Insight: A story of persistence

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

In the days before digital, newspaper articles were written on a typewriter and much harder to produce.

Computers simplified that process but not the interactions between reporters and the subjects of articles. For me, I take hand-written notes and use them to create the stories I write.

Back in January 1980, I was new to my duty assignment with the 2044th Communications Group at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C., where I was serving as a Public Affairs representative in the Air Force. That meant I was reporting on the activities and airmen who were also assigned to the unit.

I would compose articles and then drop them off in person or mail them to weekly military newspapers that my commanding officer thought would be interested in publishing them.

My duties had me cover everything from special events being hosted by the 2044th Communication Group to welcoming new personnel. If I wasn’t out of the office interviewing someone, or typing stories up at my desk, I could be found taking photographs at The Pentagon or discussing potential articles with the editors of several nearby military papers on the phone.

In just my second week of duty at The Pentagon, a Senior Master Sergeant who supervised the 2044th radio section stopped by my office and asked if I would write an article about a young airman who had passed a proficiency test for radio repair with a perfect score. I agreed and called to arrange a time to do that.

Three days later, I met the young airman at his office workstation and started asking him questions about the test.

His name was Airman First Class Billy Catalina, and he grew up as an only child of a family in Queens, New York. He told me that he used to watch airplanes taking off and landing at LaGuardia Airport as a boy and wanted to become a pilot someday.

Billy’s father had died when he was 8 and his mother struggled to put food on the table for her son. As Billy got older, he paid less attention to school and spent more time with neighborhood friends. He got a part-time job in the evenings at a warehouse and dropped out of school with failing grades when he was a sophomore in high school.

His mother pleaded with Billy to return to school and to please her, he signed up to attend night adult education classes at a nearby high school for several years trying to earn his diploma. When his boss at work changed his hours, Billy had to give up night classes but he then spent almost a year on Saturday mornings studying and he eventually took the high school equivalency test and earned his GED diploma.

That was his ticket to enlisting in the U.S. Air Force where Billy trained as radio repairman and was assigned to the 2044th Communications Group. The test he took was to advance from an apprentice-level to a proficient-level in his job and consisted of tough technical questions.

He said he was a bit apprehensive and not very confident prior to taking the test since he was such a poor student in school. But he dedicated himself to reviewing the radio repair manual in advance of the test and was the first person in the examination room to finish the test.

Several weeks later, Billy received notification in the mail that not only had he passed the proficiency test, but that he had achieved a 100 percent perfect score.

I wrote a small 400-word article about Billly’s accomplishment, and it appeared several weeks later in the Air Force Communications Command’s newspaper. Billy stopped by my office a few days later to pick up a few copies of the newspaper and to thank me in person for taking the time to interview him.

Less than a year later, I was reassigned to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona for duty as editor of the base newspaper. By the time I had completed four years of duty there, I had written hundreds of stories and was preparing to return to civilian life and restart my career as a newspaper reporter.

At Christmastime in 1990, I was shopping at the Winrock Mall in Albuquerque, New Mexico when someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was a man pushing a baby stroller and holding the hand of another small child under the age of 5. He asked me if my name was Ed and if I remembered him.

To be honest, his face looked familiar, but I didn’t recall his name. He said he was Billy Catalina and reached into his wallet and retrieved a faded yellow article that I had written years before about him.

He told me that his mother had died of cancer not long after it had been published. In cleaning out her house, Billy found a clipped copy of the article in her bedside nightstand, and another one tacked up on her refrigerator. He hugged me and thanked me for making his mother so proud of him.

I try to keep that in mind with each article I write and hope they impact lives positively like the one about Billy Catalina did. <

Andy Young: Discovering good fortune(s)

By Andy Young

Recently while in the midst of yet another abortive attempt to de-clutterize my living space, I picked up a piggy bank I found hidden under some old shirts in the back of a seldom-opened drawer. However, when I shook it, I didn’t hear coins jingling, but rather paper rustling. I briefly found myself hoping I had stumbled onto a cache of $20 bills I had squirreled away and forgotten about some years before, but it turned out what was producing the noise was something even more valuable: a veritable gold mine of good fortune!

Or, more accurately, good fortunes. Seventy-nine of them, in fact. Years (or perhaps decades) ago I began saving the messages from inside the cookies my dinner companions and I polished off after finishing our Chinese takeout.

Sadly though, not every fortune comes to fruition. For example, one that said, “August will bring you financial success,” has yet to do me much good, although to be fair, it didn’t specify in which year I’d be moving up a tax bracket or two. Other date-specific messages included, “An exciting opportunity will knock on your door this Friday,” “An act of kindness on a Saturday will have a ripple effect,” and “Your career will take a positive turn in April.”

If you eat enough fortune cookies, it’s inevitable you’ll start getting some repeat messages. For example, I have two separate fortunes that declare, “A secret admirer will soon send you a sign of affection.” I’m not sure which one to believe: the one printed in red ink or the one in blue, so I logically kept both of them. I also have two fortunes that say, “August will bring you unexpected surprises.” But that one doesn’t really excite me, because really, aren’t all surprises unexpected?

I’m convinced some people who write those fortunes are moonlighting from their regular job of authoring the daily horoscope that runs in newspapers. I swear I’ve read “The time is right to make new friends, “This is the month that ingenuity stands high on the list,” and “Your hard work will lead to greater happiness” before; the only question is which of the 12 signs of the zodiac these generic lines were written about.

Evidently some amateur philosophers are employed as fortune providers. Anyone who can write, “There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness,” “It is easier to fight for principles than it is to live up to them,” or “Those who love rumors hate a peaceful life,” clearly possesses insightfulness that many of the rest of us do not.

It’s also likely that some folks who currently churn out fortunes for a living aspire to be comedy writers. That would explain, “Don’t worry about the world coming to an end; it’s already tomorrow in Australia,” “A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory,” and “Oops……Wrong cookie.”

Some fortunes just defy explanation, like, “You are the mast of every situation.” The author of that one is probably still learning English. The same goes for whoever wrote “Une personne que vous connaissez attend votre louange.” Fortunately. that one had a translation on the back (“Someone you know is waiting for your praise”).

I’m not sure if keeping those fortunes guarantee that they’ll come true, but throwing them out would almost certainly negate whatever magic they might possess. Those tiny pieces of paper aren’t taking up much space, and who knows, maybe one of these days a secret admirer will send me a sign of affection, in either red or blue ink.

That would be most delightful.

Not to mention, an unexpected surprise. <

Insight: Memorable duty in the desert

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Following two years of high-profile military service at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C., I was hoping that my next duty assignment for the U.S. Air Force would be somewhat less intense in the fall of 1981.

An F-15E Eagle aircraft from the 555th Squadron sits on the
tarmac while awaiting a training mission in 1983 at Luke 
Air Force Base in Arizona. COURTESY PHOTO 

I was mistaken as I drew Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona. Sitting on land donated to the Air Force by the Goldwater Family after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Luke AFB was among the busiest military installations in the world and was training F-4 Phantom and F-15 Eagle pilots and maintenance aircrews.

With a 2 ½-mile long runway, at the time of my arrival, Luke was third behind Cape Canaveral and Edwards AFB in California as a potential U.S. Space Shuttle landing site. Each time U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy flew home to his California ranch, Air Force One would land at Luke so they could visit with Nancy’s mother and stepfather, who lived nearby in Scottsdale, Arizona. U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater would fly his Cessna aircraft home to Arizona from Washington, D.C. and would land at Luke.

Within weeks after I arrived at Luke for duty, my commanding officer informed me that I would be part of a base response team that mobilized quickly in the event of an emergency. Just three days later, I joined a team of airmen aboard an old Huey helicopter responding to the crash of F-4 pilot in the desert on a training flight. My job was to interact with any reporters who arrived at the crash site and to safeguard any classified information in case it was exposed during the crash. I sat on a bench in the helicopter, which had no doors and secured myself to the bench with a rope instead of a seat belt.

As the helicopter hovered in a circle above the crash site, I wanted to throw up as the only thing preventing me from falling out of the open door was a flimsy piece of rope. We landed and all that was left of the F-4 was contained in a 10-foot black smoking hole in the sand. The pilot had ejected before the aircraft crashed, but the ejection seat landed upside down and he was dead upon impact.

While I settled in at Luke, my primary job was to write for the weekly base newspaper. But I did have other duties such as serving as a flightline guide for tourists and groups known as “tailspotters,” who would take photographs of aircraft tail numbers as a hobby. These groups were required to apply to visit the base months in advance and couldn’t stop by randomly as they wished.

Another of my duties was to serve as the Public Affairs Command Post representative one weekend a month. Back in the days before cell phones, I was handed a beeper and notified of emergency situations. One Saturday morning in May 1983, I was recalled to the base for a commercial airliner in distress.

Taking off from Fresno, California with 81 passengers and crew members on board, a Republic Airlines DC-9 aircraft enroute to Phoenix was forced to make an emergency landing at Luke because of a fuel problem. The aircraft’s fuel gauge read full in Fresno, but it was faulty, and the DC-9 only had less than five gallons of jet fuel or about 30 seconds of time in the air remaining when granted permission to land at our base.

I notified the base commander of the incident, and he directed that the Luke Officer’s Club be made available for the passengers. He arranged for an Air Force bus to transport them to their awaiting families at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. My job was to brief reporters about the incident at the base’s front gate after I made sure the passengers knew what was happening and helped them contact their families to let them know they were safe.

During my time at Luke, I never got to see a Space Shuttle landing there, but one afternoon, I did watch as a “Super Guppy” aircraft landed to refuel in September 1984 while carrying the Space Shuttle Discovery across the U.S. on a trip back to Cape Canaveral in Florida. I also was able to see a SR-71 Blackbird aircraft when it landed for refueling on its way to Beale AFB in California.

Luke’s mission also changed while I was stationed there. The Air Force transitioned Luke’s fleet of F-4s to the Air Guard and began training F-16 pilots at the base. A contingent of Saudi Arabian pilots and aircrews also trained on the F-15 at Luke as did Italian, British and German pilots on the Tornado aircraft.

On several occasions, I was offered an incentive flight as a passenger on an F-15 aircraft, but I always turned those down. I had previously written articles for the base paper about incentive flight recipients and had always noticed a large plastic trash can filled with water near where the F-15s landed. I had asked what that was for and learned that the amount of G-forces recipients experience, and their lack of flight time result in severe vomiting afterward. The trash can is there to splash away what incentive ride recipients throw up when landing. <

Tim Nangle: Investing in Maine’s childcare workforce

By Senator Tim Nangle

Earlier this month, alongside Senate President Mattie Daughtry, I joined Space to Thrive, a local nonprofit providing early childhood education and school-age care in Windham and Raymond, for a beach day at Sebago Lake State Park. I listened to their staff talk about the challenges they face and the support they need to continue doing this critical work.

State Senator Tim Nangle

I walked away from that conversation deeply moved and deeply concerned. What I heard over and over is that while these jobs are essential, the people doing them are stretched thin, underpaid and too often underappreciated.

I want to be clear. Childcare providers are not babysitters. They are early education professionals. Every day, they help children learn how to share, solve problems and express their feelings in productive ways. They teach children healthy habits and how to socialize, which is no small task in a world that sometimes feels more disconnected than ever. Their work allows parents to go to their jobs knowing their children are safe and cared for.

That’s why we must treat this workforce with the seriousness it deserves.

During my conversation, the providers told me about some of the tools that make a difference. One is the public-private partnership model that pairs school districts with local childcare providers. These partnerships give parents more choices, save districts and taxpayers money and expand access to high-quality early education. In Windham, for example, partnerships like this are helping to fill critical gaps in pre-K and wraparound care.

Another essential tool is the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood Scholarship Program, which helps childcare educators earn college degrees and professional credentials. The scholarship covers most tuition costs, provides stipends for books and expenses and includes paid time for coursework. This program makes higher education affordable for the workforce, reduces turnover and builds long-term career paths for the people who care for our “mini-Mainers”.

But childcare providers are losing staff even with supportive programs like these because wages are too low to compete with other fields. Many who stay do so because they love the work but nonetheless struggle to make ends meet. As one childcare professional told me, “We can’t keep asking people to do so much for so little.”

That is why the Legislature acted during the last session to strengthen the system as a whole. We maintained critical funding for programs that keep child care centers open, including wage supplements for workers, support for families covering the cost of care and investments in Head Start (LD 210). We required the state to enter into contracts that expand child care slots, especially for rural families and children with disabilities (LD 1736). We also made it easier for small businesses to open child care facilities, increasing availability in more communities (LD 1428).

These actions matter. They keep centers open, support the workforce and expand access for families. But they are only a foundation. We know wages remain too low, staff turnover is too high, and too many families still cannot find or afford care.

When we invest in childcare, we are strengthening the foundation of our communities. Parents can work and support their households. Children are better prepared for school and life. Employers gain a more reliable workforce. And the entire state benefits from a healthier, more resilient economy.

Our conversation at Sebago Lake reminded me that this work is not optional. It is vital. Our childcare professionals deserve our thanks, respect and most importantly, continued action. I am committed to making sure the Legislature keeps listening and responding, because when we back the people who care for our kids, we’re backing the strength of our whole community.

For the latest, follow me on Facebook at facebook.com/SenatorTimNangle, sign up for my e-newsletter at mainesenate.org, or contact me directly at Tim.Nangle@legislature.maine.gov. You can also call the Senate Majority Office at 207-287-1515.

The opinions in this column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of The Windham Eagle newspaper ownership or its staff. <

Andy Young: Randomly thinking random thoughts

By Andy Young

I wish I had discovered the value of walking years ago. Non-competitive physical activity, I’ve found, doesn’t just encourage the free flow of ideas; it enhances it. Often, I find myself wondering about everyday things whenever I have the opportunity to stroll down some country lanes, or hike through nearby peaceful forests. 

Thankfully I was able to remember a few of the thoughts that occurred to me during this morning’s nature walk.

For example:

Who buys shoes or clothing on the Internet? I can’t imagine purchasing any article of apparel without first trying it on to see if it fits. It’d be like buying a car without at least test-driving it or buying a house sight unseen. I just don’t get it.

After eating with some friends at a restaurant recently we had to split the check. Up until then I thought cash was still king but apparently, it’s been dethroned. What the heck is Venmo? When I heard that word, I thought they were talking about some defenseman on the Finnish national hockey team. And who (or what) is Crypto? If I had to guess, I’d say he’s a fictional supervillain who’s out to destroy Gotham City, and ruin Batman in the process. I bet he lives inside a luxurious, tricked-out mausoleum, and only comes out at night.

If Venmo really is a thing, it won’t be long before someone launches Vedgmo, a system of paying for things with fresh produce. I’m just worried that someone’s going to create Vengemo, a diabolical method of gaining retribution for real or imagined past slights. Maybe it wouldn’t be all bad, though, since it would take all the idle hit men off the unemployment line.

Litterers are lazy, selfish, and disrespectful. I know I’ve said that before, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Here’s a joke I heard (or to be accurate, re-heard) recently.

What’s Ludwig van Beethoven doing these days?

Answer: decomposing.

You know who must have lived a frustrating life? Whoever it was that bought the exclusive rights to manufacture 49-star flags. They probably thought they’d make millions when Alaska became the 49th United State on Jan. 3, 1959, rendering every previously-existing 48-star American flag obsolete. But imagine their chagrin when, just 230 days later, Hawaii joined the union! Owning all those 49-star flags turned out to be like owning Blockbuster Video stock in 2014.

These days 49-star flags are probably lining landfills that are rapidly filling up with fax machines, overhead projectors, manual typewriters, paper road maps that never fold back to their original shape, telephone books, boomboxes, Walkmans, slide rules, mimeograph machines, and shoes that need tying. When 29th century archeologists get around to digging up relics from our era, they’re going to wonder why 20th- and 21st century people needed so much tangible stuff. Alas, by then all the 49-star flags and paper road maps will probably have disintegrated.

I’ve been buying “Forever” stamps for so long now that I’d forgotten what their actual price is. Did you know it currently costs 78 cents to mail a letter within the U.S., and 61 cents to mail a postcard?

I’ve figured out how to get my money’s worth from the post office, though. Instead of sending letters to friends, I write out two postcards, then stick them inside an envelope and mail it. Every time I do that, I save 44 cents!

Another random thought: “Random” is a pretty random word. Why not use “haphazard,” “desultory,” “slapdash,” “arbitrary,” or any other unpremeditated synonym instead?

And finally, do scientists know how long it takes for a boombox to decompose?

Insight: Let the laughs begin

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Back in the 1970s, I spent a good deal of time going to the movies and despite the lack of reclining stadium seats, Dolby surround sound, personalized concierge concessions and $18 tickets, I survived the experience.

'Foul Play' starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase is among
Ed Pierce's favorite comedy films of the 1970s.
COURTESY PHOTO   

I would attend midnight showings on weekends, drive-in marathons, and Saturday afternoon double-features. On most excursions to the neighborhood theater, I could buy a movie ticket, a Coke and a large popcorn combined for less than $10.

Recently I was asked about my favorite films from the 1970s era. I told them it was a very good question because it’s hard for me to pin that down as I watched so many movies in theaters during that time. Off the top of my head, I rattled off “A Clockwork Orange,” “Rocky,” “The Godfather,” “American Graffiti,” “Bound for Glory” and “Carrie,” but having more time to think about it, I might have answered differently.

Comedies have always appealed to me and the 1970s produced some of the very best which I vividly recall 50-some years later.

At the old Serf Theatre in Las Vegas, New Mexico in January 1972, I watched “Kelly’s Heroes,” an action caper set in World War II. I typically didn’t associate Clint Eastwood and Telly Savalas with a comedy, but Donald Sutherland was hilarious and so were Don Rickles, Carroll O’Connor and Gavin McLeod. I was amazed at how much I laughed during this movie about a group of GIs trying to extract Nazi gold bars from a bank behind enemy lines in France. It was also the first time I remember seeing Donald Sutherland on the big screen.

While visiting home over Christmas Break from college in December 1972, I watched “What’s Up Doc?” at the Lowe’s Theater in Pittsford, New York. Ryan O’Neal, Barbra Streisand, Kenneth Mars, and Madeline Kahn are part of an insane screwball plot involving identical plaid bags, stolen Top Secret classified documents, a valuable jewel collection and a bunch of igneous rocks. It’s a madcap whirlwind ride through the streets of San Francisco and contains an assortment of oddball characters including Sorrell Booke (who went on to play Boss Hogg on television’s “The Dukes of Hazzard”) and John Hillerman (Higgins on TV’s “Magnum P.I.”).

The night that “Blazing Saddles” debuted in February 1974, I was watching it with friends at the Highland Theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico and couldn’t stop laughing. Harvey Korman, Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder and Madeline Kahn were perfectly cast in this classic directed by the legendary Mel Brooks. Former NFL football star Alex Karras as Mongo cracked me up too. The scene sitting around the campfire eating beans remains one of the best things that I’ve ever seen while attending a movie in my lifetime.

I didn’t know anything about “Slap Shot” when I saw it at the Coronado 4 movie theater in Albuquerque in April 1977. Starring Paul Newman as the coach of a losing minor league hockey team in West Virginia, the film becomes even funnier once the general manager, played by Strother Martin, adds the three “Hanson” brothers to the team. They inject craziness into a team going through the motions of a losing season. Between hockey fights and brawls before the puck is even dropped during their games, the Hansons inspire the team which is on the verge of folding.

In August 1978, I watched “National Lampoon's Animal House” at a U.S. Army and Air Force Exchange theater on Drake Kaserne in Frankfurt, Germany. Serving in the U.S. Air Force at the time, this movie brought me back to my college fraternity days. I identify with Tom Hulce in this film as the new fraternity pledge as I was back in 1971. John Belushi, Kevin Bacon, Tim Matheson, Steven Furst, Bruce McGill, Mark Metcalf, Peter Riegert, Karen Allen, Verna Bloom and John Vernon all deliver excellent performances. It’s non-stop laughs and remains one of those films I can watch today and find something new to laugh about. It still makes me chuckle to think about the toga party in this film.

The following week in August 1978 at the very same U.S. Army and Air Force Exchange theater on Drake Kaserne in Frankfurt, Germany, I watched “Foul Play” with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. It’s a wacky story about a kooky librarian who is being stalked by a strange cult looking to kill the pope who is visiting San Francisco. Hawn picks up a hitchhiker who slips something into her purse and dies but not before telling her to “Beware the Dwarf.” That sets into motion a chain of bizarre events and she meets Chase, a detective who is investigating. Burgess Meredith and Billy Barty are also in the cast, but the scene stealer is Dudley Moore as an inept ladies’ man who keeps showing up at inopportune times. I can laugh just thinking about some of the Murphy bed scenes with Moore. The 1970s remains for me a Golden Age of classic films and a time when it was highly affordable to watch new movies at the theater and no screen flashes from smart phones lighting up the darkened theater. It was a different era and one I’d go back to in a heartbeat.

Andy Young: Keeping up with the Joneses

By Andy Young

The National Football League Players Association has filed a grievance on behalf of Christian Wilkins, a defensive tackle who has been released by the Las Vegas Raiders.

I have no interest in the brutal business of professional football or in the Raiders, who last time that I cared were calling Oakland home. I’m guessing Mr. Wilkins won’t starve though, since $84.75 million of the four-year, $110 million contract he signed in March of 2024 was guaranteed.

What caught my eye was the reason for the grievance. The NFLPA contends the Raiders are attempting to void the contract of an injured player, an action that is not only reprehensible, but also against the rules.

Mr. Wilkins is currently physically unable to perform due to his slow recovery from surgery to repair a Jones fracture.

What? You’ve never heard of a Jones fracture? Don’t feel bad. Neither had I.

A Jones fracture occurs at the base of the fifth metatarsal bone, which is on the outside of the foot. It can be caused by the sorts of repetitive stress professional athletes, particularly large ones, put on their bodies, and recovering from surgery on it is difficult, since the bone has a limited blood supply. Numerous NFL players, including current stars Derrick Henry and Deebo Samuel, have sustained Jones fractures, as has basketball superstar Keven Durant and more than two dozen other prominent NBA players.

What I want to know is who the Jones Fracture was named after. There are plenty of candidates, as “Jones” is the fifth-most common surname in the United States, behind only Smith, Johnson, Williams, and Brown.

It’s natural to assume that the first to sustain such an injury was an athlete, given the constant stress they put on their feet. Could the original Jones fracture have been suffered by Sam or K.C. Jones, two key members of the dynastic Boston Celtics teams of the 1950s and 1960s? And if not one of them, how about Caldwell, Wil, Major, or Charles Jones, four large brothers who played basketball for Albany (Georgia) State University before launching NBA careers of varying lengths. It’s not unlikely a basketball player was the first to suffer this particular injury since no fewer than 118 men (and at least 10 women) named Jones have played the sport professionally.

But then, it could be one of the 145 Joneses who’ve played major league baseball, or one of the 352, including seven Mikes, five Davids, four Willies, three Rods, two Victors, a Buddha, a Pacman, a Deacon, a Too-Tall, a Spike, and a Tebucky who’ve played in the National Football League.

Could Shirley Jones have fallen off a stage while dancing in Oklahoma, Carousel, or The Music Man, or during a taping of an episode of The Partridge Family? Maybe John Paul Jones tripped while declaring “I have not yet begun to fight,” during a memorable battle in British waters in 1779. Could it have been Davy Jones while on tour with The Monkees? Grace Jones tipping over when her hair got too heavy on one side? Carolyn Jones while performing a stunt as Morticia in an episode of the Addams Family? Terry Jones of Monty Python’s Flying Circus? James Earl Jones while voicing Darth Vader? Tommy Lee Jones? Catherine Zeta-Jones? Quincy Jones, or one of his daughters, Rashida or Kidada?

Okay. The Jones Fracture was named for … drum roll … Sir Robert Jones, a British doctor who first described the injury in 1902 after he himself sustained one while … dancing!

So there. And shame on those of you who pooh-poohed the possibility of the Jones fracture originating with Shirley while she danced. <