We moved a lot. So much so, that I thought everybody did, until I got into Junior High School in Anacortes, and I realized all the people I knew had all gone to school with each other since Kindergarten, and were life long friends. Who had life-long friends? Didn’t everybody have to start over making friends, every other year? That’s what I did.
Moving involved a whole litany of events for military brats. There was the realizing you were leaving your comfortable relationships, and lots of curiosity and trepidation about this new, unknown place.
What was the base like?
What was the school like?
What were the kids like?
Where would we live?
Was there anything to do?
Would we make friends?
Then there was the packing. We got very familiar with Atlas and Mayflower Van Lines. The routine of putting numbers on all the pieces of furniture and boxes. Some places had stickers. Dad would pay us a nickle at the other end to go find the stickers placed in all the obscure places on furniture and remove them, taking to him as proof. Some you didn’t find until the next move.
Would the furniture you had make it to your next destination? There were horror stories we heard about moving trucks catching fire enroute and a family having nothing when they got to their next duty station. I think Mom was most afraid of that.
Would the furniture be broken? Or something stolen? We had a car shipped to Libya, and it arrived without the radio. Remarkably through all the moves, the vast majority of stuff Mom and Dad picked up made it intact, including some really valuable things like a sterling tea service, a globe bar, marble telephone, various pictures, and my favorite, the Tantalus.
What to do with it now that Mom & Dad are gone is the big question. All of us kids have our own houses full of our own stuff. As nice as theirs’ is, how do you incorporate it in your already-full house?
In all, we moved:
- 1961, George AFB, CA - RAF Bentwaters, UK (Dave was born)
- 1964, RAF Bentwaters, UK - George AFB, CA
— short TDY to Davis-Monthan AF, AZ (lasted probably 6-9 weeks)
- 1965, George AFB, CA - Anacortes, WA (Dad went to Vietnam, and I’m pretty sure dependents couldn’t live on base without their Sponsor back then)
- 1966, Anacortes, WA - George AFB (Girls were born)
- 1969, George AFB, CA - Wheelus AFB, (Tripoli, Libya) (Libya had a coup d’etat, so we were forced to leave early)
- 1970, Wheelus AFB, Tripoli, Libya - Aviano AFB, Italy
- 1972, Aviano AFB, Italy - Anacortes, WA (Dad went to Korea for a year)
- 1973, Anacortes, WA to Nellis AFB, (Las Vegas, NV)
- 1977, Nellis AFB, NV, to Luke AFB, AZ (Litchfield Park)
- 1978, College (US Air Force Academy for me).
