Reflections

“This place needs a fresh coat of paint,” Mike said to me as we stood in the flag-bedecked United Nations Square in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.Mike, my executive officer, was the king of dry wit. Besides his sense of humor, Mike was a superb…

So, why EMS?That question came up often in the first few months on the ambulance, and it was an understandable one. I worked part-time for the county’s 911 emergency response system while I completed a master’s degree in creative writing in…

On an October day in 1966, the sun rose in the west, a man was seen biting a dog, Hades reported ice storms—and the U.S. Marines asked the U.S. Army for help.Okay, the first three things didn’t happen. Normally, the Marine Corps is the most…

The sun clung to the horizon at four p.m. that November day in Alaska. From my office, I quickly did the calculations—if I left now, I would have just enough time to scoop up my children from daycare and fit in 20 minutes of sledding before…

I grew up in Richland, Washington, and enrolled at Washington State University in the fall of 1959. By my junior year, I really wasn’t too happy there and didn’t think I was going to finish. Meanwhile, guys I knew were getting drafted left…

June 9, 2022, started like any other day—I was up at five a.m. to get ready for work at Marine Aircraft Group 36 in Okinawa, Japan. At the end of my drive, I checked my phone and found a message from my good friend Teedha, my first flight…

I still remember the blinding glare of police lights in my rearview mirror. My heart began to race as the white officer approached my vehicle. I knew I did nothing wrong, but still I clenched the wheel tightly to signal I was not a threat.…

“You know what’s crazy?” I said. “I’m turning the same age you were when you went to war.”“Oh wow,” my mom said, nodding thoughtfully from the couch. Then, “Wait, you’ll be 35?”I laughed from where I reclined on the floor, stretching my…

William (Mac) McKissick was my hero. I never told him that. I am sure he never knew. We were not friends. The best that can be said is that we served together in the Air Force in Vietnam for about nine months.He was a technical sergeant at…

Every family has their secrets. Some big, some small. One of ours was that Yia Yia was a bit crazy. And where to begin: One could point to her sudden and animated outbursts of anger in awkward places. Her decades of pill popping that made…