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Return From Okinawa – Finding Donna and The Failure to Commit While I was in Okinawa, Donna and I wrote each other regularly. I kept telling her I was doing better. But then I'd been telling her I was doing fine when I obviously was not. Of course it had not been quite so obvious to me. Donna's letters were beginning to contain things like how much she believed in me and how I turned out to be tougher than she thought I would be. I was beginning to feel she might be leaving and now that I was more engaged I realized I had been lucky she hadn't left already. We were able to talk on the phone a couple of times. It wasn't a regular phone. It was a line through the base with an operator on with you. It was one way communication. You spoke and when done said “over”. The operator would then cut you off and open it up for the other person to speak. Both of us were rather private people and trying to have an intimate serious conversation with a third part...

A New York Yankee and His Free Time I grew up rooting for the NY Yankees. Consequently, I hated the Boston Red Sox. I always thought that Boston should have been named the Yankees because we considered people from New England Yankees. I grew up with what was considered “Yankee” principles or traits. Things like: keep to yourself, do things yourself, be independent, be self reliant, be straightforward, be frugal, be humble, and do it all with integrity. These were the traits that were pushed as admirable in my family. While some may question how I've fared with that last part, I pretty much have adopted these ideals. I've always been very self-contained. I like being by myself. Being by myself energizes me whereas being with others drains me. I am also empathetic. I don't know if those two are particularly “Yankee” but if you put that with the other traits I think that goes a long way towards explaining who I am. Of course putting those two together mak...

Okinawa and Appreciating Water Preparing to ship out to Okinawa, I moved out of my apartment and into the barracks. A couple of days later I boarded a cargo plane, with 30 or so others, heading for Kadena AFB in Okinawa. Kadena is where the real missions were run, over places like China and Russia and particularly Vietnam. We all rotated out to Kadena on TDY (Temporary Duty). The rotation was 4 months in Kadena and then 8 months back in the states. Since the plane we worked on, the SR-71, was a spy plane, this was all secret stuff. That was why we were all there on TDY status, because then we would be officially in California at Beale AFB, not Kadena. Donna had wanted me to try to get it postponed. I didn't see the sense in doing that as I would have to go sometime soon so what difference would a month or so delay make. Besides, it was unlikely that my assignment would have been postponed much, if at all and I didn't want the extra attention I might get for as...