There’s a list I carry in my head.

People I’ve seen. People I’ve touched. People I watched on a stage and never forgot. A New York kid who ended up in uniform for thirty years gets lucky that way. Lucky enough, anyway, to have run into some of the best.

If I’ve mentioned any of them before, bear with me.

* * *

Al Jolson — 1948

He was billed as “the World’s Greatest Entertainer,” and even a nine-year-old boy in Flushing had heard of Al Jolson. You couldn’t miss him. His voice was unmistakable. His movies were everywhere.

But in every one of those movies, he wore blackface.

So when the announcer at Loew’s Prospect Movie Theater hollered “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Al Jolson!”and a white man walked out…

Wait, wha? He’s white!!

I was only in the early February of my life. I had genuinely believed he was a negro. That was the proper term in Flushing, 1948.

His singing voice was one of a kind and wonderful. The show was great. I was enthralled.

And still confused.

* * *

Bobby Thomson — 1953

I was a die-hard Yankee fan, which made this more complicated.

My Uncle Dan (not really my uncle) took me and my friend Johnny to the Polo Grounds to see the Giants. Bobby Thomson was their star outfielder. Two years earlier, he’d hit the Shot Heard Round the World, the three-run homer that won the 1951 National League Pennant against the Dodgers.

After the game, Johnny and I waited by the locker room door. We spotted Bobby. He spotted us and started moving fast toward his car.

We ran after him, shouting his name.

Johnny stumbled. Scraped his knee. The chase was over.

And then Bobby stopped. Turned around. Came back. Helped Johnny up.

And gave us both an autograph.

* * *

Surprise — September 1964

Marjorie and I had been married exactly three days.

We were on our way to two weeks in New York City, with a stop in Washington, DC. Walking past the National Theater, we noticed a matinee about to start. Tickets available. Great orchestra seats. Cheap.

We went in.

The show was a preview. We watched it and wondered to each other whether it might be a hit on Broadway.

It was Fiddler on the Roof. Starring the great Zero Mostel. On a spontaneous whim, three days into our marriage, we saw the original Fiddler.

Of course it became a monstrous classic.

What a surprise!!

* * *

Barbra — Same Honeymoon, Different City

We saw ten Broadway shows in fourteen days. One of them was the mega hit Funny Girl, starring the mega star Barbra Streisand.

I had been a super fan even before getting married. Had all three of her LPs. Marjorie had loved her before I even told her about her.

Her performance in Funny Girl.

Absolutely unforgettable.

* * *

Johnny Mathis — The Copa

Yep. Same honeymoon.

The Copacabana. Most famous nightclub in New York City. Maybe the world. Golly, I was naive. I thought having a reservation meant we were all set.

Then I noticed the people ahead of me slipping something into the maître d’s hand.

Of course, it was $$.

So you want a decent table, reservation or not, have cash ready for tipping/bribing. Believe it or not, we got a decent table. Johnny sang a bunch, didn’t talk much (that wasn’t his thing), and we loved it.

We went back decades later, saw him again at Myrtle Beach in the ’80s.

Still great.

* * *

Sammy — 1981

He was the only headliner in Las Vegas advertised on the Sands famous giant hotel billboard with just one name.

Sammy. That was enough.

Of course, it was the great entertainer, singer, dancer, comic, actor Sammy Davis Jr. He put on the most entertaining one-man show that Marjorie and I ever witnessed. A one-of-a-kind talent and the only member of the Rat Pack I ever had the privilege to see in person. Never got to see Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, or Joey Bishop.

He died way too young, at 64, in 1990. Smoked too much. Lived too hard.

But happily, Marjorie and I got to see him in his glory.

* * *

Presidents Nixon and Carter

In early 1973, I was at a podium in the Statler-Hilton in Washington, briefing families on what to expect when our Vietnam POWs came home. Medical care, finances, the whole process. We were expecting Dr. Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State.

What we got was better.

I heard Hail to the Chief over the loudspeaker and stepped aside fast.

President Nixon walked to the podium and said, modestly, “I know you were expecting Henry, but I hope I can step in for him.”

Standing ovation. He’d ended that stupid war. Our POWs were on the way home.

President Carter was different. Around 1978, at Pope Air Force Base, adjacent to Fort Bragg, NC, home of the 82nd Airborne Division and the great Green Berets, he made a pass-through visit on his way to somewhere in Florida. He wasn’t very popular among military folks, but he was our Commander-in-Chief, and my boss asked (ordered) me to bring some of my people to the flight line to greet him.

I brought my seven-year-old son Jeffrey.

President Carter walked by with Rosalyn. She looked at Jeffrey and said, very graciously, “Oh, what a cute little boy.”

Jeffrey and I never forgot that wonderful honor.

* * *

Reagan and Bob Hope — Same Stage, 1985

Believe it or not, they were on the same stage together.

At a major Army-Air Force training exercise at Fort Bragg/Pope AFB, there they were. President Ronald Reagan and the one and only Bob Hope, a fantastic supporter of those serving our country in uniform and one of the greatest comedians ever.

Their good-natured banter about their respective ages was easy, warm, and genuinely funny. Reagan was beloved by the military. And there will never be another Bob Hope, not for those of us who served.

I had the honor to be in that audience.

Not bad for a geezer from Flushing.

Jolson. Thomson. Zero Mostel. Barbra. Sammy. Two presidents and Bob Hope.

Unforgettable.

Enuf.

If you had scanned the Dock Street Theatre at Saturday’s matinee, you might have noticed something.

Row C. On the aisle. Two men.

That was us.

We were there because Jim (my editor/son) had come to Charleston for an early birthday celebration. His actual birthday is March 6, but he won’t be here then. So we celebrated early.

It was fun and memorable. For me at least. Hopefully, he had some fun too.

It was not immune from several sitcom moments.

Friday Night: The Martini Incident

On Friday night, Christine joined our festivities. A great mini-family reunion.

The three of us enjoyed a lovely birthday celebration dinner at 39 Rue de Jean, a prime Charleston example of French cuisine.

Our waiter, though very personable and responsive, had a little trouble with my libation ordering communication.

I ordered a dry gin martini on the rocks with olives. Simple, no? No.

First he said back to me, “Right, a gin martini, straight up, with olives.”

“No, not straight up. On the rocks,” I replied.

He said, “Right, I meant straight up on the rocks with no olive juice.”

“No,” I answered. “Straight up on the rocks is an oxymoron.”

I was waiting for him to ask, “Who you callin’ a moron?”

It got worse.

He asked, “Was that vodka or gin?”

Sigh. Let’s start again.

“A dry gin martini on the rocks with two olives, but not dirty. No olive juice.”

“Got it,” he said.

Out came a gin martini on the rocks with a lemon peel.

I was nice. I waited for our waiter to come back.

I pointed gently to the lemon peel befouling my gin martini.

“That doesn’t look like an olive.”

He said, “Right, I’m so sorry,” and brought me three green olives.

All was well. I was bought off with three olives.

From then on, all went swimmingly. Swordfish special for me. Birthday boy had rack of lamb, which he seemed to savor. My memory is not my forte. I can’t remember what Christine had, but I’m sure it was great.

All in all, a beautiful, fun time.

Saturday: The Main Event

Saturday morning, Jim joined me for a usual winter tradition — breakfast out with our dear friend Nonie. That tradition stretches back many years to Farmers’ Market mornings with Marjorie and our friends Nonie and Dick. It continues still, even as life changes.

After a few hours of quiet conversation at home, we headed to the highlight of his birthday celebration:

A matinee performance of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at the historic Dock Street Theatre.

I felt more confident about our seating assignment than I had about my drink order the night before.

After we got settled, I did a quick scan of the surrounding rows and asked Jim if he noticed anything.

He did a quick survey, nervously grinned, and said, “We’re the only dudes in here.”

He was so right.

By my estimate, we represented about 20 percent of the total testosterone in the Dock Street that afternoon.

I guess dudes don’t do matinee musical comedy. At least not many of them.

So who does?

We were surrounded by about forty delightful ladies from a Summerville “55 and over” residential community. The men from that community must’ve been home watching golf, football, baseball (whatever season it is) on the tube with a cold beer.

We had, in essence, infiltrated their section.

Naturally, we started talking to several of them. They were charming.

The show was musically funny, cute, and extremely well performed by a talented cast. We enjoyed it a bunch.

The Exit Strategy

After an hour and a half with no intermission, it ended with a well-deserved ovation.

Uh oh.

Now I had to get out of those not-so-comfortable historic seats and walk a couple of blocks to the garage where we parked. A bit of a challenge for my soon-to-be 87-year-old body with neuropathy. I hope I didn’t embarrass the birthday boy by weaving and hanging on to hedges and buildings on that hike to the car.

The challenge continued. I needed to drive down four floors of the garage in heavy traffic — foot on brake all the way down — and negotiate payment at the robot gate.

I done it successfully.

Got home safe and sound.

Two dudes at a musical.

Not a bad way for a father to spend a birthday weekend with his son.

Enuf.

Family is important to all of us, but it’s not always our priority as the vagaries of life are upon us continuously. As we conduct our lives, we are concerned about careers, our home, immediate family, and the many challenges of our daily sitcom.

Lucky for me, Marjorie took on many of the responsibilities of maintaining contact with both sides of our family. Mine was no challenge. It mostly consisted of my cousin, Nancy, during our 61 years together.

Marjorie, conversely, has dozens of cousins. (Hey, that rhymes. Cool.)

Our family has suffered two tremendous gut punches with the death of Harry and Marjorie’s passing late last year. And a couple years earlier, Harry’s boys lost their mother, Candy. That’s a lot of loss for one family.

Harry and Candy raised four fine boys. They have endured more than their share.

Harry’s passing, while heartbreaking, also became the vehicle that brought us back together. Not the way you’d choose to do it.

Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to reconnect (golly what an important word that is) with some of them I hadn’t seen very often for several years. I feel blessed to have the chance, though maybe a little late.

I was blessed with an invitation and the opportunity to spend time with Chris and Terri at Water’s Edge. Chris is Harry and Candy’s eldest. Thank you for reaching out and making that happen.

I have been additionally blessed that Craig, the youngest of the four, honored me by driving all the way from Florida to spend a couple days with this old man. He heads back today. I’m sincerely hoping we can stay close with additional visits and other communication in our time ahead. Hope I didn’t bore him with my life stories. I know him much better now, and because I run my mouth a lot (I hear ya, Marjorie), he knows more about me too.

Seems to me we may all be trying to fill a little void. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Got a lot more outreach to do.

Get on with it, Don.

Enuf for now.

A letter

Marjorie,

I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about our life together. Writing to you feels like the only honest way to do it. I also know others may read along, and I hope they will come to know you a little better through my remembering.

Sixty-one years is a long journey to summarize. I can’t possibly do that. What I can do is speak to you the way I lived with you, by remembering who you were in the moments that mattered.

You were the most understanding person I ever knew. I learned that early. About a year after we were married, my best friend from college asked me to be the best man at his wedding in New York City. I happily and proudly accepted. Three weeks before the wedding, the Air Force assigned me to a one-week airlift mission to Germany. No sweat, right?  Two weeks to spare.

Murphy had other plans.

Our C-130 broke down in Germany, and we waited nearly two weeks for a part that was unavailable there. Oops.  I had to call my friend from Germany and cancel out from his wedding. Worse still, I had promised you a romantic return trip to New York, our honeymoon city.

You never complained. You never resented the uncertainty of my life as an Air Force officer and aircrew member. You never even hinted I change my career plans. You simply understood, and you stood with me.

You were beautiful. I first saw you in 1962 when I drove the hostess of a party to pick you up from the Medical College Hospital (now MUSC), where you were working the 3 to 11pm shift as a nurse. You rarely got to attend parties because of those long hours.

I watched you come down the hospital steps in your white nurse’s uniform, and you looked like an angel.

Love at first sight? Apparently not, since I didn’t date you until 1963, and we married in 1964. I’m the epitome of the slow mover. But I got you.

You were wise. I used you as an example in workplace seminars I taught at Trident Technical College on “Getting Along in the Workplace.” Your wisdom showed up in a simple habit. You knew when to ignore me.

I would come home from work and rant about some minor thing because I had a crappy day. Instead of reacting defensively, you would “ignore” me and stay quiet. After a while, I would realize I was acting like an a–hole and sheepishly apologize. Your wisdom avoided so many possible clashes. It also cost me a buncha money, because apologies often included dinner out, flowers, or the occasional bauble of jewelry.

You were talented in ways.  I was in awe. You were a superb psychiatric nurse, a devoted mother, and later in life, a gifted interior designer. You helped sell numerous homes by staging them for resale, thanks to your natural eye for layout and design. That talent was always there. You simply waited until later in life to develop it, to the delight of many satisfied clients.

You were forgiving. That mattered more than either of us understood at the time. When young people marry, forgiveness is essential, because young people do not always make great decisions.

One of my good friends, Wally, had a small Cessna airplane and a private pilot’s license. Another good friend was getting married in Mississippi. Wally said, “Hey guys, I’m goin’ to Biloxi to see Tom get married. Wanna fly down with me?” I said yes, sorta forgetting that I had a wife. Not smart.

I flew down and returned the next day without ever consulting with you or asking you to come along. Oh s—t.

When you confronted me on my return, I had no defense. Luckily my head wasn’t entirely filled with mush.  I had no real choice but to hang my head and apologize profusely. I promised never to leave you out of decisions again. You forgave my juvenile forgetfulness. Coulda been a lot worse.

You lived love most clearly in ways that never needed explanation. “In sickness and in health” from our wedding vows became very real when I survived colon cancer. I was the survivor. You had to survive me.

I will not gross you out with TMI. I will only say that it took deep, steady love for you to endure those long, difficult years with your usual grace and patience.

You were my best friend and my partner. I miss you every day. I still talk to you about everything, except you are not here to answer.

You were my constant sounding board through raising children, dealing with weak or autocratic bosses, trying to afford life for us and for the kids, and moving more times than either of us wanted. You were always there.

I know we will be together again. But I miss holding your hand when we walked. I miss your voice, even though I did not always hear it well. I miss your smile and your laugh. I even miss you scolding me for telling people too much, like I am probably doing now.

So. Enuf.

I miss you.

During this most challenging time of my 86-year life, why does this soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Macbeth keep playing in my weak brain?

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

That beautifully morbid passage has always been a favorite of mine. It’s lovely.
And it’s absolute bullshit.

“Signifying nothing?”
My life started signifying something over sixty-one years ago.

On June 9, 1964, the most beautiful woman I knew, Marjorie, agreed to be my wife. Less than three months later, on August 29, we were married.

In our “hour upon the stage,” with God’s continuing help, we produced and raised three wonderful children: Christine, Jim, and Jeffrey.

Jim and Jeffrey found their life’s loves in their wives, Kiersten and Angela.

Then, in what seemed like no time at all, Joshua, Sydney, Erin, Caroline, and Apollo came into our hearts and our lives. Our grandchildren. All grown now.

Joshua has found his lovely bride, Cierra. And now I have two great-grandchildren: Lucy, age three, and Harrison, ten months.

I don’t think that’s “nothing.”

Enuf.
But more later.

On what may be the saddest Thanksgiving of my life, after the recent passing of Marjorie, my true soul mate, wife, partner, love, teacher, listener, fan, supporter, and of course a loving mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, I still find that I have much to thank our loving God for.
(Yes, I know I ended that too-long sentence with a preposition.)

First, I thank God and the greatest team of medical professionals anywhere for the miracle that I am still alive, mobile (sorta), mentally functioning (sorta), and able to write this note of thanks. I am actually living better electrically, because my pacemaker and defibrillator are actively controlling my heart rate. Yay.

And I am grateful for my wonderful family, who have taken a gut punch just as hard as the one I sustained, yet have still managed to provide superb support to this old man.

I also thank God that I live in a beautiful, historic house, the attic of this beautiful house to be exact, in the Holy City of Charleston, a consistent winner of Conde Nast awards for being one of the world’s favorite travel destinations.

I am thankful that I am planning to enjoy a wonderful Cracker Barrel Thanksgiving “Heat and Serve” dinner for four adults and two very young great grandchildren. Yes, we will have four generations of Scoolers at our small Thanksgiving feast. That alone is a blessing worth noticing.

Finally, for today at least, I thank God and all who have been present with Marjorie and me to enjoy at least 55 Thanksgiving dinners together.
Why not 61, you ask. You were married for 61 years.

Well, during my aircrew years I missed a few. I teased often in those days that I spent some of those Thanksgivings in Turkey. How is that for juxtaposition.
(Yes, that is a word. Or a woid, as they say in Brooklyn.)

I also missed one while serving as an EC 47 navigator in Viet Nam in 69 and 70. And yes, thank you, Lord, for letting me come home from that fiasco to Marjorie, Christine, and Jim. Jeffrey was not here yet. He arrived in 71 because I came home in 70.

So that is my very partial list of things I am truly thankful for at 3:15 in the morning on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2025.

I am going to try to go back to sleep for a while now. I am looking forward to seeing some of you in about eight or nine hours.

Again, Happy Thanksgiving.

Enuf.

Just Margie and me, and her sister makes three.
Mary Louise came down from Virginia to spend the week with us.
Now it’s just the three of us, catching our breath after a “relaxing” beach vacation.
You know the kind…relaxing right up until it isn’t.

Josh, Cierra, and the kiddos have packed up and headed home.
The noise has faded, the toys are gone, and the fridge is looking more like a science experiment (lots of food to throw away instead of lugging home.
We’re pooped, but we survived…. Mostly.

Along for the week were our daughter, Christine, her son Josh (our grandson), his wife Cierra, and their two: Lucy and little Harrison—aka Cranky Pants (LOL). He’s six months old, teething, and not particularly thrilled about the whole beach vacation thing.
Felt kinda icky all week. Poor guy.
Luckily, he won’t remember any of it.
The rest of us? Oh, we’ll remember.

It’s Friday already. Checkout’s looming (10AM tomorrow).
We’ve had a good run. Great weather, just a few showers. In all, a fine, relaxing week.

Well… mostly relaxing.

Wednesday night, 11:30PM.
Outta nowhere, total blackout.
Us along with 262 of our Folly Beach neighbors, suddenly and completely powerless.
No AC. No fridge. No ceiling fans. Just silence. Initial info we got was that expected repair was at 6AM Thursday.  We were immediately concerned that  both our food and us were gonna get hot.

We were all awake at 1:30AM, talking and trying to stay cool. I went out on the porch where it was a bit cooler.  Just 80 degrees. Practically refreshing.

We were sitting around trying to figure out what to do about the food in the fridge when it happened:
The smoke alarms.

The smoke alarms went off with a loud shrill sound that would wake the Devil. Maybe it’s supposed to, but only if there is smoke.  There wasn’t any.
It was probably caused by the power outage

We waited about 30 minutes, hoping they’d stop on their own. Then the power came back. Lights, AC, fridge, everything.
BUT the smoke alarms? Still screaming.

Christine called the emergency number for the property manager. Their advice?
“Remove all the batteries.”
Translation: climb up, yank them off the ceiling, and remove the batteries.
So that’s what we did.

Aah…silence…finally.
We can get to sleep now.

Thursday.
We left three voicemails for Vacasa.
No response…surprise.

Friday morning.
I drove down to their office on Folly Road to talk to nice human lady. 
She put in a work order and said someone would come out to take care of the smoke alarms.
A couple hours later, a tech showed up, looked around, and told Josh to just reconnect the alarms.

He did. Fixed.
About a day late, oh well.

Now it’s Saturday. 6AM.
We gotta get out of here by 10, and I’m wide awake.

I can’t do much at this point. I’m freakin’ old.
They’ve only asked us to strip the beds, clear out the fridge, and start the dishwasher.
Seems simple enough…until you look at the fridge full of food.  Did we overstock?  Probably.

I’ll do what I can to help, but I can’t steer this ship.
That’s up to Christine or Josh now. They’ll handle it. I know they will.

Still, it’s not easy stepping aside.
I’ve spent a lifetime steering.
It’s tough for this old geezer to relinquish control, but that’s the sitcom plot, which is unchangeable.

Watch us, kids. We’re a glimpse into your future.

Enuf already!!

Now I am a cat person. Never thought I’d say that, but I have evolved over 86 years into an honest to goodness cat person.
We had a dog, Teddi, who we loved and who loved us in return. When she passed, we had gotten older and couldn’t really handle another dog to walk several times and properly care for.
We did without a pet for a few years, but one day we heard that Charleston had roof rats to deal with. We, actually saw one in our unit once. Hence, we hired an exterminator to do an “exclusion” project. That means he plugged up every visible entry in our unit to keep the rats out. In casual conversation, the exterminator said, “If you guys had a cat, the rats would sense it and go to another location.” We immediately started a search for a cat.

Nicole was our first cat; a ragdoll; a breed that’s relatively calm and a good match for an elderly couple like us. She was a great pet. We got her when she was about two years old. We gave her the whole apartment to live in, which she did for about 11 years. She stayed on the floor and didn’t jump up on everything, including the sink and stove.
Nicole, however, was “allergic” to her carrier. She just hated it. Whenever we needed to put her in the carrier to take her somewhere, like the vet, we needed to allow at least an hour. She would run from us and hide under the bed to avoid being put in the carrier. After a few frustrating efforts, we learned that we had a way to get her out from under the bed. It’s called a vacuum cleaner. Just running it near the bed would get her to run out and enable us to catch her. Then shoving her into the carrier was another major effort. We’ll visit this later, when discussing our next feline pet.
Nicole did her job. In addition to being a fine, lovely, furry companion for Marjorie and me, she warded off any possible roof rats from our apartment (we didn’t have any elephants either).

Looking back, we weren’t her owners. We were her staff. She was the boss of us. But after about 11 years comfortably in charge, Nicole passed on.

Enter our latest feline queen, Ziva. We got her as a kitten from a breeder of ragdoll cats. We named her for one of our favorite TV heroines, Ziva David of NCIS. Ziva is still very much with us. She’s now about 3 years old and a super companion for seniors like Marjorie and me.
Like most cats, Ziva is not a lap cat. If you pick her up and sit with her in your lap, she may stay still for 10 seconds, but then she’s off. She does want to be in the same room with us, just not too close. She sleeps at the foot of my bed and when she feels like it, likes to knead the skin on my side. They call that “making biscuits”. It doesn’t bother me until her nails get too big. Then it hurts, so I take her to the groomer to get her nails clipped. Yesterday morning she got groomed and had nails clipped. So knead all you want, Ziva. In fact, she just finished this morning’s biscuits about 5 minutes ago.
Luckily, Ziva, unlike Nicole, is very docile and cooperative when it comes to the carrier. She seems very comfortable in it.
That’s the good news. We need to keep her primarily in one room of the apartment; our bedroom. Why, you ask?
Because she won’t stay down on the floor. She’s up on everything; including the sink, stove and tabletops. She could easily hurt herself on the stove or break things. Ergo, she stays in our room.
Another Ziva idiosyncracy. She likes me to pet her with my foot. I need to remove my shoes before going into “her” room. She’ll lay down in front of me and turn over to be petted. She’ll tolerate hand petting for only a short time. Weird cat.
Finally, she seems to have a built in alarm clock. Between 530 and 6 AM every mornin, she’ll jump on the bed and come right up to my face. She’ll stand with her face almost touching mine. I can usually feel her whiskers.
She doesn’t meow, lick, or bite me. She just stands there on the bed with her face right into mine, until I awaken.
It’s like she’s sayin,”Get your ass outta my bed and feed me, Dummy”. Which, of course, I do. After all, that’s what staff is for.

Enuf

When Marjorie said, “I do,” she became part of a family structure far different from how she was raised. I’m a Yankee from New York and a half orphan, you see. Mom was widowed when I was 4.
Marjorie, on the other hand, is a true Southern belle with a big, traditional southern family: Mom, Dad, two brothers, a sister, two grandmothers, a bunch of aunts and uncles, and a slew of cousins.
My family was tiny by comparison.  I had no living grandparents, just two real aunts and uncles—my mom’s sister Aunt May and Uncle Ted, and my dad’s sister Aunt Gert and Uncle John. Cousins? Only five (that I knew of).

So, to kinda make up the difference, my mom, the tradition-maker for my family circle, manufactured several aunts and uncles for us. If we had close personal friends or neighbors, mom didn’t want us to call them Mr or Mrs. But she believed it was disrespectful for little kids like me to call adults by their first names.
Enter lots of faux Uncles and Aunts. For example, my best friend, Allen’s mom and dad were good friends of my mom. Ergo, they were Aunt Stella and Uncle Lou to me. Other great, longtime adult friends of the family were Aunt Emma and Uncle Frank, Aunt Mabel and Uncle John, Aunt Em and Uncle Bill (yep, I had an Auntie Em, just like Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz).  These are what I called my “Waltonesque relatives”
There was, however, a more PG-rated side. My mom, an attractive “widder” lady, had close adult male friends, who visited frequently and became uncles to me. Uncle Ned and Uncle Mac, for example.
A complication to this tradition occurred when close, married, adult male friends from the “Waltonesque” list frequently visited my mom (and me) by themselves (sans wives). They often sent me to get ice cream. (hmmm). To this day, I totally believe that those visits were entirely innocent:  Mom was an empathetic listener and her visitors could discuss things with her in confidence. That’s my story and I’m stickin to it.

Marrying Marjorie and adopting her family in 1964 brought me a touch of normality (UFO Welcome Center cousin being an exception). Luckily they (sort of) adopted me too.
I’ve done my best to keep things boringly normal for our kids, although they did have a few confusing non-relative relatives that needed clarification when they got a bit older (Aunt Vernice, Aunt Connie, and Aunt Nel).

Now, over 60 years later, Marjorie and I are blessed with 3 adult kids; 5 grandkids; and even two great grands, who I’ll see in July.
I can’t keep track of Marjorie’s myriad of cousins. But it doesn’t seem to have a major impact on our daily life.
We now look forward to the future of our family with great expectations for even more blessings. Thanks to the Lord. Enuf

I was especially pleased to receive my next Air Force assignment after three years at Scott AFB, Illinois and the MAC Headquarters staff. Our next destination…Pope AFB, in Fayetteville, NC, just over three hours from the Holy City of Charleston, our beloved hometown. (This Yankee from NYC had long since adopted Charleston. Hope she adopted me).

Fayetteville offered a chance to own a home for the first time. With help from the VA and a wonderful realtor named Ann, we bought our first home in a suburb called Devonwood. It was close to the base and the Cape Fear Mall, the area’s main shopping center. Ann said buying the house would be as easy as picking up a loaf of bread. It sorta was.  No down payment and affordable mortgage payments made it doable. Our Devonwood home was the best part of our three-year tour in what the 40,000 GI’s of the surrounding Fort Bragg affectionately called “Fayette-Nam,” a nickname still echoing the Vietnam era psyche in the late 1970s.

We made several weekend trips to Orangeburg, SC, where Marjorie’s mother lived, and to Charleston, reinforcing that “home” was never far away.

Pope AFB was tiny compared to the giant Army installation to which we were adjacent. That was Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne Division, with its 40 to 50 thousand GI’s. We had about 5000 folks at Pope. The 317th Airlift Wing liked to say they put the “air” in ” airborne”. There is truth in that.
Fort Bragg soldiers and their families were the primary industry of the town of Fayetteville. Air Force blue was well hidden by Army green.

I was assigned to the USAF Airlift Center, a tenant organization at Pope, a test center for new and proposed airlift equipment and tactics. We also did studies on issues assigned by the Command.  One big one was the study to determine if a navigator was an essential crew member on a C-141 with Inertial Navigation System (INS) on board. I was a navigator, you see. We went where the evidence led. It showed the pilots could easily use the INS and find whatever place which they sought. There was a safety concern in losing a third set of experienced eyes and ears in the cockpit. However, the $$ that could be saved from removing navigators from C-141’s ruled the day. Soon after our study Air Force changed the C-141 crew complement, removing navigators. Oh well. Thankfully, I had an MBA and there was plenty for me to do as a financial manager for the rest of my Air Force career.

A Director at the Airlift Center and one that enjoys running my mouth, I became a spokesman. I presented a rather showy quarterly briefing to the senior staff at Military Airlift Command on the results of our many tests and studies.
When it was time for me to leave the Center for my next assignment, which was to become one of 25 Air Force officers to attend US Army War College in Carlisle, PA, with over 300 Army officers, my colleagues presented me with a large plaque. On that plaque was a large Air Force style Tap shoe. The inscription said I was the official USAF Airlift Center Tap Dancer. An obvious tease about my quarterly “tap dance” for the senior MAC staff. That Tap Shoe Plaque still owns a place of honor on my bookcase. Thanks folks.
As for my upcoming assignment to Army War College, that was to be my favorite year in my 30-year Air Force career. Only 45 years ago. Wow. Enuf