House on the hill
Woody Woodham & Charlie Sunderland, Bob Elie, Col. Robert Cohen, Lt. Col. Ed Bradley, Major Dager Larry Doster, Tal Harris. Al Tate, Al Heim,
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As an ambitious junior office< I joined our Brookley Toastmasters Club when it was formed.
This small group would meet periodically and practice given speeches. One day at the Base officers meeting, the Toastmasters Club was asked to provide the program. I was not part of the program and planned to enjoy the meeting, The very first part of the program was to demonstrate an extemporaneous talk; The host called me up to talk about my “favorite mother in law”. I went to the front totally frozen with no idea of what to say. I do not remember one word of my talk but the place was an uproar at the end. I was very popular after that talk and recognized by every officer on the base.
I developed life-long friends at Brookley, Phil Atkinson being my favorite. I was best man at Phil’s wedding to Thea Baumhauer. After Brookley Phil stayed in Mobile and started a contracting business there. Another good friend was Bud Bullock, a VTI graduate. Another was Al Karcher, a Dartmouth college and Business School grad.
At that time, Bud had a car. Several of us went to the Christmas party of the local back, where we knew several female employees. It was a pretty wild party. At the end, Bud was driving Karcher and me back to the bas, when he was stopped by the police. Bud thought that he would impress the police by jumping out of the car and going to them. In the process, he slipped down on wet pavement. and was taken to the police cruiser and thence to jail. I drove to the jail but archer and i decided that we were in no shape to help so headed back to the base. I had to stop to relieve myself and Karcher drove away.
So here I was several miles from the base with no transportation. I walked several miles back to Brookley, crossed the airfield and runways and was glad to get back to the BOQ (Base Offcier’s Quarters). The next morning Karcher and I drove into Mobile and sprung Bullock out of jail. He was censured by his bosses but not treated badly.
The Air Force had several large maintenance and supply depots around the country. Each facility and its divisions had a permanent civilian in charge. Next to the civilian and baring overall responsibility would be an Air Force Officer. As such, I had an amazingly relevant job at Brookley as the officer in charge of scheduling major maintenance of categories of Air Force equipment, such as F-89 and -94 fighters, Wright jet engines and much more. Both Air Force repair facilities, like Brookley, and independent contractors such as Aerojet General were used. It was wonderful experience.
We junior officers were in demand in Mobile social circles since most of the local young men had been drafted. One event we participated in was a musical comedy. I was written, produced and directed by a local wannabe playwright. Several of us second lieutenants acted as soldiers in this musical play modeled after “Desert Song”. We had a fine time usually bring a few beers to rehearsals. Finally opening night! We did our best. The review the next day in the Mobile newspaper was headed “Hot Sahara not so hot”. That was the ending of my acting career!
At the end of my first year at Brookley, our contingent of second lieutenants was joined by several graduates from Harvard & Dartmouth Business Schools. This was an impressive group and included Bob Sellers (Princeton), Fred Krimendahl (Ohio Sate). These guys impressed me so much that I applied to and was accepted by Harvard after leaving the Air Force.
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