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From: Bob McKnight <rwmck@mediaone.net>
Date: Sun Feb 21 13:24:25 1999
Subject: Fond Memories
I was at Devens (058 School) from Sept 55-Mar 56....
a weather/cultural adjustment for this native Florida boy. Have a few scanned photos....where are you Horace Libby, Hank Land, Graham Bass, and other Ten Percenters?I went on to 14th ASA Fld Sta near Itazuke AFB, Fukuoka (Kyushu), Japan where 2 of the most memorable years of my life were spent. Came back to U of F...now retired....living in Jacksonville with college sweetheart bride of 38 yrs. I'd love to hear from you guys!
A few of my rememberances of the winter of 1955-56 include:
Stopping for late night chili at the diner in Ayer after returning from a weekend in Boston or New York. The customers loved to chat and listen to us 'southern boys' talk. I used to say that the only difference between us and them was "they had funny accents"!
Walking out of the train station in Boston one nippy evening and hearing the newsboy call out the startling news..."extra, extra, President Eisenhower has heart attack!" He survived, but it sure shook us all up!
My friend Graham Bass (Apopka, FL) and I going out with two girls from Lowell one night, and they wanted us to tell them all about what Miami was like. Didn't have the heart to tell them that Port St Joe, was a little gulf coast town over 600 miles from Miami; and Apopka (near Orlando) was known for it's fern greenhouses.....neither of us had ever been to Miami!
So many of us had attended college, but dropped out to enlist before the GI Bill expired in July 1955. I tried to volunteer for the draft, but would have had to wait in line for months. So my friendly Army recruiter said "I've got just the assignment for you!"...and the rest is history. Three years in the Army seemed a lot better than four in the other branches. Although the GI Bill was probably our favorite excuse....the various Deans of Students usually knew better.
I remember hitchhiking to Portland, ME for a visit with my dear friend Horace Libby. I had never been so cold...never have since. Went ice skating near his home in Gray, ME. His mom, who had a wall covered with county fair blue ribbons, did some unbelievably delicious things with Maine potatos. Horace, who was a graduate of the U of Maine, later went on to law school in Boston I was told!
There was our company First Sergeant, SFC Petrie, a full blown Cajun from Louisiana, and a dead ringer for Barney Fife. Our platoon's resident humorist, Dick Lapkin, a Cornell dropout from the Bronx; had a ball with Petrie's serious soldiering. Once while in formation in front of the orderly room, Dick, couldn't hold back any longer and burst out laughing. With Petrie in his face screaming "what's so funny, soldier boy"....he loved calling us 'soldier boy'....Lapkin nearly fell to his knees in hysterics, while Petrie fumed! Dick Lapkin's favorite expression back in the barracks was, "kill my baby Sgt Petrie, but please don't gig me!"
A couple of us had sneaked back on base after a particularly late night excursion.....we were crossing the parade field in the worst snowstorm I had ever seen....in fact it was the ONLY snowstorm I had ever seen. At about mid-field, it occurred to me that I didn't know which way was which....The howling snow made EVERYTHING white....I actually had a slight pang of panic down in the gut, then a faint barracks porch light appeared and we followed it out of that thigh-deep mess. I thought of the local newspaper headlines the next day blaring;
"STUPID SOUTHERN GI'S FOUND FROZEN TO DEATH IN DEVENS PARADE FIELD"!Since those days at Ft Devens, and later Japan, the Dean of Students at the Univ of Florida, relented and allowed me to return in 1958. There I met my beautiful wife of nearly 39 years and the mother of our 2 sons and 2 daughters. Marilyn was and still is the most beautiful girl I've ever seen!
Graham Bass graduated from Florida Atlantic University, and is a CPA in Houston.
I ran across Dick Lapkin around 1973 in Melbourne, FL, where he was an electrical engineer with Harris Corp., a Kennedy Space Center contractor.
Terrell Kingen, returned to Mississippi State Univ. and is a retired engineer and a city councilman in his hometown of Corinth, MS.
Ken Farmer, who went on to Japan with some of us, retired from the Army Special Forces (Green Berets)....spent 3 tours in Viet Nam, and now is in business in Clarksville, TN.There are so many others, and I would love to hear from or about each of them. Hank Land, who took me to his fraternity weekend at the Univ of Buffalo and let me meet his most gracious mom, sister, and grandmother.....O'Hare (was his name Michael, or Alex), who was from Manhattan, and his fiance was attending Wellsley....George VanHoose, who was AWOL once because he went home to Flat Gap, KY on a 3 day pass; said he was "homesick for those hills of Kentucky"....so many fine people and such a long time ago....wish I could hear from all of them.
Bob McKnight
Jacksonville, FL
Copyright © Robert McKnight, 1999. All Rights reserved.
