Dear Garrett..

Leaving the SFO Airport it was back to everyday life which since the age of twelve consisted of basic survival. I still had another semester to go to complete High School. I didn’t really attend High School to learn anything — I attended simply to  complete it and get a diploma.

Following my Dad’s passing, when I was twelve, a radically new course had been set in motion for my family. Within a few months, it became apparent that my family had become a ship without a rudder. The events that followed were too incredible to be real. But they were real.

My Dad was an engineer for the Michigan Bell Telephone Company. Dad was from Canada. His parents were from England. Dad was a proper man with well developed British manners. He was well-respected professionally and personally. He  provided well for our family. I was the oldest of his five children with my Mom. He had a daughter, my half-sister, Janet, from a previous marriage.

Dad moved ventured out on his own from Canada to Detroit, Michigan when he was 16. His first job in the United States was with the Detroit Free Press Newspaper. Dad did not finish High School. He got his second job in Detroit working on the frame at Michigan Bell. The frame was an entry-level job at the phone company. Michigan Bell subsequently sent my Dad to engineering school which became his job for most of the 29 years he worked there.

Dad had Rheumatic Fever as a child which damaged his heart. He passed in 1960 leaving us five kids and Mom to figure out how to live without him. Immediately following his passing, everyone told me that I was now the man of the family and that it was my job to take care of my sister, brothers and my Mom. When they’d tell me this, I’d just listened never  answering back. At age 12 and didn’t know how to answer to the charges pronounced onto me. I thoroughly believed, though, what I was being told. So, beginning at twelve years of age, I became the patriarch of my family.

Little did anyone know at that time what all the commotion would involve but we would find out soon. If that vulnerable period could have been measured physically with a seismograph the pre earthquake tremors would have been significant indicating a very rough ride and time ahead. The Earthquake that was about to transpire in our family under our new leadership would be off the Richter Scale.

The week Dad had his fifth and final heart attack, I spent most of my time skating around on my hockey rink on the canal behind my house shooting my hockey puck up against the seawall. I wondered what life would be like without a Dad. I felt lost and bewildered.

Had Dad lived, I feel I may have become a physician, maybe an Internal Medicine Doctor. Without my Dad now, I had no direction whatsoever regarding a career. When Dad passed, basic survival for the next several years became what mattered.

In less than a year, life had become off the scale exciting, diverse and dangerous. Within two years three different men, with my Mom’s help, would bankrupt our family.

I’ll save the explicit details of my years between the ages of 12 and 18 for another place in this story. But very briefly, I ended up in East Palo Alto following a departure from Michigan and a sweep through Louisiana and Texas and then on to California; thus the location at the time of the arrival of my dream to become an Aviator at the SFO Airport in California.

So now I had my dream to fulfill. It was a financially expensive dream with no money and no parents in sight to fund said dream. It was only a dream but as I was to find out the dream was all I would need to get started. Then it would be up to

the THOUGHTS, WORDS and ACTIONS to follow which would eventually make the dream a reality.

When I returned to High School, I now had an answer when asked, “What are you going to do after High School?” Now I could relax and say, “I’m going to be an Aviator.” Nobody I replied to ever said what they thought about my idea. I’d just get a blank look. Either they didn’t know much about what an Aviator was or they didn’t believe I could become one? If they were judging my ability to succeed at something from my High School GPA, they might have felt correct in that assumption. It just took me finding something worth studying to apply myself — that didn’t happen in High School like it did later.

There are not very many Aviators in the world relatively speaking — last I heard less than two tenths of one percent. And even though the world population continues to increase, the pilot population has been on the decline for a few decades now. If anybody reading this is thinking about becoming an Aviator, now is a good time.

I managed to make it through High School good enough to graduate. Following my epiphany at the SFO Airport, I would have to relocate my living quarters three more times while completing my senior year.

Someone decided I shouldn’t live with Larry, the playboy pharmacist who gave me a place to live for a couple of months. Larry and I worked at the same pharmacy, Baneth’s Pharmacy in Menlo Park, California. I had actually worked there my last two years of school from 1pm to 10 pm. I was in a work program at school which allowed me to leave early and get work experience and school credit too. I loved my job there. I was the delivery boy, a stock boy and a checker. School, a sixty hour work week and sleep kept me from getting into any trouble. I started at the pharmacy at $1.25 an hour and worked my way up to $1.45 per hour, obviously not enough to save up for any flying lessons but I was happy with how I was managing to get by.

My next domicile was with my boss, Mr. Baneth. He and his family lived in a million dollar mansion in Menlo Atherton. Maybe they thought that living with them would be a healthier environment than living with a playboy pharmacist? Or maybe Larry needed more privacy at home and worked out a deal with Mr. Baneth? No one ever told me why, they just said I was moving.

Mrs. Baneth was a pretty blond mom of two boys who worked in real estate. I never felt comfortable living with the Baneth’s. It felt strictly like a business arrangement. I was only there two or three months. I lived alone upstairs is this huge mansion. The family lived downstairs. After awhile, Mr. Baneth told me that Mrs. Baneth expected me to do chores at the house when I wasn’t working my 60 hour work week and attending school. I did do a little bit of garden maintenance before going to work a couple of Saturday’s which was not enough to satisfy Mrs. Baneth. I worked at the pharmacy from 1pm to 10pm on Saturday also which gave me some time in the morning before work to either rest up from the week at school and work — or to do chores to keep Mrs. Baneth happy. Shortly after I did do the garden work, I was told that I needed to leave.

At that time, I probably had another two to three months to complete High School. Leaving the Baneth’s, I packed everything I owned into my 1962 gray Volkswagen Beetle and drove away. It would take a while for me to find another place to live so I slept in my car in parks on the safe side of Palo Alto, the West side. Nobody ever bothered me in the parks. Although cramped, I was able to sleep some in my Beetle. I would get up in the morning like everyone else, get fixed up and head to school.

I remember being late only once for school during that period. I had accidentally locked myself out of my VW Beetle with the engine running while I went to get something to wear out of my trunk. I spent the next hour trying to figure out how to get back into my car. I was concerned about the engine running and how I was going to get to school on time. After an hour of walking around downtown in Palo Alto looking for a coat hanger or something to get into the car, I went back to the car and broke out what I estimated to be the cheapest window to replace. The most embarrassing thing about that event was walking around Palo Alto without any shoes on which were locked inside the car. I had to decide whether to walk around in my socks or barefooted. After a bit I pulled off my socks and went barefooted. It was early in the morning still with hardly any people around to wonder what I was up to.

If I was going to be an Aviator, it was important to make it at least through High School. That’s a good size task for anyone. Like anything, it can be easier for some than others. I obviously chose the more difficult path probably for the extra strength I would need later when I did become an Aviator.

From the completion of my junior year to the completion of my senior year, I attended three different High Schools in three different cities and lived in nine different places. Nonetheless, I had graduated. My course through High School was heavily buffeted by multiple obstacles but none of them deterred me from accomplishing my goal in the least way. Five years from my High School graduation and five years into my career as an Aviator, I would encounter the toughest buffeting of my life. My experience of living and attending High School in what I perceived as the hell of East Palo Alto was minor compared to the hell that awaited me as an Army Pilot in Vietnam.