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Bill told me he was a poor soldier boy, and he wasn't kidding.
He made 75 dollars a month as a cadet. We stayed in Albuquerque two months, then he went through the phases of training. We
went to Salt Lake City where he got his orders. From there we went to Boise, Idaho; Redmond, Oregon; Walla Walla, Washington;
and Pierre, South Dakota. There were five military wives in an automobile, and we drove
from Walla Walla in the middle of the winter and ran into a snow bank. The snow plow came out and took us back and everybody
made me stay in the car because I was pregnant with Pamela. Bill wanted me to go to Canada and meet his folks, but he was
grounded in Rapid City, so I had to go by myself to meet his parents. The temperature was 50 below zero in New Dayton--and
me a California girl with open-toed shoes. An English soldier (a Limey) gave me his boots on the unheated bus.
Next I went to Salina, Kansas. We (the wives) could only stay
in a hotel for three days, so we got in a taxi and went to look for a rooming house. The other wives insisted I take the first
one we came to because I was pregnant. I had to go downtown to meet the other women for meals. When I walked into the hotel,
one of the wives, who was a nurse, noticed I had the measles. Bill wanted to put me the hospital because he was going overseas.
The people at the rooming house took good care of me while I was sick. They even borrowed a car and drove me to the station,
so I could return to California when I recovered. Pamela was born on the October 4, 1943. Bill came home two
weeks later. His bomber, flying out of North Africa on his 27th mission, had been shot down. The crew parachuted into the
ocean, about ten miles off the coast of Naples. They lost three of their ten crew members. They had a one-man life raft for
the remaining seven men, so they took turns being in it. After 48 hours off the coast of occupied Naples in the ocean,
they were rescued. Bill saved a fellow crew member's life by holding him up when his Mae West failed. He earned the Soldier's
Medal, a Purple Heart, and several air medals. We had our first argument over whether it was more painful to have a baby or
to get shot down.
We lived in Louisiana for two years. We bought a house in Long
Beach, when Bill got out of the service. When he found out that officers could come in as top- ranking enlisted men, he returned
to the service. Mike was born in Puerto Rico, where we spent three years. Then we were stationed in Edwards AFB in California.
We went to Kelly AFB in San Antonio, Texas, for six months, until Bill went to Korea and I returned to California. He returned
a year later and we were transferred to Chandler, Arizona. In 1957, we went to Greece for three years. We returned to Sacramento,
where we lived for a year, until Bill retired from the Air Force after 21 years of service. Bob Judson offered Bill a job at St. Andrews Country Club.
We moved to Florida in 1978 for a year. We returned to St. Andrews a year later. We moved back to Florida and lived there
for 8 years before moving to Sierra Vista, Arizona. In December, 2004, we moved to the Handmaker Home in Tucson, Arizona,
where we live independently in an apartment.
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