Life Shapers

This Life Shapers document was originally written for my mother on Mother's Day as a reminder of all the things that happened to me in my life that shaped who I am today. While not all inclusive, it captures a great deal of the highlights. It made me realize I am a lucky man indeed for having had these experiences:

Sat on a pile of ants crying while my dad took many pictures of me (he didn’t know).

Ate oranges, apples, and bananas from trees.

Touched the Great Buddha in Japan.

Was chased by pecking roosters, mad dogs, German kids, Japanese kids, helicopter pilots, moose, bears, bad guys, angry parents, and the cops.

Steered a canal boat on the Zider Zee in Amsterdam.

Drank rainwater collected in the leaves of tundra grass on the cliffs of an Aleutian Island while watching gray whales breach in the Bering Sea.

Hit home runs, scored touchdowns, won wrestling matches, set a school track record, made the Japanese Little League All Stars, and lettered in four sports.

Lost every single game in football one season, struck out, broke a leg on the field, suffered a concussion during a game, and got kicked off a team.

Wore real wooden shoes in Holland.

Broke four leg bones, seven ribs, my wrist three times, and my nose twice.

Played guitar on stage in a band in junior high, high school, as an adult in bars, at company parties, private parties, and state fairs.

During 20 years in the Navy I learned to protect, learned to spy, learned to kill with extreme prejudice, learned to be inventive, and learned to lead people. I walked beside people of greatness. I also saw the inequities of the world’s selfish and witnessed the tyrannies of evil men.

Launched and recovered fighter aircraft from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Saw men die violently, up close and personal, for the first time.

Lived at sea for ten months at a time, several times.

Married a woman I hardly knew (still with her and still love her 34 years later).

Stood on a boat between Europe and Asia.

Watched the Marines march in parade uniform at sea during our nation’s 200^th birthday while my son was being born half a world away.

Left my wife and children many times for duty to my country, never sure if I would see them again.

Stood, swam, floated, and paddled in the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean

Sea, The Caribbean, Sea of Japan, Gulf of Mexico, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Bering Sea,

Bermuda Triangle, numerous rivers, and too many lakes to count.

Watched kittens being born on my friend’s bed, then watched two of them die.

Played in a swamp full of snapping turtles, cottonmouth water moccasins, and copperhead snakes in a gravel pit. Never feared any of them as much as I feared the watchman who tried to keep us out of the gravel pit.

Caught blue-tailed skinks off the bricks of my house. Also caught salmon, baby rabbits, frogs, snakes, turtles, crayfish, crabs, birds, and possums, all with my bare hands.

Started forest fires, helped fight forest fires, and set my bed on fire accidentally. Also set a neighbor’s yard on fire with a plastic fire breathing (hair spray and Zippo lighter) Godzilla.

Ice-skated on a ten-mile long lake in the Alaska wilderness.

Walked and climbed on glaciers.

Paddled kayaks, canoes, and inflatable rafts on rivers, oceans, wetlands, and lakes, sometimes at midnight.

Helped raise two fine sons. My proudest moment was the first time I saw them play in a band together on stage at the university, I thought they were cool.

Went to school in Japan, New York, the Aleutian Islands, Washington DC, Anchorage, Alaska, and Virginia.

Climbed trees, mountains, tundra cliffs, buildings, and down into caves.

Buried my father.

Camped outside in a lean-to at 40 degrees below zero.

Flew remote controlled jet powered targets at Mach 2 for Navy fighter aircraft to shoot at.

Shattered all combat pistol course records for the Navy.

Learned to speak some Japanese, German, Spanish, Italian, Farsi, Vietnamese,

French, and Filipino.

Played with marbles, yo-yos, pachinko games, toy soldiers, read comic books, traded baseball cards, collected coins, pulled wheelies on my bike, shot BB guns, and jumped on satellite shoes.

Played army, played guitar, played hooky, and played around with girls.

Was initiated as a Navy Chief Petty Officer and later, appointed to Senior Chief.

Cracked my head open on the cobblestones of El Morro fort in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Got banged up, bruised, cut, soaked, burned, shot, and exhausted beyond belief during Crisis Response Force Training.

Got married in a tiny chapel with only three people present.

Didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 19 and married (which never stopped me from driving in high school).

After 20 years of working on some of the most sophisticated intelligence gathering equipment in the world, I went to work for Hewlett-Packard as an entry-level production worker.

Watched dolphins lead U.S. Navy warships through the straits of Gibraltar. Also watched dolphins swim alongside my ocean kayak in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ate fresh killed quail cooked in mud balls by an 85-year-old black man I met in the woods while hunting in the swamps of Virginia.

Was at the 9^th grade teen club dance when a girl I knew fell over dead from inhaling freon from a plastic bag while trying to get high.

Stood on the ruins of the Parthenon in Athens and watched the sunset. Also watched the sunset from the Colossus of Rhodes, the Serengetti Forest, at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk where humans first flew, a cliff overlooking Mt. Fuji in Japan, a C-130 aircraft 30,000 feet over North Africa, and way too many islands to list.

Watched ravens for hours and found my inner spirit…mischievous…clever…the prankster.

Wanted a Fender Telecaster electric guitar more than anything in the world when I was ten. Finally got one when I was 38 and played that first night until my fingers bled.

Watched my baby brother fly his F-18 on a 7-G carrier break at NAS Pensacola, home of the Blue Angels. Talk about cool! Two months later he was flying incredibly dangerous combat missions over Kuwait during the Gulf War. I was continuously sick with worry until he was home. A few years later I was at his side when he beat cancer, possibly caused by Gulf War inoculation cocktails. The war tried to kill him twice...

In Japan we had a Japanese maid. I would say what I thought might be naughty Japanese words in front of her. If she scolded me, I ran to my bedroom and wrote that word down as an authenticated Japanese naughty word…for future use…the beginning of my colorful vocabulary.

Was violently run over by an 18 year old pregnant girl with no insurance while riding my motorcycle

Learned to fly fish at age 46…found out where heaven was.

At age 51, reconnected with some great folks I grew up with in remote parts of the world...this after 40 years of leading different lives. I rediscovered once again that some things never change; we instantly had bonds and connections few others will ever know or understand. This comes from experiences and life shapers of our own, living and growing up together in a time and place removed from America's mainstream, very tribal like...part of the military family. What a great way to grow up!

Mt. Hood

Recently, Irene and I had visitors to our home in Washington. They were my mom from Boise, my cousin Connie, and her husband Art from back east near Rochester, New York. We went a bunch of places while they were here but Art's favorite was our day trip to Mt. Hood, Oregon.

At 11,245 feet of elevation, Mt. Hood, the tallest mountain in Oregon, is part of the Cascade Mountain range and considered to be an active volcano by the USGS. The Cascade Range is a major mountain range of western North America, extending from southern British Columbia through Washington, Oregon, to northern California. It includes both non-volcanic mountains, including the rugged spires of the North Cascades, and the notable volcanoes known as the High Cascades. The Cascades are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, the ring of volcanoes and associated mountains around the Pacific Ocean. All of the known historic eruptions in the contiguous states have been from Cascade volcanoes. The Cascades volcanoes include Mt. Rainier, Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, Mt. Jefferson, and the notorious Mount St. Helens.

We left the house around 10 AM heading across the Columbia River to Highway 26. We climbed steadily from the river bottom to higher altitudes as we passed through the towns of Gresham, Sandy, Brightwood, and Government Camp. Just after Government Camp we took the road up the mountain to Timberline Lodge. Timberline, which sits at 6000 feet of elevation, was constructed between 1936 and 1938 as a Works Project Administration project during the Great Depression. It’s modern claim to fame was that the movie The Shining, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, used aerial shots of Timberline as part of its opening scene. Film of the exterior of the Timberline Lodge was also used for some establishing shots of the fictional Overlook Hotel throughout the movie. However, several of the exterior shots in the film which purport to show the Lodge, such as those with the hedge maze or loading dock, were not taken at the Timberline Lodge itself, but at Elstree studios in England, using a mock-up of the south face of the Lodge. We walked around the lodge, taking in the ornate timber construction and craftsmanship evident at every turn. Outside, looking up at the mountain, we marveled at the large number of summer skiers tearing down the slopes in mid August. This ski area is open year around. As we left the parking lot at Timberline, I noticed the coolest bus - The Bustache! I was disappointed not to be able to meet the owner since they obviously had a lot of humor and creativity...my kind of people.

After an awful meal in the ski hut, second only to the worlds worst cheeseburger (see blog post on Columbia Gorge Waterfalls below), we headed down the mountain in search of Trillium Lake. The area at Trillium Lake was part of the Barlow Road, a component of the Oregon Trail. Closely spaced logs provided passing immigrants with access across marshes to Summit Meadow which was a tollgate from 1866-1870. I had seen amazingly beautiful pictures of Trillium Lake and was determined to take some of my own. I was not to be disappointed. It would have been hard to take anything but gorgeous pictures of this scenic marvel. The air temperature was 74 degrees and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. After some time at the lake, I pointed us northwest again and headed us home, all the while knowing that I would be back to camp and kayak here another day. Who knows, perhaps there are also some rainbow trout waiting to challenge my fly fishing abilities!

Military Brats

I grew up as a military brat. More accurately, I was a Navy brat but I spent some time on bases other than Navy bases so I use the broader term. Non-military personnel may find the term “brat” insulting if they do not understand the context but when coupled with the term “military” it becomes a term of endearment for people who have either served in or have grown up as a part of the U.S. military.

I spent the majority of my childhood overseas, living in foreign countries and remote parts of our country – places like Puerto Rico, Germany, Japan, the Aleutian Islands and visiting many more countries as well. I attended a wide variety of schools, mostly Department of Defense (DoD) schools, taught by American teachers, which assimilated the local cultures of the country in which I lived into my education. While I didn’t know it at the time, I found out as an adult that the DoD schools I attended in Japan were built and run as models to the Japanese on how to structure education to promote an industrialized society. This was under General MacArthur's post WW II plan for the period known as “Occupied Japan”.

Military brats tend to have a breadth of culture, experiences and an education on life largely unmatched by most teenagers who were not associated with the military, due mostly to exposure to much more of the world. The military also tends to immerse you in local cultures and teach you how to live like the indigenous people while still maintaining a strong sense of your own country. The foundation for this strong sense of your own country comes from living on the base. Military brats may not develop strong relations with people or places, but can form strong connections with the notion of a military base and the communities in which they find themselves. This is because the knowledge, experience, values, ideas, attitudes, skills, tastes, and techniques that are associated with the military can sometimes differ from civilian culture.

Military bases are miniature, self-contained, government-subsidized towns that promote conformity. No matter where I was in the world, I knew and was comfortable with, the order of the military base. You knew there was a commissary that sold groceries, you knew there was a base exchange that was like a department store, and you knew they both carried American things. You also knew there would be swimming pools, gyms, hobby shops, teen clubs, organized sports teas, and libraries…all very similar no matter what base you were on. The comfort that can be found on military bases is not limited to the physical trappings, but is also fortified by some of the consistent rituals common to them. When moving around the world, these rituals helped us feel at home in our new community. Even though the faces and geography change, the "base" can remain recognizable because the rituals are often uniform. You knew you were going to stand up for the national anthem before each movie began at the theater. You knew when the base flag was lowered for the night each evening that “Retreat” was played over a loudspeaker and you were expected to stop whatever you were doing and face the flag with your hand over your heart.

The bonds formed amongst the brats are far stronger than those formed with civilian children. These bonds are often strong for life. No matter how crazy life got, I always knew that back on the base were other kids that understood what it was like to have a parent gone or worry about your father possibly going to war. I have many such bonds with other brats I grew up with regardless of how many years it’s been since I’ve seen them. Some of them I even knew and went to school with at multiple duty stations. Yeah, I'm talking about you Sue...and yes, you too Karen.

The older I get the more I understand the importance of those bonds, the meaning of our shared experiences, the gravity of our sacrifices, and the fortune of our life education. I will always have a special place in my heart for those other kids I grew up with on those bases during a time when our fathers answered America’s call for service to country. Over the years I have reconnected with some of them and rekindled those ties: Billy Westcoat, Karen Carruthers, Diane Power, Ken and Rick Brown, Sue Saari, Mike Hooper, Paul Gedwed, Ginger Kilgour, Walter Ellis, Gary Pinault, Jacqie Newton, David Osband, Tom Priest, and most recently my friend Debbie Shepherd. To those friends - if you're reading this article...it’s been a treat for me to reconnect with each one of you and I am glad we have all reached out across time and distance to make those connections.