Insight: 48 years and counting

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Seems hard to believe that this week it will be 48 years since I completed my U.S. Air Force basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Where has all the time gone?

Ed Pierce at Lackland Air Force Base during U.S.
Air Force Basic Training in July 1977.
COURTESY PHOTO 

Members of our Squadron 3723 Flight 610 arrived in San Antonio back in June 1977 for eight weeks of learning about what it meant to serve in the military. That first night, we gathered outside our dormitory waiting for everyone’s plane to land and to join us so we could begin training.

A friendly sergeant who waited outside with us called our group “Rainbows.” He said that term was derived from the fact we were all dressed in different colored clothing, like every shade of the rainbow.

Once everyone was there, another not so friendly sergeant joined us and told us we were going to play a game called “Pick ‘Em Up, Put Em Down” to get us accustomed to taking orders. For the next few hours, we lifted our suitcases upon his command and put them down when he instructed us to do so. It was boring and monotonous, but I adapted and avoided being screamed at for not following a command.

At the end of that drill, we were instructed to proceed into the dormitory and choose a cot. We slept head to toe, alternating positioning with each cot. The gruff training sergeant then told us we had five minutes to use the restroom, remove the whiskers from our faces, and pop into bed. That was an easy one for me as I was clean-shaven and at the age of 23, I couldn’t grow much of a beard or mustache at all. A frantic shaving rush ensued and by the next morning when I woke up and looked around the room, I saw many of my fellow trainees sporting significant shaving cuts and looking like they had gone through a hamburger grinder.

The person sleeping in the cot next to me was called out after the sergeant looked at his pillow and face. He had more than 40 deep facial hacks from his razor and his pillow resembled the underside of steak packaging at the supermarket. He told the training sergeant that he was frightened by his command to remove his whiskers, and we never saw him again as he was discharged for military incompatibility.

We marched as a group everywhere including to the barber shop to have our hair buzzed off, getting our first uniforms to wear or to the mess hall for breakfast, lunch and dinner. While being measured for a uniform, I was given pants two sizes too large but hesitated to complain out of fear that I could meet the same fate as what happened to the hamburger-faced trainee.

Rather than remain in the dorm on Sunday morning when we weren’t training, I joined many fellow flight members at church. Afterward several food trucks were in the parking lot, and you could unwind and just be yourself and socialize with your friends for a while there.

Our weekdays were spent marching around in 95-degree heat. On one occasion, the training sergeant noticed me at the back of a formation, and he pulled me aside. He told me that I better get in step or else I would face a “setback” or a return to day one of Basic Training. That was all it took for me to rapidly dedicate myself to always be in step during the three-mile marches.

In the classroom, we learned about the Uniform Code of Military Justice and basic hygiene principles, and what was expected of us as U.S. airmen. In the dormitory, we were shown how to make a bed using neat and sharp hospital corners. While demonstrating precisely what he wanted to see by showing us himself, the training sergeant yanked back the covers of a trainee’s bed to demonstrate but instead discovered a puddle of pee. That trainee was given a discharge for military incompatibility.

Each morning our dorm was inspected, and demerits were assigned for shoes under the beds not being aligned properly, messy lockers, filthy bars of soap, poorly made beds and uniforms not hung up the right way. Those demerits resulted in extra running drills for the entire flight or a smaller amount of time that we could use the telephone to call home after dinner once a week.

Eventually after weeks of racking up demerit after demerit, we came together and determined that we all needed to leave a bar of unused soap in our lockers. We instead all used a jug of liquid soap carefully hidden away in a shower vent. when we showered. A team of the best show aligners, best bed-makers, best locker arrangers, and best uniform hangers handled those tasks for everyone and there were no more demerits.

On Aug. 1, 1977, our training instructor bid us farewell and put us on a bus for tech school. My bus, bound for Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, pulled out of the dorm parking lot and then suddenly stopped. A trainee had given the middle finger to the training instructor out the rear window as the bus was leaving. He was removed from the bus and given a “setback” and had to do the eight weeks of basic training all over again. <

Insight: Where do nomads go on vacation?

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

When you sign up for military service, as I did, you learn quickly that where you wake up today may not be the same place you wake up tomorrow.

C-Rations were canned prepared meals used by military
members on deployments in the late 1970s.
COURTESY PHOTO      

For me, it could be best described as a nomadic lifestyle, and certainly not something everyone can embrace.

It takes a person to all kinds of places and situations and looking back on that time of my life years later, how I adapted to constantly moving from place to place can only be attributed to my youth and being open to experiencing new things.

I can recall being with my unit on a wintertime deployment in what was then West Germany in February 1978. Our commanding officer was directed to have us establish a camp at the edge of some woods near Fulda, close to the border with East Germany, which at that time was a communist nation under the control of the Soviet Union. We pitched our tents in darkness and set up a diesel stove inside the tent for warmth.

Outside there was snow on the ground and the temperature was hovering at around 5 degrees. Our unit’s tent sat on a massive sheet of ice which never melted, despite keeping the diesel stove going throughout our entire week there.

There was no mess hall for food, so we ate what were called C-Rations, canned prepared food, much of which was left over and recycled by the military following the Vietnam War. I was informed by other unit members that some C-Ration meals were better than others. The meals were stored in drab olive cans and flimsy brown boxes.

Inside each box was a canned entrée, a small package of stale crackers, a packet of ground coffee, packages of salt and sugar, canned pound cake or bread, a chocolate bar or chewing gum, matches and a package of three cigarettes. To open the C-Ration cans, we were issued what was known as a P-38, a tiny aluminum disposable tool.

Sometimes by the time I finally got the C-Ration cans open, I would find that what was inside was rotten or moldy. Because of that, I became a bit more selective in meals that I chose when they were offered. I preferred C-Ration cans of tuna and boned turkey over beef slices with potatoes (we called these ones beef with boulders), chicken chunks and noodles, beans with hot dog chunks (known commonly as beanie weenie) or ham and lima beans.

To this day if I see a can of C-Rations for sale somewhere in an antique store, I gasp, and my stomach turns.

There is very little that compares to sleeping in your clothes for a week in a sleeping bag, waking up on a tiny wooden canvas cot and smelling burned coffee grounds on top of the diesel stove in freezing weather. There were no showers, no running water, and no amenities associated with modern life which we all take for granted such as electricity.

Later in my military career, I was a candidate for a TDY, a temporary duty assignment to another location, along with another E-5 staff sergeant who worked in our office with me. It was not disclosed where this temporary assignment would be, and up until the moment that we received our official orders, we had no idea where that location might be.

We were going to flip a coin to see who had to go, but he said he was supposed to be best man at a wedding that weekend and asked me nicely if I could go and he would then gratefully take the next TDY assignment in the future. I agreed and then was informed that my TDY was to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I spent three weeks there and slept in the NCO barracks, getting up early each morning to conduct interviews, gather stories and then produce a newsletter for Air Force air crews participating in an air-to-ground military exercise. Each newsletter was finished and distributed by noon and the rest of my days and evenings were free to see the sights in Las Vegas, go to some shows and enjoy great food served in almost every casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

When it was all over and I had returned to my regular duty station, eight months passed before another TDY assignment arose. The other staff sergeant received orders to travel to a remote jungle location about 75 miles from Tegucigalpa, Honduras. When he got back from his trip, he spoke about living in the utmost primitive conditions there.

He said there wasn’t laundry service at the camp he was assigned to. All their clothing was washed in a large boiling vat, which resulted in most of his military T-shirts turning a shade of light brown. He was also receiving medical care for a mild case of malaria after being bitten by plenty of mosquitoes and hordes of other insects.

I chose not to share with him how different our TDY experiences turned out to be, but I thought to myself how fortunate I was to be sent to Las Vegas, Nevada instead of some remote jungle location in Honduras. <

Insight: A mentor and a friend

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

On the night before Thanksgiving in 1977, I was more than 5,000 miles from home, it was raining all the time, and I didn’t know anyone there. I had just been sent to my first duty assignment in the U.S. Air Force at the age of 23, at a remote location near Frankfurt, Germany.

Daryl Green was a longtime friend
of Ed Pierce and they served
together in the Air Force
in Germany and in Washington,
D.C. during their military careers.
COURTESY PHOTO

It was not what I had hoped for. My unit’s barracks were at Drake Kaserne in a U.S. Army housing building surrounded by a tall stone wall. My third-story room contained a cot, a closet and a window looking out over the stone wall onto a city street below. It was a 7-minute walk to the mess hall for a meal and by the end of my second week there, I was wondering if I had made the right decision in wanting to see if things looked any different on the other side of the world.

For the Thanksgiving holiday, my unit had been given four days off. I wasn’t envisioning having a fun time eating my Thanksgiving dinner alone in the mess hall and without receiving my first paycheck yet, I was unable to afford to use a payphone to call my family back in America.

Then something unexpected happened. Another member of my unit who lived across the hall from me in the barracks invited me to listen to music in his room and that simple gesture renewed my spirit. His name was Sgt. Daryl Green and meeting him turned out to be one of the best things to ever happen to me.

He was originally from Brooklyn and had been in the Air Force for almost four years. He was single and had some of the most expensive stereo equipment I had ever seen. Although I did not share his love for jazz music, I discovered that sitting and listening to his jazz albums in his room was as close to attending a jazz concert as in person.

All his record albums were jazz greats such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane and he introduced me to more contemporary jazz musicians such as the Brecker Brothers, Idris Muhammad and Herbie Hancock.

Even more impressive was Daryl’s turntable. It was a $2,000 Jean Francois Le Tallec linear turntable that electronically sensed the album tracks, and the turntable’s tone arm was self-contained. Each record played on it sounded incredible.

As I got to know Daryl, I found that we both loved college basketball and were both writers. He was working in Aerospace Ground Equipment in Europe, but his next duty assignment was to be the editor of the base newspaper at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. When he was eventually transferred out of our unit, I shook his hand goodbye, thanked him for being my friend, and sensed that it wouldn’t be the last time I would see him.

About 13 months later, I was reassigned to a squadron at The Pentagon in Washington and soon thereafter reconnected with Daryl. He asked if I would write some articles about events at The Pentagon for the newspaper that he was editing called the “Bolling Beam.” Over the next two years, I produced more than 200 articles for Daryl’s newspaper, and we went to a few college basketball games at American University and at the University of Maryland. I was with him when we ate lunch at the first Wendy’s Restaurant to open in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

By August 1981, I was reassigned from The Pentagon to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona to work for the base newspaper there and Daryl learned that he was being transferred in January 1982 to Beale Air Force Base in California. Before leaving Washington, I had dinner with Daryl and his wife Taryn at their home in Maryland and we talked about what it was like to serve as an editor of an Air Force newspaper.

We spoke on the phone almost weekly for four years and he congratulated me when I was promoted to serve as the editor of the Luke Air Force Base newspaper in 1982. He called me several times in New Mexico in 1986 after I had gotten out of the military and was in the process of earning my degree in journalism at the University of New Mexico.

In 2009, Daryl and I became Facebook friends, and he mentioned that he was retired from the military and was seeking a job in Las Vegas, Nevada as a card dealer in a casino. Despite sending him several more messages, I didn’t hear from him again. But earlier this year I noticed that his brother Vinny was on Facebook and sent him a message asking about Daryl.

He told me Daryl had passed away in 2012 at the age of 56 in Maryland and I couldn’t believe it. He had retired as a Master Sergeant from the Air Force and had served in Vietnam and in the Gulf War and was one of the smartest people I have ever known.

It was more than mere coincidence that led Daryl Green to invite me to listen to music with him in 1977, and I will always remember his kindness and guidance in serving as one of my mentors and a great friend.

Insight: Gone but not forgotten

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Not long ago, I wrote about people who unexpectedly re-entered being a part of my life after a prolonged absence and that got me to thinking. What about those people who unexpectedly left being part of my life and never returned?

U.S. Air Force airmen serving on a Reforger exercise
deployment in Germany in 1978 included, from left,
Ed Pierce, James Smith and Mike Hodges.
COURTESY PHOTO 

In some of these situations, I probably will never find the answers about what happened to them as too much time has passed and despite being resourceful, I’m afraid I will never know.

Airman First Class James Smith served with me in the U.S. Air Force in Germany from 1977 to 1979. He was without a doubt the wittiest and funniest individual I’ve ever known. “Smitty” as we called him was from Los Angeles, California and was a radio operator for our unit.

From the first time that I met him, I liked him, and he made me laugh heartily. His humor wasn’t the type that made fun of other people’s looks, appearances or physical traits, instead he found laughter in everyday situations.

He was adept at pointing out humorous aspects of daily life and as many of us, including me, had recently completed Air Force Basic Training in Texas, and he often found humor in the lingo or expressions used by Air Force Training Instructors at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.

Almost 50 years later, I can remember “Smitty” telling me a story about learning to march in formation with his fellow recruits during basic training. When he missed a step, “Smitty” caught the attention of the Training Instructor. He said he told the instructor “I’m sorry.” The Training Instructor then growled at him saying “I know you’re sorry. That’s why I’m screaming at you!”

“Smitty” made everyone laugh, from the unit commander to the lowliest airman, and he uplifted us all during a time when we were far from home and needed something to smile about.

On the day he was departing back to the United States as his tour in Germany was up, he stopped by my office in his dress blue uniform and shook my hand for the final time. He told me that he needed to go back to the radio operator’s trailer for a second because he had left something there that he wanted to take on the plane with him. While in the radio trailer, another radio operator grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed it over his dress uniform as a joke.

The last time I ever saw “Smitty” he was frantically brushing white fire retardant off his uniform before catching his flight home. I never saw him again after that incident in October 1979 and I left Germany myself for an assignment at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. the very next month.

I’ve tried looking for “Smitty” as best I could, but James Smith is one of the most common names in America and it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Rick Walsh was in my first- and second-grade classes at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Brighton, New York in 1959 and 1960. He was quiet and reserved but a good student and his desk was across the aisle from me. We both liked reading comic books and playing kickball. Rick also happened to be the first kid I knew who had a crew cut with his head shaved except for a small tuft remaining in the front of his scalp.

He always took a place in front of me in line when we were going to the school library, outside for recess, or to the school lunchroom. We both brought our lunches every day from home and sat together every day during lunchtime.

We were each advanced readers and in third grade in 1961, Rick and I were both reading Hardy Boys mystery books. When I finished one, I’d pass it on to him to read. After each of us finished a book, we would sit in my garage and discuss it and talk about who should play the part on television. Walt Disney had made some of the first Hardy Boys books into a serial presentation for TV’s “Mickey Mouse Club” in the 1950s but had stopped doing that by the time we were in third grade.

I would tell him that I thought Paul Petersen, the young actor from “The Donna Reed Show” should portray Frank Hardy if they ever made a new “Hardy Boys” series. Rick disagreed, saying it should be Tim Considine from “My Three Sons,” who had played the role in Disney’s 1950s adaptation.

One day in January 1962, our third-grade teacher, Mrs. Wahl, told our class that Rick had suffered a severe diabetic attack and that he was in the hospital. The class all made Get Well cards for Rick, and I was elected to take them to his bedside at the hospital. My father drove me there and we found Rick was in bad shape. Rick’s father said that he would not be able to return to school and that he would require insulin injections for the rest of his life.

I never saw Rick again and to this day, I don’t know what became of him.

We lost touch, but he’s not forgotten. <

Insight: A time for heroes

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

As residents of the greatest nation on Earth, we eagerly await special and meaningful holidays to arrive every year. No matter if it’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Independence Day, there are occasions where we take time to reflect on what these holidays mean and why they were created.

A portrait of five-star U.S. Army General Omar Bradley 
hangs outside the hallway near his old office at The
Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Bradley maintained an
office at The Pentagon until his death in 1982. 
PHOTO BY JIM GARAMONE, DOD

When I think of Veterans Day, I am drawn back to the time I spent in the U.S. Air Force at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and some of the individuals I had the opportunity to meet there. A few of them left their mark on the history books and are renowned for their valor and dedication to the cause of freedom, while others performed their duties in relative obscurity.

Each time I walked around the building, I would discover something I hadn’t known about before, or run into someone who inspired other soldiers, sailors, airmen or Marines.

If I needed to deliver paperwork to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on a Saturday, I would pass by the office of General Lew Allen, a four-star general and the U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff at the time. He liked to work on weekends because it was quieter then and on at least three occasions he invited me in to have coffee with him.

He wanted to know what I felt about military service from my perspective as an E-3 Airman First Class and he would ask me what I thought about my military pay, how to keep good people in the Air Force and my thoughts about college basketball. His favorite team was the University of Maryland, and he showed me an autographed photo he kept in his office of then-Maryland coach Lefty Driesell.

He was kind and caring and I always felt he listened to what I had to say, even though he was a four-star general. After he retired from military service, he served as the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and worked closely with NASA to make space shuttle missions safer after the Challenger explosion in 1986.

Once I had the opportunity to meet legendary U.S. Army General Omar Bradley, who maintained an office at The Pentagon until his death in 1982. He had been General Dwight Eisenhower’s field commander for American soldiers during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day and rose to the rank of five-star general after World War II. He also was the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

I had met him one afternoon when he was leaving his office for the day. By then, General Bradley was in his late 80s and only came to his office every other month. He asked me where I was from and about my parents. When I told my father about my meeting the general, he said Bradley was one of the top generals he served under as a soldier in Libya in 1943.

In February 1981, I attended a ceremony in The Pentagon courtyard where U.S. Army Master Sergeant Roy Benavidez was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was given the honor for his courage in combat near Loc Ninh, Vietnam in 1968.

While part of a 12-man Special Forces patrol, Benavidez and his team were surrounded by a North Vietnamese infantry battalion numbering more than 1,000 troops. Caught off guard and armed only with a knife, he jumped from a helicopter some 30 to 40 feet off the ground with a medical bag and ran to help members of the patrol who were trapped. He joined his comrades who were under unrelenting enemy fire despite sustaining numerous wounds, Benavidez saved the lives of at least eight men.

During the battle, an NVA soldier encountered Benavidez and stabbed him with a bayonet. He pulled it out, drew his own knife, killed the NVA soldier. He later shot two more NVA soldiers with an AK-47 rifle he picked up while providing cover fire for members of his patrol who were boarding the helicopter. In all, Benavidez was treated for 37 different bullet, bayonet, and shrapnel wounds he sustained during the six-hour battle against the enemy.

Another time I was humbled to meet retired General Jimmy Doolittle, who inspired Americans during the early days of World War II by leading a daring air raid on the Japanese mainland in April 1942.

Doolittle commanded a group of 16 bomber crews who took off from the USS Hornet on a one-way mission to bomb Japan, after that nation had crippled the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii slightly more than four months earlier. Each member of Doolittle’s raid knew their planes didn’t have enough fuel capacity to bomb the target and make it back safely, but they flew their missions anyway. Of the 80 airmen who participated in that mission, three died and 15 planes were lost. But Doolittle’s raid demonstrated that the Japanese mainland was vulnerable to American air attacks and boosted America’s moral at a dark time in U.S. history.

Each of us owes a measure of respect for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States and the ongoing struggle for freedom. Honoring those who served on Veterans Day is the perfect way to do that. <

Insight: A Mighty Rhine Time

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

As a child, I always dreamed of traveling around the world, seeing how other people lived and if the sun looked any different coming up on the other side of the world. In November 1977, as a member of the U.S. Air Force, I got to experience what it would be like to live in another country when I was assigned to serve at a location in Germany.

Ed Pierce, right, visited Oktoberfest in Munich,
Germany with some of his U.S. Air Force friends
in 1978. He was stationed in Germany from 1977
to 1979 just outside Frankfurt.
COURTESY PHOTO  

When I first arrived in Frankfurt and stepped outside the airport, a difference I noticed was the air smelled like vegetables. At that time, German sugar beet farms surrounded the Frankfurt airport, and it was beet harvesting season.

As I settled in to living in another country and didn’t speak German, subtle cultural differences quickly became apparent to me. About a week in, some of my Air Force co-workers stopped to buy lunch at a food truck along a highway. The menu featured several types of “wurst” sandwiches, different kinds of sausages on a hard roll and were accompanied by “pomme frites,” or what we know as French fries. The woman taking orders asked me in German something about my meal and not understanding a word she was saying, I smiled and nodded to her.

When my order was ready, I discovered the waitress had asked if I wanted mayonnaise on my French fries, a common custom there. I had to scrape it off my fries and it wouldn’t be the last time my inability to speak the language led to a surprise.

Several months later after renting an apartment in Frankfurt, I learned that on the other side of the wall to my living room was a pizza parlor. One evening I decided to order a pizza to bring home for dinner. The owner was Italian and spoke little German, but I pointed to the medium pepperoni pizza on the menu and paid him. I sat there while he prepared and cooked the pizza for me.

At some point, he said something in Italian to me and made a motion referring to the pizza slices. I thought he was asking me if I wanted my pizza sliced, so I smiled and nodded in agreement. When I opened the pizza box at home, I was shocked. Apparently, the pizza shop owner had asked if I wanted raw egg on my pizza, which is a popular pizza topping there.

At a local carnival, I purchased a box of popcorn and found that instead of salt, Germans prefer to sprinkle sugar on their popcorn.

When renting my apartment, I learned that the term “unfurnished” was a bit more extreme there than in the United States. When Germans describe an apartment as being “unfurnished,” it’s not only without furniture. “Unfurnished” there means without appliances such as a stove or even overhead light fixtures as there were just wires to hook light fixtures up to. I had to purchase at a department store a toilet seat and door handles. I had to buy a bottle of liquor for the “hausmeister” or apartment manager to obtain a small electric stove for me.

For $25 I bought a second-hand apartment-size refrigerator from an Air Force sergeant who lived in the apartment building but was returning to the U.S. later that week. I found that Germans do not use ice and cook all their meals fresh every day, so they do not have refrigerators in their residences. That goes for businesses and restaurants too. Beer on tap is room temperature and even soft drinks such as Coca Cola are served warm.

Trying to work the stove offered me lessons in the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit and made me appreciate that America did not convert to Celsius configurations for baking when it was proposed in the early 1970s.

Somebody gave me a television set and I tried to watch German drama programs, but the better offerings were shows imported from the U.S. and it was kind of funny to hear Telly Savalas as “Kojak” dubbed in German or William Shatner as Captain Kirk in “Star Trek” giving orders to the crew of the Starship Enterprise dubbed in German. My favorite German television show was the “Hit Parade” on Saturday nights. Many American musical acts appeared on that show, and I could understand what they were singing, although once an American performer named Ken Curtis was introduced and he sang entirely in German. After a minute or so of watching his performance, I realized that Ken Curtis was the actor who portrayed Festus Haggen on “Gunsmoke” on American television.

I loved strolling through outdoor markets in Frankfurt on the weekend and the aroma of fresh baked cakes and cookies during the Christmas season. One time I was amazed to see a pack of dogs sitting together on a sidewalk looking in the window of a shop as I approached. As I got closer, I found the dogs were sitting and looking in the window as a butcher hung meat cuts there. I thought it was a scene my grandfather might have witnessed as a child and now I was observing it too.

For me, living overseas made me grateful for the life we have here in America.

Insight: Think it’s easy being an editor?

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

For many years in my journalism career, I preferred being a news reporter or a sportswriter to serving as an editor and having to edit someone else’s articles.

Yet back in 1982 while serving in the U.S Air Force, someone in a position of leadership decided it was my turn to experience reading articles turned in by staff members and then trying to make them clear, concise, and understandable for newspaper readers. Along with that task, I had to compile a weekly list of stories appearing in the paper, prioritize their importance for placement on the pages of that week’s edition, write the headlines and photo captions, and then review assignments with reporters for the following week.

It was quite a challenge to serve as the editor of the base newspaper and I was happy to take on the responsibility until several weeks into the new role, I was working with a woman who I had assigned to cover the base’s new women’s softball team.

It’s more than 40 years later, but I can still recall the introductory paragraph to her story and to this day it still makes me chuckle. This reporter had previously only covered news stories and she told me that she knew very little about sports. I assured her that the article would just be about the formation of the new team, its practice schedule, and to focus on the team members, what squadron they were from, and who the coaches were.

She went out early on a Saturday morning and interviewed team members and then turned in her article on Monday for my review.

The opening to her story went like this: “Every Saturday morning a group of girls gather behind the base gym to throw balls at and tantalize each other.”

Somehow after reading that, I knew my career would never be quite the same. But I adapted and became adept at rewriting articles that needed help and leveraged my experience and resourcefulness when I returned to college, earned a Bachelor’s degree in journalism, and started working for a commercial weekly newspaper and then a daily newspaper as a reporter and sportswriter and a copy editor.

In 2009 while working for a daily newspaper in Florida, I was promoted to a department editor role that included overseeing the content creation and production of seven weekly newspapers. My team included several friends I had worked with previously as a copy editor and I was happy to have them working for me.

This new promotion meant I had to proofread their pages, assign articles to them for their editions and approve their output for publication.

One copy editor I had worked extensively with in the sports department was working on an upcoming edition and along with designing the newspaper pages, he had to write the headlines that appeared with the articles in that edition. The top story on Page 1 of that week’s edition was about a women’s church group that had knitted mittens, scarves, hats, and shawl wraps for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy at the hospital.

As we approached deadline, I received the page proofs from the copy editor and began a review but was stopped cold by a large headline at the top of Page 1 of this edition. In large type, his headline for the article was “Thou shawl cover the ill.”

Sorry to say, but that one was sent back for a headline rewrite.

Through the years, I’ve tried my best to keep ridiculous errors from happening in the printed edition, but I’ve learned that no matter how hard you try, typos and mistakes will happen.

Once while working for a weekly paper in New Mexico as a news reporter, I had to cover a short city council meeting, type up the story, and hand it to the copy editor who was finishing up the edition that was supposed to come out the very next morning.

The meeting itself only lasted about 15 minutes and had been quickly arranged so that city councilors could transfer funds from one city account to another to pay for bridge repair expenses performed by a local contractor.

I walked to city hall, covered the meeting, walked back to the newspaper office, and typed up my article. Before handing it over to the copy editor for placement as the top story on the front page, I checked my facts, verified the correct spellings of the city councilors’ names, and wrote the headline. The copy editor then selected the correct font and style and put it on the page before typing the headline.

My headline read as follows: “Council shifts cash in special session.”

As my work was complete for the day, I left and went home, only to be stunned the next morning when outside the door to the newspaper office, I caught a glimpse of the edition in the window of the newspaper box there.

In large letters across the top of the front page it had my headline, except the copy editor had mistyped it, omitting the “f” in shifts.

The newspaper editor then required that all stories and headlines undergo proofreading before publication. <

Insight: Conquering an irrational fear

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

When I was a small child, my family would spend time at an amusement park by Lake Ontario called “Seabreeze.” The park was legendary in the Rochester, New York area for its thrill rides, but one ride stood out for me over all the others, and it was a roller coaster called the Jack Rabbit.

Billed as the oldest continuously operating roller coaster in America, the Jack Rabbit ride opened to the public in 1920 and featured seven dips, a helix that twists while you remain stationary in your seat, and a tunnel. With 2,130 feet of track and a 75-foot first drop, the wooden roller coaster propelled entirely by inertia has scared children and adults for more than a century.

One of those who was terrified of the Jack Rabbit was my mother, Harriett. She went to school not far away from the amusement park and would go there with friends for birthday parties and on Friday nights during the 1930s. Even during the coldest winter months when the Seabreeze Amusement Park was closed, she would describe in detail to our family how frightening the Jack Rabbit roller coaster was to her and why she would always refuse to ride it whenever she visited the site.

She told us a story once about how one of her cousins, who had been drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II, was home on leave and everyone went to the amusement park for fun one weekend. The story goes that this cousin asked my mother to go on the Jack Rabbit ride with him and she refused citing her fear of the roller coaster. The cousin then asked another girl to accompany him on the ride and when it was over, she said he felt dizzy and passed out, throwing up all over himself. My mother said her cousin experienced dizziness for weeks and was reassigned from Army training as a paratrooper to the mess hall because of the condition. She said afterward, he always blamed the Jack Rabbit roller coaster for ruining his military career.

Somehow through all of this, I too developed an aversion for the Jack Rabbit ride. It was totally irrational because when my parents would take my brother and I to Roseland Amusement Park in Canandaigua, New York, I had no trouble riding The Skyliner roller coaster there, featuring 2,400 feet of wooden track rising to a height of 60 feet looking out over Canandaigua Lake and an insane vertical drop of 45 feet.

But my fear of the Jack Rabbit persisted during my teenage years and into adulthood. Whenever friends or family would go to Seabreeze, I’d go with them but would always decline an invitation to join them for a ride on the Jack Rabbit.

One time when I was serving in the U.S. Air Force in Arizona, I had to fly in a helicopter that had no doors and the passengers sat on benches strapped down by rope as the whirlybird dipped and hovered over the crash site of an F-16 training flight taking off from our base. I felt unsettled as the helicopter pilot tilted back and forth so the crash recovery team that I was part of could get a better look at what was left of the aircraft on the ground.

After we landed back at the base, I was glad I didn’t have to do that every day. But I did get through it and thought to myself that if I could experience riding in an open-air helicopter high in the air tied to a seat by only a strand of rope, maybe I could overcome my fear of the Jack Rabbit.

In 2001, I traveled to Rochester for my 30th high school class reunion. I joined some friends for dinner at a restaurant near Lake Ontario and later, they wanted to visit Seabreeze Amusement Park to see what had changed through the years. As we entered the park, I felt a chill come over me and started breathing heavily as we took a spin on the carousel and then played some carnival and arcade games.

Coming out of the arcade area, we turned south and there I found myself standing directly across from the Jack Rabbit ride. I made the decision right then and there that to defeat my fear for good and to move ahead with my life, I had to ride that roller coaster and put an end to years of apprehension, dread, and phobia.

I purchased a ticket, sat down in a Jack Rabbit car and off I went. As the cars slowly pulled away from the starting point, I thought of my mother, and how for 60-some years she could not fathom the adventure that I was about to experience. The cars dropped suddenly, and I was jolted back to reality. The Jack Rabbit cars roared through all the twists and turns and spins, and I held my breath as we approached another steep drop and then into a tunnel before coasting to a stop.

I had overcome my silly fear of the Jack Rabbit roller coaster and was free to live my life. <

Insight: Bravery beyond imagination

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Around this time in April some 50 years ago in 1973, the final U.S. prisoners of war being held in North Vietnam were freed and returning to their homes after years of captivity.

U.S. Air Force pilot Mike Lane was
shot down over North Vietnam and 
captured and held as a Prisoner of
War for 2,271 days in the Hanoi Hilton
before being freed. COURTESY PHOTO

About eight years later, when I was stationed at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C., our squadron hosted a symposium on the release of the POWs and it included a special guest speaker, a U.S. Air Force pilot, Lt. Col. Mike Lane, who had been shot down and imprisoned at the Ho Loa Prison Camp, known commonly as the “Hanoi Hilton.” It was my great privilege to be able to interview him for the Bolling Beam, an Air Force weekly newspaper, it it truly opened my eyes to the brutality and hardships that these valiant Americans endured.

Lane was from Connecticut and had participated in the ROTC program while attending Notre Dame University. Upon graduation in 1964, he then trained as a fighter pilot and learned to fly the F-4 Phantom aircraft. After a year of service in England, he was transferred to the 559th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Cam Ranh Bay Air Base in South Vietnam in November 1966. Less than two weeks later, Lane’s F-4 aircraft came under heavy enemy fire on Dec. 2, 1966, while patrolling the skies over North Vietnam. The plane was so badly damaged that Lane was forced to eject, beginning a grueling ordeal that tested his mental and physical strength and will to survive.

He was shaken but alive when he was captured by North Vietnamese troops that day. They tied his hands with rope and forced him to march about 12 miles to the prison, where he was thrown into a cell and later interrogated about his mission and the military capabilities of his aircraft. He stuck to only telling him his name, rank, and military serial number.

His captors consistently beat him and demanded he tell them information about his squadron’s flights during the war and potential targets around Hanoi. He was punched, slapped, and deprived of food and water.

Yet despite it all, Lane and other prisoners held in the prison clung to the belief that one day the war would end, and they would be freed. In the meantime, the prisoners, who were forbidden to speak with each other, learned to communicate between their cells using a primitive form of tapping on their cell walls. Through this system, Lane learned the names of many of the other prisoners and how long they had been held captive as POWs.

When there was food, it was served in filthy conditions and covered with insects. I recall Lane telling me that one day he found a live cockroach in a bowl of rice he was given and a biscuit contained weevils. The worst food I wrote about him being served though was a type of pork still containing bristles that he had to pick away to eat.

The cells of the American prisoners were open-air with iron bars on the windows and the prisoners slept on dirt floors with no blankets for winter or cooling in the summer heat. Guards treated them viciously and beatings continued throughout their imprisonment.

Then one day, after nearly six years of captivity, Lane found out that a deal had been reached to free U.S. POWs. It was called “Operation Homecoming” and finally after 2,271 days as a prisoner, Lane was released on Feb. 18, 1973. He was hospitalized for several months following his release because of injuries he had sustained as a POW.

Once recovered, Lane was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry and intrepidity in action for his in connection with military operations against an opposing armed force while a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam. His citation mentions that despite the enemy resorting to mental and physical cruelties to obtain information, confessions and propaganda materials, Lane resisted their demands by calling upon his deepest inner strengths in a manner which reflected his devotion to duty and great credit upon himself and the U.S. Air Force.

He went on to resume his military career and told me the one thing he wanted everyone to know about his time in captivity as a POW was that the Americans who were held at the Hanoi Hilton were the bravest individuals he ever knew and their love for this country was undeniable. Lane later married and retired as a colonel, serving as the Chief of the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory at Williams Air Force Base in Arizona in October 1988.

His participation in our salute to U.S. POWs at The Pentagon was the highlight of the event and came about because Lane was good friends with our commander, Col. Jerry Bronnenberg, who was my boss. Our nation’s military history is filled with tales of heroism and unselfish sacrifice, but when I think back about the things that our POWs in Vietnam went through, little compares to the treatment they received at the hands of their captors. These men and what they endured should not be forgotten or relegated to a chapter in a history book. They served valiantly and 50 years later, we honor their service.<

Insight: A Thanksgiving I’ll never forget

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I had packed up my remaining gear in my truck and said my goodbyes to my classmates at the Department of Defense Information School near Indianapolis. First thing on the Monday morning before Thanksgiving in November 1981, I was hitting the road, making a two-day drive to my home in New Mexico.

Ed Pierce sits in his new Datsun pickup truck before leaving 
for the Defense Information School at Fort Benjamin
Harrison, Indiana in September 1981. This is the same
truck he drove from Indiana to New Mexico in
November 1981. COURTESY PHOTO  

After several years of being stationed at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and 12 weeks of specialized editor training at the school in Fort Benjamin Harrison in Lawrence, Indiana, I was ready for a break and some down time with family and friends before proceeding on to my next U.S. Air Force duty station in Arizona the day after Christmas.

This was supposed to be a leisurely 18-hour drive that would take me from Indiana, passing through Missouri, on into Oklahoma, then across the Texas Panhandle before eventually crossing into New Mexico and arriving at my home just south of Albuquerque.

In setting up the trip the week before, I had decided to not wear myself out driving, but to take it slow and stop for the night Tuesday at a hotel in Tulsa after my first nine hours of driving. My wife had flown home before Labor Day and was waiting there for me and working with her mother in planning Thanksgiving dinner.

That first part of my trip was rather uneventful as I made my way home in a new 1981 Datsun pickup truck I had just purchased in early September 1981. Part of the reason I had bought a new vehicle was specifically to take me across the country safely and then to drive it to my next assignment at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona.

It wasn’t widely known at the time, but within six months, Datsun announced it was changing its name to Nissan, so my pickup was one of the final “Datsun” trucks ever manufactured.

Like I had originally planned, I stopped for the night in Tulsa, had dinner, checked into my hotel, watched the premiere episode of “Simon and Simon” on television, went to sleep, and then got up at 6 a.m. Wednesday for the final day’s drive to my home.

The miles and highway rolled by and soon I spotted the “Welcome to Texas” sign meaning I was just one state away from my destination. Noticing I was running low on fuel, I pulled into a gas station and filled up, confident I was within range based upon the mileage I was getting in the new truck that I wouldn’t have to get gas again before arriving home.

Outside Amarillo, something strange started happening while I was driving. The pickup would sputter and act like it was going to stall when I put my foot on the gas pedal. I pulled over to the side of the road, turned the engine off and restarted and everything would be OK for about 40 miles or so. I couldn’t get up to more than 40 mph when it would start doing it again.

Time was at a standstill for me as darkness fell and I worried the vehicle was going to break down stranding me out in middle of nowhere. Slowly I made it to the New Mexico state line and drove for another 40 miles when I spotted a service station near Tucumcari, New Mexico.

I pulled in and asked if anyone could look at my truck to find out what was wrong. The attendant said the mechanic had gone home for Thanksgiving but would be back Friday. He suggested I park the truck in their locked compound and because it was under warranty, I could have it towed to the dealer in Albuquerque on Friday.

He also said that a Greyhound bus would be along any minute, bound for Albuquerque, about 175 miles away. I parked the truck, purchased a bus ticket, grabbed my bag, and asked the attendant for one last favor. He agreed to call my family and let them know what had happened. This was before everyone had a cell phone and I didn’t have change for the pay phone outside the service station.

About 12;30 a.m. Thursday morning, the bus arrived in Albuquerque and my wife was waiting for me at the bus station. I was exhausted and worried about leaving my new truck so far away. But I was glad it was Thanksgiving and at least I had made it home safely.

That Friday around noon, the dealer in Albuquerque called and said that the truck had been towed there. Several hours later, the service department at the dealer called and said we could come get the pickup.

When we got there, I found out what the problem was. Apparently, I had picked up some gasoline that contained dirt in Texas, and the $13 tiny plastic fuel filter distributing gas flow to the engine had become clogged, resulting in the stalling and sputtering. The fuel filter and the labor to replace it was under warranty, but I had to pay the towing bill, which ended up costing me $225.

To this day, I’ve never forgotten this Thanksgiving “adventure” that ended up having a happy ending. <

Insight: Overcoming inevitable evolving friendship dilemmas

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Since the onset of the pandemic, I’ve observed a meme circulating on Facebook and other social media that challenges participants to list the number of years of their longest friendships and speculates nobody has friendships lasting longer than 20 years. As someone who’s been around a long time, I think the question is silly, as I have friends that I made in first grade back in 1959 and many others I met throughout school more than 50-some years ago.

Ed Pierce, right, and his friend Mickey Justice during Reforger
military exercises in Germany in 1978. COURTESY PHOTO

I also have friends I made while serving in the Air Force in the 1970s and 1980s and others from college and early in my career working for newspapers. Although I may not speak directly with many of my friends that I’ve accumulated every day, I do follow some of their social media posts and try to catch up through activities such as attending my high school reunions or by telephone.

Driving home from work a few years ago, I listened to an NPR podcast on the radio in which a relationship consultant suggested if you want a friendship to last a long time, it’s inevitable that changes with your friendship will occur over time and people have to be flexible to remain friends.

She said that the longer a friendship lasts, the more it becomes susceptible to becoming uncomfortable. According to her, people inevitably change, and that evolving friendship dynamic can strain relationships such as when your best friend in high school marries someone you don’t like, and you don’t see them much anymore, or you get a new job, and you now work a new schedule and hardly ever see your former co-worker pals now.

But do situations like that spell the end of friendships? I tend to disagree. I have played in a fantasy baseball league with many of the same friends for the past 19 years and we have all gone in many different directions since the league was originally founded in 2004.

One big change was I moved from Florida to New Hampshire and then to Maine a few years back. But my friend Jack, a mortgage broker from Florida who also plays in the league, and I have remained friends even though I haven’t seen him in person since 2013. I just had a long text exchange last week with him wanting to congratulate my schoolteacher wife on her retirement and I asked him about potential tax incentives for her tutoring a few students in our home and how the real estate market is fairing in Florida these days.

I also post my newspaper columns on Facebook and Twitter every week and many of my high school friends are among the first to read them and make comments about how they can relate to the column’s topic or what they thought about the content of the columns. Some of these individuals are friends that I made while attending Carlton Webster Junior High School way back in 1966.

In the past few weeks, I’ve heard from someone that I supervised in the Air Force in 1983, a co-worker of mine from a newspaper in New Hampshire in 2014, and a college fraternity pal from 1972 in New Mexico. I learned something new about each of these friends through our latest conversations and we picked up almost from about the last time we spoke, in one case nearly 15 years ago.

I’ve lost touch with friends that I wish I could speak to again but because of distance or circumstance it’s not possible. My Air Force buddy in Germany, James Smith, is a great example for instance. We were close friends from 1977 to 1979 but the last time I saw him was when he was flying home a few months before I left Germany myself in 1979. I never saw him again and have no idea what he’s been up to for the past 43 years, but it does not mean we couldn’t be friends again if I ever track him down.    

Having reached the advanced age I now am, I can also say I’ve lost many wonderful people over time that I’ve been close with and not because they no longer wanted to be my friend.

I’ve learned that the longer a friendship goes on, you must accept that life is fragile, and nobody lives forever. In the last 20 years, I’ve said goodbye to many high school classmates, former co-workers, and people I’ve met through the years that I’ve liked and admired.

It’s a fact that long lasting friendships will change and the changes that do happen won't always be comfortable.

I’ve also found out that in my lifetime I have gone through many different versions of myself. I’ve evolved from a Little League baseball player to a U.S. Air Force staff sergeant, to an inexperienced reporter and sportswriter to a husband and stepfather to a newspaper editor and now a grandfather.

It means that the friends I make in each experience are part of  individual chapters of my life and it’s up to me to blend them all into a friendship tapestry that is woven from all the various experiences of my life. <

Insight: Acceptance can lead to resilience

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Like many others, for a good part of my life I have tried to fit into a mold or attempted to be someone that I am not. Realizing that fact and accepting my strengths, weaknesses and limitations has always led to personal growth for me and a better understanding about what makes me happy.

I’ll share a few examples to illustrate my point.

When I was sent to Germany while serving in the military in the 1970s, I was the lowest rank that a U.S. Air Force enlistee could be, an E-1 Airman Basic without a single stripe on my uniform. Assigned to a unit where the lowest ranking person other than myself was an E-4 Sergeant, my name kept coming up for the tasks nobody else wanted.

I removed and dumped waste from Port-A-Potties, cleaned and scrubbed toilets, walked the flightline picking up trash in the heat, mopped and waxed floors, and shoveled piles snow and ice from walkways during blizzards.

But one day I was handed a push broom and ordered to sweep the street in front of unit headquarters and all the nearby sidewalks. As I swept the asphalt, I asked myself if I was just being told to do something just to keep me busy. The longer I swept, the more I grumbled to myself and bemoaned my fate as the lowest ranking person at the site.

Just minutes after I finished, an Air Force staff car turned the corner and parked in front of the headquarters building. On small flags attached to the front two bumpers of the staff car were stars, indicating that a general was visiting with our unit commander.

After the general had left, the first sergeant sent for me and told me that the general had remarked how nice the unit grounds looked and that our commanding officer was pleased with my sweeping work.

That evening I had an epiphany that changed the arc of my military career. I thought that if I simply accepted that I didn’t have to know everything in advance  and had confidence in my superiors, my job would be a lot easier. I stopped questioning every little thing I was asked to do and soon I became an E-2 Airman, and then an E-3 Airman First Class, an E-4 Senior Airman, E-4 Sergeant and eventually an E-5 Staff Sergeant.

Acceptance played a significant role in my accomplishing that and growing as a person as I assumed greater responsibilities the higher in rank I became.

I once worked at a newspaper as a copy editor for a section editor who severely lacked any resemblance of social skills or empathy for others. Over the span of five years, even though I sat inches away from him at an adjoining desk, not once did he ever say to me “Good Morning, Nice Job, Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, Hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving Day, Congratulations on getting married,” or even a simple “Hello.”

What I did hear from him was plenty of cursing when things didn’t go his way, how much he despised his job, how he couldn’t wait to retire, and why he deserved every penny of his salary. But instead of complaining about him, I accepted my role, did my job to the best of my ability, and sometimes I had to do his work too when he was gone on vacation.

His desk was always a mess and his leftover lunch bags, stacked-up newspapers and correspondence frequently spilled over onto my neat and tidy workspace, creating an embarrassing situation when a co-worker would stop by my desk to discuss an upcoming page layout or article. I would apologize for the mess and move on.

One day I was called into the department editor’s office and told I was being promoted to that section editor’s position and he was being transferred to another section. That news was surprising but was confirmation that acceptance had helped me gain a promotion. It led to me going on to becoming an editor for another newspaper, and later being chosen to lead several daily and weekly newspapers as their top editor.   

Acceptance can mean many things to many people, but for me, I can say that it assisted me in being comfortable with who I am and knowing that how I feel about my place in the world plays a major part in how happy and resilient I can truly be.

I’ve certainly made my share of mistakes along the way, but I’ve never been afraid to fail. Deep down inside, I’ve always possessed the confidence to believe that no matter what, things will be OK and accepting that inevitability has led to better things for me professionally and personally.

In practicing acceptance, I’ve had to acknowledge many uncomfortable parts of myself, my emotions, my thoughts, and my past. But letting go of all that can be freeing in many ways and ignite a spark in us in ways a lot of us never expected to achieve or accomplish.

Acceptance is about trying to be real rather than trying to be perfect and that’s a great foundation for anyone and for any age. <

Insight: Memories frozen in time

 By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Each day millions of photographs are taken around the world and stored as images to be viewed later. These pictures are captured as moments in time and reflect joy, sadness, splendor, sorrow, majesty, and beauty. These snapshots can depict significant occasions or a person’s desire to save an image of a child’s first steps, a wedding or from a cherished reunion. 

Whether taken on a cell phone or by a sophisticated digital camera, none of those images can compare to the ones captured forever and stored inside your brain by your memory. Throughout our lifetimes, every one of us when healthy can vividly recall the moments that have made us who and what we are today, and we all possess the ability to relive the backstories, recollections and events leading up to what makes these remembrances so special to us.

Someone recently asked me to choose three moments in time from my life that have profoundly affected me, what would they be, and why did I narrow the list to these three? Here’s what I answered…

May 19, 1991: It was a Sunday, and I was living in Florida after having moved there three months before. I was staying in my parent’s guest room while saving up money to get my own apartment. About 2:30 a.m. the doorbell rang and knowing that my mother was a sound sleeper, I got up to answer the door. I still recall what I saw when I turned on the porch light and opened the front door to my parent’s home. Standing there was a state trooper in uniform who asked me to step outside for a second.

I did and he told me his name and he asked me my name and if my mother was at home. I answered yes and he then told me that my father had been involved in an automobile accident earlier Sunday evening near Orlando. My father had gone to visit his elderly sister for the day about an hour and a half away and had driven his station wagon there. The trooper informed me that a drunk driver had crossed the center line of the highway and struck my father’s car killing him. At first, I thought the drunk driver had died, but the trooper told me my father had done nothing wrong, was doing the speed limit and had his seatbelt on when he was killed.

That ringing doorbell changed the course of my life and left me without a father, who I had just gotten to know again as an adult after living thousands of miles away for years and service in the military overseas. So that’s one frozen moment in time I’ll never forget.

April 22, 2004: It was a Thursday evening in Florida, and I drove to meet an elementary school teacher named Nancy after getting off work. I had been corresponding with her online on a dating website. We agreed to meet over ice cream at a Friendly’s Restaurant and that date changed the arc of my life significantly. She was beautiful, humorous and the conversation flowed easily. Without a doubt it was the best date I ever had, and we agreed to see each other again soon. Around 14 months later Nancy and I were married, and I will never forget that first date or laughing at her homemade sign around her neck that read “Hi Ed” as she stepped out of her Ford Bronco and into my life forever. Another moment frozen in time.    

June 10, 1977: It was a Friday morning, and I walked into a conference room in the Federal Building downtown in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I joined a group of people in the room who stood silently at attention when a judge wearing a black robe entered the room.

 

We all raised our right hands and proudly repeated the following oath. “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the president of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

 

The members of this group were then congratulated for enlisting in the U.S. Air Force and a few hours later we were all put on a flight to San Antonio, Texas for six weeks of basic military training at Lackland Air Force Base. That morning at the Federal Building in Albuquerque remains stuck in my memory and is another one of those occasions frozen in time that changed the direction of my life and made me who and what I am today.     

 

The collection of the most meaningful photographs in the world are not contained and displayed in some posh museum in a faraway country or flashing on some gigantic screen in Times Square in New York City. Instead, these indelible images are readily accessible whenever you want in your own mind.

 

What precious memories do you hold sacred that are frozen in time for you? <

Insight: Closing the book on a lifelong obsession

By Ed Pierce

Managing Editor

More than 56 summers have passed since I first laid my eyes on what would become a lifelong obsession for me, completing an entire collection of all 598 Topps 1965 baseball cards.
From the time I stepped out of R’s Market on Monroe Avenue in Brighton, New York in July 1965 and spied my friend Billy Whitney on his bike in the parking lot thumbing through a freshly opened pack of five cards he had purchased there for a nickel, I was hooked. The vibrant colors and team pennants were the first thing that I noticed about the cards, and he gave me three cards in his pack that day which were duplicates of what he already had in his collection.

So my 1965 collection began with Card #142 Pitcher Bill Monbouquette of the Boston Red Sox, along with Card #114 Outfielder Jim Hickman of the New York Mets and Card #90 Third Baseman Rich Rollins of the Minnesota Twins.

I took the cards home and carefully placed them in an old shoebox on the shelf of my bedroom closet and throughout the rest of that summer, any spare nickels I had were used to purchase packs of baseball cards at R’s Market. With each new pack I opened, I dreamed of finding the most valuable cards in the set at that time, Card #350, Outfielder Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees, or Card #250 San Francisco Outfielder Willie Mays, that I could trade to my neighborhood pals for seven or eight other 1965 cards to build my collection. Mantle or Mays never showed up in any of my new packs, but once I discovered #Card #300 Pitcher Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers and I traded it to my neighbor David Ronner for four Baltimore Orioles cards, including Card #33 Outfielder Jackie Brandt, Card #15 Pitcher Robin Roberts, Card #94 Catcher Charley Lau, and Card #290 Pitcher Wally Bunker.

Trading the 1965 Topps Koufax card was something I came to regret as an adult because the price to replace it skyrocketed after he retired the following season and at age 36, he became the youngest player ever inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.

As I returned to school in the fall of 1965, I had about 125 cards in the shoebox and I would sometimes pull them out and read through the statistics on the back of each card, marveling at the lengths of their careers or the far away cities or towns that they once played in. For example, I noticed that Card #157 of Shortstop Zoilo Versalles, the 1965 American League Most Valuable Player, indicated that he was born in Havana, Cuba, and played his first season of professional baseball in Elmira, New York in 1958. Or that Outfielder Jerry Lynch of the Pittsburgh Pirates (Card #201) led the Piedmont League in batting in 1953 at age 22 while playing for the Norfolk (Virginia) Tars.

As I continued my education on into high school and then college, I occasionally pulled out the shoebox and wondered how I could add to my collection of 1965 cards.

In 1982, I found a chance to do that when a sports card store for collectors opened near the U.S. Air Force base that I was stationed at in Arizona. I was able to purchase many common 1965 Topps cards from that store, and added Card #260, Hall of Fame Pitcher Don Drysdale of the Los Angeles Dodgers, from that store.

When the internet came around, I found some more cards I needed for the 1965 set on eBay and others I ordered from a sports cards dealer in Ohio. I’ve upgraded cards in the collection that were in less-than-ideal condition and protected them carefully to ensure they remain in pristine shape.

As of this morning, I’m down to the last card to acquire before finishing the collection, that being Mickey Mantle, Card #350. Earlier this week, I acquired Card #477 Hall of Fame Pitcher Steve Carlton’s rookie card and the week before I had purchased Card #300, Pitcher Sandy Koufax, which was the card I originally flipped for four others.

I’m about to close the book on the 1965 set and my wife and I have decided to sell it and use the money from it to help pay for a new roof for our home. The complete set of cards is worth thousands and I’d rather put it to good use than have them stored away unappreciated.

The 1965 Topps baseball card set has long been my obsession, but if you think I’ll miss them, think again. I do have other sets I’m working on, and I’m not done yet with this hobby. <

Insight: Brown gravy nearly halts a military career

By Ed Pierce

Managing Editor

It’s been almost 44 years since I took one of the most harrowing plane trips of my life, yet looking back on it now, it’s ended up being a source of humor that I carry with me to this very day.

In the fall of 1977, I was an Airman Basic (E-1) in the U.S. Air Force and boarded an airplane at Charleston, South Carolina with many other military members and their families bound for Frankfurt, Germany. I was headed to my first permanent military assignment and it was an eight-hour overnight flight to Europe with a stop to refuel in Gander, Newfoundland.

At that time, regulations mandated that all military personnel on the flight wear Class A dress uniforms and I was dressed in my official dress blue Air Force uniform with a tie and was assigned a middle-row seat, sandwiched between two U.S. Army colonels wearing their dress green uniforms.

Not long into the flight, each of the Army colonels pulled out books and began to read, while I thumbed through a magazine that I had purchased at the Charleston airport. The plane landed in Gander and we had about a 40-minute layover before taking off again for Frankfurt.

As the flight wore on, both Army colonels on either side of me removed their dress uniform jackets and fell asleep. As the flight progressed, as a 23-year-old, I was too excited about traveling to Europe to sleep.

About an hour after departing Gander, the flight attendant came around and offered dinner to the passengers. I accepted but both Army colonels were sleeping and did not awaken during the meal.

The dinner was roast beef covered in brown gravy with a dinner roll, mashed potatoes, and carrots and served on one of those old white plastic TV dinner trays with plastic utensils. The plastic trays were lukewarm at best and the food was a bit cold, but I was hungry and eagerly started eating.

Somehow a pocket of brown gravy was concealed underneath a stack of the roast beef and when I cut into it with my plastic knife, a small spurt of brown gravy flew off my tray and up onto the collar of the Army colonel seated to my left. It left an ugly stain on his light green collar and now I was faced with a major dilemma. Do I wake him up and apologize for the terrible thing that I have just done or do I let him sleep and pray that he didn’t realize what happened.

The minutes slowly wound into hours as I agonized about what to do. I envisioned that this was the end of my military career before it even got started and that the colonel would complain upon landing in Frankfurt. I envisioned being court martialed and sent back to the USA on the next available flight.

I wrestled with my conscience over and over and played through many different scenarios, all of them turning out bad for me and my budding military career. I thought of how proud my family was of my service and how let down they would be as it all came crashing down all because of a hidden pocket of brown roast beef gravy.

After what seemed like an eternity, the pilot’s voice came over the airplane loudspeaker and announced we were descending to land at Frankfurt, Germany. Once the plane’s wheels touched down, as soon as passengers were allowed to exit, I was up and out of my seat, grabbed my duffle bag from the overhead compartment and was headed for the door.

I made it through customs and was waiting in the airport lobby for my unit to pick me up when I saw a NATO staff car adorned with four-star general flags pull up outside. NATO’s Commander, General Alexander Haig, got out of the staff car and made his way into the airport lobby.

Turns out General Haig was there to pick up his chief military aide, the U.S. Army colonel sitting left of me on the flight, who had by then made it through customs and was walking toward the general.

The colonel stopped, saluted Haig and then I watched as Haig crooked his neck and stared directly at the brown gravy spot on his collar. I heard shouting and a commotion as I turned and slowly walked away to get a cup of coffee. I felt relieved and decades later, it remains a memorable situation that could have turned out much worse. <