Day 13, 6/17/95
The next morning, as we were folding up the sleeping bags and tent, the family invited us over for another cup of coffee. We sat on the porch with mom and the girls, enjoying the coffee and conversation, hearing coughing from inside the house. The father—his name was Freeman—came out and joined us, chain-smoking, coughing. He said he worked in the coal mines and was afraid of the health risks, such as black lung and accidents, so wanted to work above ground. He said he had an offer, too, doing construction work for the same pay. The only hitch was that the job did not include health insurance, which he did get in the mines for his whole family, so he was staying in the mines. He was risking his health for health insurance. I dared not add that I had canceled my health insurance as I began this trip.
We went back across the road and began packing up. Freeman went with us, stood drinking a cup of coffee, and chatted. He pointed to a small whitish house up the side of the mountain across the creek, downstream a hundred yards or so. He told us about the great flood of 1969, eight years earlier, caused by Hurricane Camille. After this monster storm tore up the Gulf Coast, it had moved north and dumped many inches of rain into these mountains. More were killed here than at Pass Christian, the little town in Mississippi which was essentially wiped out by Camille. But all these mountains drain into a few creeks and rivers, and all overflowed. The flood had washed the house I was looking at up the side of that mountain! It was at least 50 feet above the spot we were standing on. I tried to imagine this entire valley filled with surging water. It was awe-inspiring and fearsome. Freeman and his family invited us in to use the bathroom. We said goodbye. As we packed our bikes across the street, we continued to hear Freeman’s rasping cough.
This day included more steep grades, more walking the bikes. It was very hot and the traffic was heavy at times. This was difficult going, and my mind wandered—perhaps a defense against the difficulty we were experiencing. I was thinking about that storm in 1969, and how I was in it too—although not with so tragic an outcome.
***
I had been in Pensacola, in Navy flight school, when I heard about the great hurricane bearing down on us. I went down to the beach, and witnessed a strange sight. It was not yet raining, nor was it particularly windy. Clouds were off in the distance to the south, over the Gulf. The only thing out of order was the water. Huge waves rolled toward the beach, became breakers, and crashed onto the sand. They then foamed over the wide beach, rolling up to the foliage and houses. Then—they rolled back down the beach, toward the Gulf, and met other breakers coming in! The collisions resulted in geysers many feet higher than my head. I had never seen such a thing, and I had spent many days at beaches in Southern California, and even at some beaches in Hawaii. I stood there, mesmerized by the sight. Over and over again, the waves crashed into one another, and the salt spray was everywhere. Very few people were there, as the warnings had already gone out. Soon there would be a mandatory evacuation of the beach. Although I wanted to stay and absorb the beauty and power of these forces of nature, which seemed to be getting stronger, I was also becoming anxious. It was time to leave.
I drove back over the bridge from Pensacola Beach to Pensacola proper, and to Ellison Field, the helicopter training base. When I got there, I learned that the emergency plans had been announced. Our aging, wooden barracks were to be evacuated, and we would spend the night in the modern new brick flight operations building. We were all to bring our mattresses and essentials over to our emergency shelter for the night. The lights would be turned off to the old buildings. Nobody was to go near them, because it was feared they would crumble in strong winds.
We moved in and by 9 PM everything was set for the night. One of my buddies beckoned me to a corner and whispered there would be a hurricane party in one of the rooms of the old barracks. I sneaked out and joined them-—here, by candlelight, we drank beer and played poker while the winds howled outside. Some time after midnight we broke up and ran across the open ground through driving rain to our shelter, where we slept through till morning.
It was then that I heard that the hurricane hadn’t hit us directly, but had hit 50 miles west of us, near Gulfport and Biloxi. We carried our things back to our rooms and realized that there had been no damage. But by evening the news told us of a Holiday Inn in Pass Christian, where another hurricane party was going on. The hotel had been washed away, 25 people had been killed. Little did I know that the storm would travel on to the north, and kill many more in the next few days.
I began to think about flight school, and the paths that lead to and from that experience.
I graduated from the Naval Academy, barely in the upper half of my class and pretty demoralized, although I didn’t know it then. I only applied to flight school because the alternative was shipboard duty, and I had found out on cruises that I get seasick. I failed the eye exam the first time I took it, but was asked to come back for another test after lunch. I then passed at the very lowest eyesight limit.
The summer of 1968 was an exciting time. My best friend from high school, Bill Speckmann, was at the University of Maryland, and we drove back together in my new Pontiac LeMans. We saw Mount Rushmore, the Grand Teton Mountains, and the Grand Canyon. It was not only and east to west tour, but north to south also, because we visited my relatives in Staples, Minnesota and his in Tucson, Arizona. We had just started our trip when we heard that Bobby Kennedy had been shot. That news had put an edge on our trip, but we mostly tried to put it out of our minds. When we arrived back in our home town of El Cajon, just outside San Diego, we were welcomed as returning heroes by our families.
Later that summer, while I was waiting for my class at Pensacola to start, I was asked to report to Miramar Naval Air Station near my parents’ home. They checked me out and gave me a thrilling ride in an F-4 Phantom fighter-bomber. Then they flew me up to Alameda, across from San Francisco, where I was to join the USS Coral Sea for two weeks of sea duty. But after checking in, I had a weekend to myself, and I spent it in San Francisco.
I brought my guitar to Golden Gate Park and began strumming, like some others were doing near there, and a couple of interesting guys approached. One, white like me, was a photographer who was documenting police brutality, and the other, African-American, was a sometime security guard for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Martin Luther King had been killed that spring, and he was currently unemployed. (The irony here didn’t dawn on me at the time!) They were undeterred by my short hair, and in fact intrigued by a guy between the Naval Academy and flight school who played Bob Dylan songs in Golden Gate Park. They gave me a tour of counter-culture San Francisco. It was the summer after the Summer of Love in San Francisco, and although Haight-Ashbury was fairly run-down now, lots of other places brimmed with activity.
Late that night my hosts invited me to smoke some dope with them. I declined. I found the last bus back across the Oakland Bay Bridge and returned to the ship. I have often wondered about that road not taken.
From those two weeks on the Coral Sea, I have four significant memories: The first was of the greatest show on earth, watching night operations on the deck of an aircraft carrier. The takeoffs of jets using catapults, the controlled crashes of jets into the arresting cables, the crew on the flight deck performing a dangerous ballet, the lights, and especially the thunderous sounds. I want to do this, I said to myself.
The second memory was of trying to sleep in a top bunk next to the catapult stop. Whenever they were operating, which seemed to be all the time, I was almost thrown out of bed by the crashing impact of this hunk of metal that had just thrown a jet into the sky and now had to be stopped. It was noisy, and I could feel the impact in my bones.
The third memory is of a Rotsie Midshipman who could fart the Star-Spangled Banner. He was, admittedly, off-key, but his rhythm was correct, and he got all the way to the end of the song.
The final memory is of losing a jet near Monterey Bay. An A-3 with a crew of 3 was approaching for a night landing and disappeared off the radar. We searched for the next 24 hours, but found nothing. All three fliers died. On that somber note, we returned to Alameda.
Two weeks later, I was back in El Cajon and began my drive to Pensacola. It was a long drive, especially the drive across Texas. I stopped to break the boredom in West Texas. With no sign of human habitation anywhere except on the road, I dug my .22 caliber rifle out of the trunk and went shooting at whatever I could find, which was mostly rocks. As I walked, I wasn’t conscious of how long I had been out there, or how far I had wandered from the car. Finally, I turned around to see my car off in the distance with two other cars—one in front, the other behind my car. They were police cars. I hurried back to the car and was greeted by a tall Texas Ranger with two pearl-handled revolvers on his hips. He gruffly informed me there is “no open range in Texas” and that I had no right to be shooting there without the landowners’ permission. I was polite and showed them my identification, and they let me go without arresting me. I think the short hair, the Navy ID, and my respectful manner is what kept me out of trouble that day.
I finally got out of Texas and was in Louisiana, stopping in gas stations to wipe the smashed bugs off my windshield. Next morning, I picked up a hitchhiker on the outskirts of New Orleans. He was heading to New Hampshire and had been on the road for several days, he said. He had about three cents to his name, and an empty box of crackers. I drove him as far as Pensacola, and when it was time to let him out, I stopped in a fried chicken place and bought him lunch. We sat outside at a picnic bench and ate, and he was very appreciative. Afterward, he asked me if I played that guitar that he had seen in my back seat, and if I knew “Alice’s Restaurant.”
I did know the little guitar ditty that is repeated ad infinitum, as Arlo Guthrie tells a funny story that eventually becomes an anti-draft, anti-war message. But I didn’t know the words, I said. No problem, my guest knew all the words by heart. We sat at that picnic bench and he sang and talked his way through the entire song, which is about 20 minutes long. It was a wonderful experience for both of us. When we were done, we shook hands and he thanked me for the meal. I thanked him for the song. He headed out to the highway and I headed to flight school. It was an ironic and memorable way to begin the next chapter of my life.
Flight school was not depressing like the Academy. I was not ostracized by my peers. I had the unexpected pleasure of learning to fly an airplane—something I had never seen as one of my life’s goals. I remember my first solo flight, my first recovery from a stall and spin, my first formation flight. Once we were doing a breakup and rendezvous maneuver, and I was soloing the 4th airplane in the formation. From echelon right, the lead aircraft is to break left and fly a ten-degree angle of bank turn. Each of the other three aircraft are to count ten, in turn, and break left and fly a steeper angle of bank, catching up with the leader by flying the inside track of a tighter circle. This time, however, the student leader didn’t take into account the giant cumulous cloud to our left. Since we had to avoid the cloud, he had to shallow his angle of bank and fly around the cloud. And we couldn’t take the inside track, for that would have taken us into the cloud. With no alternative, we simply followed him around the cloud. As the last plane in the formation, I saw the other three rounding the huge white cotton ball. It must have been a mile high, and more than that in diameter. To see those tiny airplanes silhouetted against that enormous cloud made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
But I was not much of a flight student. I neglected my studies. I found memorizing flight procedures tedious. I was a dreamer, and floating among the clouds was a good place for dreaming—and dreaming is not a good stance to take when flying in an airplane with the performance characteristics of a World War II fighter. I received 5 “downs,” meaning that I flew five unsatisfactory flights. In times of peace, one or two downs would be enough to be washed out of the program. But this was during Vietnam, and pilots were needed as cannon fodder, so the standards were relaxed. I realized I would have to give up my dream of flying a jet off a carrier.
My last solo flight in a fixed wing aircraft was a crowning achievement, however. We had practiced for weeks for our carrier landings. When the time came, I was again in a flight of four. We broke up our formation and entered the landing pattern of the USS Lexington. When my turn came, I followed the “ball” down the glidepath just as they said I should, my gear down but my hook up, and made an excellent touch-and-go landing. Solid crunch into the deck, followed by immediately going to full throttle, and slowly lifting off the deck over the Gulf fifty feet below. Then back into the landing pattern, for a real arrested landing.
This time the hook would be down, and the objective was to catch one of the four arresting wires stretched across the aft section of the deck. The number 3 wire was the preferred one to shoot for. I followed the ball down the slope again, the Landing Signal Officer talking me down, and the crunch was followed by the shock of going from 90 knots to stop in about twenty feet. I looked at the deck crew, who signaled me to idle my engine. Then I looked back at the wires. I had hit number 3!
I felt myself going backwards as the wire pulled me back and was then disengaged. I raised the hook and awaited the signal. There it was! I hit full power and began creeping down the flight deck toward the bow of the ship. This was the scariest part, the takeoff. The airspeed indicator said I was accelerating normally, but everything looked to be in slow motion. I remembered what they had taught us: The ship would be steaming into the wind at 20 knots, and today’s wind was forecast at 15 knots. I would have 35 knots flowing over my wings that I couldn’t see. I would be able to lift off. But because the only solid reference point I had was the ship, my intuition told me I would not be able to fly, I would go down off the bow and be run over by the aircraft carrier. I trusted my training and forgot my intuition, and I floated up just like the instructors said I would.
I had five more chances at the number 3 wire, and I hit it each time. I had six “OK” arrested landings, which is the highest mark they give. I felt great on the way back to the field.
The very next day I moved on to helicopter training. I had chosen helicopters because of my ambivalence about Vietnam. I found a senior officer who was an expert on post-flight-school duty assignments, and told him I didn’t want to go to Vietnam. His advice: ask for helicopters, then ask for duty as a station pilot. But he added that I would have no Navy career if I made that choice. That was OK by me, because by now I only wanted to get out as soon as I could.
What a kick helicopters turned out to be. Always flying close (500 feet) to the ground. Hovering and following patterns traced on the runway. Landing with ski-shaped skids on a grassy field. And, especially, autorotations. From 500 feet I would drop the engine to idle, point the nose down, and fall out of the sky. Falling through the air maintained the rotor blades at flying speed. At fifty feet, I would pull back the nose to bleed off the airspeed, and as the nose fell back to the level position, pull in the power, coming to a hover at about five feet off the deck. This was the practice maneuver that prepared us for an engine failure. In a real engine failure we would not have the engine to bring us to a hover, but instead would use the angular momentum of the rotor blades to bring us to a soft landing. I qualified in both the Bell Jet Ranger and the UH-1E “Huie”.
I received my wings in September 1969, as a helicopter pilot.
By the time I arrived at my permanent duty station, Naval Air Station Oceana, in Virginia Beach, I knew I’d be getting out of the Navy as soon as possible. I was gradually waking up to the horrors of the Vietnam War. It became difficult to wear the uniform, because the nation was polarized and just by wearing it, I was making a pro-military statement.
But at the same time, there were benefits to my lifestyle. I could fly a couple hours in a Navy helicopter three or four times a week. I was in training to be come a Helicopter Aircraft Commander (HAC). We were in a potentially exciting and important job, the only search and rescue detachment in the southern Chesapeake Bay area. I was memorizing emergency procedures, learning to do 360-degree autorotations, hoping to actually rescue somebody someday.
But that day seemed to never come. The Coast Guard, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, was the official search and rescue entity, and as such was the automatic on-scene commander at any rescue site. Any time two helicopters were there, the Coasties picked up the survivors. And they were good, we had to give them credit. Forty miles south of us, much farther from all the action of Hampton Roads, they could still usually beat us to the scene. So we didn’t get much business.
I remember picking up a baby at Norfolk Regional Airport and flying it, in an incubator, to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital. I remember picking up the body of a painter who had fallen off the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel while working. The crew members gave him CPR in the cabin as I flew him to the hospital. But he was dead. But mostly I remember boring holes in the sky, sight-seeing, practicing autorotations, sometimes being asked to fly an envelope to Norfolk Naval Air Station, or to go to Norfolk to pick up some arcane electronic part so that one of the jets at our base could fly.
The war in Vietnam raged during those three years I spent at Oceana. I could not support that war, yet was benefiting from wearing that uniform: making good money, being home every night. I was also in school—the GI Bill paid my tuition as I went to night school, working on a master’s degree in administration. How could I justify such an easy life while my colleagues and classmates were killing and dying in Vietnam?
I found myself at the Friends’ Meeting in Virginia Beach. They had a traditional peace message. They welcomed my confused, searching state of mind. In this time of division, braless hippy girls in jeans and tie-dyed shirts sat next to elderly women in hats and white gloves. Gentlemen in suits shook hands with gentle men with long hair. The meetings were quiet until someone could not not speak—and then anyone could stand up and speak his or her peace. Their meetings for business were conducted in consensus: if anyone objected to any proposal, it was delayed. All had to agree before any decision was final. This meeting owned a rent-subsidized apartment building for the poor, and was making it work.
I found out about the peace movement there. I joined a small group of peaceful idealists working against the war. We demonstrated, we wrote letters, we read the names of the war dead. Our Congressman was G. William Whitehurst, and we took a poll in his home neighborhood. We found that a majority of the residents favored peace, favored ending the war immediately. He ignored our efforts and continued to support the war. Acting behind the scenes, I helped the Great Canoe Blockade, in which we tried to stop the sailing of the aircraft carrier USS America from Norfolk Naval Station. We brought a returned POW to town who was against the war and I almost was able to get him in to make a speech to the Officers’ Wives Club.
And after each weekend of activism, I would return to the station in my dress blues, put on my flight suit, and crank up the helicopter. I was a hamster on a treadmill.
***
Perhaps these reveries and memories helped me endure this difficult day. I don’t know what inner strength supported Inanna. On one mountain grade, again we were pushing the bikes, and a pickup stopped. Inside were three rough-looking characters, offering a lift to the top. I was worried, but Inanna nodded, and the bikes and we went into the back. They took us to the top of the Breaks, and let us out.
The Breaks Interstate Park is a park jointly run by Kentucky and Virginia, because it is on the border. Signs proclaimed it the “Grand Canyon of the East” because of the spectacular view into the river gorge below. We had never heard of it. At an overlook with a panorama below, we ate cheese and crackers. Soon a strong rain shower began, but we were so warm, and relaxed, that we walked slowly through the rain towards the lodge. Under a small shelter, we met a family. Their two young boys sat perfectly still and upright on the bench and we had a strange conversation with their parents. These people were very nice, but quite conventional. We must have been among the most unconventional people they had met. In any other situation, either they or we would have left. But the rain was still coming down heavily, we were already soaked, and they didn’t want to become as wet as we already were. I pulled out our little backpack stove and boiled water for instant coffee. We offered them some in the dirty plastic cups we were using, but they declined.
Finally the rain let up, and as we ventured out of the shelter we met the group of bikers we had met back at Mt. Rogers. Joey and Sue were still together, and Joey told me how he had “tuned his spokes like a guitar” to get the rim back into round. We left the Breaks and had a long downhill coast into Elkhorn City, Kentucky. As we crossed the state line we clapped and cheered. Finally we were out of Virginia. It had taken us almost two weeks! But Virginia is actually quite long, east to west, and we had not taken a direct route.