When you are young, adults find amusement in asking, “What do you want to do (or be) when you grow up?” Often, the erratic path of childhood changes directions several times before you arrive at any kind of destination. What follows is the process that the Lord used to get me where He wanted me to be.
This photo was taken for inclusion in a military magazine but was wholly posed. The monitor was new. I passed for someone who could type. The captain and the two senior NCO’s in my office were pretending there was anything of substance to see on the screen.
When I was very young, one of my favorite Christmas presents was a manual typewriter. My parents loved me! Mom put this picture in my baby book and said it was Christmas ‘62, so that would make me 6 years old:
I took typing in my freshman year of high school and the QWERTY keyboard became a natural extension of my hands in the same way piano keys become an extension of a well-trained pianist. I still put two spaces after a period and after a colon, and two hyphens make one dash. Have you ever done the math it takes to type a nicely-centered table in the middle of a letter? I have, although, admittedly, it’s been a while!
The difference between back then and now is that when you were typing, it was serious business – you did not make a mistake and simply backspace to get rid of the evidence, or drag and drop to move sentences around. To make three copies, you needed carbon paper between the sheets. That’s what “CC:” means – “carbon copy.” Each time you messed up, you would have to use an ink eraser to rub out the error all three times. You had to gain speed, be accurate, and hit each key with equal fervor so all the letters looked the same.
I was eight years old when our family moved to the Philippines. We lived off base in a real house because we couldn’t move our trailer there. The house had large fans and a red floor – specially waxed with a mosquito repellant. The garbage collection was done with an open wagon pulled down the dirt road by a carabao. It was so hot, we had to wake up very early in the morning to go to school, and get home before the hottest part of the day.
We took a bus to Wurtsmith School on Clark AFB, where our classrooms were in rounded WWII quonset huts. One time a kid found an unexploded bomb on the playground. Our school milk program used reconstituted dry milk and it tasted very terrible. We had a choice between that and chocolate milk, and every kid chose chocolate.
One day, my parents took us to the American Embassy in the Philippines. I have no idea why we needed to go there, but when I stepped inside, I gasped. It was air conditioned! There were people in American clothes speaking English, and it was just like being back home. We ate lunch in the cafeteria, and the fare included real ice cream! And the secretaries were tapping out neat letters on their typewriters and hurrying back and forth, doing important things.
What did I want to do when I grew up? Be a secretary. And not just any secretary, but one in an American Embassy.
Also, in the Philippines, I met my most favorite teacher, one Miss Gottman. I thought she was wonderful, so I would hang around her desk and talk with her (okay, bother her).
She taught her pupils Creative Writing, and my favorite assignment was to write a story with the title: “One Day When I Was Walking Backwards in the Park, I Bumped Into an Alligator.” Maybe I could be a writer! It certainly helped that when I left the Philippines, Miss Gottman became my penpal. She still is, and loves to point out how much I have always loved to talk.
Mr. Tretheway, my Math teacher in eighth grade, thought I should be a mathematician. I did like Math, but I didn’t think being a mathematician sounded very amusing.
In Girl Scouts, I applied for a National Girl Scout Opportunity called “Career Preview,” where I could investigate theatre in New York City. I had been impressed with the Covenant Players, a Christian repertory group that performed at the Spiritual Life Conference our family attended in 1971 and conducted workshops, so I thought I would be happy with a career in Christian theatre. (Here’s me at the Spiritual Life Conference, in a Charlie Brown style skit.)
I was selected for the Girl Scout Opportunity, and with a little fundraising activity, during the summer of ’72, I was on my way.
The trip was awesome, or maybe I should say, “Groovy!” I saw the Metropolitan Opera House, a Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado off-Broadway, and Jesus Christ, Superstar on Broadway. When I came back, I organized and executed a project working with a Brownie troop on a play they wrote themselves, since they had dug into their treasury and contributed $3.00 towards my trip.
My first real job was working in Aunt Jackie’s Hawaiian Shoppe when I was 16, where we sold Hawaiian clothes and made costuming for various Polynesian dance groups. We also arranged and organized fashion shows, and once, Jackie even brought me to a luau so we could see our costumes in use in a dance program. I was an asset to Jackie because my skin color and long brown hair made me look like an islander. Looking back, I guess I am – just not Polynesian.
My high school counselor thought I should go to UCLA after graduation. After all, anybody who graduated as a class salutatorian should get scholarships and move on to the university, right? But I wasn’t thrilled about being only one out of a great number of students. And anyway, what did I want to do with my life? And did I need to go to UCLA to learn it?
I did take the ACT test. And there was a part of the test that was more than just knowledge regurgitation. That was more of an interest survey – what kind of work was I suitable for, based on my personality?
At that time, I was experiencing one of my low points. I had decided I just wanted to be a computer programmer because people would hurt you, and I thought I could avoid people by just hanging out with computers all day. So when I took the test, I answered all the questions accordingly – no people! It turned out that my personality placed me way out in left field – where there were no jobs! Not getting along with people is a contraindication for getting any kind of job, anywhere.
Finally, my dad stepped in and proposed something I had never thought about: Join the Air Force with a guaranteed job, and go to college later. I would get G.I. Bill benefits which included a free college education. There was a delayed enlistment program, which meant I could sign up early, spend the summer after graduation being lazy, and then leave for Basic Training after my 18th birthday in October or November.
That sounded great! As a military brat, I had loved living near the flight line. There’s nothing like seeing our great planes in the air. I always felt safe and secure when I heard their roar. My parents had both served in the Civil Air Patrol as well, and our family used to go on searches together when I was little.
My mother cooked breakfast in our little vacation trailer for the cadets on their trips. I had great memories.
I took the Air Force aptitude test (ASVAB) and found out I scored a little too low in mechanics for a few jobs, but high enough for a guaranteed job in Computer Programming. That was cool because, though the high school in Arizona had a computer, Artesia had none. This was a way I could actually reach my goal!
I did it. I got the tee-shirt before I even graduated. (“Do It In the Sky”) Here’s a news clipping from one of the local papers, when I received the High School’s Senior Award (the Conestoga Award) for Social Studies, wearing my promotional tee-shirt.
Then I spent the summer riding everywhere on my bike, and passed the time pushing carts in the parking lot of Costco, where Joe (my boyfriend) worked. The plan was that I would leave in November.
I told Joe about the Air Force, and that my mom had said, “If he’s really the right one, he’ll wait for you.” He was a little skeptical of that, but I was sure of it. We would write letters – it would be fine. He wasn’t interested in the Air Force at all – he thought I should stay in California because he wanted to minister to the Hispanics in the area. So, though it was fun to gaze at the stars together and talk about how much we loved each other, our goals were a bit different.
Just after my 18th birthday, October 1, 1974, I got a call from my Air Force recruiter. He said there was an emergency opening for someone in my guaranteed job. Could I leave in October instead of November?
“How soon do you mean?”
“October 7.”
“Can I pray about it?”
“Sure!”
I hung up the phone and started by telling my mom. But by the time I had communicated this proposal to her, the phone rang again.
“Have you finished praying yet?”
This time, I didn’t hang up on him, but I did have some hurried discussion with my mom. The conclusion was, there was really no good reason to stay. So I was hurtled into my Air Force career, as soon as I could get the items on my list packed, including stamps, several new pairs of underwear, and film for my camera. Then I spent the whole weekend eating nothing but bananas so I could lose a couple of pounds and not be over the 125-pound weight limit.
Six days after my 18th birthday, after some hasty good-byes, I left for Basic Military Training at Lackland AFB, Texas, thus filling the emergency opening. Early Monday morning, with a group of 40 or 50 other recruits, I took the oath, said, “So help me God,” and boarded the plane.
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