SEEDS of DESTRUCTION

By Sue Golemon Whitaker

Sue Golemon Whitaker has written a compelling narrative of the life of a family, lived well but not without struggle...a life that spans the last half of the 20th Century and into the Millennium, a life of equal parts of joy, heartache...and faith. Even though

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sue Golemon Whitaker Books
• Release date: Aug 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781957009599

Book preview

Foreword

Sue Golemon Whitaker has written a compelling narrative of the life of a family, lived well but not without struggle…a life that spans the last half of the 20th Century and into the millennium, a life of equal parts of joy, heartache…and faith. I’ve known Libby for 61 years, the last 60 of which she’s been the bride of my youth. The story begins on a south Alabama beach in 1956 where a couple of 19-year olds meet…and begin an unlikely odyssey they could not have dreamed! She, a lovely beach girl who had stars in her eyes, and would have been perfectly happy to have spent her life there on that beautiful place by the sea…and he, with mountains to climb and no thoughts of settling down…anywhere! Not being able to see too far down the road, they married a year later, and their horizons were about to expand significantly…they had places to go, and many life lessons to learn…and they had to do it in an ever-changing world.

Two years later, they hitched a trailer onto the back of their ‘55 Chevy Bel- Air, tenderly placed their one- and two-year old baby boys on a mattress in the back seat and drove away from a small southern college town into the West, and the world beyond, to seek their fortune. They were armed with an engineering degree, a commission in the Army, and the ‘55 Chevy…and more than a little excitement, wonder…and confidence that they could, with God’s guidance, meet any challenges out there. What lives the four of them…to become five two years later with the birth of their only daughter… would lead, and what magic places they would see!

The first part of the family’s life thrust all five of them headlong into something that was unique to them all…the life of a Military Family! There were professional challenges for me, and, for the family, excitement and fun, with lots of travel and an opportunity that most young families don’t have to see a foreign land, and to see most of the great country that is the USA! But there were also the alter egos of excitement and fun… pressure, responsibility and discipline. A Military career, unlike most others, requires an oath, and that oath demands that lives be lived in accordance with those attributes. Sue had those qualities, and became as close as one can come to the perfect Army wife, mother and American, and later, a great Ambassador for the United States in every part of the world she lived. Even though the rigors of a military life impose unique requirements on the family…the added pressures of a foreign war, extended absence from the family unit by the military member, unexpected and frequent family moves and changes of schools…our family seemed to adapt well, and, for a time, to thrive.

The teenage years for the family, however, coincided with the growth of societal stress in the ‘70’s, and began to reflect values from outside creeping in. My Army career took me to DC for the last six years, which was great for my career but not so good for the family’s life. Sue was quick to discover the family pressures that resulted. She took most of them on herself, and made an almost untenable situation survivable. The catalyst for the book Seeds of Destruction was a major incident that almost took the life of our second son Greg. The outcome of those years – 1976-1982 – was my premature retirement from the Army, our (Sue’s and my) movement overseas to take advantage of my training in the Middle East and Africa, and the emancipation of our three children to allow them some growing up time and space!

God’s hand in this story became clear when, after I accepted a position with a major US firm that had a contract to build military facilities in the Middle East, Libby and I were privileged to make our first visit to Europe. We were to go to Frankfurt, Germany to allow me to work with German engineers who were designing the work, and when the design was mature, to go in-country to manage the construction of the facilities. As retired military, we were allowed access to a major US base, Rhein-Main Air Force Base, and Libby shopped there, arranged for travel tours, and sought out the on-base chapel. In tune with most of our life until then, she could never have imagined that, not only was a group of Women of the Chapel about to begin a major Bible study…but they had only eleven ladies signed up, and needed a 12th to hold the course! Thus, as I embarked on 22 years of exciting work in the Middle East, Libby threw herself into the unexpected opportunity to join the group Bible study available, while intensifying her individual study that persists today, and is the vehicle for this book.

The 23 years that we worked, lived and travelled Europe, the Middle East and Africa was a period of time that could only be inspired! The experiences of seeing places to which we likely would never have been able to travel are priceless, as are the friends we made in all the countries we touched. Particularly, the lands of the Bible came alive to us – John’s cave on Patmos, the sites of Paul’s travels in Corinth and Ephesus, the Roman catacombs and the Egyptian deserts where the Holy Family sojourned for four years.

The book should be interesting to many audiences: young military families trying to cope with the almost constant overseas demands placed on them in today’s military; people of all ages who love travel and are willing and able to accept the challenge; and Christians everywhere who are interested in Bible prophecy.

Seeds of Destruction is the work of a lifetime, not only of the entire family who lived it, but especially a work of total commitment for over 30 years by the author, and the focused study of Christianity and the signs of our times. Sue Golemon Whitaker’s analysis of the true path to God’s will for us is exemplary, and I believe it should be read by all who feel that much of today’s world is taking us in the opposite direction.

Introduction

This is the story of a military family as we traveled our great country during the early years of family life and later overseas to Rabat, Morocco, when our kids were in their teens, for my husband’s in-country training as a Foreign Area Officer specializing in the Middle East and North Africa. We were a close-knit family because we moved so often and we needed one another, as we left old friends behind and made new ones in new locations. It was hard on our children, and, as a mother, I felt all their hurts and pain as we tried to make the best of every situation always looking forward to the new adventure. It was always a major adjustment having to learn the ropes of a new place and make a home for our growing family. Trying to create some normalcy out of all the upheavals of moving was quite a challenge, but we seemed to flourish as we made many new friends and learned to fit into many different cultures.

My husband was committed to his Army Career, having received his BS degree in Civil Engineering and his Commission in the US Army upon graduation from the University of Mississippi in January 1960. After having his high school band in Memphis, John was hired by The Downbeats, a very popular dance band at Ole Miss, to play saxophone and clarinet. I worked all over campus in various jobs as secretary, typist and two summers, after the births of our two boys, filling orders for football tickets. My last job at the Alumni House trained me to operate an Addressograph for mailing out literature to the Alumni. We left Oxford with two baby boys pulling a U-haul trailer behind us on our trek across the desert to his first assignment at Ft. Bliss, TX where John learned to fire a missile in preparation for his two-year assignment at Fort MacArthur’s Air Defense Control Center, San Pedro, CA. It was my first move out of the South where I had grown up and spent all my summers on the beautiful white sandy beach of Gulf Shores, Alabama. John just happened to be playing a job with the Downbeats in August 1956 at the Canal Lounge when we met right there on the beach at Gulf Shores.

Since John decided to drive all night from Houston, where we spent the night with my oldest brother, Franklin, and his family, I crawled in back with the boys to sleep on a baby mattress, which covered the whole back seat. Around dawn, John called me up front to see the lively wild rabbits hopping around on both sides of the road. Overnight, the landscape had changed dramatically from vegetation to desert with picturesque table top mountains as far as the eye could see. It was the most beautiful sight I could have imagined as the desert came to life with shifting shadows falling across the landscape and a roadrunner crossing the road in front of us. After stopping for gas and coffee, we continued our exciting adventure amidst blowing tumble weeds all the way to Ft. Bliss. While checking in, John received a list of places where we might find temporary lodging for his three-month assignment, and we selected a duplex within view of the lovely El Paso mountain range. I was happy to find a nursery on post where I could leave the boys for the morning while I boarded a bus, with a few other wives, out to the firing range to watch as John and his hand-picked team fired the class missile for a direct hit.

After serving his two-year commitment, John chose to leave the Army and try out civilian life, so we borrowed a typewriter and started writing letters to send out with his resume to various companies across the nation. When the responses started pouring in through the mail slot of our front door, our 3- and 4-year-old boys had a regular field day, laughing and jumping all around as they gathered the mail to bring to us. John set up a few interviews as we crossed the country back to the Gulf, where we stayed with my folks for about a month while the boys and I enjoyed the beach. John flew to a few interviews and visited his folks in Ohio. Then he flew down to get us and drove us to Columbus, where Margaret was born July 2nd. John’s first job as a Sales Representative with a major glass company took us to Richmond, where the kids and I were snowed in for five days at a time while he made his rounds over to Norfolk and down to the Carolinas. Neither of us were happy with this situation, so John followed up on another job for which he received an offer back in California as Civil Engineer for a major oil company. So we re-crossed the country again, visiting all the relatives along the way, back to California when Margaret was about 9 months old, and we found a cute little house in San Pedro overlooking Catalina Island. Still, we were not satisfied with this arrangement and felt like something was missing: John missed Army life and decided to come back in as a Regular Army Officer. His orders took us back to Ft. Bliss and the Air Defense Artillery School. We felt like we were home again.

After several attempts to write our story, I feel compelled to follow through this time because the time is short. Like prior to WW II, it now appears that we could be headed for World War III, or worse if we don’t take back our Country and fight for liberty once again. The purpose of my book is to share my testimony of how God brought us through some very difficult times common to all people who are struggling to make it through life’s incredible journey. In spite of all the odds against us as a military family, we were greatly blessed to have enjoyed many wonderful adventures together while the kids were still young and living rather sheltered lives. I remember telling people that Our kids discovered the world in Morocco because that’s where they all three seemed to rebel against our parental authority to keep them safe.

Due to a tragic accident involving our second son, Greg, I promised God that I would denounce a study which I had fallen into several years earlier to please a friend. I thought it was beneficial to me in understanding the characteristics and personalities of our family members. The course teaches that we are only fated by our lack of understanding and that, in knowing these esoteric truths, we can avoid pitfalls and make the most of our opportunities. I eventually learned that this study is listed in the Bible under the occult, along with many other abominations, all of which can open the door to demonic attack. As I was preparing for bed the night of Greg’s accident, I removed a piece of jewelry I had been unaware of wearing that day. It was a Christmas gift from John, a golden pendant with three small diamonds, which I never intended to wear because of what it represented. As I looked down in total disbelief at the object I was holding in my hand, I heard the still, small voice booming out loud and clear: Thou shalt have no other gods before me … and no graven images! This is my testimony.

CHAPTER ONE

A Time for the Unexpected

1981

It was a Thursday, that cold fifth day of February 1981, a day our family would never forget. Early that morning, John and I had dropped our 21-year- old son off at an Arlington bus stop to ride the short distance over to the employment office on our way to work telling him to Get a job! In fact, it was the fourth day we had done this, hoping that he would get a life. John worked at the Pentagon, and I worked on the eighth floor of a high-rise office building in downtown Rosslyn overlooking the lovely Potomac River with a fantastic view of the Washington Monuments. John and I drove in together each morning from our home in Alexandria, and we usually had our family business meeting on our way to work. He would drop me off in front of my building and continue his drive over to the Pentagon parking lot. Sometimes, if he was running late, I would take the subway over to get the car and pick him up out front for the drive back home. Usually, however, I would busy myself in the office until he pulled up in view of our side office window. This back and forth drive was always a rat race and cost us 30-45 minutes through heavy traffic depending on where we lived, but it gave us time to hear the news and some of our favorite popular music. After two tours of duty in Saigon as an Intelligence Analyst/Briefing Officer at MACV Headquarters and several years of training as a Foreign Area Officer (FAO), John was now serving as one of the Army’s top specialists in the Middle East and North Africa.

I was secretary to the Recreation and Tourism scientist in Forest Environment Research, a branch of the Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture. I loved my job and all the people I worked with in FER. On this particular afternoon, everything was proceeding along as usual and I was totally absorbed in my office duties when a phone call from John sent a shock wave throughout the entire office. Our second son, Greg, had been struck by a subway train in a tunnel near Metro Center around 2:30 pm and was rushed to George Washington University Hospital. John had just given the emergency room doctors permission to amputate his badly crushed right foot and lower leg. My mind rushed back to that morning when we dropped Greg off at the bus stop wearing his fleece-collared sheepskin coat and Pepsi stocking hat to keep his ears warm while looking for a job that day. What on earth was he doing in a DC tunnel? With Greg, anything was possible, and we could only speculate! Whatever it was, we prayed it would somehow change his life for the better.

The emergency room doctor said Greg would be in surgery for hours and there was nothing we could do but wait, so he suggested that we drive on home and get some rest. He told John that because Greg’s blood-alcohol ratio was so high, they couldn’t give him an anesthetic for fear of an overdose. He promised to call that evening with an update. Our drive home was reflective and quiet, as we thought back over the weeks and months leading up to this terrible accident. Nothing Greg did ever came as a total shock to us because we knew that if he didn’t change his impulsive behavior something dreadful was a real possibility. He had come close to death so many times and owed his life to the quick actions and hard work of the many people who saved him.

We were not hungry that evening, so John and I just nibbled a bit on whatever we could find in the kitchen. Finally, the call came in from the young emergency room doctor with the update. We were very thankful to hear that the surgery had gone as well as could be expected and they had saved as much of his right leg as possible. They only removed the crushed portion around mid-calf, which the doctors thought would be ideal for the future fitting of a prosthetic device. They also removed his badly crushed left big toe, which was crushed inside his shoe. Only his tight shoe string kept the skin from ripping further up his foot. They searched for internal bleeding and found none. Except for a large, round puncture wound the size of a baseball on the upper side of his right thigh and a broken front tooth, everything else seemed to be intact. We were very thankful that once again his life had been spared by the grace of God.

While getting ready for bed that evening, I removed a piece of jewelry I hadn’t been aware of putting on that morning. It was a Christmas gift from John, a golden pendant with three small diamonds, which I thought I would never wear because of what it represented. As I stood there looking down in total disbelief, I heard the still, small voice from God booming out loud and clear, Thou shalt have no other gods before me … and no graven images. In my haste to get ready for work that morning, I remembered looking around in my jewelry drawer for something which might go with the neckline of my blouse. I must have tried it on absentmindedly to see how it looked and then totally forgot about it. It was an image of my sun sign, Sagittarius, the Archer, with drawn bow and arrow, and it represented Astrology! I believe God allowed this to happen in order to make a strong point with me about something I already knew deep within my heart, but wasn’t quite ready to face up to. I promised God right then and there that I would denounce this abomination once and for all and that I would get into deep Bible Study at my first given opportunity.

One of my Christian friends had told me quite matter-of-factly Astrology is of the occult, and it could have opened the door to satanic attack. She went on to say that the practice of astrology is an abomination to God and advised me to burn everything I owned associated with it. I looked up the scriptures she gave me and found it listed among many other abominations in Deuteronomy, where God refers to one who consults the stars as an observer of times. In Jeremiah, He makes it very clear about those who consult, or worship, the host of heaven. I thought back over the years of Greg’s rock idols and the demonic records he owned with vibes which drove us up the wall. I remembered his affair with the rock world, Circus Magazine, the grotesque posters covering his walls, and his desire to attend every rock concert which came to town. It was all abominable!

Since I had never really studied much of the Old Testament, I questioned what my friend told me, but I looked up the verses she gave me and started reading. I had once heard a TV preacher say If the Bible is indeed the infallible word of God, then every word of it must be true, or then none of it is true. My friend referred me to Deuteronomy and Jeremiah. Was it a coincidence that all of these terrible things started happening after I got involved with astrology? I didn’t get much sleep that night, and, around dawn, the phone was ringing. It was Greg! He was calling to let us know that he was in the hospital, so we wouldn’t worry about him, as he had done so many times before. He seemed totally unaware of what had happened! We thanked him for calling and said we would drop by to see him on our way to work. It was a long drive through heavy morning traffic to Georgetown, but, when we finally arrived at the hospital, I noticed a Metro sign at the entrance. On future visits, the subway would be the way to go because Greg was bound to be in the hospital for a very long time.

When we walked into his room and saw him lying there without his right foot under the sheet, I could only think of one thing to say — something my mother might have said — I’m so glad to see those toes, as I gently brushed my fingers across the four remaining ones of his left bandaged foot sticking out from under the sheet. I couldn’t bear to think of the ones that were missing! They had started the morphine early that morning and Greg wasn’t feeling a thing, nor did he seem aware of what happened. We visited for a short while and then it was time for us to leave for work. We hugged him goodbye and promised to come back for a longer visit on the weekend. I told him about seeing the Metro sign out front and mentioned that I might be able to hop on the subway once in a while to ride over from Rosslyn on my lunch hour and have lunch with him. Of course, this became a habit as the weeks passed and Greg always expected me to bring him a Big Mac, large fries and a chocolate shake in exchange for his hospital food. He looked forward to our weekly visits!

John and I drove over the first Saturday for a long visit and met his roommate, Ronald, a Baptist minister, who had been scheduled for back surgery when Greg was brought in. Ronald’s surgery was postponed until the next day, and he called all the Christian doctors and nurses together to pray for Greg. He told us that he thought this was why God arranged for him to be at this hospital at this particular time. He tried to get into a hospital closer to his home in Woodbridge, but couldn’t find one which had the right equipment for his particular type of back surgery. He said GWU was the only hospital he could find with the right equipment and the availability. He requested that Greg be assigned to his room. Ronald tried to get through to Greg regarding the dangers of alcohol and his obvious need of salvation. However, Ronald was only able to put up with Greg’s rock music for a day or two and then asked to be moved to another room. Once Greg discovered his bedside radio and learned how to tune in the rock station, the nurses couldn’t get him to keep the volume down.

Considering his injuries, Greg looked good and seemed happy when we visited him. We could see where the skin had been ripped off the top of his left foot and where the doctors had stapled skin grafts from his thighs. We could also see the large puncture wound on the back upper side of his right thigh where something, maybe the protruding rod of the approaching train, had miraculously pushed him aside and quite possibly saved his life. This open wound had to be cleaned out and repacked daily until it healed. Still there was no sign of Greg’s awareness that something tragic had happened. A Metro representative arrived while we were there one day and told us that the driver of the train said that when she rounded the bend and saw him on the tracks, it looked like he was bending over looking for something. She said that when he looked up and saw the approaching train, he turned to run but there just wasn’t time to get out of the way.

Greg’s continuous apathy over his lost limbs caused the doctors to question his mental stability over the next few weeks. Then, one night as John and I entered the apartment, the phone was ringing. It was Greg and he was hysterical, Mom, I’ve lost my foot, and my big toe is gone! I won’t be able to walk down the beach anymore! And the skin was ripped off the top of my foot! We must have shared his agony over the phone for an hour, as we tried to think of ways he could have a new leg made in the form of a prosthetic device that would look real. He thought of snakeskin boots that would fit over the rest of his right leg and his disfigured foot. He seemed more concerned about his disfigured left foot than the missing right one. We thought of ways his big toe might be replaced. Finally, he got it all out and seemed comforted enough to relax and get some sleep. I called the nurse’s station and found they had taken him off the morphine that day and started him on Tylenol III. He later told me that he liked the morphine so much he just didn’t care about what had happened to him.

Many weeks later, Greg would recount his story of that fateful day: After we left him at the bus stop to take the bus to the employment office, he boarded one headed for the Pentagon where he caught a subway train into the District. He was headed for the radio station to pick up some records he had won during the Christmas holidays. He said he was having a good day and joked around with the disc jockeys. Then he left with his records to walk back to Metro Center for the trip home when he passed a liquor store. He had no intention of buying anything and just walked in to look around when he noticed a large bottle of rum on sale. He walked out! Half-way down the block, something made him turn around and go back. He knew it was wrong, but without consideration for lessons learned, he bought the bottle of rum anyway and continued his walk to Metro Center. While waiting for his train, he placed his records down against the wall of the platform, opened the bottle and took a drink. When he saw the train coming, he placed the bottle inside his coat pocket and boarded the train. He found a seat, opened the bottle and drank some more. Somewhere along the way, he remembered his records leaning against the platform wall and decided to go back to get them. He remembered getting off at National Airport and crossing over to the other side to wait for the next train. While standing there, he remembered offering a man a drink. Many people must have seen him in that intoxicated condition. Why didn’t someone get help?

CHAPTER TWO

Prior to the Accident

1980-1981

When John and I moved from our townhouse in Vienna to the seventh floor of our high-rise apartment building in Alexandria, we were welcomed by the wonderful sounds of Hawaiian music wafting up from the swimming pool below and a gorgeous full moon overhead. We were too tired to go down to the luau, although our sweet landlady had encouraged us to join them. We were just too worn out from our long, tedious moving day! John and I preferred relaxing outside on our balcony where we could hear the music and watch the incoming air traffic into National Airport in the far distance. It was so wonderful to find peace in our new apartment which just seemed to fit our needs and was much closer to our jobs in the northern Virginia-DC area. It was a wonderful change from our recent life in Vienna: Greg was making progress in a drug rehab program at the State Hospital; Maggie was enjoying her new apartment in Vienna and her job at the Penguin Feather; and Jim was about to graduate from the University of Mississippi the following spring and get married in August. He was planning to bring his fiancée home with him for Christmas so we could get to know her. We hoped to spend some quality time with Jim and Kathleen and get better acquainted before the wedding.

Sometimes on weekends, I would sit out on the balcony and reminisce over the recent years trying to figure out just where our family had gotten so fouled up. We were such an all-American family while the kids were growing up and enjoyed all the normal activities of life: the beach, all sports events, traveling, pizza night or an occasional dinner at a good restaurant. However, when our kids reached their teens, it seemed like something took place inside them to bring out rebellion in one way or another to be like their peers. They had been raised as Christians, although we were not always in a good church environment, but they were taught right from wrong and encouraged to believe in God and have faith. What had gone wrong? Were they born with these seeds of rebellion already in them ready to blossom out at puberty? With Greg, it seemed that they developed into seeds of destruction as he plunged headfirst into other things, such as alcohol and drugs, which he knew were totally against us and all we believed in.

Our second son had always been the most daring of all three of our children and was bound to get himself into trouble sooner or later. When John was in Vietnam and we were living in Mobile, he told Maggie at the age of three to stand still and hold a paper cup of water on her head while he shot it off with his little bow and arrow. At six years old, it never occurred to him that he might miss. It could have put her eye out! But, thank God, it only grazed the top of her head. Jimmy, our oldest, took Greg’s arrow and broke it into pieces and threw it on top of the apartment building. We were expected at my parents’ home for dinner that Sunday, so I drove Maggie by the clinic first. Thank goodness, it only required a butterfly bandage. When Jimmy started to school in El Paso, Maggie became Greg’s little sidekick and followed him around in her Indian outfit. One day while they were playing Indian, Greg found some matches and started a fire behind a bush in our front yard. Our next door neighbor had a better vantage point to see the whole thing and telephoned me to bring it to my attention. Sometimes, they would play Camelot, and he would tie her up in her little rocking chair in the pretense of burning her at the stake. Around the age of 10, Greg made a miniature guillotine and started cutting the heads off of Maggie’s dolls, which I believe he got from watching his favorite TV show, Dark Shadows, when he came home from school. John came home from work one day just in time to save him from a beating by a very angry young man of 16, who was chasing him down for throwing rocks at his go-cart in front of our house. He was always daring and mischievous as a young boy, which we figured was just a natural part of growing up. However, as he grew into his teens, it was as though Greg thought himself invincible and that he could get away with just about anything. He began to push the envelope a little further in each situation, which seemed to increase his boldness and self confidence but also, at times, put his life in jeapordy.

I tried to think of places we could take Jim and Kathleen while they were home for Christmas. I thought they might enjoy coming down to my office to see where I worked and then have lunch in one of the trendy places in Rosslyn where the young people seemed to flock in the afternoon. After lunch, they could catch the subway into the District of Columbia to visit the museums and monuments and then meet us back at the Pentagon to ride home. They might like to visit John for lunch at the Pentagon on another day and resume their tour of Washington. We could take them to our favorite dinner theatre in Woodbridge one evening and to the Kennedy Center another. There was always something going on in the DC area, so I would have to scan the newspaper and make reservations. Kathy could have the second bedroom and Jim could sleep on a small bed behind the couch in the living room. Maggie could drive over from Vienna to spend Christmas Day with us, and I would serve my usual turkey dinner with dressing and all the trimmings. We looked forward to their visit and planned on spending our entire holiday vacation showing them around Washington.

As stated earlier, the accident hadn’t come as a great surprise to either John or me. We knew that if Greg continued his dangerous lifestyle, something dreadful, out of the ordinary, was likely to happen to him. We had tried for years to get him into a substance abuse treatment program through the county court system, however, everything seemed to fall through and nothing was accomplished. Now we thought we could rest assured that he was in the right place for treatment. However, after about a month in the program attending daily meetings and receiving counseling, he became very ill with a severe stomachache and was released to the University Hospital in Charlottesville. They found an obstruction in his stomach, which needed emergency surgery, and called John for permission to operate. Of course, John gave his permission, and, a couple of days after the surgery, the hospital called to ask if we could drive down to Charlottesville to pick him up and bring him home to recuperate. We figured that our short lived peace would be shattered sooner or later, but we didn’t expect it to be quite this soon. All we could do was bring Greg home and hope for a new beginning.

It was a beautiful fall day and the trees were at the peak of the season, turning to rustic shades of browns, red and gold. It was really the loveliest time of the year in the Shenandoah Valley, so we enjoyed our hour’s drive through the lovely scenery to Charlottesville. John and I used this time on the way down to devise a new plan for Greg, one which we hoped would give him time to heal and a new beginning for his life. But first, there were a few very important things we had to get straight. In order for him to stay in our apartment while we were at work, he would have to remain drug and alcohol free for the safety of those who lived in our building. We needed his promise that he would spend his time studying the GED manual in hopes of passing the test as soon as possible to get his high school graduation certificate. We would also expect him to scan the daily newspaper to seek a job and a place to live in the area after his recuperation.

We enjoyed meeting the hospital staff who had taken such good care of Greg, and we were glad to see him looking so well and feeling well with a good attitude about getting on with his life. On our drive back to Alexandria, we discussed our plans for a new beginning and Greg said he was willing to cooperate. He said he wanted to pass the GED test to get his diploma from high school and that he wanted to get his own apartment and become independent. The Director of Forest Environment Research, where I worked, suggested that Greg apply for a job in one of our National Parks. He said there were wonderful opportunities for young men and great training programs to work in the National Forests. I took Greg to see a great documentary about the possibilities of working for the Forest Service, and, although it would have presented him a great opportunity and a very interesting career, he wasn’t at all interested.

About a week before Thanksgiving, Greg found a room for rent advertised in the paper, and I drove him over to Falls Church to have a look. He would be sharing expenses with two other young men who were looking for another tenant. He could ride the bus into the city to work each day. Of course, he had to first find a job. Without hesitation, I paid the deposit and one month’s rent, and we moved him in expecting him to keep his word, find a job and budget his money to pay his support. At the end of the first week, he was kicked out with all his belongings which were strewn all over the backyard. They shoved his furniture down the back stairs, and one chest of drawers was broken beyond repair. When they called me to come and get him, I had no recourse but to drive over in our station wagon and retrieve what I could. It was the most miserable day of my life and what a letdown! Greg was heavily intoxicated! He had just walked through his landlords’ living room, picked up a bottle of their liquor and wolfed it down. No wonder they were throwing him out.

Greg thought he was helping me load our station wagon with all his things, but he was picking up piles of clothes mixed with dirt and throwing them haphazardly into the back of our car. What a mess! I tried to organize and reposition everything in order to get it all in the car, and, when I saw his ungodly magazine collection he had purchased with our expense money, I immediately deposited it on top of the garbage to be picked up the following morning. When we finally got in the car to leave, the engine wouldn’t start! It was so embarrassing. I had no alternative but to swallow my pride and knock on the landlords’ door to borrow their phone and call a taxi. I had to leave the packed station wagon there in their driveway overnight until John could take me back the following morning to get it started and bring it home.

Greg’s second committal resulted the first week of January when he dropped a lighted cigarette onto a stuffed chair at the second rooming house. He found another room for rent shortly before Christmas, and I drove him over to see it. The guy showing us the room looked rather shifty and didn’t make a good impression, however, we were desperate to find Greg a place before Jim and Kathy arrived home for Christmas. We just didn’t have enough beds to go around otherwise in our small apartment. As it turned out, Greg slept in our apartment anyway in a sleeping bag on the thick carpeting of the living room floor, so our family could all be together during the holidays. We took Kathy and Jim to see Oklahoma at the Lazy Susan Dinner Theatre, and John brought them over to meet me for lunch one day in Rosslyn. They also enjoyed having lunch with him at the Pentagon and rode the subway into the District to see the monuments and tour some of the museums. Maggie brought a friend with her for Christmas Day to share our turkey dinner, and we all enjoyed our special day together. Then a few days after Christmas, Jim and his best friend, Gill, from Morocco, who was also living in the Washington area by this time, helped Greg move into his new rooming house. Then it was time for Jim and Kathy to take off on their drive back to Ole Miss.

Greg was scheduled to start work two days later at Toys-R-Us, restocking shelves for the after Christmas sales. However, just when we were hoping that Greg would be able to get on with his life and his new job, and also learn some responsibility, we got a phone call from the police that he had been arrested for starting a fire at the rooming house. Again, we had paid the deposit and a full month’s rent to a man who reeked of alcohol when Greg moved in. Greg wasn’t sure of how the fire started, but this shifty little man pulled the chair out into the yard and watched the wind whip up the flames. According to Greg, he never even tried to put out the fire. Instead, he called the landlord, who immediately called the police to have Greg arrested. Greg said this guy already had the rum and was drinking when he offered him a drink, and he didn’t really know what happened after that. Since Greg didn’t drive or have access to a car, I guess we’ll never know what actually transpired that day, but it sounded like a trumped up charge to me. I called the Crisis Squad to intervene and had him set up for another Court Hearing. The Judge sentenced him back to the VA State Hospital to finish the program from which he had recently been released.

The Hospital released Greg after only a couple of weeks and sent him home on a bus exactly one week before his tragic, and near-fatal, accident, because they did not consider him a danger to himself or others. Greg said it was because he was spending too much time in the restroom having to blow his nose due to a bad cold, and he said that someone locked him in there for a while before they released him. Since John had laid down the law that Greg wouldn’t be allowed to come home until he completed a drug program, I had to meet his bus alone and decide what to do with him in all that freezing weather. Since we still had a few days to go on his month of paid up rent, all I could think of was to drop Greg off at the rooming house for the remainder of the time for which we had already paid. I didn’t feel good about the situation, but at least he would be out of the cold for the night and that would give us time to come up with a better plan. Since John was adamant about not allowing him back into our apartment and it was getting late, I really had no alternative. Since he was told that his room was already rented on his first knock on the door, Greg knocked on the door a second time due to my insistence that he try again. This time he insisted that he be allowed to sleep on the couch in the den until we could find another place. After he was allowed inside and I drove away, the shifty little man punched him in his stomach where his stitches had been a few months earlier. Again, he called the landlord, who called the police. It was well after midnight when the policemen knocked on our front door to ask if our son could come in for the night to get out of the freezing weather.

Due to the circumstances, John reconsidered and allowed Greg to come in and stay overnight until we could devise a new plan. We could not allow him to stay in the apartment while we were at work because of his alcohol and drug addiction and the danger it presented to those who lived in our building. John said that Greg would have to leave every morning when we left for work, and he would have to spend his time looking for a job. If he managed to find one, he would be expected to work a regular work day before coming home to meet us in the lobby. Then he would be allowed to come up with us for dinner and overnight in the apartment. Greg agreed. So we dropped him off at the employment office Monday morning and left him there to register. We were very anxious to hear the results of his day of job hunting when we got home each evening, but there was not much he could tell us. He said that he had applied for a job at a nearby Mexican restaurant, but we heard no more about it. Once he had a job, we expected him to work all day and not come home until we did. He appeared to be cooperating and was ready to get in the car every morning. After the first two days, John started dropping him off at a bus stop to ride the short distance over to the employment office. However, as he told us much later after the accident, he never even entered the employment office to request a job. Each evening, we would find him sitting in the lobby waiting for us to come home, so he could come up for dinner and spend the night. He said he spent his daytime doing other things he enjoyed more than job hunting.

On Thursday, the fourth day, our worst fears were realized when John received a phone call from the emergency room at GWU Hospital asking his permission to amputate Greg’s badly crushed right foot and lower leg. We prayed that somehow God would use this terrible tragedy to turn Greg’s life around for the better and get him the professional help he needed to overcome his addictions. Our son was sick, and he needed help to get his life back on the right track. This time we would not allow him to come home until the hospital found him the proper treatment facility which could lead to his rehabilitation toward a good future and a productive life.

CHAPTER THREE

A Sequence of Events

1964-1973

During all our moves around the Country, when the children were most vulnerable, they became engulfed in the lifestyles of their peers. It was as though they were individual barometers measuring the moral climate of all the places we lived. They were affected by their friends in one way or another, and all the while, their characters were being molded and tested. We loved traveling around our beautiful country when our kids were small seeing all the wonderful sights together as a family, and we always took advantage of our opportunities to stop and see the interesting places along the way such as Carlsbad Caverns, the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, Yosemite National Park, the Grand Canyon, and the Sonora Desert. Later, when they were in their teens, we took them to Disneyland, Hawaii and Morocco. As our military life took us overseas, it was great to experience life in another country, as we learned some of the history and customs and quite naturally picked up some of the language. We also learned to appreciate the charm of our differences as foreigners in another land, and we tried to teach our kids to be good Ambassadors for God and Country. We had always been rather close knit as a military family because we needed one another when we had to leave old friends and family behind and move on to a new place.

El Paso, Texas:

When John returned to Army life in 1964, he was again assigned to Ft. Bliss. It was like coming home again, and this time, we were assigned to on- post family housing on Scott Avenue. Jimmy started to school that fall and caught the school bus right in front of our house. Greg looked so sad when Jimmy left on the bus that day because it was the first time the boys had been separated. Maggie became Greg’s little sidekick and followed him around playing Indian or Camelot, etc. Jimmy learned a few words of Spanish in the first grade, so when anything was accidently broken, they blamed it on Maggie’s doll and said, the mal baby did it! We had a double birthday party for the boys in April because their birthdays were just two weeks apart, and we invited all the kids in the neighborhood plus a couple of Jimmy’s first grade classmates. My mother and dad, who had visited our relatives in Houston, drove out for a few days, and we had fun driving them around El Paso and taking them out for their first taste of Mexican food. We also drove them to White Sands Missile Range for a picnic in the National Park and then up through the beautiful mountains to Cloudcroft. While John was working one day, I drove them over to La Posta, at Old Mesilla, a famous Mexican restaurant just outside Las Cruces, NM where Billy the Kid was captured over a century earlier. They loved walking around the small town and seeing the jail where Billy was imprisoned.

John received orders for Vietnam about the time Jimmy finished his first year of school. His teacher impressed upon me the importance of spending that first year of school with one teacher in one school, because she said, It sets the pattern for the remainder of the school years. John would be trained in Baltimore, MD as an advisor to the South Vietnamese Army, so we made the decision to keep our family together as long as we could even though the boys’ school year 1965-66 would be divided between three different schools. After leaving Baltimore, John thought it important to detour by Washington, DC for a couple of nights to visit the national museums. The kids loved the Museum of Natural History and were greatly impressed with the dinosaurs and all the animals displayed in their natural habitats. The boys did fine walking all the way through the museum with their pent up energy, but John had to carry Margaret who was only three and couldn’t keep up. We walked across the street to the Smithsonian where John and the boys loved seeing the airplanes and were able to buy some sandwiches and drinks for a picnic lunch on the Mall. After a brief rest, we walked down the mall area to the Washington Monument and a little further on to the Lincoln Memorial and took many pictures along the way. Then it was time to head back to the motel and prepare for our long drive to Columbus where we spent Christmas in Ohio with John’s mom and dad.

Mobile, AL:

John left us in a very nice apartment on Spring Hill Avenue to be near my folks during his first year in Vietnam. As a result of Greg’s interrupted first grade, he was having trouble adjusting to the new location just as Jimmy’s first grade teacher had warned us about. Greg’s first grade teacher at Old Shell Road School, Miss Inge, recognized his lack of self confidence, discovered his interests and told him to bring his dinosaur collection to school for Show & Tell. It worked so well she had him take his display over to the other first grade class, which was taught by her sister, the other Miss Inge. Greg loved showing his dinosaur collection to his classmates, and, as a result, he became very popular with both first grade classes. Both Miss Inges are to be highly commended for their great success.

I was relieved to learn that John was not an Advisor in the jungles of Vietnam. Miraculously, he was working 16 hour days at MACV Headquarters in Saigon, and he was gaining valuable experience as an Intelligence Analyst/Briefer. It was an answer to my prayers: The position just seemed to open up for John at just the right time and the guy he replaced had been sent home early due to security issues. Many of our friends were being shipped over late in 1965 during the first big build up, and reports coming back from the wives I knew were just horrible. Most of the guys had never known combat, and, once over there, they learned the enemy was deeply entrenched in the mountains by the thousands and had been for years. Their orders were: Find the enemy and kill them. The heartbreaking movie taken from the book, We Were Soldiers, tells the story of what happened to our brave young men who were given this assignment on their first mission to Vietnam in 1965. When John returned home at the end of December 1966, he was given an assignment near Mobile where we could remain a while longer near my family and enjoy our Gulf beach.

Montgomery, AL:

When John arrived home shortly after Christmas 1966, my mother and dad drove over from their home on the eastern shore to go with the kids and me to meet his plane. After having Christmas all over again in our small apartment, we enjoyed our family get-togethers until it was time to move to Montgomery where John was assigned to the Armed Forces Examining & Entrance Station (AFEES). Hoping to remain settled for a while, we purchased a new home in a new housing development near Bear School with easy access to Maxwell Air Force Base. Our family flourished that year with the boys’ involvement in Little League Baseball and Cub Scouts, and, on the first day of school, I found myself volunteering as a den mother for Den 8, which would meet at our house every Wednesday afternoon from 3:30-5:30. I benefited as much as the boys from all the projects assigned to us each month. John purchased a second car, a cute little green Volkswagon to drive to work, so I would have the big car to transport the kids to their various activities, including a carpool for Margaret’s kindergarten class.

I learned to dye rice and macaroni, make kites, weave baskets, and discovered many crafts I had never experienced before. I helped the boys make emblems and a giant eagle, as a centerpiece, for our dinner table at the Cub Scout’s Blue & Gold Banquet, which was the highlight of the year. The second highlight was the Box Car Derby, which all the guys looked forward to because it was both fun and competitive to see who could make the fastest race car. Of course, it had to look good, too, and we had all sorts of designs and colors. To start off the year, we had a tour of Barber’s Dairy where we saw how the milk got from the cows into the bottles and then into the stores, and everyone was happy when we received a round of ice cream at the end of the tour. Maggie was our little mascot because she went everywhere we went and even collected garbage along the highway, which we used to make our garbage monster that hung on a large poster in our den. The boys worked hard to earn their badges: we tackled two assignments in one when we studied Rivers of the world and made Kites. Each Cub drew the shape of his assigned River on his kite, as shown on the map, and then put the kites together themselves and flew them in our backyard. Later, each Cub drew a scene depicting a Montagnard house or farm in Vietnam and held up his poster at the monthly Cub Scout Pack Meeting. As each one stepped up to the microphone to tell his story, most of the guys shied away from the mike and you couldn’t hear a word they said, but Greg, when it was his turn, and understanding the problem, stepped boldly up to the microphone and spoke directly into it. You could hear his voice clearly all over the auditorium.

John was the Adjutant of AFEES and was kept busy running the station and dealing with operational problems and guys coming in from all over the State of Alabama and Northwest Florida. He was able to make some changes which proved very beneficial to everyone, including more pay and better hours for the secretarial pool, which was overworked having to type all the information from all the guys coming into the Service through AFEES. John signed the boys up immediately for Little League Baseball and he played Softball and Basketball in the adult leagues. We did all our shopping at Maxwell AFB Commissary and BX and our medical needs were met at the AFB clinic or hospital. We also attended the AFB Protestant Chapel. Their baseball team, The Eagles, with Jimmy as pitcher and Greg as catcher, won their little league tournament that year with trophies for all the players right there, too, at Maxwell Air Force Base. The boys did very well at Bear School, which was just a short drive from our home, and Margaret finished kindergarten. She learned to sprout peas and grow them in our little patio garden along with our tomatoes and bell peppers. Life was good! On Halloween night, we picked up our first pet and named her Spookie. Then one day the following spring, after she gave birth to her first litter of kittens, John informed us that it was time to move again. The Army thought he should have some command time and was sending us to Milwaukee, so he could command a nuclear missile battery on Lake Michigan.

Before we left Montgomery, a funny thing happened regarding our five- year-old daughter, Margaret, who we had jokingly nicknamed Yacky Duck, because she was always talking. John told me I could drop her off at AFEES while I had a doctor’s appointment on base. Some of the secretaries at his office wanted to see Margaret because they had heard so much about her, so John took her into the Colonel’s office and sat her down at his desk with some pencils and paper while he was at lunch. When the Colonel came back in unexpectedly, his secretary warned him that Margaret was in his office sitting at his desk. He had not met her either, so he gently opened the door to peek in and smile. He said that she boldly spoke up and said to him, "My daddy told me I could sit