- Growing Up

I was born in 1968 in Denver General Hospital, where my dad was a resident physician.  We left Denver when I was two and I grew up with my family in Lincoln Nebraska - not at all a bad place to grow up, particularly by today’s standards.  Today, I consider myself a native Nebraskan. 

It was then, and I imagine still is, a town where kids play outside by themselves, and you can walk alone downtown at any time of the day or night without fear.  By Lincoln’s standards my childhood was nothing short of normal until that night in the field, just three months past my seventh birthday. 

We had a nice big house in the Lincoln countryside sitting proudly on a hill in the middle of ten acres of land at the end of a rocky road off what then was Rural Route 1.  It was moms house that she'd always dreamed about.  I spent countless hours with my brothers and neighbor kids exploring the countryside on foot or on the back of one of the horses which lived in a large barn on the back five acres of our land.  We only had three T.V. channels on our old wood-box Zenith with the big picture tube jutting out of the back, so the outside world was our only real source of entertainment.

            Mom took care of all of our needs, and made sure we were clothed and fed and loved and kept in line.  Dad worked hard as an orthopedic surgeon at various Lincoln hospitals and his private practice to provide us with a comfortable life, but subsequently I never saw him too much.  Mom was our total support system, and somehow she kept her three crazy boys from killing ourselves or each other.  Don’t ask me how.

She was like a saint, though.  She had incredible patience and no matter how hard she was working to keep our home clean and comfortable, she was there for us.  Whenever I had a question or problem or fear, she would always stop everything and dedicate all of her attention to me.  It was the same for my siblings.  She was never too busy for her children, and no question was meaningless; no time for explanation was too long.

Trouble began shortly after she was killed.  My dad, emotionally wrecked from it all, immersed himself in his work and this new concept of ATLS.  He was the Chief of Surgery at Lincoln General, which in and of itself was a huge commitment of his time.  Add in his ATLS work and all of his time was taken. 

I knew all along that whatever he was doing, it was important, both for us and him.  I believe in my dad.  I always have.  He is a good man. 

But the result of it was my brothers and sister and I had to move forward through life largely by ourselves, without much of a guide.  We were lucky, though.  We had a home at least and were in a secure environment, relatively.  Through it, an interesting mix of people began to move in and out in the form of dad’s girlfriends or care givers, sitters, etc., each offering some hope for the stability we all craved, but most always disappearing too soon.

But dad tried his best through it all to do right by us kids.  He was lonely and wanted us to have a mom again, so he remarried to a young 21 year-old nurse from the hospital not quite a year after the crash.  She was as much a distraction for him as she was an attempt to provide some kind of maternal figure for us.  Dad meant well and we all loved her immediately.  She was young and beautiful and full of energy and seemed to love us back.  But it was just an illusion – for all of us, including her.

            Back in those days there was largely no such thing as grief counseling.  At least I never heard of it.  The salt-of-the-land mentality of the Midwest has always been such that when life kicks you down, you get up.  You don’t complain; you just keep moving.  I can’t and won’t say this is a detrimental philosophy.  There is strength in that mindset for many.  But as such for me, I never saw a psychologist or counselor to talk about what happened to mom, or the fear I felt every day.  I should have, but had no idea about any of that kind of stuff.  I was just a kid. 

So I internalized it.  I got good at internalizing. 

Then I started getting into trouble while people around me wondered with astonishment why I couldn’t keep out of it.  People asked what my problem was.  My dad was wealthy and I lived in a nice home and all of my needs were taken care of.   I should just remember all that I had still and get on with life.  Quit screwing up, calm down and be a good kid.

They were right when they said I was privileged, and I will never know what it is like to grow up poor.  But no amount of wealth could fill the vacant chasm that had been wrenched into my soul.  And no one anticipated the anger and bitterness and fear that I would hold and carry through my life and far into my adulthood, like a torch.

To her credit, our step mother tried to deal with and raise four very messed up and confused children, still trying to make themselves understand that mom was in fact never coming back.  She grew up in the farm country where spare the rod, spoil the child was the rule of raising kids, and she reverted to that philosophy quickly.  The beatings started soon after she moved in. 

These were punitive measures for ‘disobeying’ or not getting home from school fast enough or whatever other infraction she deemed worthy, the likes of which became increasingly hard for me and my siblings to avoid, and increasingly severe and savage.  They rarely were mere attention-getting swats or spankings.  Many times objects such as riding crops were used to implement them. 

It hurt.  Largely because that brand of discipline was new to us in a horrible and shocking way.  Mom had never laid a finger in anger on any of us.  She would have defended us from the likes of what our step mother flung down with her life.  But she wasn’t there.  Dad seemed oblivious to it all, and never talked about our “discipline”.  I had no way to know how wrong it was.

We endured it all in silence for the next three years.  We moved away from our moms beloved country home and into the city to live a soulless flashy house in a rich neighborhood and tired to get some consistency.  This went on until my grandma Hazel found bruises all over the back of my sister’s legs; the result of a wooden spoon whooping for spilling a pot of sugar.  I don’t know what grandma said to her son, but it made my dad wake up to the difference between discipline and abuse. 

That wasn’t all.  Allegations of infidelity arose and surrounded both dad and her.  The allure of the disco 70’s were just too much.  Finally under that kind of pressure, our step mom broke and left dad.  We were all too much for her in spite of her iron fist.  I was glad when she was gone, but we had no mom - again.  I hated her for years for that until one day I realized she was just a kid too.  Then it made me sad for her. 

Dad was crushed.  He had protected himself from the emotional fallout from mom’s death with our step mom, and now the absence of that bunker almost buried him.  But he picked himself up again and found himself once again in his work.  It’s just how he is.  I admire him for having the strength to do it.

But for me, I realized I was on my own one day a few months later, while a 7^th grade student at Pound Junior High School.  Some of the many bullies there, who had always been drawn to my small size and meekness to target with their taunts, viciously dumped my books from under my arm between classes.  I struggled to hold on to them, but with little success.  My papers disappeared into the churning frenzy of feet of the uncaring students in the crowded hallway, jumping on them like sharks to blood. 

The bullies then taunted and humiliated me mercilessly and I ended up being pushed down in the middle of the hallway, where I sat stunned for a few seconds before I broke into sobbing tears, much to the delight of the other students.  I can still hear their tinny, miserable laughter. 

The two teachers who witnessed it all just stood in their doorways and looked pathetically down on me, shaking their head with a complete lack of sympathy.  Then the bell rang and they all vanished like good little students into their rooms, leaving me alone in the hallway, in total desolation. 

After a few minutes the halls cleared of students and I was left alone in my misery.  I calmed down a bit and tried to regain some dignity, then rose to my feet to slink off, not bothering to gather my notebooks or assignments now scattered all up and down the hallway.  Most of the assignments were unfinished anyway.  I guess no one bothered to tell dad about the episode.  I didn’t.  I figured that was just how life was. 

But inside me, as I lurched, a door clanged closed.  I didn’t cry for the next 20 years.

Instead, I turned to what I guess you could say was my duty to distract my dad from his own misery the best I could.  I did this by not staying out of trouble for too long at a stretch.  A long series of those kinds of events culminated with me crashing my brother’s car into a ditch beside a country road sixty miles from home one night (when I was fourteen and obviously unlicensed).  This finally got me sent to military school in Wisconsin, at the advice of the juvenile authorities who were getting tired of me.  I was getting ready to start my junior year in High School. 

My dad placed me under the care of my aunt Mary Lou who lived in Chicago.  Mary Lou and my uncle Pat understood my need for structure and finally I had some.  They were wonderful, but I was a pretty hard package. 

I did alright in military school, for awhile anyway, once the school year was on.  The old stone of Northwestern Academy in Lake Geneva became my home away from home…away from home.  I got good grades for the first time since I was a little kid, succeeding in getting on the honor roll my first year.  I was active on the Northwestern Rifle Drill Team and a varsity soccer player.  I was promoted quickly and became the editor of our school paper by the end of my junior year. I was picked to be a Cadet Staff Officer for my senior year, and for the first time people began to treat me with respect.    

But trouble again managed to find me.  After a number of missteps, bad timing, and incredibly stupid decisions I finally got busted.  But I somehow caught a break.  They stripped me of my rank and position but let me stay and graduate, for which I am thankful.  But the faculty, my aunt and uncle, my family…they were all very disappointed in me, but especially so was my dad who thought I had moved beyond that brand of bullshit.  He never told me so, but I knew.  But hey, at least I was consistent somewhere. 

The Academy was torn down years later, and I was sorry to see it go.  I tried college for a semester after graduation, but I drifted aimlessly around the huge University of Wisconsin Madison campus without any semblance of a compass.  Despite military school, it turned out I possessed a total lack of discipline.  On my own I wasn’t ready for it, choosing easy women, booze, dope, and parties (all of which seemed in vast abundance) over anything as mundane as classes.  It wasn’t long before I was out of the school’s good graces and slammed on probation.   

Back at the Academy I had a friend and roommate named Jim.  Jim was a Marine at heart.  He was in the Young Marines and often talked about the day he would join up.  His dad and grandfather were both Marines, too.  His dad was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and his Grandpa was a World War II veteran and had stormed beaches in the south pacific.  I met them both at the Academy once and thought that could have been brothers, they both looked so young and hard.  They were both extremely powerful and ruggedly handsome with chiseled features.  To me they were the epitome of manliness. 

Seeing that first hand made me even consider joining for a second, but then I quickly thought there was really no way.  I couldn’t get my head around a four year commitment.  At 17 years old, that was like an eternity.  And beside…me?  A Marine?  Oh sure.  Those kids at Pound Junior High would be laughing their asses off about that.

Still, it figured that one day over Christmas break from college, I found myself before a tall Marine named Sergeant Sinclair wearing a sharp dress blue uniform and standing casually in the doorway of his office at the recruiting center in Palatine, Illinois, looking like something out of those old movies.  I had just finished my first semester with straight Fs, and it had been suggested by some both at the University and other places that I seek a new path. 

With a single glance Sergeant Sinclair immediately recognized the look of me.  He put his arm firmly around my shoulder and guided me into his office, sweeping me up in his spiel of the glory of his beloved Corps.  It was what I needed to hear and I bought all of it, hook, line, and sinker – not to say that he was pulling my leg or anything; I can honestly say that everything the Corps ever told me during my entire enlistment was true.  The truth may have sucked to hear sometimes, but it was still true. 

I had never seriously thought that I could ever actually be a Marine.  I thought Marines were all 6’4”, made of steel, and feared nothing (I was 5’6”, made of weak flesh, and feared everything).  But Sergeant Sinclair assured me that I could be one, too - and that I would be. 

He took me under his wing as my mentor and gave me direction and a focused purpose for a change.  He made me get in shape and quit screwing around.  I went to boot camp with Recruit Training Platoon 2021 at the Marine Corps Recruit Training Depot in San Diego the following February and to my own surprise, I excelled.  I quickly became a Squad Leader and by the end of boot camp I was one of the fastest and most fit recruits in my training battalion.  I shot expert with the M-16 rifle (which I could strip clean in seconds and reassemble correctly just as fast blindfolded) and quickly learned everything the Corps would teach me about all the things Marines do. 

In the Corps, I had once again found a home and a family a structure and stability.  And eventually I accepted that the Corps loved me.  It was a tough love, sometimes a brutal love, but it was love and care for my future and well being nonetheless.  Yes, in many ways I was akin to a piece of equipment, but there was never any secret about that.  That's what you were.  A fighting machine.  And in return I got to be a Marine – one of the Few.  That is no small thing.   I am sure that it is all only something Marines themselves can truly understand.  It’s why we stay Marines, even long after we get out.

I was stationed at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California as an Armor Crewman, otherwise known as a ‘Tanker.’  I was assigned to the “Jokers” of Bravo Company, Third Tank Battalion, 3^rd Platoon, where I would stay throughout the rest of my enlistment.  I mastered every job from loader to Tank Commander and ended up as a driver on a big M-60 A-3 Main Battle Tank that we named the Night Stalker. 

I loved tanks.  They truly were the only way to travel.  My friend and fellow tanker Hank gave me our motto: “When I move the earth rumbles.  When I speak people die.”  That suited me.  Tanks have lots of guns.  I found that I liked shooting guns.  The bigger, the better.  Over my tour I learned to fire many.  The Corps made sure I was deadly accurate with all of them.  But it wasn’t the violence or fantasy of killing my enemy that attracted me to my job.  I never wanted to kill anyone.  It was the craftsmanship of these war tools and the skill needed to use them that I was fascinated by.  And if these tools were to be my business card, I figured I’d better know how to flash them.

I finally found my place. 

I met Terri when I was a 20 year-old Lance Corporal.  We met at Disneyland one weekend when my friend and I had met up with mutual friend of mine and hers who said he’d introduce us.  Who was I to refuse?

Immediately, when I saw her, I was stunned.  She was amazingly beautiful, like none I had ever seen.  I was struck by her open smile, piercing dark brown eyes, and long black hair.  She was smart and well-spoken.  I quickly recognized her incredible intelligence.  She is still one of the smartest people I have ever known.

Probably because of that I very quickly couldn’t stand her…and she hated me. 

I determined that she was a spoiled California brat and she thought I was a stupid wannabe-bad jarhead.  We spent the whole day arguing about our various opposing points of view until finally I got sick of her and walked away with Don to get into whatever trouble we could find on our own.

            That’s why it was quite surprising to me when we ended up kissing each other with great passion at a party we both attended the following weekend.  It was quite surprising to her when I called the next day to see how she was doing, and to see if she’d like to see me again. 

We started dating over the long distance between Twentynine Palms and her home in Garden Grove.  After a month or two of that, she saw clear to come out to the desert to be with me full time; we moved in together into a little shoebox of an apartment in town just off of Adobe road and Highway 62, much to the chagrin of my beloved Corps which looked at all non-marine women as trouble for their poor innocent young troops.

            But I didn’t care.  In the swirling heat of the desert nights, I found comfort in her arms.  We would stay awake in silence and listen to the coyotes howl at a nearby oasis, or talk softly about the things to come.  When I finally told her about mom and my adventures with Debbie she was surprised, but I imagine it explained a thing or two about me. 

I tried to convince her and myself that it was behind me; that my love for her would make it all right.  And I did find that I loved her with all my heart.  She made me feel alive, and I hadn’t felt that as long as I could remember. 

But even with her beside me, I still thought about mom and the airplane almost every day.  I could not escape it.  I never understood the why of it all and figured I never would.  It just had become part of my life. 

I thought about her every time I watched another family, whole and complete, spend their time together, secretly jealous of their unity and resentful that they didn’t have to know what life would be like without each other. 

I thought about her when the first snow began to fall back in the Midwest, and the ground would start to freeze.

I thought about her when I lay staring at the dark ceiling night after night trying to recapture and retain the fading memory of the sound of her voice, the feel of her touch, the smell of her hair…she never really left me.

Terri and I married in September after eight months of courtship, if that’s what you’d call it.  The following August I was getting ready to move out of the Corps and into my new life and the promises of the civilian world.  My unit was getting ready to go and play overseas for two weeks in Thailand, and we were all looking forward to that.  Tank units don’t get to go overseas much, and many of us had never been.  We would finally cross the equator and would earn our tattoos.  The following February my enlistment would end and I would get out of the active duty Marine Corps and Terri and I could get our life started. 

Then on the 2nd of August 1990 Iraq, a country I was only vaguely familiar with and had always thought was our friend, invaded a country I had never heard of called Kuwait, and in the blink of an eye all of our plans were put on hold.  Third Tanks was immediately deployed to Saudi Arabia, and we were there for almost nine months - for the entirety of Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm.  I ended up getting my tour extended to stay in Saudi Arabia and fight the war in Kuwait with my unit. 

Third Tanks had been assigned to the First Marine Division during Desert Shield, and then was further assigned into Task Force Ripper.  On February, 23, 1991, we blasted our way into the meat grinder of Desert Storm.  Four days and four hours later, our smoking weapons ceased fire.  Behind us lay a mangled and bloody path of human destruction, the likes of which I could have never imagined a few days prior.

I got back home to a hero’s welcome and got out of the Corps a month later, my tour of duty honorably completed.  A little late, but completed, nonetheless.  Even though I was still too stunned by the war and my subsequent thrust into the civilian world to know it, I was as proud of my service as a Marine as anything I would later know in my life. 

I had learned many lessons there which I have used ever since, many times completely unaware I was using them.  During my tour, I met true heroes and living mountains of men like Gunny Russ Williams, Staff Sergeant Jeff Daniels, Lieutenant Colonel Buster Diggs, Warrant Officer Tim Cook, my Drill Instructors:  Staff Sergeant Shaffer, Staff Sergeant Dixon, Staff Sergeant Phillips, and Staff Sergeant Binkley, to name a few  – all of whom were the type of men I have never met out in the civilian world.  That world is far too small and meek for men like them. 

My tour as a Marine was the first major thing in my life that I had ever started and then finished without screwing it up.  The Corps gave me pride and a new direction when I needed it.  I could say it saved my life.  But like everything it came with a cost. 

Terri and I moved to the Midwest to work on a campground that my Aunt Mary Lou and Uncle Pat owned.  We attended Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois together.  I immersed myself in college and tried to adapt to civilian life as best I could.  I missed the Corps though, and compensated somewhat for it by joining the Illinois National Guard.   

I was assigned to the Second Battalion, 123^rd Field Artillery, Battery B; a crack artillery unit stationed at the Macomb armory.  I had a lot of fun there and quickly won the respect of my fellow soldiers.  I served out my four year inactive reserve service requirement with them and wore the uniform of a soldier with the same pride with which I wore the uniform of a Marine. 

Desert Storm had become like a companion to me and was never far.  I started to get sick a lot a few months after I returned.  I began to dream about it and the dreams of mom were for a while replaced by the horrors of what I had seen and done over 100 hours in that desert in southern Kuwait.  They started calling these types of ailments “Gulf War Syndrome,” whatever that is.  I went to the VA and they said I was suffering from PTSD.  

And to compound that, the death of mom hadn’t gone anywhere.  She was still there, floating on the fringes of my subconscious – another thing which I had yet to deal with.  But I struggled through as best I could and with Marine tenacity I managed to get a life together for Terri and me. 

Then I crashed my bike and the dam burst.  I awoke with a familiar jerking start one night, reliving the phantom impact, just like I relived the war night after night.  When I calmed down I considered the event and knew I was tired of it.  But sitting there in the dark that night, I was drawn to a conclusion which I had suspected all along, that maybe the rock of PTSD was bigger than that.  Bigger than me.   I should really get…help?

I hated the way the word felt in my brain; like I had a disease.  It made me feel weak and pathetic.  But I was sick of being at the mercy of the traumatized part of my psyche and I had to try to do something about it. 

What could it hurt, I decided?  

The next day I drew a random name from the list of psychological services my insurance company gave me and made an appointment.

When I walked into Carol’s office and sat down on the comfortable arm chair (which to my chagrin disappeared at some point to be replaced by an ottoman), she greeted me with a warm and trustworthy smile.  She was a social worker, not a psychologist or psychotherapist or anything heavy like that.  I guess I figured that by seeing her instead, it meant that I wasn’t that far gone.

I gave her a brief synopsis of my life.  She furrowed her brow and tapped her pen as I reeled it out.  Perhaps she liked a challenge.  It seems funny to me now, but in reality it was the beginning step of the long journey which I have made since, and that I am still making.  It has led me here, to you.  And that is good.   

  I had what they refer to in psychological circles as a turning point a couple of years later.  Following a family Christmas trip to Kauai, Terri told me she was pregnant. Our son James was born the following October.  When I looked into his eyes for the first time it was as if I was reborn myself.  And with him, I began to truly believed the fracture of my own childhood life could heal through his life.  

That’s where it stands.  And here before you, maybe it has healed - a little.  Not all of it, but some.  I am part of a whole family once again.  Through James, I found renewed strength and began to attack the other things.  I began to write here and there, and I found it worked wonders to help me get through the rough patches.  

But sometimes even now when I look at my son, I am aware, despite my shame, that I am jealous of him as I watch him with Terri.  I am jealous that he has a chance to know her, to talk to her, and to tuck himself into the safety of her arms.  I realize in those moment how much I miss mom. I have spent my life wondering about all of the things I don’t have, and will never have, because she wasn’t there. 

She was thirty-two years old when her life ended in that field.  That seems so young to me now.  I remember thinking on my thirty-third birthday that I was actually older than her.  It is an odd thing to become older than ones parents, particularly when you are not that old.  I felt at that age like I was still just starting my life, but yet hers had ended. 

            But I am no victim of life.  Writing this story has saved me from that.  I want neither pity nor condolence form anyone for anything.  I can’t change the road that led me here so I continue on ahead.  Something the Corps taught me was that the battle is before you.  Watch your six, but continue to march. 

So I march.  And as I do I find that every day above ground is a good day. 

On these pages is the story of something that happened once and that ended up changing the world.  It’s about how I went looking for the facts behind it. 

What I found was that it wasn’t just about an airplane crash.  And this was never about me…any fool can end up like I did that night.  It was really about all of the other people, most of whom I didn’t even know and would not meet for many years, if ever.  It was about people who put their lives aside to find us, to rescue us, to care for us, and to make something good from something so bad.  These were people who didn’t even know what the others did that night, when the world changed for me…and for you.  People who weren’t even aware of the roles they played in changing it.

            It’s about my mom and one small tragedy in a world of tragedies.  It’s about my father, an unwitting hero who did what he had to do.

            It’s about a concept called ATLS, and how it came to be.  How through it, at the end of my mother’s life, maybe she made it possible for others, so many others - maybe even you and maybe even me - to live.

I have written about it, and how it all came together, and to give credit to those people who came, and to say out loud that the entire world is maybe a better place because of them.  My part of it sure is. 

And I also realized that doing that is one of the most important things I have ever done or ever will do.

Now you know me a little; I think that’s important.  Here is the story of that night, and the consequences of it – both for me and the rest of the world.  It was a blip in time which I cannot distinguish as the worst night of my life, or the best.  It was a moment that blurs the difference, making each concept irrelevant in the presence of the other.  

Good, bad…it all depends on how you land, I guess. 

You know.