Okay, Okay, Jeffrey, here you come.
Christine was my feature for Part 2. Jim was the star of my March 26, 2024 story called “The Longest Day,” so it’s gotta be Jeffrey’s turn. First, the set up.
Who are we? I’m an Air Force captain, recently returned from a one year assignment as an EC-47 navigator in Vietnam. My wife, Marjorie, is the real hero of our family. She’s from South Carolina, not used to snow and cold, and I just “dragged” her to Denver, where the four seasons are July, August and winter. With us are Christine, who will be 5 years old next March and Jim, who will be 4 in that same month.
Why are we here? I’ve been assigned to the Air Force Accounting and Finance Center (AFAFC), at 3800 York Street in northern Denver (not on any Air Force Base). Among many other functions, one of its primary missions is paying every Air Force member from one central location. I would soon become enmeshed in that mission.
Our next mission was to find an apartment that would accept children in a nice neighborhood of Denver. Believe it or not, several, if not most, apartments accepted pets but not kids.
We focused on a nice location called Canyon Club on Happy Canyon Road (sounds like a site for “Sesame Street”).
After some searching, we leased a small apartment at Canyon Club. It seemed just fine for the four of us.
OOPS!! Marjorie just learned from her doctor that we are expecting a third child in July, 1971. Welcome Jeffrey Paul Scooler.
So, here I am; starting a new job in a field I knew little about, moving into a small apartment in snowy Denver, with my lovely, small family, knowing full well we’d be moving to a larger apartment to accommodate our growing family, hopefully in the same complex in a few months. No pressure there, right?
So we settled in to our too small Apt 60, 6495 Happy Canyon Road, on Christmas Eve, 1970. Marjorie continued to demonstrate her Super Woman capabilities by getting a Christmas Tree and prepping for a great Christmas in spite of us moving in on Christmas Eve.
We were, not so affectionately called “the Scooler tribe” cause we dared to have a third child when the latest national environmental fad was “zero population growth”. Only two children allowed. LOL.
Shortly after settling in to Apt 60, we started the process to move to a larger 3-bedroom unit as soon as one was available at Canyon Club. Leave it to us to turn one move into two moves. Yay.
Due to Marjorie’s past problems, the doctors decided a Caesarean birth was the choice for Jeffrey Paul. The bad part of that was Marjorie had to undergo abdominal surgery, never any fun. The not so bad part was that it was scheduled. His birth date was gonna be July 19, 1971 and we knew that weeks in advance. No uncertain labor for Marjorie.
Jeffrey’s birth on July 19, went very well and we were soon all at home as a family of five.
Jeffrey Paul was a fun baby. Didn’t cry much, laughed and cooed a lot. His mom and I would often take him from his bassinet and bring him to our room to play, while his two siblings slept. Jeffrey was an easy kid to raise.
Following are two examples of events that prove he has a little mischief in him to keep his mom and dad on our toes. They are not in chronological order. That’s to keep you, my reader, on your toes. LOL.
He does like to throw a small incident at me reminding me that words do sometimes matter. He recounts and admits he was doing something especially nasty when he was all of of about 10 ish years old. I told him to go to his room. He was mumbling something and not moving toward his room. I helped him a bit with a slight nudge with my stockinged foot. ( Hopefully, I didn’t kick him in the butt with shoes on). He turned to me and snapped, “I HATE you!” I allegedly retorted, “I hate you too.” He likes to scold me now by asking what dad tells his youngest son, “I hate you”?
I cite this story as a great support for the truth of the great Stephen Sondheim lyric, “Careful with what you say, children will listen.”
One other example of his initiative to embarrass me occurred when we were throwing a party for my Air Force colleagues at our Fayetteville, NC home. Sixish year old Jeffrey decided it would be a good idea to charge admission to our party. He planted himself outside of our door and asked visitors, “Are you going to the Scooler party?” When they said yes, he said something like, “That’ll be 25 cents please.” I did teach him to say please and thank you. LOL.
Within minutes someone ratted him out. I ran outside and brought him to his room. The folks thought he was so cute. I wanted to shoot him.
Jeffrey Paul, has grown to be a fine, caring husband to his wife, Angela and a great dad to his fine young son, Apollo. Apollo is doing great as a full scholarship Electrical Engineering student at Oregon State. He just turned 21. God, I’m freakin old!
They’ve had some difficult times since Angela had been ill for several years. She is doing somewhat better now, so I’m hoping for much better days ahead for them.
Jeff is working very hard in social work trying to keep juveniles outta trouble and outta jail, by finding suitable employment for them. No easy task these days. So very proud of you, Jeff. Hang in there. ❤️❤️
Enuf
