Heck, I reckon you wouldn’t even be human beings if ya didn’t have some pretty strong feelings about nuclear combat. But I want ya to remember one thing, tha folks back home is a countin’ on ya, and by golly

Civilian Life

I was discharged from the Air Force on Friday, April 2, 1965, two days short of my four year enlistment. The early release was the result of my normal discharge falling on Sunday. A month earlier, 3,500 U.S. Marines landed in South Vietnam to defend the Danang airbase. They were the first U.S. combat troops to enter the war. A great many more soon followed.

My direct involvement with the military was behind me and the transition to civilian life was difficult. Prior to going into the service, making a living was not a major issue. In the summer of 1965, it was my major concern. I did not want to move in with my parents, so I began driving a cab. The work provided enough income to let me buy groceries and rent a small room. The flexible hours gave me time to start a career. I soon went to work for a photography studio in Alexandria. The founder had died and his wife was trying to run it. She was one of the most obnoxious people I’ve ever met and even though I enjoyed the work, I couldn’t stand being around her. I left and went back to driving a cab. Then I went to work for a Clarendon photography studio taking baby and children photos. SAC-trained killers and screaming kids don’t mix well. Back to driving a cab.

By this time it had become apparent that Dena and I would never be able to make a go it. I had no desire to get involved with any women, even for a one night stand. In spite of our inability to live together, I still felt an emotional bond. Plus the Vietnam War protests were ushering in drastic social changes. The use of illegal drugs was becoming increasingly widespread. The lasses of the early sixties encouraged sexual advances, but were discrete. They were soon replaced by the ladies of the late sixties, who took the initiative. Some were very aggressive. On several occasions I was approached a lady stranger with the greeting, “Let’s screw.” I didn’t like the twist of events.

I often drove my cab at nights so that I could spend my days job hunting and doing an occasional free lance photography job. One night my fare was an attractive older woman. We began to talk and were soon engaged in a very engrossing conversation going. A few nights later, I took her out. Peggy was thirty-four, ten years my senior. She was from Scotland. She had put her husband through college and medical school and then he left her. She worked at the World Bank and was independent and self-sufficient. She was a wonderful woman and we ended up having a wonderful affair that lasted over a year and a half.

Peggy had an interesting collection of friends that included a real life nymphomaniac. Pattie was married to a navy commander, but was always ready for extra-curricula sex. Any time one of my buddies wanted a quickie, she was available. One night Pattie stopped by the apartment, grinning from ear to ear. She bragged that she had screwed fourteen men in the sauna room of the National Press Club. It would be interesting to know who they were.

Toward the end of the summer, I drove to Pennsylvania to see my good friend Jim Nestor. He had been discharged four or five months earlier and was finishing up summer school. He returned to Arlington with me for a well-needed vacation. I talked him into seeing IBM and they were so impressed by his knowledge and intelligence that they actively recruited him. He soon joined the computer giant and spent the next eighteen months in their various schools, all while continuing his conventional education. He began working at the N.A.S.A. Space Flight Center just outside of Washington and told me that he was one of only twelve people in all of IBM who could do his job. He graduated from University of Maryland, and went on to get his masters degree and doctorate. He is now deeply involved in astrophysics research.

In August, an employment agency sent me to see the Northern Virginia Board of Realtors. It hired me to photograph homes for multiple listings. For three days a week, I photographed homes in Alexandria and the southern half of Fairfax County. Other guys had other territories. The other two days were spent in production and delivery of the listings. In the morning, we collated and drilled holes in the previously printed pages; that afternoon we delivered them. I rented a room from my boss, Phil DeLauder.

I worked hard by day and studied at night. I took a night course in writing from the University of Virginia extension. For our first project, the instructor urged us to write about something we knew. This resulted in The Greater Victory. In it, I combined the events previously described in The Night SAC Went To War with those of An Intimate Moment to create a suspenseful short story.

I then wrote The Utah Incident. I had learned about it from General Lemay’s autobiography. He was the navigator in the exercise to see determine if the army’s new B-17s could find and sink the battleship Utah. My research included cockpit familiarization which led me to the Smithsonian Museum’s aircraft warehouse and restoration center at Silver Hill, Maryland. It had one of those original B-17s. The Enola Gay was nestled against the back wall of the warehouse. It was the B-29 that had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. She was laying on her belly. The fuselage was in several sections, laying end to end and the wings were laid along side. I walked through the plane and felt a sense of sadness that so majestic an aircraft had come to such a sad end. My escort told me that it would probably never go on display as anti-nuclear warfare feelings were running so high. That was over thirty years ago. Times change and so do feelings. It is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum.

I also took a real estate course sponsored by the Board of Realtors. In the Spring, I passed the exam and received my real estate license. I went to work for a broker on my delivery route. He had just started the business, had no leads, nor any money for advertising. No customers and no hope of getting any. Within a month, I knew I was beating a dead dog, so answered an ad in the newspaper and began selling for Orkin Exterminating Company. The company furnished leads and I sold just about every pitch I made. Things began looking up, but I didn’t stay long.

In late summer of 1966, I acquired the Famous Photographer’s School sales agency for the Washington, D.C. area. The Famous Artist’s School was founded by Albert Dorne. Famous artists compiled it’s correspondence course. The school ran full page ads in national magazines featuring on it’s founders, Norman Rockwell. He was America’s most beloved artists and the ads proclaimed, “We’re looking for people who like to draw.” It was very successful. After Dorne’s death, the marketing people took over and Famous Writer’s School soon came into being. The photography school was the most recent addition. The course had not sold well. My first-hand knowledge of photography combined with my persuasive sales abilities proved extremely useful. I found the course very easy to sell. Within a few weeks, I led the nation in sales and I often made over a thousand dollars a week - good money for a guy only twenty-four years old. I rented an apartment in Roslyn, overlooking the Potomac River and Georgetown and bought a new car, a VW Karman Ghia.

My work led to my meeting a lot of interesting people. I signed up a young marine over at Henderson Hall Marine Station, near the pentagon. He introduced me to his boss, Joe Rosenthal, the photographer who took the famous Iwo Jima flag raising picture. He was then the editor of Leatherneck Magazine. I had the opportunity to visit the facility where the navy tests ship hulls and the Patuxen Naval Air Station, home of the navy flight school.

Most of my prospects were guys my age and we soon became friends. I learned much from Ernie Pappas, who worked in the photography lab of National Geographic Magazine. I was also doing free lance photography and would sometimes take one of my students with me. Bill Silliman was a young pharmacist, who had already become bored with his chosen occupation. He wanted to photograph girls for Playboy. He lived in one of the high-rise apartments that line Shirley Highway. Betsy was one of his neighbors. She was a professional model and he asked me to go with him to photograph her. She was so impressed with my pictures that she introduced me to her agency and soon I was doing portfolio shots for many of Washington’s top models. This led to some fashion assignments. It was a complete about-face. My time in SAC centered around destructive forces. Now my energies were directed toward creative achievements.

About this time, I received a phone call from Jimmy Bowdoin. He had retired from the Air Force and he and Mama had gone their separate ways. He was more or less drifting. He drove up from Alabama and moved in with me. I helped him get a job as maintenance supervisor of a luxury apartment building. His drinking had increased as had my father’s. They hit it off great and spent many a day drinking their lives away in our basement. After one of these bouts, my dad told me that Jimmy had told him of the many problems that I had encountered in Plattsburgh. I had never mentioned them to him. Dad said that he was proud of the way that I had handled them. It was one of the few compliments he ever paid me.

Somehow a fellow named Larry Studnicky heard about my success selling for Famous Schools and approached me about working with him. He owned the Washington franchise for Success Motivation Institute. My Famous Schools sales calls were in the afternoon and evenings, so I gave it a try in the mornings. I did a great job of selling the courses, but part of the program involved training the sales forces of various companies. Teaching was a new experience. I had anywhere from ten to thirty students in a class and felt a little awkward because I was the youngest person present. It was fun, but it simply resulted in too many hours as my workday was running from 8:00AM until 11:00 PM. I wanted to spend more time with my photography and writing. After a couple of months, I had to give it up.

My Scot lady, Peggy, and I were still going together. We both maintained our own apartment, but I spent most of my nights with her. We never thought of our relationship as leading anywhere, it was an end in itself. We enjoyed each other’s company, but dated others. We often talked to each other about our beaus.

In February or March of 1967, I met Susanne, a young lady from Germany. After a whirlwind courtship, we married. A year later she got her permanent residence visa and she walked out on me a few days later. I’ve only since her twice since. I was devastated by having been so used. Nympho Pattie soon introduced me to Roberta, a vivacious redhead whose Air Force husband was fighting in Vietnam. We were both lonely and enjoyed one another’s company. We spent many evenings together, but the relationship was plutonic.

I had developed an especially close relationship with one of my students and we had often photographed his attractive wife, who worked at NASA. Judy and I went out for lunch one day and she announced that she was in love with me. She said that I had suffered drastically and that Roberta was nothing more than instant rebound. She maintained that the sexy redhead was nothing a black widow spider getting ready to eat it’s pray. She would devour me. The tragic thing about it is that I was so lonely and vulnerable that I would let her do it. Judy said that she wanted to show me true love. She asked if she could spend the weekend with me. Shocked, I pushed myself from the table and asked, “What does Steve have to say about that.” She replied that he had volunteered to baby sit. We had our weekend together, but it made Roberta furious. She felt that it was a threat to our relationship. The result was an incredibly intense affair. About this time, I sold the VW and bought a new Corvette. Beautiful woman, hot car, neat bachelor pad and money in the bank. What more could a young guy want?
* * *

In 1968, racist Alabama governor ran for President on an Independent Party ticket. General Lemay became his vice-presidential running mate. I doubt if he ever had illusions about winning the election. Rather he used the opportunity to attack the current administration’s policies toward our nuclear deterrent. He had no use for Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. Wallace never had a chance at the presidency, but if he had been elected, then assassinated (as was quite popular at the time) or otherwise unable to serve, then Curtis Lemay would have become president. The Constitution gives Congress the exclusive right to declare war, but timing had become far too critical to permit a conventional declaration. Congress responded by passing the Emergency War Powers Act; it gave the President the authority to order to a nuclear strike. Lemay was a hawk and had no hesitation about using nuclear weapons. I have no doubt that if he had become president, he almost surely would have found some reason to use them, sooner or later. It was a scary thought.

My last sales appointment for the day usually ended about 11:00pm and I’d often drive home on the George Washington Parkway. As I went by the pentagon, I often noticed every light on the top floor of the River Side was on. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were working late. My stomach would tighten, as I wondered what threat was on the boards. I was still living in the shadow of nuclear holocaust and didn’t like it.

Control Data was a leading computer manufacturer. Management knew that the industry’s growth would be largely dependent on the availability of technical skills, so it started it’s own school to teach computer maintenance and programming. Technical people are usually weak in marketing skills, so it had gotten off to a bad start. A new sales manager was brought in and as luck would have it, he had been one of my students when I taught with Success Motivation Institute. He asked me to set up the sales program for Control Data. We soon reached an agreement and I took on the task. Within six weeks, the program was in place and the next four courses were soon sold out. I’d done my job and done it well. I was handsomely rewarded, but what was perhaps even more important, I’d learned a great deal about computers. The school’s computer filled several dozen large metal cabinets that contained memory, storage, and processing equipment. The whole thing was run from a console, which was little more than an IBM Selectric typewriter. This giant system had 4K of memory and sold for about two and half million dollars.

In June Roberta’s husband returned from Vietnam and we soon met. I won’t go into the details, but it was a very traumatic time. Compounding the stress was the fact that my dad died. He had been drinking very heavily and during the past year had been very abusive to me and Mom. Grandfather died three years earlier, so Dad’s death left Joel at the helm of the family business. I had no use for him and he had none for me, so I never fulfilled my role of heir-apparent. Mom had suffered greatly because of Dad’s behavior. There were things that I wanted to do with my life, but I postponed them so I could be close by to help her through the time of crises. In the months following Dad’s death, I helped her get settled. Finally I felt my duties had all been fulfilled.

Since discharge, I had honed my photography skills and was learning to write. I wanted to combine the two skills and make movies. The emotional trauma of Dad’s last year, two failed marriages, and my misadventure with Roberta had all taken their toll. I tied my tent and sleeping on my Corvette’s luggage rack and headed to Hollywood.