Me and the Military
As I have explained before, my age places me in between major American wars and just beyond the reach of the draft. I grew up with WWII on the brain and that has never left me, as both Prime and Netflix long ago figured out by way of their movie selections for me. I spent my high school and college years thinking about and worrying about military conscription and the war in Vietnam. I will finally hopefully be able to purge those demons next year when we travel to Southeast Asia and visit Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. While I was in college, one of my best friends, Mike, who lived across the hall in my freshman dorm, started dating a young lady by the name of Debbie. Debbie was the daughter of a large Catholic family. Her father was a senior enlisted man in the Air Force, who rose to the vaunted position as the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. During college, Debbie’s family was based in Hawaii and being a large family on a military enlisted man’s budget, she was relegated to spending much of the Cornell vacation time in Ithaca. I too was a distant overseas resident who spent most of my vacations on campus, so we logically became fast friends. Truth be told, I always had a bit of crush on Debbie, but she was sort of out of my league in those days, so I satisfied my urges by just paling around with her while we each worked vacation jobs in the Ithaca area.
During the school year, Debbie and I were able to stay fairly close because she roomed with three other young women in an apartment that was positioned halfway between my fraternity house and campus. One of her roommates was Margie, who was the girlfriend of a fraternity brother, Marc, who had also been Mike’s freshman roommate across the hall from me. Another of her roommates, Kathy O., was a comely young lass who dated a number of my fraternity brothers over the years, most notably brother Wolfert. Debbie’s fourth roommate was the most exotic of them all. That was Nancy, a blonde woman who tended towards the avant-garde early goth style with black fingernail polish and other sexy accoutrement. Nancy added to her intrigue to all of us by dating the star running back on the football team, a large, intelligent and friendly black guy by the name of Ollie. Debbie had quite an apartment and she, herself, eventually spent a goodly time dating an upperclassman in our fraternity, Mark, who was unusually quiet and went on to a career in Law.
During all those college years, I secretly hankered to date Debbie, but the time was simply never right and the circumstances never allowed it even though we had some good times during the summers in Ithaca. After college, Debbie decided to go to Cornell Nursing School in Manhattan and while there at some sort of COrnell mixer, she met a fellow Cornelian who was a few years ahead of us. His name was Jay and he had gone after college to join the Marine Corps after going through OCS. That always struck me as both unusual and to be expected all at once for Debbie. You see, Debbie spent a goodly amount of time feeling somehow less than worthy since she was the daughter of an enlisted military man. Given the very high status of her father in the enlisted ranks of the Air Force, it was hard to believe that was rank or status oriented, but rather a function of being a military brat that was forced to move from one Air Force base to another. It was a syndrome I recognized because my best friend in those days, Paul, also a fraternity brother, was the son of a West Point graduate who had spent his career on one army base or another, with all the life disruption that logically entailed. That all made Debbie’s choice to team up with Jay in the Marine Corps seem both logical and somehow unexpected.
As with most pairings, the passage of time fades all the question marks and Debbie and Jay went about living their lives, building a family and moving from one Marine base to another as Jay’s assignments evolved. Our mutual old friend Mike was still very much in both Debbie’s and my friend coterie as Mike had gone on to become a flight surgeon in the Air Force, another very strange coincidence given his intention early on at Cornell with Debbie, the Air Force brat. We didn’t see Debbie and Jay very often in those busy days of youth as we were all building our careers and families. I used to get regular updates from Mike about them because Mike was very aware of Jay’s status in the Marine Corps. Based on his assignments, it was looking like Jay was pegged as a fair-haired boy who was slated for bigger things in the Marine command. For us, that was easy to believe because he was a wonderfully pleasant and solid guy who everyone loved. He got the assignment as head of the Color Guard in Washington D.C., which meant he commanded all those Marines that attend to funerals and state events. His recruiting duty was in Times Square, arguably the most visible recruiting assignment. He then went off to Korea to attend to that infamous fence-line, the closest thing to a wartime assignment the Marine Corps had to offer in the 80s.
Then came Operation Desert Storm when we pushed Iraq back from its attack of Kuwait. Jay was a senior officer by then and was assigned to be General Schwarzkopf’s Chief of Staff. We heard stories of how the entire war in Iraq was on Jay’s spreadsheet in 47 sub-spreadsheets. By then it was clear that we were dealing with a very important military commander in Jay. Sure enough, after that stint in the Pentagon, Jay was assigned to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, what was considered one of the top grooming assignments in the military (I got all my insider tips on such things from Colonel Mike, the flight surgeon). For his next step, Jay was made the Commandant of the Marine’s West Coast primary base at Camp Pendleton, a mere 10 miles from my hilltop. Given the passage of years, Jay had rounded the clubhouse turn and was then made Deputy Commandant of the Marine Corps., assigned to the Pentagon. During that time he also acted as Chief of Staff for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, so you could say that he was clearly in the room when whatever was going to happen happened. During all those years, Debbie was the trailing spouse, working for various Veterans Hospitals and other Federal Health Care organizations including the Wounded Warrior Program.
Jay’s commission got extended for a few years so he could be considered in his last great beauty contest for the Commandant job for the entire Marine Corps. He didn’t get that post and went on to a graceful retirement. Just yesterday, I heard from Debbie that they were going to be in the area next weekend. They will come over and spend the day with us, which should be fun. Strangely enough, I will also be seeing my friend Mike (the retired flight surgeon) the following week while we are Las Vegas. Also, it so happens that Kim’s sister Sharon and her husband Woo will be with us next weekend to attend Kim’s concert that night (Debbie and Jay will also attend). Given that Woo was a career Naval aviator, I’m sure they will have fun comparing notes. As for me and the military, I’m thrilled that I know such important, even if retired, members of the military and will always thank them for their service and be glad that I managed to avoid having to serve.