chronological changes

In my last blog there was some information which was not in chronological order, therefore I have decided to redo the whole thing.

So here we were in Oklahoma for the first of June 1967 and Boy!! was it hot. We had never experienced heat such as that of the west in summer. While we waited for our car to be repaired after being rear ended in Indianapolis we rented a car with air conditioning. Aah!! It was like heaven after never having AC before. It made traveling so much more comfortable, especially for our 6 month old daughter.
Lee started work at Reynolds Army Hospital as a staff nurse on the Orthopedics floor which he seemed to enjoy. It was really the first time since we were married where we felt safe and secure. Lee's check was deposited at the 1st of every month, and our health needs were all taken care of as well. However, always looming over us on a daily basis was the threat of receiving orders fir Viet Nam. It seemed that almost everyday when Lee came home he had news of another of our nurses being sent to Viet Nam. The day that Lee joined the Army he had been told by the recruiter "don't worry, we have plenty of volunteers for Nam. What they neglected to tell him was that almost all of the volunteers were females. Life continued and we tried not to dwell on the negatives. Lee was satisfied with his job, and felt that he was learning a great deal. The people we had met were lovely, gracious and giving people which always makes a transition easier.
One of our biggest hurdles to jump over was the once a month payday. In the past we both had been paid bi-weekly, and even then sometimes it was difficult to make ends meet. The military check is deposited on the first day of the month and there is no more money until the first day of the next month. At first, I said "no way will I be able to do that." Well, guess what? I did learn to do it and quite quickly really. It just takes some organization, meal planning, budgeting and cooperation by the whole family. I had learned to cook when I was a teenager, I had to help my mother out at times, especially when my dad hired workers to harvest crops. Sometimes there would be 8-10 extra men for the noon meal. My cooking skills were quite good really. As long as I have a small piece of meal or poultry, some potatoes, flour. shortening and the basics I was able to prepare a good hearty meal. Sometimes at the end of the month the groceries would really be low and it would be slim pickings, but we managed. Some of the other young couples would resort to going to the Officer's Club to eat and charged their meals 3 or 4 days before payday. My dad had always said "charging food is like paying for a dead horse, you have nothing to show for your money." Being of Irish heritage my mother always fixed meat & potatoes for my father. The fact is that my dad refused to eat spaghetti, pizza, Chinese food or any ethnic food really. I was raised in a very prejudiced family where all of the racial slurs were a daily occurrence. People were stigmatized according to their race.
At that time, which was many years ago, the military had good "perks". One of them was the military health care system which Lee would be requiring approximately 6 months after starting active duty.
When Lee had been in that collision while still a student, he also received serious injuries to his right knee. At the point of impact from the other car his knees were shoved under the dashboard and his right knee sustained a crushed knee cap which has bothered Lee ever since. For several months Lee had experienced more and more pain and did use NSAIDS and sometimes stronger medications to ease his pain. Finally, I convinced Lee that he should have an Orthopedic physician evaluate his knee. He was seen in the morning and a date was set up for surgery. That very afternoon Lee received his first orders for Viet Nam. It was approximately the 2oth of December, the actual day of Lee's knee surgery before he was notified that orders for Viet Nam had been rescinded. The knee surgery turned out to be more extensive than the doctor first thought. When Lee came out of the surgery he had a full cast from his right hip down to his ankle. I visited him that evening in the hospital and he was in a great deal of pain, and his knee was extremely swollen. His eyes were glassy from the effects of Morphine. The next day he didn't remember that I had been there. The next day Lee was in and out of consciousness and still in a lot of pain. Sometime during the night the cast split open, Lee had an infection in the surgical site. The following day they took Lee back to surgery, the wound needed to be debrided, and then a new cast would be applied. His entire leg was casted from December until May, at which time they removed half of the knee cap before they were finished.
In January of 1968 Lee and I and our two children decided to drive back to New York to see out families. Since Lee was on Convalescent leave we had some extra time, but no money to speak of to finance the trip. I think altogether we scraped up about 50 bucks and we had a SUNOCO credit card. Those were the "good old days", nothing bothered us and we just started out. It was around midnight the first day of driving that we broke a fan belt. It occured near Tulsa, Ok, and as luck would have it we found a gas station that was open all night long. Our Sunoco card came in handy early on, we charged the repair and went on our merry way. The bulk of the driving was my job because Lee's cast was on his right leg. That cast turned out to be a major conversation piece. People were very inquisitive about it, and not shy about asking questions. For example "do you have to wear that thing to bed?" "how do you, ya know, manage? My reply to those people was "where there is a will, there is a way." End of questions!
We didn't really get to spend much time with our families, and so we started back to Fort Sill. Thank God the trip back home was uneventful.
Sad news awaited us when we returned to OK. One of the CRNAS who had been sent to Viet Nam only a few months before, had been killed. Jerry had been in a plane which was on its way back to their duty station. He and a whole cadre of others, doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel had been helping one of the Evacuation hospitals who had been inundated with serious casualties. On the way back they encountered engine problems, the engines stalled and the plane crashed into the side of a mountain. All members of the military on board were killed.
Our group at Ft Sill's Hospital were very tight, we spent a lot of time together. We could get a party/picnic together in record time and have 25-30 people show up at one of our homes. Everbody brought food and drinks and there was always plenty to go around in case someone showed up late. Therefore, everyone felt the terrible loss and waste of a young man's life. Jerry was 30 years old and left behind his wife and infant daughter. Life went on, it always does, but Viet Nam loomed large over the rest of us like a terrible invisible ogre!!