For those who don’t know much about me, here is a short history of my life.
I was born on June 24th, 1959 in San Pedro, California. I was born in an Army hospital (as my father is retired Navy, we had access to military hospitals and installations) at Fort MacArthur. If I am correct that army base has been closed. I don’t remember much of San Pedro as I was very young when we moved from there to Paso Robles, CA.
The only thing I remember about Paso Robles is Kindergarten and I don’t remember much of that. There is only one memory that stands out during that time and I don’t know how much is real or just imagined. I remember riding my tricycle and seeing people crying. They were crying because someone had died. The only thing I can think of is they were crying because of the death of John F. Kennedy. As I said, I don’t know how much of that is real or just in my imagination.
After kindergarten, we moved to Port Hueneme in Southern California. It was there that we lived in a small house on the corner of the block. When we moved there, there was a small palm tree that was shorter than my older sister, who was probably about 8 years old or so. I don’t remember when it happened, but when we moved from that house a few years later, that tree was taller than our house. I believe we lived in that house about 5 years or so and moved from there to Ventura, CA.
In Ventura, we lived in, what I thought, was luxury. A beautiful big house with 4 bedrooms, two stories, a fireplace, a two-car garage and even built-in sprinklers in the front lawn. I also remember that we lived next to an orange orchard where we spent a lot of time playing, and keeping out of the framer’s sight.
I had a friend, John Machamer that lived on the other side of the orchard. We spent all our spare time together, either playing basketball, fishing at the pier, or trying to stay out of trouble. I haven’t seen or heard from Jobn in decades. I wonder what ever happened to him.
When I was about 13, my family moved to Australia. My father was there during WWII while he was in the Navy. He loved it and always wanted to return to live, if only for awhile. The chance finally arrived, so we sold everything we had, packed the rest into 15 suitcases and went. The trip there was quite an adventure as we tried to get there flying “space-a” from Travis AFB to Australia. For those who don’t know “Space-a” is a military term. If you are active duty, or retired, you can fly on military transport if there is “space available”. Well, after a couple of weeks, the only destination we could get was to Hawaii, where we heard rumors that people were getting to Australia from there. Getting to Hawaii was easy, but when we got there, it turned out that no one was getting to Australia. So we went to plan B where we got a space-a flight to Clark AFB in the Philippines. From Clark AFB, we traveled to Manila where we caught a commercial flight to Australia. The trip from the USA to Australia was long but for us kids, it was quite an adventure. Apart form traveling to Hawaii and the Philippines, I remember that we also went to Guam, where the humidity was horrible, even early in the morning.
In Australia, we first lived in a small town in North Queensland called Charters Towers. Charters Towers had two claims to fame. 1) it used to be the second largest city in Qld. When it was a gold-mining town (it is no longer the second largerst) and 2) it is the educational center of North Qld. Besides the public or state High School, it had 6 private high schools, or what they called “colleges”.
In Charters Towers our living conditions were VERY different than they were in California. The house we lived in was built for one person. There was no running hot water. No air conditioning or heating. Actually, there was no insulation. We usually kept all of the windows open during the summer, which allowed all of the bugs to visit us. But somehow we got used to it. My mom did insist on getting an air conditioner that was portable so she could move it from room to room.
One thing I forgot to mention is that we lived in the tropics, ergo the heat and humidity. We also had a lot of flies, beetles, frogs and other assorted insects that thrive in the tropics. And mosquitoes. I can't forget them. We even slept under mosquito nets at night. We also only got mail a couple of times a week. Our phone number consisted of three digits. We got two television channels, and those went off the air about 10 or 11 PM. And this was all in 1973. Regardless of all the hardships we had to deal with, it was quite an adventure and I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.
We lived in Charters Towers for about 3 years and then moved to Margate on the Redcliffe peninsula, just north of Brisbane. Our house was just about half a block from the beach. Margate was also bigger and closer to the big city. (In Charters Towers, we lived 90 miles from the nearest big city of Townsville.)
I enjoyed living in Margate much more than Charters Towers. We made some great friends and had some great adventures. I remember a lot of good times with my friend Adrian. We would skip school, get some meat pies and cokes and just hang out on the beach. Sure, it wasn’t great for my grades, but I found out that my high school grades didn’t end up on my “permanent record”.
After graduating from Clontarf Beach State High School (yes I did graduate), I spent the next few years trying to decide what to do with my life. I tried going to college in the states, but after a year and half ended up back in Australia. But after not being to get work, I went back to the states. Back to college, Dropped out. Lived with my parents. Went back to school and eventually joined the US Air Force.
I enlisted in April of 1982 and it was the best thing I could’ve done with my life. Up till then, I had no direction or purpose and the AF gave me some stability. After basic training in Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX, I spent the next 6 months in training at Lowry AFB near Denver, CO and Plattsburgh AFB, in Plattlsburgh, NY. I went to my first permanent base on Dec 7th, 1982. That was RAF Lakenheath in the UK.
I spent 3 and half years overseas working on the F-111f. A medium range bomber that saw action in Vietnam to the first Gulf War. It was a lot of hard work, and I’ll admit I didn’t enjoy it all. But I did get the opportunity to travel. The AF sent me to Italy, Germany (twice) and Turkey. I was also able to visit Israel twice (a month each time). I am proud of my service to my country and have a great respect for all who served faithfully with honor. And as a side note, when you see a man or woman in uniform, or a veteran, don’t forget to shake their hand and say “Thank you”. They deserve it.
After the AF, I moved to Portland, OR to go back to school. I attended Portland State University and acquired a BA in International Studies in the Middle East (I also received an Associates in Applied Science from the Community College of the Air Force before my discharge). It took me three years to complete my degree and I graduated in June of 1989.
In Sept of 1989, I moved to Philadelphia, PA. It was there, at a Messianic Synagogue that my wife and I started dating. We dated for a year before becoming engaged. We were married 6 months later on Feb 22, 1992. We lived in Philly for another 7 years before moving to Manhattan, NY. A move we never regretted. We love this city.
Since we have been married, we have had a lot of ups and downs. Apart from learning to live with each other (and being two very different people, that was no easy task), we have also dealt with surgeries, moving, depression, excitement, traveling (Morocco, San Francisco, Arizona, Southern California, Curacao, Canada, Tennessee), infertility and now cancer. It has not always been easy, and I will be the first to admit that I am not an easy person to live with, but I am very fortunate to have found a great wife who has stuck with me through many hard times, and enjoys traveling and adventure and our Harley!
And that brings us up to today.
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