When Don went into the service he went into the Strategic Air Command. He went in as an airman because his commission hadn’t come through yet. He was in Germany for about six months, and then he became a first lieutenant without any special training or anything. It was really weird. He went through the gate Monday as an airman and came out as an officer. It was just strange.

First Don did some training at a base in Texas. Then he went to Spokane, Washington. Then he applied for language school and they sent him to the Chinese language school at Yale University. He was always interested in things Chinese. I think he was convinced that in another life time he had been Chinese.

Then they sent him to intelligence school in Washington, DC. From there we went to the Philippines for a couple of years. When we got home he was stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Then he got assigned to Japan. I think we stayed in Japan for about six years. During this whole time, Don was working as an intelligence officer. Finally he spent a year in Vietnam. Somewhere in between there we were in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton is one of those things you forget. (Laughter).

We did a lot of moving around. I once figured out that in the twenty years that Don was in the Air Force we moved 28 times. It’s not like childbirth; it doesn’t get easier. Moving is a mess.

Finally when Don retired we got all that stuff together and discovered many duplicates. I had three ironing boards and I never ironed (laughter).

We got rid of a lot of stuff and moved to Costa Mesa, and finally moved back to Hanford. Don was reluctant to come back to Hanford. To Don, happiness was Hanford in the rear-view mirror. But he did move back here. I don’t know if that’s what killed him or what.

I wanted to come back because Don’s health had gotten so bad that I didn’t want to stay down there in all the traffic of the Los Angeles area.

All this moving was tough on our daughter Lori. Very often we would be in a place and she would start a new school. Quite often there was a friend that she had known from a previous school, so she was never a complete stranger. I think the best time for her was when we were in Hawaii. She loved Hawaii. Imagine being in high school in Hawaii! It was relatively safe then; we didn’t worry too much about getting into trouble. All the big rock stars, all the big celebrities came to Hawaii. They would do concerts; she still talks about those concerts.

Lori has chronic fatigue syndrome among many other things and she can really take care of herself. She couldn’t work so she moved in with us after a while.

Backing up for a moment, while we were in the Philippines I edited a magazine for the wives of officers in the Far East. I did quite a bit of writing. When we moved back to Newport Beach I worked for the newspaper there. It is called the Daily Pilot.

When we moved back to Hanford I missed writing so I returned to the Sentinel. I started out writing a column and then they asked me to work fulltime. When I had my accident when I was 70 years old I was still working 40 hours a week or more. I was pretty proud of that. The accident really put me out of commission.