year I found myself in high school and I liked it just as much as Lewis Junior High. By the time I reached the end of the first semester of 10th grade, my life had really improved and I felt that I was actually a part of something special - no more feelings of being an outsider and ALWAYS the "new guy". I made some good friends, got involved with some clubs (I was the president of the karate club), and I was really enjoying myself.

That is until my folks dropped a bomb on me.

We had been living in Air Force housing on nearby Eglin Air Force Base since our arrival in Florida. Suddenly my folks decided that they wanted to move off base into a civilian neighborhood. Unfortunately though, they wanted to move to Fort Walton Beach instead of Valparaiso or Niceville. I could not convince them to change their minds and so, again, just like 20 times before, I had to change schools.

I really tried my hardest to keep a stiff upper lip and to make the best of the situation. It didn't take me long to realize though that my new high school could never come close to replacing NHS. It was much, much larger and most of the kids came from a much higher financial class than I did. I was not welcomed with open arms as I had been in Valparaiso and Niceville - in fact, I was down right ignored and made to feel like a total outsider.

By the beginning of 11th grade, I was ready to drop out of school. I started suffering from depression and it took all I had to drag my carcass to school every day. At the time, I did not own a car but I did have a motorcycle, which I chose to drive to school even in bad weather, so as to not have to daily ride the school bus and listen to jokes made about where I lived. My neighborhood was a "dump" - at least that is what the "preppies" constantly called it. It wasn't really though, it was just lower middle-class.

Finally, I had had enough and I told my folks that I either needed to go back to Niceville High School or school was over for me. To my surprise, they took me serious. My dad immediately went down to the school board and got a waiver for me to change school districts. He then purchased a REAL inexpensive car for me to drive - it was a 1965 Ford Falcon with about a zillion miles on it! While handing me the car keys, my father explained to me that I would have to go get a part-time job in order to pay for the car insurance and for the fuel needed for making the 30 mile round trip to school every day.

I was estatic!

Within just a few short days I was back at Niceville High School where I was heartily welcomed. I was also working part-time in the early morning hours before school, and in the afternoons at a bank in Niceville. Eventually I secured a job delivering newspapers in Fort Walton Beach. Getting up at 3:30 a.m. every morning, 7 days a week and having the largest motor route in town. I made real good money but boy I was very tired all of the time!

To me the only negative thing about going back to NHS was having to graduate. I actually considered the idea of purposely failing the twelfth grade so that I could enjoy one more year at Niceville High School. I just was not ready to leave school. I had spent so many of my years just trying to "survive" school, that I had been unable to prepare myself for life beyond it. I had no idea what to do with my life. I was young, I was impetuous, I was frustrated about the future, and so, after a year of just bumbling around, I joined the U.S. Coast Guard - and that my friends, is a whole other bunch of stories.

Remembering 9/11

What a time to start working at a newspaper!

I'd only been at the Clovis News Journal a few days. Although hired as an editorial assistant, I found myself wearing many hats. I recall vividly listening to the radio in my car as I pulled up to the newspaper office parking lot that morning. The report I heard was that a small private plane had crashed into one of the World Trade towers. Seemed like significant news but nothing horrific though.

In just the few minutes that it took for me to get from my car to the newsroom though - the world had changed - forever. As I walked through the door, I noticed that the newsroom contained no activity which was very unusual for a Tuesday morning. All of my colleagues were huddled motionless around the small color television in the corner of the newsroom - watching and listening as the truly horrific events unfolded.

I joined their shock and dismay - my stomach got nauseated. Soon the telephones starting ringing off the hook - the citizens of Clovis were making sure that the newspaper knew what was going on. One of the telephone calls reported that traffic going into nearby Cannon Air Force Base was backed up for miles - they had closed the gate to the base as a result of the attack on America. The editor considered that newsworthy and thought a picture of the traffic would make good copy.

It was time for me to put on a new hat.

I got the order "go out to the base and take pictures - and make it quick!". My first photo shoot for a newspaper - I should have been thrilled but my mind and stomach were still churning. I had stood on the top of one of those World Trade Center towers back in the late 80's. I actually lived in the shadows of those towers for about six months while living on Governor's Island, right off the tip of Manhattan - I had been in the Coast Guard. I felt violated even though I was 2000 miles away from New York City.

As I arrived at the base the traffic had dropped down to just a few hundred yards from the main gate - not very photographic. I was determined to do my job though. After parking my car about a half a mile from the gate to the base, I walked quickly toward it carrying a very large and very expensive digital camera. It wasn't mine. As I started to take pictures of the traffic making it's way slowly toward the gate and of the Air Force Security Police personnel decked in full battle gear - the reality of what had happened began to sink in.

Then reality really hit me when all of a sudden I was descended upon by a half-dozen armed uniformed military policemen. It seems that I looked awful suspicious standing there taking pictures - I might be a terrorist. My heart raced and my nerves jumped as the questioning began and the thought of them confiscating a $3000 camera that did not belong to me made me even more nervous. Finally, after some dialogue I was allowed to leave the premises intact and with the camera.

I shook all the way back to town. My picture made it to the front page of the paper that day and the Associated Press picked it up and carried it nationally. Quite a feat for my first news photograph. The thrill though just wasn't there. What was there was a bag of very mixed emotions. Sadness, anger, frustration, to name a few. Looking back I remember thinking to myself while being accosted by those military policemen - freedom, ours - will now be challenged more than ever. And not just by the enemy.

A Very Small World...

Not long after getting got out of the U.S. Coast Guard in 1987, I went to work as a police dispatcher in Clovis, New Mexico. I had only been in Clovis for a few weeks and did not know anyone there except for my parents who had moved to town a few years earlier. While I was going through the training process for new dispatchers I met one of the full-time operators who had been there for several years. Over the next few weeks that I was undergoing training, Becky and I would exchange pleasantries and jokes and go about our business.

The strange thing was, that every time I saw or spoke to Becky, it was if I had met her before - long before ever arriving in Clovis.

Finally, I got up the nerve and asked Becky about her personal life, like where she was from, etc. We started exchanging information about our backgrounds and although she had no feelings of familiarity about me, she understood how convinced I was that we had met before. Sometime during our conversation one evening, I mentioned that I had been in the Coast Guard. Becky gave me a funny look and said "You know, my brother-in-law is in the Coast Guard."

I immediately asked Becky what her brother-in-law's name was - off course not expecting whatsoever to recognize the name, I mean - there are over 30,000 people in the Coast Guard, but I had to ask anyway.

Becky told me the man's name was Brian Davis (I've changed the names in this story for the sake of personal privacy for the others involved). I just sat there looking at Becky like a deer in the headlights. Becky asked me what was wrong.

"You are Brenda's sister aren't you?"

It was Becky's turn to stare at me with her mouth open.

Come to find out, I had once been stationed with Becky's brother-in-law and his wife for over four years at a Coast Guard facility in the mid-west. I had been to their home several times for dinner and had even house sat for them once. I hadn't seen or spoken to the couple in the two years since leaving that duty station and getting out of the service.

Becky and I just sat there in amazement. It was no wonder that Becky had seemed so familiar to me, she looked and sounded a great deal like her sister Brenda!

We called Brian and Brenda that night and excitedly explained what had happened. You know, for some reason, they just didn't seem all that excited about it. Maybe though, it had something to do with the fact that it was almost 2 a.m. their time when we called them.

Return to "Normal"....

Yeah right!

Anyway, I just returned from spring break (I'm a full-time college student right now) and was expecting Spring to be here! Instead, we've had snow and freezing rain for the past few days. Over the course of my mini-vacation I drove a total of 4,010 miles. Some people will see that number and think I'm crazy - others will be envious.

I love to get out on the open road and to explore new places. After driving out to Clovis, New Mexico where most of my seven kids and twelve grandchildren live - and visiting with them for awhile, Miss Susie and I headed up to the four corners area of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah. Then we explored the western range of Colorado all the way up to Boulder.

Miss Susie was quite ready to depart Clovis when she did. She had gone out a few weeks before spring break and ended up right smack dab in the middle of a tornado disaster. Yep, a very large tornado skipped and hopped right through Clovis and caused some major damage. Over 500 homes and businesses were damaged and at least 150 homes were destroyed. In fact, the tornado touched down right across the street from my daughter Vicki's house causing serious damage to a senior citizen recreation center and uprooting several large trees on the property. Vicki only lost a portion of her privacy fence.

I was very impressed with the community spirit in Clovis, the spirit that has never died over the 100 years that it has been around. Folks of all races and social status pitched in together and helped each other out. A very large dairy was nearly completely destroyed and wouldn't you know it, personnel from some of the other competing dairies showed up on scene to help clear debris.

Nothing like a little disaster to pull people together, don't you wish that kind of spirit and camaraderie were just a normal everyday thing?