Veterans' Day

In June of 1956 I walked across the tarmac at Newark Airport and climbed aboard a Lockheed Super Constellation (right) non-stop to San Antonio, TX. It was my first flight, and the beginning of my four-year enlistment in the United States Air Force. It remains the most exciting and eventful four years of my life.

I was a boy of 17. When I was honorably discharged in July of 1960 I was a man, with a duffel bag full of one-of-a-kind memories. I was trained as a Russian linguist and received the equivalent of a Master's Degree in that language from Syracuse University.
It was the dawn of the Space Age. I traveled around the world, monitoring Russian military and space communications. I also worked as a basic Russian instructor and top secret code breaker.

When Sputnik I fell to Earth, I monitored its descent; when Khrushchev gave America a six-month ultimatum to get out of Berlin, I listened to Soviet preparations for conflict; when Francis Gary Powers's U-2 spyplane (left) was shot down over the USSR, I listened to possible MIG interceptors and the probable missile base that brought him down.


There was fun, too. When Alaska became a state I was in Anchorage. (Now THAT was a party!) I spent a 30-day leave on the Italian Riviera, living in a gypsy camp in the woods outside Bordighera.

And does anyone remember what a B-25 looks like? That was the twin-engine bomber (right) Jimmy Doolittle and his men flew in the famous thirty seconds over Tokyo raid in WWII. In 1960 I flew in the last official Air Force flight of the B-25, from Kelly AFB in Texas to Andrews AFB outside of Washington. I was on my way home to get discharged and the port engine conked out TWICE during the flight!


Every veteran has stories, many of them far more perilous than mine, but all of them with a unique bond; we were all proud soldiers of Uncle Sam. On Veterans' Day, remember who we were, who we are, and big or small, what we did.

(Click the title to visit the Intrepid Museum)