My Father

The ghetto is full of stories from men who have never known their fathers.

I don’t have one of those. I’m Danny B’s Son. I’ve always loved him, and I’d like to personally welcome him to my blog.

We talk a LOT these days. I’m happy about it. For a stretch of ten years or so, we didn’t speak very often. I think we probably needed time to heal from my terrible teens.

Back in those days, he was a strict, and difficult man. My impression was that he could never admit being wrong.

I was as stubborn as he was and that was a custom-made recipe for more confrontations and conflicts than games of catch or lessons in auto repair.

Religion, and business. That’s what we talk about. It’s always been the case, and now I wouldn’t change anything about that.

He took me to a Lakers game once. In Kansas City. The Lakers spanked the Kings, but I’ll never forget it. I think it’s the only sporting event we’ve ever gone to watch together.

Yesterday, I took my son to watch the Washington Capitals beat the Tampa Bay Lightning. I couldn’t care less about hockey, but I hope he remembers it and writes about it someday in his blog.

There are a number of memories that I owe completely to my father.

The most important, was in March of 1998, I think.

I’d traveled from Tokyo to Baltimore to attend some training. My wife and I had just decided to divorce.

I was devastated, but coping.

I called Pop to tell him I was in country, and ended up swallowing my pride and telling him that he’d been right about my decision to get married when and how I did. I was expecting the kind of tongue lashing that I’d always silently accused him of enjoying.

It never came. For the first time in my life ... he got quiet on me.

"Where are you, son?"

I told him.

We did a bit more catching up, he told me that he loved me, and hung up the phone.

I don’t know how much time actually passed, but it seems like the very next evening I got a knock on the door.

My father had caught a bus from Omaha, Nebraska to Laurel, Maryland just to be at my side.

We spent a couple of days just talking and catching up. He never judged me, he never gave me the "see I told you so" lecture that I expected. He just talked to me ... and listened.

To whatever degree my spirit has stayed intact, I'm not sure I would have survived that personal crisis without that gesture, and his silent support.

I doubt I’ve ever told him how much that meant to me. I’ve always loved and admired him,
but in that week he became my hero, again.

When I think about it now, it reminds me of how he’d earned that position over the years.

We both remember the best summer of my life.

His job was transferring us from Kansas City to Omaha. It was the summer between my sixth and seventh grades. Our job was to travel to Nebraska to scope out the new situation and find a place to live.

We were partners.

We stayed in a motel, looked at real estate, and got to know the city. I remember him putting a bid on the house that is STILL my favorite, and not getting it. (Do you remember Belvedere, Pop?)

I remember Mary Ellen, the real estate agent, promising him that she’d find us a perfect house and coming through on that promise.

I remember the 10¢ sodas in the real estate agency. I remember that it was in a strip mall, and that there was a toy store three doors down. I remember leaving the office when I’d get bored to visit that shop and dream.

I remember falling in love with some toy I’ve since forgotten, and that one day he was probably as bored as I was and asked me where I always went when I left.

"Where do you go, son?"

I told him. He asked if he could go with me.

It was my little sanctuary, and part of me wanted to keep it to myself.

But I said yes. I don’t think he saw the point of the toy, but he bought it for me.

He was already my hero. Even then, I wasn’t materialistic. It was a practical toy, but I still remember that moment.

My dad is an ex-Marine. I remember being four, or five, and him deciding that it was time for me to learn how to fight in our second floor flat on Kingsbury Avenue in St. Louis.

He spent most of the morning teaching me "how to fall."

That brought the normally quiet Ms. Davis upstairs to find out "what the hammerbrand" was going on.

A few weeks later, we were visiting one of his customer's houses. Their little roughneck sons had
just gotten a punching bag and set of gloves for a birthday or something, and couldn't wait to invite the preacher’s kid to box against them.

I was terrified.

I remember my dad rescuing one of those poor thugs from me punching the shit out of him on his front porch. (Never give a scared little kid the means to hurt someone. He probably will.)

I remember that my dad rarely "gave" me money. I always had to work for it. But I always had spending change.

I remember learning about capitalism by having to sell magazines.

I remember my father breaking his rule that "the teacher is always right" by confronting Mr. Fox, my white, sixth-grade music teacher, who insisted on calling my friends and me "his little chocolate angels."

That guy was a racist, and I'd made it a point to never follow his instructions "just right." I'd always assumed that I’d get a whipping for never obeying him. Turned out that it was the right decision, though. I was right, and he was wrong; at least in Danny B's eyes, which is all that mattered in those days.

And my dad backed me up.

He also backed me up when the English teacher at my all-white boarding school insisted that I read the part of Kunta Kinte in the classroom reading of "Roots, the Christmas Story." I wouldn't, and left.

He taught me that you don’t have to "already" know how to do a particular thing, to do it well.

When our church basketball team suffered a humiliating defeat against the very Globetrotter-esque church down the street, he became our coach, bought a book on coaching a game he’d never played, and led us to victory against those same scrubs.

He taught me that its okay to exploit your opponent’s weaknesses by making little Eric (four feet tall at the most) our lead-off batter in a softball game against the best pitcher in the league to throw him off his game. (Rest in peace my young friend. You left too soon.)

He taught me that your opponent is not your enemy by standing at the fence the next week, and talking that same teenager to a 1-hitter against a team he’d never beaten.

When he opened his business, we built a really cool bookshelf. We call it the ark, because it’s got shelves on four sides and fills up the middle of a room. (Do you still have the ark, Pop?)

He taught me that it’s okay to stand alone by always having an opinion he’d thought about, and being willing to say it loudly and proudly in a million different hostile environments. He was the first black Republican I ever knew personally.

The lesson he taught me most consistently was to think for myself, and always be willing to make my own decisions, fully aware of the consequences, and fully willing to accept the worst case scenario.

He supported me when I dropped out of college to join the military, even though a war was starting and he didn’t think it was the best time to be heading off to boot camp.

He’s never been a quiet man, nor shy. He’s never been prone to keep his thoughts to himself. I learned that from him, too.

We don’t agree about religion. He’s a devout Christian, and I fully expect that if there’s a heaven, he’ll go.

But he’s respected my choices, and talked openly about both the parts he thinks make sense about them, and the parts he thinks I’m stupidly naive about.

We don’t agree about politics, although Dubya has probably brought us together more on the subject than any President since we debated whether we should go see candidate Carter in St. Louis.

He’s been married to my mom for almost 35 years. I kept it together for about seven and tried to quit with dignity.

I am a man today. I love to discuss religion and politics. I’m strict, and probably difficult. I’ve been beside my friends on some of the most difficult days of their lives. I try to never say "I told you so" on those days.

Last weekend, I started teaching my son how to fall. He asked me for this noisy firetruck. I bought it.

I work for the money I have.

I'm not what you'd describe as "handy," but several years ago I built a set of shelves that I’m really proud of, even though I don’t see them anymore (long story).

I have no problem winning, and will gleefully find and exploit my opponent's weaknesses to do so.

But I know how to lose with honor, and to give my best effort in competition.

I will shake your hand, and congratulate you on your victory.

I'll mean it when I do.

I’ll help a friend.

I think for myself, and make my own decisions.

I’ve suffered enough consequences that hurt me deeply to know I’m not afraid of tough choices. I’m neither quiet nor shy.

I don’t keep my thoughts to myself most of the time, although I don’t tell just anyone everything, either.

The ghetto is full of stories from men who have never known their fathers.

I don’t have one of those. I’m Danny B’s son.

I love you. Pop.


p.s. If you ever want or need a Bible, Danny B will be happy to sell you one in any language. check him out at:
http://www.internationalbibles.com/
If you tell him that Stew sent you, he might even print your name on it in gold leaf for free. I dunno, you'll have to ask him. He makes his own decisions :)

8/6/97 -- Part Three

Andersen Air Force Base sits on what I’ve always thought of as the Western end of Guam. I say thought of, because it occurs to me that I have absolutely no idea how the island is situated in the ocean. I’m not sure where I got the notion that Tumon Bay faces south, or that Nimitz Hill was on the East side. I guess those are just details, but if my impression is wrong, its pretty shoddy storytelling to not know which direction I traveled to get to the moment that changed my life forever.
I suppose that after I finish this entry, I’ll use the considerable power of the internet to check my facts ... but for now, I’ll rely on my memory and impressions for this document. If an error in fact should make it to the final draft ... charge that to artistic license, not laziness. These moments don’t hit all the time, I don’t want to lose this one ... it’s taken a long time to get here.
I think of Guam as being a kidney-bean shaped island that sits out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I’ve driven it end to end dozens of times, and in my mind’s eye, it’s about 30 miles from Western edge to Eastern. I know that from a geographic standpoint, it’s the top of a collection of submerged volcanoes that sits near the Marianas trench. It’s the largest island of Micronesia.
In my mind, we drove from West to East that morning; beginning at Andersen, and ending closer to the Navy’s headquarters at Nimitz Hill. (For an exciting story, check out the history of Nimitz Hill sometime. It played a fascinating, and sorta tragic role that no one ever talks about in World War II.)
I was nervous for the entire ride.
Strangely, Dan and I have never talked about this experience, one-on-one, after the fact. He has his story. This is mine. I believe he was as nervous as me. I’d never been to a crash site of anything larger than a car before.
Nimitz Hill is actually a collection of rolling hills that dominate the eastern part of the island. From their westernmost point, you can stand on top and look over at Central Guam.
That’s where you’ll see the Won G. Pat international airport.
To land there, a pilot has to clear Nimitz Hill in his final approach from the East.
They’re not gigantic peaks, but for this particular flight, trying to land on this particular morning, in this particular storm, they were tragically perfect. In the early morning darkness, the pilot ... unaware that his altitude wasn’t higher than the top of the big hill in front of him, flew his fully loaded passenger jet directly into the side of Nimitz Hill at a speed of several hundred miles per hour.
The plane broke into several large pieces, which spilled their mechanical, corporate, and suitcased guts across the hill, while keeping many of the still-sleeping passengers safely belted in to their useless seats as jet fuel-fed flames licked from one side of the wreckage to the other.
Rescuers were able to get to 25 people from the bunch. The last was a six or seven year-old girl. Video showed her screaming for her mother, who also survived.
By the time the Tech Sergeant, Dan, and I arrived there that morning, the scene was an organized, smoldering shrine. Firefighters and medical technicians were finished with their part of the response effort. The airport was still closed.
We passed the commercial photographers stand at the top of the hill several miles from the actual site. Everyone seemed to be shooting with high-powered lenses; the kind I’ve always equated with stalking celebrities.
On this day, all those optics were pointed to the valley between two hills, at the big metal pile. I asked if we could stop. I whipped out our camera, set it up, and asked Dan to shoot long-shots while I talked to the only reporter I could see.
A couple of minutes with the lone photog who’d slept through part of the night, and was now manning all of the cameras ( a fact many people don’t realize ... in the field, especially foreign correspondents share virtually everything, including tape, cameras, and photographers. CNN, Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC might be competitors, but that’s not something you’d EVER learn from watching their grunts do work. They frequently share the work of covering an event so everyone can get some sleep. It always makes me kinda giggle when they leave the impression that one station or another has some sort of "exclusive" ) caught me up to where the story had evolved in the hours I’d been traveling.
He gave me the reporter’s skinny on how the military wouldn’t let anyone down to the site (seemed reasonable then and still does today. I wish someone had kept me away.) He talked about the start of rumblings about one of the island’s higher ranking officials who’d wormed his way down to the scene for what was generally considered a photo op, rather than mission support. He gave me "confirmed" numbers about fatalities and casualties, and off the record stuff about early speculation about the cause of the accident.
He asked if I’d be willing to share any of the footage we were able to get from closer in exchange for some of the early shots of the crash. I told him I wouldn’t be able to do that, but traded cards with him anyway. He was a nice guy.
I remember the TSgt driving us past a Red Cross tent about a quarter mile from the makeshift site entrance (an access road built directly to the side of the wreckage by a team of Seabees, working as survivors were being pulled from the plane) already staffed with volunteers who were handing out sandwiches and bottled water to the clean-up teams.
I remember passing the checkpoint, and sliding/driving down a muddy, 45 degree slope as far as the Sergeant felt comfortable trying to control the vehicle.
I remember getting out, checking the camera, telling Dan to start finding out whatever he could and setting up interviews while I started to shoot, and walking up the slope of the other hill to get the highest angle I could get. I remember standing next to a gigantic metal chimney that looked directly down to the runway below and realizing that it was part of the radar system that rumor said may have failed.
I remember starting to shoot video and getting into that zone I always find when I look at the world through an eyepiece. Behind a camera, I’m not afraid of heights, or depths, or wild animals. It feels a lot like I imagine Harry’s invisibility cloak must feel.
Usually, the lens allows you to see life’s moments almost as art. You’re not really paying attention to what is being recorded as much as how. Is it framed well, does it look well composed? Is it in focus? What’s the most logical move to make? Should I pan, or zoom, or rack focus? Am I close enough? Do I have enough angles for a sequence? The fact that it’s a beautiful flower is left for the poets and botanists who’ll come behind.
That’s what makes it beat back my acrophobia most of the time. It makes the fact that I’m at 10,000 feet and leaning out the side of a helicopter by my safety harness feel like I’m watching television. Fate forbid that I open the other eye and put the camera down for a moment–I freak. But for as long as the camera is unblinkingly filtering things for me, I’m "ten feet tall and bulletproof."
There is one thing I’ve learned pierces that sense of security for me.
Recording scenes of death.
It shoots right through my invisibility cloak like a Hogwarts spell. It makes me human at the most inopportune times. After documenting the obvious connection between this final peak of this final hill and how close it was to the runway, I carried the camera and sticks to the other side of the hill to start shooting shots of the actual wreckage. It wasn’t real to me that there were still hundreds of bodies inside. It was television. I had no way of knowing that I’d arrived during a planned break in activity. Or that things were going to pick up very quickly, very soon. I was just a young reporter on a beautiful day in Guam.
For the moment.

(originally posted 29 Jan 07)

On Religion

I am agnostic.
Allow me to define what I mean by the term, because labels are convenient oversimplifications, and belief is a very nuanced thing.
After decades of being taught about religion, and God; and years more of studying, thinking, praying, and meditating on my own, I’ve arrived at the (hopefully temporary) conclusion that I don’t know whether or not God exists.
I’ve read apologetics that demand belief in the idea, and treatises that explained the existence of a deity away. I’ve found both to have resounding logic in some areas. I’ve also found both to require a tremendous amount of faith. I lost that sort of faith a long time ago. Finally, I have some resolution.
I don’t know.
Not, "I’m right and you’re wrong." Not "I KNOW because I can feel it." Not "it’s true (or false)" because some preacher, saint, or sinner has convinced me. Not even, "this is so obvious I believe it because nothing else makes sense."
My resolution at this time is much more basic and fundamental than any of that.
I don’t know.
I study, I believe I’m learning, I even care DEEPLY about the answer. I think its important. I think it matters. I think there IS an answer. But ...
I don’t know
what that answer is.
Religious zealots and avowed atheists are the same in their insistence that I have to pick a team.
I don’t have to pick a side, and I won’t until I’m ready.
I cast my lot with the ignorant.
I don’t know.
Whenever I start down the road of thinking about the events that cemented me here, I end up reaffirming my belief that its ok that I don’t know.
It’s ok with me for one simple reason.
I don’t believe that you know either.
I concede your faith, I acknowledge that you’ve settled on an answer that satisfies you and meets all of your needs. But I require more.
I don’t scratch unless I itch. I don’t dance unless I hear music. I don’t laugh unless I think it’s funny. And I don’t say I know when I don’t.
The "Jesus freaks," as I endearingly call them, insist that if I don’t accept their Lord as my Savior, then I’ve picked the side of Satan.
Guess what. I’m not so sure about him either.
It’s not a binary function. I can choose Christ, Buddha, metaphysics, Hinduism, Islam or Wicca. In fact, I can select parts and pieces if I choose. I can have all, some, or none. I can mix and match if I want to.
Its not even a matter of there being "two sides to every story" for me. I believe there are infinite sides to every story. The two sides, are just extremes. The people who insist on that theory are extremISTS. And in the view I’ve chosen, the people who believe there’s only ONE side ... are idiots.
There, I said it.
I said it because its one of very few things I believe.
Now that its good and murky for you. Let me go a little bit deeper.
I like church.
I think church is one of those rituals that has a very important place in the human psyche. But I don’t go.
Why?
Simple. Because the people that talk to me at church are annoying. They irritate me, with their self-righteous know-it-allness.
They feel too entirely comfortable asking me questions that are entirely none of their business, and then judging the "type" of person I am by the shallow-assed answers I give them to their entirely sophomoric, or worse, elementary questions.
They never answer the questions I ask in return. That quickly devolves into some idiotic discussion of things I have to take on "faith." Which I’m starting to believe very few of them actually understand.
The rare time I’m at church, it isn’t because I want to be converted. Its because I’m too simple to think I’m the most important or powerful force in the universe. Both nature and faith are much bigger than I am. And even though I don’t know the answer yet, some days, I want the feeling of acknowledging the fact of their tremendous breadth, width, and depth. On about half of those days, I go to church. Most other times, I go outside, or to my local pub.
I don’t go because it’s your "visitor’s" day.
I won’t go because you ask me to.
I can’t go because I believe that what’s happening there is in any way tied to my "salvation."
I go because I want to.
Again, its that simple.
For the record, I find atheists just as annoying.
Their haughty insistence that humankind appeared on the scene without any external factors is almost as nonsensical to me. And their insistence that they "know" there is no God sounds a lot like the same drivel I get at church, minus the sit/stand/kneel/pay routine.
I really like sermons, though. The very good ones are motivational speeches without the Zig Ziglar-ish oiliness. Most of the time, I learn something. More often than not, I get a lot of useful methods and interesting anecdotes from them.
I REALLY like T.D. Jakes. I don’t like Dallas, so I don’t plan to ever attend his church, but if he ever needs a donation for a worthy cause, I’ll chip in.
He’s a scholar, and his words demonstrate that he’s spent a significant amount of time actually studying the principles he’s espousing and extracting something meaningful from the texts he’s chosen to expound on that will benefit his audience in some way.
That’s more than a talent. It’s a gift.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for that.
There are others.
I put Henry Wright in the same category. If you ever want to hear a useful sermon, from a man who’s done his research, you should find yourself in his congregation, at Community Praise Center in Alexandria, Virginia on a Saturday morning.
The people may annoy you, but ignore them. They portend to mean well.
I always end up here when I think about Guam. August, 1997.
I suppose its my brain still trying to make some sense of what I saw. I’ve let the process work itself out internally for long enough now. I don’t think anyone actually reads blogs, so this seems a cheap and reasonable alternative to more very expensive therapy.
I’m not trying to make converts. So please don’t bother to tell me that I’m right, or that I’m wrong. This isn’t about you. These are my thoughts. I’ve earned them, fought them, and intend to let them continue until they reach their conclusion, or I die...whichever comes first.
If some doctrinal tenet REQUIRES you to respond, start with the ANSWER and PROOF to this question.
"How do YOU know?"
Since your response is uninvited, assume I’ll be somewhat hostile. It’s also true that I will listen to you, and probe your answer. If you’re sure, your better bet is to write it down, copywrite it, and sell it to the masses. They need it, are looking for it, and want it.
I don’t.
I’m having fun without you. I study history, particularly the history of religion ... and THAT is more fulfilling than any year-long course on your twisted version of "truth."
It’s biased, infinite, multi-faceted, and well-documented by passionate people who wanted to get their side of the story out.
But they rarely annoy me. They don’t have that scent of know-it-all on their breath. They don’t nag me about my bad habits, or expect me to accept a dinner invitation. They write down their thoughts in a book, give it a title that catches my attention, and leave it to me to buy or catch it in the library.
If you ever want to talk about THAT ... I’m all in.
Until then,
I’m agnostic.
I don’t know.

(originally posted 15 Jan 06)

8/6/97...part two

Most of that day was a blur to me at the time.

Oddly, now it lives in my memory as a crystal clear moment by moment instant replay.

I remember calling my wife to tell her that I’d probably be leaving at some point, destination Guam.

I remember sitting at my desk, surfing internet news sites for old stories about plane crashes to
get a feel for where the lines were.

I remember making hotel reservations.

I remember doing telephone interviews with some of the local medical staff about the processes and procedures for responding to large-scale emergencies.

They were professionals who’d seen wholesale tragedy in war zones, at refugee camps, and at the scene of natural disasters from floods to earthquakes.

Some of them had even been on both sides of those kinds of days–I remember a Captain talking about evacuating from Mount Pinatubo’s ashy aftermath.

I wasn’t prepared.

Even now, I can’t think of anything that could have done the trick. There are some experiences that there is no preparation for.

It haunts me now as I think about the young men and women we’ve sent to war.

Fate has been kind to me.

I’ve never had to kill a man because his nation and mine disagree. I’ve never seen a man lose a leg to an improvised explosive device, or had to stop the bleeding of a comrade-in-arms on the worst day of his life.

I’ve only seen the results.

But there are tens of thousands of people who have. Even as the greatest generation slowly slips away, a new generation of combat veterans is being born on the battlefield.

I am grateful to have never seen combat.

My experience with war is limited to fewer than a hundred interviews with men who’ve seen the dark side. There are those who’ve learned the value of their own lives by ending the lives of others.

And each of them says he wasn’t prepared.

There are some experiences that there is no preparation for.

I "ended" the day at a bar, bags packed, waiting for a phone call.

It came just before midnight. Two seats were open on an empty medevac flight headed to Andersen. I finished my root beer, made the "here’s where I’m leaving the car" phone call home ... and boarded the jet with Dan.

I was awake for the entire flight. I still regret that.

There was a very friendly med tech who worked the evacuation flights. I don’t remember his name, not that I’d use it here. But I’ll never forget our conversation.

He’d seen our reports, and enjoyed them, he said. He gave me a tour of the aircraft. I’m sure it’s a medical marvel, really.

He showed me how the gurneys bolted onto the frame. He showed me the state-of-the-art medical contraptions that could keep critical patients stabilized en route to state-of-the-art emergency rooms.

He had the gallows humor that I’ve come to appreciate from environments where death is an everyday occurrence.

He talked about how silly the pre-flight emergency warnings were. "If you’re going down, you’re going down," he told me. He even talked about "why" you don’t inflate your life preserver until after you "de-board" a crashed aircraft.

Common sense, really. If you land on water and your preserver is already full of air, WHEN the plane starts to take on water, you’ll float to the top of the aircraft and eventually drown because you can’t reach an exit.

And on exits–"ever seen a plane crash without breaking? Don’t worry about the exit door. Just go out the closest hole."

Pretty cheery stuff, I guess, on your way to your first airplane crash.

I still don't like to fly.

We got to Guam about 18 hours after the crash. The sun wasn’t up yet. We arrived at the PA office before dawn. It was empty, except for the Tech Sergeant. He was calm, composed, and helpful. Turned out, even though he’d only been at the office for a few days, his experience with aircraft mechanics meant he’d seen his fair share of mishaps. He knew the drill and had 18 years of military experience that proved invaluable over the next few days.

He brought us up to date and offered to drive us to the site. The sun was coming up. The base and the location were on opposite sides of the island. I was struck by how simply gorgeous the island is.

It was August 7th, I’d been awake for slightly more than 24 hours.

And the day was just beginning.

The day that changed my life, part one...

August 6th, 1997.

Almost ten years later, I still remember it like it was yesterday.

I was a military beat reporter back then.


Assigned to Tokyo, my job was to cover Army, Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, and Navy news in Eastpac.


It was a name the seven of us had cooked up in one of the early newscast planning sessions for my area of responsibility.

It made up a sizable part of the Pacific stretching from the West Coast of California to Japan.


We were only a few months old as a team, and so far the bases I was accountable for were still a collection of mysteries to me.

I’d mapped them out on maps and globes, and familiarized myself with the major units at each of the locations.


Back then, I hadn’t met many contacts, and didn’t know the great restaurants and party-spots at each place at the time. (Today, if you’re planning a vacation anywhere in Asia and want a good restaurant, hotel, party, or nightlife suggestion, I’m your huckleberry.)

It was about 6:25 AM Tokyo time when I heard the first radio reports in the car en route to work. At the time, details were scarce and sandwiched between other stories.

A Korean Air Lines jet had gone down on the tiny island of Guam. No early word on casualties. And in sports ...

Work was a blur as I made arrangements to get to Micronesia as quickly as possible.

Some other day I'll tell you about Pacific Report, and what a challenge and reward it was to belong to that early team.


For now, suffice it to say it was a young newscast that had been designed to fail, but wasn't hitting that mark.

Without a proper budget, staffed primarily by inexperienced DINFOS-trained "killers," and largely unknown in the community it purported to cover, we had too little experience to realize that we weren't supposed to make it work.


So we were turning it into a recognizable name by working our asses off, and having a lot more fun than we were supposed to. Our instructions were to get the job done, worry about the rules later on.

Everything was by the book that morning.

If you’ve never tried to book a flight onto an island the same day that a major air disaster has happened, forego the experience and allow yourself to live vicariously through me.

There are no commercial flights. And the military flights are emergency personnel only. After putting myself on a dozen standby lists, and narrowing down my equipment to as little gear as possible, I worked the phones. Details were starting to trickle in.

I still have the notebook I was using that morning. The first section of scribblings from this story says:

–serious crash, early morning local time
–Won G. Pat International airport, Guam
–KAL Flight 800 (Seoul to Guam)
–330 souls on board
–very few survivors
–military response teams on scene
–Yokota medical evacuations ongoing
–All flights suspended
–Infrastructure damage unknown
–Cause under investigation
–early indications point to wx as a potential factor

It was my first call to the Andersen Air Force Base Public Affairs office. I spoke to a Tech Sergeant there.


He’d cross-trained into the career field when the airframe he maintained had been retired. It was his first week on the island. It was his first day on the job. He was a rookie, too.

Dan was assigned as my partner for the assignment. We hated each other, stemming from an awful trip to Okinawa we’d shared.


I was a little bit nervous about taking him along. In my view, he was an arrogant know-it-all, who didn’t know the job very well.


I think if he were writing this account, he would say I’ve grown a lot since then.


Since I’m writing it, I’ll say he has too.


I consider him a friend, a statement that grew out of a hundred subsequent assignments.


Today, I’d work with him any day, anywhere. But on August 6th, 1997 I didn’t know any better. I also didn’t know that my whole perspective on things was about to be radically transformed, shifted, twisted, and rewritten.

I was about to meet God, and death, and humanity, and fate, and fear, and grief, and tragedy, and heroism, and adulthood.


None of them lived up to my expectations. I was destined to learn that none of them were as good, or as bad, or as powerful as I imagined.


None of them were as strong, or as important, or as eternal as I’d convinced myself they were.


None of them.

The 1000th time

I’m sitting across from her in a restaurant.

It's not a date, but for the 1000th time, a never-married single woman asks me what it is that I have against marriage.

It isn't that she asks the question. It is an indisputably fair one.

What’s bugged me every time is the condescending way she asks it. It's the unverbalized (yet written all over her face) belief that no matter WHAT my experience has been I have no right to say that I don’t WANT another wife.

It’s the odor of her thought that there can be no legitimate rationale for my lack of desire to have again what she wants so desperately to experience just once.


It’s the tangible tentacle of her naive "wisdom" about me and what I "really" feel or can’t possibly understand about my thoughts. It’s my prejudice about her prejudice toward me and my perception that she perceives me to be unworthy of having a different view because I AM, after all ... just a man.

Sadly, because I believe every honestly posed question deserves a reasoned answer ... I give one just about every time. Worse, its never the whole truth. I don’t believe I’ve ever talked about the day I quit believing, until now.

I suspect that the rote answer I’ve memorized leads many of the "hers" to believe it happened when my own seven-year struggle ended. A painful experience no doubt; but if relationships were people, that one was born handicapped, and became a crime-destined orphan at a very young age.

Nor is it related to the oft-quoted "50% of all marriages end in divorce." That’s a sad statistic, but I’ve never been prone to assuming I’m just a integer or that every odd will opt for the chance to go against me.

It isn’t even that I don’t know any "happily-marrieds." I actually count among my friends a couple of couples who aren’t planning their divorce parties as I type this blog entry.

The simplest answer goes back to a specific day, and a very precise moment in time.

It involved "Mike" and "Laura"–and the day their decision changed my life.

I’ve anonymized them because they are very real people, living a very real life.

The internet isn’t an anonymous place, and I’ve never asked their permission to publicly discuss what I’m sure is one of the least-favorite events in their lives.

I still consider them both to be my friends, and will until the day one of them calls me and says it isn’t true anymore. That will also be a day I anesthesize myself with very cheap vodka and cry very real tears until I lose sobriety ... and then consciousness.

I love them and their brood and always will.

I’ve lost them. I can’t find them. Google won’t give ‘em up, and the white pages remain strangely silent about their whereabouts.

Now, I’m just stalling ... and that’s not fair. You’re reading this for the answer, and I’ve moved no closer to giving it up.

I met Mike in Panama. It must’ve been 1995, maybe six.

He was a co-worker. He was always in a hurry to get home.

Mike wasn’t just a nice guy, he was the nicest.

Funny, polite, shy, and not liked very much by any of our bosses. They didn’t like that he was always in a hurry to go home. Hell, none of us liked it. We worked hard, and even though he always finished his work, the news business never stops. There’s no such thing as overtime, and some stories take you away from home. There’s no quitting, and the deadline tells you when the day is over.

Mike never wanted to stay longer than his duty hours demanded. He balked at every assignment that threatened to make him miss dinner. He never seemed to put everything he had into our task. He never drank with us after a successful day. He never commiserated with us after a shitty one.

His heart wasn’t in it.

In time ... I befriended him. That’s what I do.

He was happily married.

I was married, and "geographically separated." Mine was in Washington, D.C.

Turned out, his was pregnant and having a very difficult time being away from HER mother and family as her firstborn was evolving in her womb.

He hated the Army for dragging him away from home to as hot, humid, and in her eyes inhospitable a place as tropical Panama City. There wasn’t room in base housing for them, so they were renting a gorgeous but stiflingly hot apartment in El Dorado.

Laura was hormonal and miserable, and hated the fact that Mike worked in air conditioning all day while she sat under a ceiling fan thinking thoughts of snowfall and icicles.

When it rained ... every morning, and every afternoon ... she hated the sound of how the drops hit the windows and steamed everything up.

But she’d signed up for "better or worse" and figured this was somewhere distant from the prior, and close to the latter.

She wasn’t "complaining" just sharing her feelings about Panama. She felt fat (even though she was skinny and gorgeous with a pregnant belly), but loved him dearly, and wanted to be where he was.

She was just having trouble adjusting to the tropics and hormones, and ceiling fans, and spending all day alone.

He’d made Laura a promise.

He told me
that he’d told her
that he’d spend as much time where she was as he could, every day of his life.

He told her that he’d do everything in his power to be as hot and humid as she was for as much time as he could every day of that tropical summer.

He’d promised to sit and eat ice with her, talk to her, and tell her jokes that made her feel skinny until she laughed herself to sleep.

Keeping that promise meant never staying longer than his duty hours demanded.

It meant balking at every assignment that threatened to make him miss dinner.

It meant never putting his heart into "our" task.

It meant never drinking with us after a successful day.

It meant never commiserating with us after a shitty one.

It meant his heart was somewhere else.

When he told me, I thought it was the very coolest thing I’d ever heard.

What I mean to say is ...

I thought it was the very coolest thing I’d ever heard.
That’s not quite it, either.

IT WAS THE VERY COOLEST THING I’D EVER HEARD.

(I’m nowhere close to you understanding what this has to do with the woman at the restaurant, but if I don’t give you this context my non-answer probably won’t make a whole lot of sense. I beg your indulgence.)

My wife came to visit. That wasn’t uncommon ... we had tons of good times. But it was a vacation for her. She’d sit in my hot apartment and watch Spanish soap operas, or hop in the car and get lost and go shopping and do touristy things until my deadline passed and we could share them.

I believe the phone call came on a Thursday. I was standing near Mike when he took it. It was Laura. Something was wrong with the baby. She needed a doctor. He needed to come home and take her to the hospital.

The jackass "petty" officer we worked for didn’t see the crisis. In his mind, Mike could simply finish editing the story for the night’s news, then calmly drive to ensure that the ambulance had in fact taken his wife to the right hospital.

Today, I would advise Mike to punch the jackass’s left eye. I’d punch the jackass’s right eye. We’d hop in my car and hightail it to his house, then the hospital. Problem solved.

But I was younger and calmer back then. I told him not to worry, that I’d have my wife pick up Laura, take her to the hospital, and wait with her until Mike could get there. No problem. The cool thing about Spanish soap operas is that when you don’t speak Spanish, you never worry about missing an episode. The people are just as gorgeous when you come back.

The women hit it off like sisters. I don’t think I ever found out what the medical part of the crisis was, but my wife made a friendship with Laura that somehow automatically extended to me even though we’d never technically met.

Danita eventually returned to D.C.

Mike and Laura’s beautiful baby daughter was eventually born.
I loved her.
She was chubby and cute. She smiled without prompting.
If you poked her belly just right, she giggled just like the Pillsbury doughboy.
In time she learned to walk and talk.
The way she lisped "Stewwwwwwwwwww" melted my heart.

And she was brilliant.

She knew letters and numbers within a year. And Mike taught her the sound of every animal in the universe. She once taught me the sound an ant makes. I’ve forgotten how to make it, but I remember the moment.

I want to type her name ... it was angelic. But she too has the right to be anonymous ... I’ll call her, "Michelle." Her picture still sits on my mantle.

I read her stories, she read them back. I still loved Mike and Laura ... but Michelle absolutely stole my heart.

I wasn’t a cynic back then. She wouldn’t allow it. She said such simple and profound things. She laughed just because I came for dinner, which by now was every night.

They were in an air-conditioned base house by now. I had a space on the couch that I slept in as often as my bed.

Laura always made enough soup and baked enough bread for Uncle Stewwwwwwwwwww.

It was a "Christian" home, in the finest sense of that term. Mike was a P.K. and Laura had been raised in a devout home. Over time, we talked about the things that they felt made their marriage work. They credited their faith, and their upbringing. They abhorred the prevalence of divorce and infidelity in our society. They made the whole thing seem real, and I grew to believe. Not in their religion, I was already way past that, but in the substance of their faith. I watched them weave a universe for Michelle out of that substance. I watched her thrive and grow.

We got a new boss. He was a family guy. He let Mike transfer to a position with a more stable schedule. Laura felt beautiful again, she had an all-day companion at her air-conditioned house in Michelle.

Things were good.

In time, Laura’s belly started to fatten up again. Baby number two was on the way.

By now, I think I even had chores at their place.

We were a cobbled together family of sorts, and I loved them like my own brother and sister.

My wife’s visits were a virtual family reunion for all of us. We laughed, and ate, and talked, and laughed, and shared drams, and discussed religions, and talked about futures and laughed.

Laura wanted me to experience as much of her pregnancy as possible in preparation for my own first child. Mike just beamed every time we all went for a sonogram. I remember the three of us staring in amazement at the virtually irrefutable proof of the baby’s gender. I practiced diaper-changing with Michelle as my tutor. The calendar was against us, as an assignment to Japan loomed in my near future. But it was going to be close, and all of us wanted me to meet the new addition.

It came down to the final weeks. I’d delayed my departure as long as I could. I had ten days left ... and the baby was to be born a week to ten days after I left.

There was talk of inducing labor early so I could meet my new nephew, but practicality won the day.

I kissed Michelle, hugged Laura and Mike ... and boarded the plane that promised to take me to a new future. Bright with the opportunity of FINALLY living in the same city as my wife ... Tokyo.

I laughed as Laura waddled to the door to wave good bye to me. I misted up as I heard Michelle yell "Bye Stewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. I love yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" through the screen door.

Bye Michelle. I love yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu too.

There was an e-mail waiting for me in Tokyo. It said that "Noel" had been born strong, healthy, and happy.

It was good.

A couple of months later ... another pregnancy. Mike and Laura were getting close to finishing up the family they’d always dreamed of.

They were heading back to the States ... finally, Laura could have her snowfalls and icicles again.
There are three children in all. I love them all like my very own.
But this story isn’t about them ... its about what happened next.

I got a terse e-mail from Mike one day at work.
"Stew. I need to talk to you. -Mike."

I phoned.

"Stew, I don’t know how to tell you this. Laura and I are getting a divorce." ...

...

...

What?

...

...

...

Who is this? Where’s Michelle?
"She’s fine. We’re all fine. But Laura and I have decided to get divorced."
Why?

"I don’t know, really. It’s more Laura’s decision than mine, and I’m not even sure what it’s all about, but I wanted you to hear about it from me."
How’s Laura?
"She’s ... ok. Things are a bit strange right now, but everything will be fine. God will continue to bless us."

Did you cheat on her?

"No, I would NEVER do anything like that. Besides, you know that I save all the lust in my heart for muscle cars in magazines."

How are you?

"Ummmm...I don’t know how to answer that. I love Laura, I love my kids, I love you, I love my marriage. I don’t know how I’m going to survive, but I am."

Is there anything I can do?
"No. Just remember us the way we were."
Mike. I love you guys. I don’t understand.
"I know. Laura says hi. I have to go to work now."
Bye Mike. Call me if you need me.
"I will. Good bye."

Those moments broke something in ME that snapped again as I watched my own marriage dissolve.

I wasn’t nearly as good a husband as Mike, although I gave it everything I had. Hell, I’m not as good a PERSON as Mike was, so the husband thing is almost a given.

I stopped believing in marriage that day. I wanted to prove myself wrong by making mine work, but somehow I guess my heart didn’t have enough elasticity to snap all the way back.

Now, you can keep your marriage concept. You can keep your empty promises. You can keep your dreams of wedded bliss. They are yours. I don’t have them. Give me a companion, and leave us alone. We’ll survive as long as we can, maybe forever ... then we’ll go our separate ways.

I know it won't be long before I find myself sitting across from her in a restaurant, again.


It won’t be a date, but for the 1001st time, a never-married single woman will ask me what it is that I have against marriage.

It won’t be that she asks the question. It is an indisputably fair one. What will bug me THIS time time will be the condescending way she’ll ask it. It will be the unverbalized (yet written all over her face) belief that no matter WHAT my experience has been I have no right to say that I don’t WANT another wife. It’ll be the odor of her thought that there can be no legitimate rationale for my lack of desire to have again what she wants so desperately to experience just once. It will be the annoyingly tangible tentacle of her naive "wisdom" about how much she knows about "divorced" men like me and what we’ve been through and how many dumb-assed books she’s read about what I "really" feel and how I'm simply not informed enough to possibly understand about my own thoughts.

It will be MY prejudice about her prejudice toward me and MY perception that she perceives me to be unworthy of having a different view because I AM, after all ... just a man.

(originally posted 6 Jan 06)