Staying in touch, through the years

 When I first entered the military, 1978, at the Air Force Academy, there really wasn’t an internet or cell phones. So at college, I would call home Sunday afternoons or evenings, and talk to my parents or girlfriend. Each Squadron had two pay phones in the hallway, so people took turns calling. You would get a Sprint pre-paid credit card and pay by the minute. As a college student, that kept the calls relatively short.

Letters were big. My parents kept a notebook of letters I wrote over the years. Some are pretty embarrassing to read 40 years later… I struggled at school: academics were tough, and I was homesick a lot. I am amazed everyday I stuck it out and graduated.

All through the 80s I was on B-52s and never TDY a lot. There wasn’t much need for anything but long distance and letter writing. Laura and I corresponded a lot by letters and phone calls when she moved to Washington DC. We probably should have invested in telephone stock those two years.

When I got off Active Duty and switched to C-130s, I traveled a lot more. I deployed overseas numerous times to places like Saudi Arabia, Germany and then after 9/11, Kuwait and Qatar.

At first it was back to 20 minute morale calls once a week.  That lasted until the 2000s. By then the internet was pretty widespread. Cellphones were prevalent, but the cost per minute was astronomical, especially from overseas. So we had morale computers set up. You would use your personal laptop to write all your emails, upload onto a flash drive, then go to the morale tent, wait in line for a computer to open up, sit down and send all your emails. Next you would download your new incoming emails, and go back to your tent or room and read them. Then you would type up your responses, and the next day you would repeat the process. So … you were always about a day behind with what was going on back home, but much more in tune than the week behind with only morale calls.

By the late 00s and early ‘10s, we had wifi in the dorms. you could just log on from your room and email. Video chats through skype were starting. There was little privacy, so guys would go outside and chat with their wives and gfs… so you would hear a lot of arguments from around the compound. Sometime less communication capability is better. You can’t FIX things that are broken at home, but you want to, and while they know you can’t, they vent and you take it personally. Long distance is a challenge for everyone, especially families.

By my last deployment in 2015, you could live stream video and pretty much everyone had full email and cellphone capability. The only unchanging issue was time zones. Europe is 5-6 hours ahead of Pennsylvania. The desert is 8.