Today’s choices are varied. Do I want to call attention to my childhood in my beloved Iowa? Does Ohio, where I attended and completed high school and my first year of college warrant attention?

What about that awful ten months I lived in Western Massachusetts? Does it count? I learned a whole lot there. Mostly about what I didn’t want to do with my life. That’s vitally important, but Massachusetts is best in my rear view mirror, I think. I did register as a Democrat to vote against Teddy Kennedy in the Presidential primary. I have no political party loyalty, so I’ll declare as needed to achieve the goals I think are most important in any particular election.

Then there are my Air Force years. Basic training and technical training in San Antonio, Texas. As a tech school friend said once, “How can such a crummy state have such beautiful skies?” My first assignment was supposed to be Griffiss AFB, NY, but I got washed back a couple of weeks in tech school, so I lost that assignment. Next up was Hawaii. I’m one of the few people who would not like that assignment, but, on the bright side, I had no trouble finding someone to swap assignments with (my mother has never forgiven me — she said she would have come to visit me in Hawaii), so I wound up in Great Falls, MT, at Malmstrom AFB. I never wanted to leave. But, alas, I got non-volunteered back to Lackland AFB in San Antonio for a four-year controlled tour teaching in my career field.

I bought a house and decided to make Texas my legal residence, which it has been since December 1, 1983. I asked for, and got a remote tour to NYI Rockville Iceland (but I lived and worked on NAS Keflavik, Iceland). I loved Iceland. I’d have gone back anytime. Too bad our facilities closed.

After that, I got my dream assignment to Fort Meade, MD. See, I was a cryptographic maintenance technician, and our Bible was written by DIRNSA. Every document we had and every guideline we received was subject to DIRNSA approval and control. Fort Meade, MD? The heart of DIRNSA. DIRNSA lives here. Who’s DIRNSA? The Director, National Security Agency. Mecca. I loved it then, and I love it today. These are dedicated people committed to keeping us safe, and I take great offense if anyone says otherwise. Whether civilians or military, it doesn’t matter, their primary goal is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. I “get” that some people believe otherwise, but I’ve been inside, and I know no greater patriots than the employees who work for DIRNSA. I’ve said too much.

From Fort Meade, I returned to Lackland for Officer Training School. From there, my first commissioned assignment (and, several years later, the last) was Maxwell AFB, AL — after a few weeks of technical training at Keesler AFB, MS. Dark days followed, because I had another non-volunteer assignment to teach. This time ROTC in Riverdale (The Bronx by any other name), NY, at Manhattan College. I made myself miserable for this tour. It’s my fault. I handled it very poorly. I know the people working with me knew it, but I did try (and I think I was largely successful) to keep my feelings from the cadets. The cadets were what made the tour worthwhile. I loved working with them and seeing them mature. Several remain on active duty today and have surpassed me in the success of their careers. I’m very proud of them and their accomplishments.

After The Bronx, I got a few more years in San Antonio, which included my first deployment and a number of temporary duty tours out of the country. I visited our units in England and Germany. I finally made it to Hawaii for a week. I deployed to Kuwait for three months to command a ground station. Awesome, awesome work. I’m incensed when anyone says “Bush lied.” He didn’t lie. He was just wrong. We believed Iraq had WMD. Our intelligence failure was a result of Post-Cold War politics placing an emphasis on electronic surveillance over human intelligence, and the entry into the Iraq War was the result of that failed policy “Peace Dividend” decision. So, no. No picture of Kuwait.

From there I went to Langley AFB, VA, for a different sort of job. I was formally in VA, but I spent one to two weeks a month on the road. If I wasn’t in DC, I was in Europe. At the time when most officers are cementing their reputations with their peers and superiors, I was meeting some wonderful US civilians, contractors, and NATO officers working on a project our nation didn’t really care about, even though it was essential. Knowing group dynamics, the impression left back home was that I was never there and always off gallivanting about the world — if they noticed I was supposed to be there at all. England, France, Belgium, Latvia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Canada, San Diego, and San Antonio (those last two were when the US hosted the NATO meeting). I deployed to Bahrain for three months. Many blessings for that deployment. Most people getting credit for being in a war zone were in far more danger than I was for that time. But, no. I’m not going to show you those photos today either.

I’ve been many places. Many of them were places I didn’t want to go, even though I learned to enjoy them. As a dear co-worker said at my farewell from Langley, “Jean’s the only person I know who would say, ‘I have to go to France,’ and be unhappy about it.”

So I leave you with some ranch photos, representative of life:

We’ll begin standing at the gate. Do we want to go in?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or would we rather fly free?

 

Or wander in the wilderness?

 

Perhaps we can walk beside still waters:

 

Will there be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

 

Where will we find ourselves as we enter the sunset of our lives?

 

Make sure you take time to reflect on where you’ve been, where you’re going, and if you want to go there:

 

(If you’ve been paying attention, you know that last one is from the house in San Antonio. Not the ranch. But peace is found from within, and the exterior place is not particularly relevant.)

My mother mentioned a few years ago that she’d done what she’d set out to do in life, and she was comfortable with dying at any time. I didn’t choose to take that as a statement to be alarmed by, because I understand it. Yes, I have more things to do in life. Some I know what they are, and I’m sure I don’t know others, but if my time is up, I’m comfortable with that. I think that’s what she was saying.