This is the story of my meeting Patsy Simpson at Fort Benning, Georgia in 1952,  just after returning from the Korean War, courting her, and getting Married on June 21st, 1953. 

The series of articles following this one will tell - and illustrate - the story of our 57 years of Married Life together, our three children and their growing up until they left home. Then about their kids and kids kids.

There will be a separate series of articles detailing Patsy Simpson Hughes' Simpson (father) and Morrissey (mother) family back to at least her Simpson ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War in 1775. And a separate series of articles detailing my Welsh ancestry whose direct line goes back to Dafydd Ap Hugh, 1588.

The Fort Benning Connection

Meeting the woman I was going to marry did not take place at Fort Benning in the typical fashion such meetings take place between men and women.

In fact, through a series of circumstances it did not take place until just after I returned from the Korean War in the spring of 1952. And it took place because Patsy Simpson knew about me at least a year before I knew she even existed.

That is a story in itself.

During the last four months of West Point, we graduating had a choice of what Army branch among the  'Combat Arms' to join - Infantry, Artillery, Armor, Combat Engineers, or Combat Signal Corps. Or a quarter of the class could join the Army Air Corps, which would evolve into the US Air Force. (That was before the Air Force Academy existed)

We met in a large auditorium and names were called of in order of general academic merit.

By the time my name was called, I could not elect 'Engineers' - But then as I said and thought much about it, I wanted to see the whites of my enemies eyes - and only Infantry offered that. So I chose Infantry.

I was first sent to Fort Riley to lead the  troops there, according to my original orders and requested assignment - but by the time I got there in September after my graduation leave, I was put on orders to ship out to Korea to join, as a replacement  2d lieutenant on the front line of the 8th Army which was getting battered and defeated by the highly trained, large, and modernly equipped (by the Soviets) large North Korean Army.

And I was sent without even the normal 'Infantry Basic Officers' courses all new lieutenants from previous West Point classes routinely got. There was too pressing a need for new officer cannon fodder for the war we surprisingly had. All I really knew was 'Duty, Honor, Country,' general military leadership principals, and how to fire well on the rifle range.

Fateful Choices by my other Classmates

Meanwhile my classmates who had chosen Airborne and Rangers were required, first, to be shipped to Fort Benning to undergo both types of specialized training that would take several months, before they could join fighting units.

While I, landing at Inchon in October, and after eating Thanksgiving dinner in a bombed out building in Pyongyang, North Korea, joined my unit - Company K, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, near the Yalu River - JUST as the huge Chinese Army intervened and poured over the border to defeat both the Marines and Army forces in the bitter December Korean winter of 1950. The 7th Cav was an ordinary boots-on-the-ground Infantry Regiment, whose proud tradition went back to Custer's cavalry and the Little Big Horn. And was fighting to survive more Indians - err Chinese - when I joined it.

I would soon get my idealistic West Point wish, in spades.

So what did all that have to do with meeting Patsy Simpson?

My Classmates

Meanwhile, and utterly unbeknownst to me - I had never been to Fort Benning - nor did I know someone called Patricia Simpson, a lovely 23 year old Army Brat who lived with her family, headed by Major and Mary Simpson serving there.  My  butter-bar (after their yellow colored 2d lieutenant rank insignia)  classmates did their training by day and hung out at the Officers Club and its Pool in the late summer afternoons and evenings. Even while the war, and its bad news, raged on.

Patsy Simpson, and quite a number of other eligible young Army-brat ladies, and numbers of girls from nearby Columbus, Georgia hung out with and dated them. Fort Benning, Home of the Infantry, was overflowing with student officers.

Recently graduated young unmarried West Point officers would be quite a catch for any of the local girls.

So as the story went, as confessed to me later by Patsy and admitted by many of my classmates, those classmates of mine who hung out at the pool were greatly frustrated by not getting to fight - yet - in the Korean War, where many of their classmates, including me, were already fighting, and where a number had already been Killed in Action. A real war.

And so Patsy heard their talk, as they kept making comments like 'That damned Dave Hughes already has a Silver Star and the Combat Infantry Badge.' The word had gotten back.

They were jealous, and I was being regarded as the quintessential warrior-leader they all wished to be, and had spent 4 years at West Point preparing to be. As an Army brat she was impressed.

She was so beautiful - and available - many of them wanted to marry her. A Saudi Arabian exchange officer offered her father 8 Camels for her hand if he would permit getting her for his bride. Her father refused. And she declined all offers.

Patsy Simpson was the highly desirable Belle of  Fort Benning.

Warrior's Return

By March, 1952, after a year in combat, wherein I even rose to command my Company K, 7th Cavalry, I came home. While I had not even attended the Infantry Officers Basic course myself, I was assigned to Fort Benning to train other lieutenants - including some of my classmates - in the arts of war. 

I not only had the Silver Star my classmates fretted about, I already had been awarded a second Silver Star, two Bronze Star awards for Valor, two Purple Hearts - and the Distinguished Service Cross - the 2d highest US Military combat decoration. Even the Greek Cross of War. And had won - with those Willy and Joe infantry draft soldiers - two titanic battles while accomplishing all our missions, and capturing 193 Chinese soldiers with the last 15 men besides myself still standing. All six of my officers under me had been killed or wounded in the last battles.

Needless to say the word got around Fort Benning that an Infantry Warrior par excellence had come home.

First Meeting and Love

So when I walked into the Officer's Club one night in my uniform, with all those medals, in ribbon form, on my chest, as a 1st Lieutenant, with a small delicate blue Parakeet bird perched on my shoulder, I was introduced by a still - butter-bar 2d lieutenant classmate - to one Patsy Simpson, it was love at first sight for both of us.

Soon we were having dinner alone  at the club while the Parakeet sipped from the champagne glasses before us.

And soon we were doing goofy things, like jointly buying a Bicycle Built for Two.

Our Tandem Bicycle which we rode around the Post. When we got tired of that we couldn't decide who would buy out whom. So we decided we might as well get married to settle the matter

I had swept the Belle of Fort Benning off her feet. And left my classmates, who had yet to reach Korea and Combat, in the dust. My early decisions not to follow the herd paid off, in more ways than one.

In a separate series of articles, under Military Years,  before I ever met Patsy, I  tell of my days and experiences in the Korean War which greatly defined me.

Next Article 'Married Life (2)'

Being unmarried when I arrived at Benning to do perhaps a two or three year  tour instructing officers on Infantry Tactics, I was assigned a miserable Bachelor quarters room.

It was miserable for several reasons. First of all I was still so junior in 'rank' that I didn't rate the larger - older brick-stone - quarters that bachelor Captains and above got. Secondly the very small one-room apartment I got was in the old wooden frame buildings slapped up during WWII. And those many barracks-type rooms were used by junior-rank officer students who were assigned to take courses at Fort Benning for just a few months before moving on or back to their original post. So it was just a 'temporary' living arrangement. Thirdly I got there in the coming heat of the Georgia summer, with no air-conditioning. 

So I determined to spend as little time in that small room, with shared bathroom, as I could. So I spent as much time when I was not working out of my equally hot instructional office near the training areas, in one of the smaller air conditioned officers-clubs scattered over the huge post - for breakfast and lunch. And ate in the central officers club for dinner, as often as I could with Patsy. 

There were a number of large grassy parks with huge trees nearby, where she liked to walk her dog for its exercise. I often joined her there sometimes driving past them on the way to the club, seeing her, stopped, and walked with her.  There was a small circular park in front of the Fort Benning headquarters, which was rimmed by Old Army officer quarters, in which Patsy lived with her family.

And across the street was the central Fort Benning Army Chapel.

Music

I soon learned that Patsy loved classical music, especially operas. She had quite a collection of long play vinel recordings at home.

Her favorite piece was Claude Debussy's Claire de Lune. (you can hear it by clicking here Claire de Lune )

I was, after the last savage year of war in Korea, hungry for some cultural solace (which was the primary reason I bought that fragile small defenseless parakeet the day I landed in Phoenix to visit with my Aunt Arleen, and walked past a pet shop.)

I was delighted that she liked fine music. She began to listen to it while she was growing up to young womanhood in Germany where her father was stationed after the war and they lived in places like Garmish, where, in spite of the wreckage of war, music was coming back.

There were no FM radio stations in the US beyond the east coast yet. I could only listen to some popular music on Georgia AM stations - lots of it twangy country, in my bachelor room on a dinky radio. No solace there.

So I went out and got a portable LP record player, first of all to play in my room when I retired for the day. I borrowed some of her records. Then I started building up a collection of my own. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms - more than opera.

After a number of dates eating at the officer's club we started driving out of Columbus, Georgia south on a side road to a wonderful small restaurant for dinner where I brought that player, and played - low enough not to disturb the few other guests that were there - and there was no music on hand.

About that time I had been training the parakeet progressively by releasing him into the open air, near my quarters, whistling, and he would return. But one windy day he went out of sight over a wooden rooftop and never came back. End of that episode, where other officers would look at the bird perched on my shoulder, then at the two very impressive rows of combat ribbons on my chest and wonder about my sanity.

No. I simply was marching to my own drum in this world, as I had begun to do even at West Point, once I had the self confidence which comes from succeeding against all odds. By my tour at Fort Benning, filled with young officers who had yet to fight in a real war, and had won,  had pretty much earned that right fighting on behalf of my country, having near the end of my fighting, decisively thrown both the North Korean and Chinese Armies back out of South Korea in my assigned sector where they originally two years before had been invaded and depressed. Some called it the Forgotten War, and other Americans, having not been drafted, just shrugged and lived their contented American lives that were beginning to prosper in the 1950s, ignoring the cost in blood and treasure it had taken to defend that small country from the brutality of two communist regimes.  

In some of my letters back home from Korea I had named it the 'Second Page War' - aware of just how much Americans ignored it.

It was also about then after months back in the United States that I became used to the American public trait of ignoring that which did not directly threaten them or their immediate welfare, like a large draft would have. The not-in-my-backyard syndrome which grew up the further away that younger Americans got from the memories of Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, the 450,000 men killed in WWII - and heading for 34,000 killed in the 'small' war in Korea. I was getting less sure that the American public deserved the sacrifices its soldiers made on its behalf.

I was also still keenly sensitive to the losses my Company K, 7th Cavalry - largely draftees - had taken in Korea (which reached 67 killed, over 200 wounded, and one captured, during its 15 months in combat.)

And I was developing an itch to express myself on the the larger lessons of that war in my maturing mind once my life was normal back in the United States.

Photography and Patsy

And there was nothing more pleasantly 'normal' than my growing love for Patricia Simpson as we walked around in the park, swam in the club pool. dined with classical music in the background, drove around the post where her younger brother was already in airborne training to join the 187th Airborne Brigade in Korea.

I started taking pictures of her - not really posed - but highlighting her flawless complexion, very long braided hair, and that serenely beautiful look. I still have some of those pictures. 

Sometimes at night I would drive her out to the deserted bleacher area of some of the training areas right off what was named the 'Harmony Church Road' (after an old pre-military Georgia settlement) where we would sit in the dark bleachers in the moonlight while I tried to explain to her what was I was teaching the young officers and candidate officers of OCS on their way to Korea and their possible death or injury unless they listened to my advice.

And of course I would take her to all the social functions that Fort Benning's Tactical Department held, which were many, partly because key officers were always coming and going.  I was acutely conscious of what a beauty Patsy was as my date, especially when she was dressed up. Fellow officers would wink at me and complement me for having such a beauty on my arm. According to some of the comments which came to me from their Army wives, we became a 'beautiful couple.' They wondered if marriage was in our plans.

In turn she invited me to the several 'charity' functions that Army wives and their grown children put on. I would have to do goofy things like put my face in the center of the target of soft balls to win prizes. 

The Fort Benning newspaper began referring to the 'Patrician' beauty of Patsy Simpson.

As I got to know her father and mother, ate with them on occasion, she and they let me put a small Darkroom in their basement, so I could process and blow up many of the pictures I took of her with my black and white Rolliflex. I was really good at that, remembering the photography and darkroom lessons my Aunt Mary and Uncle John taught me back in high school, and my practice at that at West Point - where I had bought a good projector.

As we seemed to get more serious in our relationship, we bought a bicycle-built-for-two. We split the cost. And we began riding around the post on weekends. When we finally sold it, Patsy joked that since we couldn't agree how to split the value of the bike, we had to get married instead.

And Patsy owned a dog she named Jane. It was her constant companion while she lived in her family's quarters right across from the headquarters at Fort Benning. We would walk it, too, to the park/parade grounds. When we got married, Jane was with us right until we got orders to go to Haddonfield for a Master's Degree in 1954, then we had to leave her with Patsy's mother at their home.

Church

While there was a beautiful small Army chapel - full sized church actually - right across the street from Patsy's quarters, she, having been baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal faith in the historic Fort Monroe Chapel, she preferred to go to Sunday church at the large civilian Episcopal Church in downtown Columbus, Georgia. 

Having not attended church services since West Point two and a half years earlier, I started going to Sunday services with her there.

The Army's standard Protestant services were derived from the Episcopal Churches of England - which most of the English Crown, and then American Army officers before the American Revolution embraced. It was very close in liturgy with what I was used to every Sunday for 4 years of West Point. 

It was no big change for me, to participate in the services Patsy was familiar with. I had by than time put Christian Science on my back burner and had attended no local services.

Great Writer?

John and Nancy Flynn invited us over to dinner with them many times during 1952. John had been my first company commander in Korea.  Sometimes I went alone, carrying my portable typewriter with me to sit out on their veranda and pound out many of the stories that I had bottled up inside me from the major experiences I had gone through leading up to and in, the Korean War.

Flynn, a Major teaching higher level Tactics in Fort Benning's Tactical Department by now, took a great interest in me. While I had been just one of his 6 officers in Company K, 7th Cavalry during the war, the combination of my being thrust into violent combat right out of West Point without even the benefit of formal Infantry Lieutenant Training I should have ahead of time - except for the exigencies of that war -  but my evident natural abilities and evident - to him and those who recommended me for a series of awards for valor - made him take a special interest in my career. We had long talks.

During that period in mid 1952 the formal presentation to me of the Distinguished Service Cross for my battles on Hill 347 took place. Had I been back home in Colorado it would have brought out at least a Congressman and other Politicians, and possible a ceremony before the Secretary of the Army in Washington or Denver. But since there were many deserved combat decorations handed out to soldiers and officers who had returned to Fort Benning from the Korean war, still going on, this was just another day at the military office for them, and me.

As I recall the Major General Post Commander, and a couple Colonels in my chain of instructional command, and the local and Fort press, attended in his office. Not important enough for me to have asked Patsy Simpson and her Major Father to be invited to attend.

However both the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News of Colorado, made a pretty big deal of it. As they had both my awards for Silver Stars at an earlier time while I was still in Korea.

Then, a little earlier I had received a big fat $500 check, notice to me, and a flurry of press releases by the Ladies Home Journal that my 'Shanks Bootees' story I wrote during the blackest days of the December '50 retreat in Korea was going to be published in the July 1952 edition. The Ladies Home Journal was considered then to be a prestigious Literary Journal besides being a premier woman's magazine.

I had already written a second story "Death of a Soldier" while composing it at the Flynn household. And submitted it to the same Journal. With the first story, only 1,000 words long - but being paid $.50 a word, I thought as a lark I would write the next one, twice as long and see if I got paid twice as much. I did and they obliged - I was paid $1,000 for 2,000 words.

With all that and the substantial publicity that also garnered me in the Fort Benning newspaper, I think Patsy thought I was enroute to become a Great Writer. Part of my appeal for her? She never expressed it that way - but all our 57 years of married life right up to and including on her death bed in 2011, she urged me to write, write, write, no matter what else I was doing. 

She became my greatest fan.

In the Hospital

But before there was serious talk of marriage in the early spring of 1953 I was hit by a painful malady.

I, as all the officers on the post had to take periodic physicals. Part of that entailed being taken to one of the grassy parks,  be measured for run, jump, sit ups, pull ups, and pushups to meet the Army standard.

When it was my turn, I passed all the tests just fine. I was still in good physical shape. One of the tests was the maximum number of sit ups I could do. I don't remember what my count was, but it was to the point I really flopped back down harder on my back near the exhausting end.

The next day I was sitting in Patsy's home, listening to a record, when a very sharp pain hit my back. I stood up and it hit even sharper, and was so continuous I doubled up and had to sit, then lay out on the floor. Alarmed Patsy got her old Studebaker out and took me to the hospital.

The long and the short of it was that I had been hit by a large kidney stone. First and last one I ever had. The situps may have dislodged it.

In any case, after X-rays were taken the Army doctor gravely said I might have a form of tuberculosis in a kidney. What? The thought crossed my mind that if I married, would that threaten the health of any children?

There was no other sign, then or later, so I forgot about it, and just wondered whether I was susceptible to kidney stones. Answer was no.

After a painful retrograde procedure the stone passed, I spent one full day in the hospital, where Patsy visited me.

I don't know whether that episode reminded me I was not immortal, in spite of surviving Korea with only two lesser Purple Heart wounds and avoided many, many close shaves, any one of which could have killed me. But I decided I should starting thinking seriously about getting married. An Army career often makes for difficult marriages, but it was obvious that a girl who grew up as an Army brat at least knew what such a life entailed. Patsy had lived such a life already She could be a perfect Army wife, no matter how many wars or temporary deployments pulled me away. I was not only in love with her, but she seemed like a perfect wife-in-waiting for me.

And so, in the early spring of 1953 I ordered a West Point  'engagement' "A-pin" matching my class ring crest, including its 1950 year engraved on it. And got ready to pop the question.

Patsy seemed ready to say yes. My daughter remembers her telling that I popped the question casually one night out in the parking lot of the Airborne Club. She rememered it - to her daughter Rebecca, as the time I  put my leg up on a log divider in the parking lot and asked 'Whaddya think about getting married?' I'm not sure I was THAT casual!

But I clearly remember when I presented her with an engagement West Point pearl "A-Pin." She much later revealed to her daughter Rebecca, (not me) she was worried I might not ask her at all to marry me. There were plenty of bachelor officers who either married late, or not at all, being content to date women from around the world. John Flynn, West Point Class of 1944 did not marry Nancy until late 1951.

But when she said yes, she wanted to take her time to get ready for a traditional wedding. So we - she - set the date for June 21st, 1953. She would be 24, I would be 25.

I joined her Trinity Episcopal Church, and was baptized according to Episcopal rules on the 31st of May, 1953.

We had several sessions - marriage counseling - to insure we knew what we were - getting into - with Rev Charles Widney of the Columbus Episcopal Church. He would perform the Wedding Ceremony, which would be held in the Fort Benning Chapel across from her home.

She had all kinds of help getting ready from her mother and her local friends. Her sister Arleigh Coates was chosen as Matron of Honor. Four of her single Army Brat friends were bridesmaids, and her neice Pamela was one of the flower girls. One other girl, Ronnie Green was the "Ring Bearer"

Which was involved in the only hitch in the entire Wedding. I had ordered from the same company - L. G. Balfour- that was a long time jeweler who won the contract and supplied all 670  Class rings to our Class of 50, and the 'A' engagement pins and the 'Miniature' Class ring for wives - all engraved properly, including Patsy and my wedding bands, with its mirror image of  West Point's Crest 'Helmet of Pallas' on the sides. But the two wedding rings didn't arrive in time for the Ceremony! They screwed up the shipping! I had to scramble to a dime store to get two el-cheapo brass wedding bands for the Ceremony. What a laugh. The order arrived two days later, after we had left for the month long honeymoon - with brass wedding rings!

As for the ceremony, both her brothers, Pfc Bailey Simpson - who was an Airborne trooper stationed at Fort Bragg and about to go to Korea, and Vernon Simpson were able to attend the Wedding.

She picked out a beautiful white wedding gown and had her formal portait done before the wedding.

Her father was happy to pay for her wedding, including a reception which would be held at the Fort Benning Golf Course Club.

"O Perfect Love" was the music she selected. Perhaps I can find a digital version to play here. I still have the Sheet music she got from Rev Widney and saved it all these years.)

Meanwhile here is an online U-tube rendition of that most beloved Hymn played at many a wedding.   http://youtu.be/CNtnhL4bHcs 

Just Cntl-Click on that URL above

And Bachelor Capt Dance, who owned a hot Jaguar and was my Best Man at the Wedding located and drove us to the reception in this Model T Ford

Honeymoon

I arranged for the Honeymoon 30 day leave trip through Virginia where we would visit Fort Monroe where she grew up in her teen years, and meet with a few of her Newport News high school days friends. Then through West Point where I would meet with Colonel Alspach, Professor of English - who had shown an interest supporting my getting a Masters of Arts Degree in English, and teach for a three year tour at the Academy.

Then we would stop in New York City, stay two nights and see the Broadway Play "Sound of Music."

Then we would drive through New Hampshire to stay overnight with Lt John Ross and his wife. Where he, a West Point Classmate of mine had been assigned to my Company K, 7th Cavalry in the summer of 1951, and was under my command. But in a combat action in August 19th, 1951, he was badly wounded in the right arm by machine gun fire on a difficult mission to try and take fortified Hill 487. He was patched up and for a time was an Assistant Adjutant at the 7th Cavalry Regimental level, where he actually swore me in while I executed a number of sworn statements accompanying my recommendations for awards for men of my company. But he never really recovered from his brief combat service in Korea, and after we saw he and his wife, he disappeared from the West Point classmates scene.

Finally we would have at least a 10 day stay at the Honeymoon goal I picked out - "Jasper in Quebec," on St Donat lake, Montcalm County, Quebec.  In the St Laurinetan Mountains north of  Montreal, Canada.

 On our way back we would stop in Atlanta, where - pretty much draining my bank account - we would order a really nice, lifelong bedroom suite of furniture from Georgia Furniture makers who were among the best.

When we got back to Atlanta we bought a beautiful, life long Bedroom suite- a four poster bed, two large dressers, and two end tables, all finished in beautiful mahagony veneer. It was shipped to our already existing two bedroom housing project in modern Fort Benning housing.

At last I would be out of my hot bachelor hovel.

Next item Married Life (4) where I will describe Jasper in Quebec where we played on the lake and went up ski lifts.

Part of our travel was to Jasper in Quebec - north of Montreal

Here is the pitch, a promo photo of water skiing (somewhere I have a picture of me water skiing there which I will post when I find it)

The newspaper reports of our wedding

(this

Meanwhile go to Married Life (5) and it will start with the birth of 1st son David

But AT LAST I was out of those small, old, hot, WWII model wooden Bachelor 'rooms.'

Our first two years of Married Life were spent at Fort Benning. Now I had been at Benning one year already, before we were married, starting my duties as a Tactical Department Instructor. That tale, with pictures, is under 'Benning Years' rather than here "Married Life'. Here much of that and the next year, through the summer of 1954 rotated around our first child, David, who was born May 3d, 1954.

I always joked that since I could't have him born in Colorado, I wanted him born on a 'Federal Reservation' (i.e. Fort Benning Army Hospital) rather than being a 'Georgia Cracker'

So to get right to the point - here are pictures of Patsy ready to go to the Hospital with unborn David. Right after his birth, our Instant Assouncement I made, and then me holding the product we both produced. I had the easy, fun job producing him.

Feeding the newborn David

And of course Jane, Patsy's dog which came with the marriage, had to get in the first act of educating very young David.

Out on the Economy for a Year

Our married life, which started on an Army Post - Fort Benning, with its PX and Commissary and Army Hospital where young David was born, and our Army supplied married quarters, was not to last.

For when we got orders for me to go get a Masters Degree from the civilian University of Pennsylvania we had to move to Haddonfield, New Jersey, from where I would commute through Camden, NJ to 'school'.

Patsy would be 'on the civilian economy' for at least a year. Since she, as an Army Brat, had moved with her parents several times during her teen years she was familiar with what would be involved. And knew how to pack.

For one thing she had - which came from the years her father and mother and she lived in Germany - much fine glassware, and bric a brac porcelain figurines. All our 57 years of married life she added to that collection, which made it through all the moves with her packing it.

Of course we had the fine mahogany veneer bedroom suite which also lasted all of our 57 years together. It was the living room furniture that changed often. 

So we began life with Foot Lockers for the next 25 years. So the Army moved our furniture in a van to the Apartment building we leased for a year in Haddonfield. And very young David made his first of many moves.

We still were in long reach of a Commissary on the closest Post, but for all intents and purposes we were on the New Jersey civilian economy.

But because we were renters in an Apartment Complex, I did not have to worry about light or heat or water, or the yard outside. Just keeping our car maintained.

And Patsy's responsibilities were confined to shopping, cooking, and bringing up David.  

Cindy and Chuck Adams

We arrived in Haddonfield, New Jersey on the same orders that Charles Adams, Class of '49 West Point was on. Both of us were to get our Masters Degree, and then teach at West Point for at least 3 years.

I don't remember why we ended up renting in the same Apartment complex, but we did. Charlie and I could car pool to the University and free up one of our cars for our wives. So we  close to them, and since Cindy had just had Bucky Adams just a year off David's age, Patsy and Cindy became fast, fast friends - which lasted all their lives.

Wallworth Apts - which Cindy and Patsy Visited in 1980. We were on the left, they on the right

Here is a photo of Chuck and Cindy, which was taken a year or so after we got to West Point. By the medallion on his dress coat and his Captains bars, I think it was taken June Week 1956.

Chuck and Cindy Adams, Patsy's best lifelong friend.

Rebecca muses about Patsy and Cindy's relationship - " A life long friendship with Aunt Cindy began here in Haddonfield -  Mom thought she was the most elegant graceful woman. Aunt Cindy was the primary reason why my mother collected blue willow china. That was Aunt Cindy's hobby and later became a vocation in the form of an antique store."

Music via Bozak

So with no 'homeowners' or even 'military home occupiers' responsibilities, other than doing my homework and getting to and from classes, some of my time was available for pursuing the finer things of life.

I undertook to build a really Hi-Fi - high fidelity sound music system. I started with the state-of-the-art set of stereo 'Bozak' speakers. For which I had to also build a pair of substantial cabinets - at least 30 inches high, and 20 inches deep and wide - to reinforce the base notes. Cover their front where the sound came through with a gold threaded mesh fabric. And finish them off with a mahogany-color paint. Patsy liked mahogany. 

And of course I bought a separate turntable for long play vinel records, an FM-only Tuner, and a kit amplifier. 

I took a half a year tweaking them until our apartment was filled with recorded, and occasional the newest FM radio station music. Our record collection started to grow.

I was proud of myself, for that system lasted us a good 25 years, until every commercial home sound system was a package deal and hi-fi.

Patsy with young David in front of our house about 1956 which fronted on Thayer Road between the Cadet area and the Thayer Hotel a mile+ away paralleling the Hudson River to the left. Where the band and cadet formations could rehearse long parades in New York or elsewhere.

Another Bundle of Joy

So Patsy became pregnant again. Which pleased us both, and especially Patsy, who said once before we were married that she wanted 'Lots of Kids'.

It remained to be seen how many 'lots' would be, but right here in the Post hospital just 100 steps from our home at the United States Military Academy at West Point, our second child would be born. A true labled Army brat if there was one.

And so, without fanfare or problems, Mary Rebecca Hughes was born, inconveniently, at 4AM on March 28th, 1957 - a year and a half into my 3 year instructional tour at West Point. First name Mary after Patsy's mother's name.

A joke I would never live down came from the fact that Patsy learned about from the Nurses about my not being there just at her birth.

The fact was I left young David in the care of a Classmate's wife who lived in the Central Apartments next to the Hospital, and went to the hospital after midnight.

But since nothing seemed to be happening, I first lolled around the building, and then, as far as the nurses were concerned I disappeared. They thought I went home where they would call me when the time came. The time came. But I didn't answer the phone. They looked around the hospital and I was nowhere to be seen.

Finally Rebecca was born. And they found me sound asleep sitting on the back stairs of the hospital where I had been all the time.

So, since I contributed nothing to the proceedings, nothing bad happened. And, like fathers' everywhere, I first saw her bundled up in the Nursery.

As soon as she was brought home, I took the above picture and turned out the announcement card as shown and mailed many.

Rebecca, much later, and a mom herself observed:

"David got a nice poem to go along with his birth announcement, I got the famous "Baby Basket".

Now I don't know where the basket and wheels came from (I suspect the West Point thrift store!), but I do know that heavily pregnant mom made the skirt from scratch and decorated it with light veiling and yellow ribbons using her trusty singer sewing machine.

I guess they did not know whether the baby was going to be a boy or girl, so went with yellow!

Anyway, the hard work was done, the skirt ironed to perfection with a lot of starch, the ribbons wound around and tied into pretty bows and all stood back to admire it.

While almost 3 year old David was riding circles around the basket on his tricycle, Dad got out the camera and took a picture of this masterpiece. His wife was so proud at her thriftiness.

Without further ado, David rode into the skirt and ripped a long tear along the front.

To this day, the tear is there, with mom's hasty hand stitches.

Edward graced this basket as a newborn (his picture comes later!), and so have my children, Jennifer and Lindsey. Their pictures will be included in this narrative when they were born in 1982 and 1985.

I think I was able to get Caitlyn Patricia Tilton 2003 (Jennifer's daughter and Patsy great granddaughter) in it once for a picture. I set it up for Nathan Tilton 2006, but alas, he didn't get into it before it was dismantled and put back into storage. Lindsey declined the family baby basket for Brynn (something about wanting something newer) , but yet it still resides at my home awaiting further babies.

Did Ed's boys end up in it for a picture?"

Mother Hughes Visits

My mother, Helen, still working in Denver and living alone, wanted to see her grandchildren. So we supported her travel out from Colorado, and she was able to make a nice visit to the growing Hughes clan at West Point.

One of the things really stuck in my mind happened during that 1957 mother's visit to us. She had her own room in our quarters, with a window that looked out across the Hudson River to the east of our home high on our hill. Most days that was a lovely view in the sunshine. And she could see the sizable ships going up and down the Husdon either coming from, or going to, Albany.

But sometimes also, the whole scene was fogged over, especially in the spring.

One night we had all retired to our rooms about 9 or later, when we all could hear the fog horns on a large ship honking away on that narrow waterway. Nothing unusual in that.

But that night the fog horns seemed more insistant than ever, and I could hear my mother chuckling to herself over the sound so close by.

Suddenly the house shook and trembled - twice.

The cargo ship had gotten lost in the fog wandered over too far, hit and sheared off what is called the South Dock. A quite small dock with its pier sticking out into the river about 100 feet. Right down below our house high on the hill above it.

The ship's prow had ridden up several feet on the bedrock beside the river, and then slid back into the river.

Now if anyone doubted that West Point indeed sits on a huge largely hidden granite stone on the west side of the River - the 'point' in 'West Point' - all they would have needed was an earthquake meter reader that night and they would have recorded the vibrations from the weight of a large vessel running aground on that granite mountain, causing the ground and houses to shake all the way - 300 feet higher up- to our house!

The accident did no great damage to the steel ships prow. It simply backed into the river channel and dropped anchor while the crew inspected the damage, and saw the wrecked dock in the morning, As we did also, walking down to the Thayer Road level below our house and peeked over the low stone fence down where the once-dock stood.

I really remember that night's proof of just how big the Point's granite was, and my mother's chuckle when she heard the mighty ship run aground after the fog horn sounded.

Exciting night.

And Patsy started out with the SECOND Carriage with Becky on the outdoor second floor porch to our Quarters 9B. Hudson River in view

Our Quarters in the New England Winter

Since we had orders for Hawaii after West Point, and we were on the East Coast leaving from California on a military-contract ocean liner, we had to deal with our household goods and our car.

Now we couldn't see trying to have the Army ship all of our household goods by sea to Hawaii, especially our large mahogany bedroom suite. So, as I recall, the Army paid to move that and the other bulky furniture into storage (I think in Denver) while the smaller items went with us in foot lockers.

The car was another matter. While the Army would ship it to Hawaii, it was already 9 years old. It would make better sense to sell it in the states, and buy a new one either before we left or in Hawaii. Patsy and I discussed it, and decided we would drive it all the way to California, and trade it in for a new, but smaller car. Not much room to drive around on Oahu, Hawaii. Which car the Army would ship. We also would be able to visit Vernon Simpson, Patsy's older brother, in Los Angeles, where he had a restaurant, and he could help us find a good car dealer for a trade in. We would then drive our new car north from LA to Fort Stoneman where it would be turned in for shipping, after we visited my sister Dorothy and her two boys who lived in San Fransisco.

That worked out great. For we traded our getting-old car for a brand new, small, convertable English Morris Minor - a Morris 1000 model. And we lucked out when the Army was able to have it put right on the same ship we, and a substantial number of other military families sailed for assignments in Hawaii.

We, in effect, had the use of it just 24 hours after we docked in Honolulu.

Below is the first picture I took of it,  in Hawaii, with Patsy, David and Becky in it. I think I took that in the rental apartment area of Wahiawa - about 20 miles from Honolulu and just outside Schofield Barracks, where we first lived before I was made a Company Commander - which then required I live on Post in government housing.

That was our most wonderful car for tooling around Oahu, top down as much as it was up. The two kids loved it. And we brought it back from Hawaii after my 3 year tour.

                              Recreation on Oahu

 And of course as soon as we could, we headed for Waikiki Beach in Honolulu to enjoy it.

We would drive down the 20 miles from Wahiawa or Schofield Barracks through the Dole Pineapple and Sugar Cane fields past Pearl Harbor and end up in downtown Honolulu. And of course we would splash around in both the sea and in closed pools along the beach.   

And over time we would buy the native garb for everyone - Mumus, sandals and other things. So we could dress native when the spirit moved us and I had time off. 

On occasion we would venture around the eastern side of Oahu where the Marine bases were. 

You can see iconic Diamond Head in the background of this picture.

Patsy reminded us all, that she was born in the 'old' military Tripler Hospital on Oahu, living with her military family (Sergeant Bailey Simpson, Mary, and their oldest son) in quarters right ON the backside of Diamond Head, because it was, up through WWII, a Coast Artillery post, with cannon pointing out to sea.

She would get into trouble as a toddler, when she clambered up to where the gun ports were.

We were able, as Army personnel without much money, to take advantage of the fact the Army owned a small strip of the shore line, administered by Fort Shafter, the earliest Army Post on Hawaii.  Those facilities were where Army families who could hardly afford the pricey tourist-oriented hotels along the 'strip' could rent rooms, and still enjoy the same beach as the better heeled tourists.    .

In later years (1980s on) the Army contracted with a large new hotel complex called Hale Kola where active duty military personel from all branches, soldiers on 5 days 'R&R' breaks from combat in Vietnam and later wars, wounded warriors, all were offered large discounts for military families. 

Our Morris Minor made our three years on Oahu a joy to ride around in.

Unfortunately I was so busy being a Company Commander in the 35th Infantry and running the 25th Division NCO Academy at Schofield Barracks I neither had the time nor inclination to 'vacation in Hawaii' all the time. Just living there for three years, with its very laid back Hawaiin style was vacation enough for me.

So I don't have many pictures of those first two years when we lived in Wahiawa and in goverment housing on Schofield Barracks. Patsy with her close friend Cindy Adams with whom we served both during Charlie and I were getting our Masters Degree at the University of Pennsyvania, and for three years at West Point, did much of the sightseeing in the family. Cindy, of course, had Bucky who was several years older than David, and Christy who was older than Becky, so the two 'mothers' had lots in common with shopping, entertaining their children.

So home life when we lived on the post, was pretty much like living on a military post everywhere else, except the weather was wonderful always.

And we had a little mutt for a dog which Patsy named 'Kilauea Icki' after the volcano on the Big Island that started to act up while we were there.

While we lived on post, we could have the dog, but it would never have worked when we moved down to Mokolaleia on the beach. Don't remember who we gave him to.

I regetted not scrambling to fly over the volcano while it was active the, on tourist flights.

I do remember sitting on garden chairs outside our home on post, and impressed by the beautiful flora - flowers, plants, trees everywhere - I tried my hand - once only - at painting the scene I could see. That painting is still around my house somewhere. Maybe my kids will find it, recognize it for what it was, and keep it as a memory of my very shortlived 'painting' period.

Meanwhile, go to the next Married Life chapter to see what the very difference 'Living on the Beach' was like. My last year in Hawaii, my duty assignment did not require that I live on Post at Schofield Barracks - close to my military unit which might be called upon to ship out to some trouble spot on short notice.

So we rented a place for out last year which had long ago been homes where the Sugar Cane managers lived on the isolated north western shoreline of Oahu. It was only 20 minutes on a back road down through the sugar cane plantations to the beach. Perfect for our little Morris Minor - with its top down. 

Life on the Beach

We finally DID get to enjoy life as a family 'on the beach' in Hawaii.

It was not until my third year in Hawaii - 1962 after I had commanded a 35th Infantry (Cacti) rifle company in 1959, attended the New Zealand Army Staff and Tactics course for three months in 1960, became the S-3 Operations Officer of the 27th Infantry (Wolfhounds) and travelled to Thailand's jungles in 1961 to learn about how to cope with fighting and existing in that kind of jungle environment that we lived a very relaxed and recreational life where we moved to in 1961-62.

I took advantage of the comparatively quiet time for the 25th Division - the beginnings of the Vietnam War was a few years away - to move with family to Mokuleia beach due north of Schofield Barracks.

We spent a wonderful year living in a cottage RIGHT on the beach, which as you can see from the photo below taken from our 'front yard' was virtually deserted 90% of the time. There were several reasons for that.

First of all, the northwest shore of Oahu is the longest way from Waikiki and Honolulu, which you have to reach either in a rented car or tour vehicle.

Secondly the cottages right on the beach were originally owned by the Sugar Cane managers, where the cane streches even today southward up the slopes toward Schofield Barracks. In fact is it only about a 5 mile drive down through the cane fields to reach the beach.

Thirdly the cottages along the beach have a 'frontage road' behind them and there are only a few, state owned, strips from that road to the beach where visitors can park and walk.

Fourth, that roadway goes past deserted Air Corps Dillingham Field and around famed Kaena Point (which had that Army radar station that detected the enemy planes coming, but which information junior officers at Pearl Harbor ignored while over which the Japanese planes flew on to bomb Pearl Harbor). But it was, at the time we lived there, a dirt road around the point that the Rental Car Companies refuse to let tourists drive over. So very very few cars passed by behind out house. You can see that point in the photo below.

So we had that magnificent stretch of beach virtually to ourselves and those few families who also lived in the small homes.

.

Mokuleia is also an ancient Hawaiian fishing grounds. For the shallow reef extends out for over a mile. Some evenings we could see the torches of locals who venture out to catch fish. Really large fish do not venture in close to the beach, although smaller sharks often chase sting rays fairly close to shore, causing a great splashing commotion in the shallow water very close as they dry to shake off the sharks. And of course eels lurked in every reef cropping.

Once in a while we could see whales blowing and surfacing beyond the edge of the reef.

We had over 50 coconut trees right in our front and side yard. Young David could shimmy up those trees with ease. And he went to elementary school - 2d grade I think - barefoot, in Waialua, just a few miles to the east. He was, being not a native, considered by the natives who made up the majority of the students, a HAOLE .

There was one problem with those coconut trees. They had plenty of coconuts high on them - a good 15 to 25 feet up. Whenever we held evening beach feasts and parties for officers of the Battle Group and their wives, as they milled about drinking my famed 'Fishouse Punch' on the grass where the lighted torches were, I was always worried that a coconut would decide to fall - and brain either one of the officers or their wives.

It never happened, but we would hear the occasional 'thump' as they fell, day or night.

And we would even make our Christmas Card tropical, while our Christmas Tree was something called Ironwood

But of course the real draw was the sea itself. And we would spend every day doing something on the beach or in the water. It was Paradise.

The only bump in our married road came when Patsy, pregnant, miscarried a featus at about 3 months. Cindy Adams, next door, took care of David and Rebecca while I hung out in the hospital. There were no complications. It was that our next child would not be born in Hawaii, but Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

I would go out with my snorkle, a spear gun and try to spear the delicious clawless lobsters that abounded around the reef. Then we would cook themover a fire right on the beach.

When I finally got the recipie from a reluctant fellow beach bum for making Fish House Punch, I started up a batch of that. That involved getting a 5 gallon class jug ( the type the local 7UP plant used), put the ingredients in it - basically Rum - put the whole jug down in the sand with only the top sticking up, let it moulder for a week, then ply all our guests - from Schofield, or up and down the beach - with it.

Fish House Punch

2) - 1/5ths dark rum (Don Q ...not Meyers)

1) -1/5th brandy (Grener French)

1 1/2 pints lemon juice

1 pint strong tea

1/4-1/2 lbs sugar (add up to 1/2 lb as needed)

1 wine glass peach liqueur

Let sit for 1 week ----gets better with age. Very expensive and VERY POTENT.

Guests would get properly snockered and then we all would swim out and spear our own lobsters for dinner by torchlight.

While we were interested in the lobsters, there were so many colorful tropical fish that Patsy and the two children loved to wade out on the reef at low tide, look at them swimming around, and young David like to try and spear them.

I even tried to start a salt - ocean water - aquarium. Got about a 20 gallon glass sided tank, took a slurp gun - a transparent plastic tube with a plunger at one end, swam out with glass and snorkle and sucked in a variety of just colorful fish and put them in the tank.

That lasted about 2 months, until I caught a small octopus, tried to put it in the aquariam with all the other critters, but it kept climbing out of the tanks. The labor to keep all the fish and tiny 'horsemen' and octopus alive got to be too much trouble, so that ended. Below is Patsy with the net the octopus is in.

One of the lasting (50 years) keepsake from those Beach Living Days was a colorful fish I speared and mounted - more from its famous name that gave rise to a song about Hawaii in the 1930s. One line in the song is

"...and the humuhumunukunukuapua go swimming by"

Here is that mounted fish I speared 50 years ago

And of course the children thrived.

But all good things come to an end. I was preparing to ask for a fourth year in Hawaii - which the usual rules would permit - but I was stunned to get the news I was selected to go for a year at the Command and General Staff College to graduate from it. Rats!

So that nipped our Tropical Paradise plans in the bud. So sadly in April of 1962, Patsy, I, David and Rebecca packed our bags, drove our Morris Minor down to the dock at Pearl harbor to be loaded, and we boarded the ocean liner. But the Aloha spirit was still alive, as a whole gaggle of friends from Schofield Barracks showed up in our stateroom, to party with us before sailing.

So sadly we sailed back to the US - where we would live for a year in lovely, hot, dry Leavenworth, Kansas. Aloha.

A Sad/Happy Epilogue

Just a week before the love of my life, Patsy died, her greatest friend, Cindy Adams, herself getting elderly, was able to talk by telephone to Patsy, and then send an hilarious story about Life on the Beach which the two of them kept secret from both their husbands - me - and Charlie Adams, all these 60 years. Here it is full text, just as Cindy wrote and sent it, and I put it here.

HELICOPTER STORY: (For Patsy from Cindy, her best friend)

Once upon a time many long years ago there was a beautiful, beautiful island and the name of the island was Oahu and the people who lived there loved the greenery, the flowers, the ocean and the coral reef. One young captain warrior who was American and his wife who loved to wear bikinis and their two children lived in an ocean front house.

The children were quite- young and quite blonde and the natives of this beautiful island were dark -skinned; some were Hawaiian and some were Portuguese. The children went to school with these little Hawaiian children and the Japanese children, they rode a school bus and the school bus was a big orange bus and it was driven by George and Annie. It would come down the little gravel road behind the house and the radio would be going full blast with George and Annie and all the children would be squealing.

They would go through the cane fields and wind up at the school that looked like something out of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Anyway, one day the mother just for the heck of it - let's call her Cindy) loved to sunbathe and she was lying out in the front of her house at the edge of the ocean – (there was a very narrow strip of sand) in her favorite bikini having a wonderful sun bath and her next door neighbor and dearest friend was Patsy. Patsy and Cindy sometimes got into a little mischief –( not intentionally mind you) but things seemed to happen to them - people called them Lucy and Ethel and probably some people called them other things. One day Cindy lying out in the bikini having a wonderful sun bath and a helicopter descended right over where she was – it was stirring up grass and sand.

She thought “oh, that idiot”, but she was getting kind of use-to people hovering in helicopters if you spend much time in bikinis on the beach, I guess. There was a passenger in that helicopter and he kept pointing and making gestures and them took off. A little while later Patsy called me and said, "Cindy come over here, I want you to swear on the Bible." It wasn't an ordinary request like come get a cup of coffee - come swear on the Bible - didn't sound like Patsy. I went over and she sure enough had a Bible and she said, "Now David’s career and Charles' career probably depend on what’s going to happen and maybe on what's already happened. You are sworn to secrecy and so am I."

It seems like a Lt. Col. Metz was a Battalion Commander of her husband's outfit had called Patsy and had made arrangements for an anniversary party for a couple (newlyweds) in their Battalion and it was to be a surprise. Now the surprise was to be that (this was their first year anniversary) Patsy was to turn her house over to this young couple and Col. Metz would see to it that a helicopter brought this young man - didn't tell him where he was going- brought him on orders (field training and camouflage wear and all of that) and told him he was dropping him off in this secret spot on the beach and he was to go up and deliver this package at a house there. Col Metz told Patsy “Cindy was out sunbathing when I came over to show the pilot where to let this young man off on the day he is to do this anniversary drop off and where to pick him up. And Cindy saw me and I know she must have recognized me and she'll be wondering so you have to let her in on the secret too - just swear her on a Bible."

So we went through that and Patsy and I started making arrangements for this anniversary that was coming up that these people didn’t know anything about and we didn't know them. We had some fishhouse punch left over from David's promotion party and odds and ends of food but we swore the children (our children) to secrecy, that if a helicopter came to land to just get out of the way it was alright and not to say anything about it.

At the appointed time Patsy and Cindy were watching very carefully and listening - Jody 's husband was a helicopter pilot himself and he was pretty picky and we knew that if Jody found out about this misuse of Government property she probably would tell and our husbands might get into a little trouble but our husbands didn't know anything about it - we never did confide in them to this day. This will be the first.

Anyway we got everything all ready and we were out watching anxiously for the helicopter and we heard the chop chop chop and saw it coming and then the pilot was coming down and it looked good, he was almost to my spot on the beach in front of my house but he kept on going, the helicopter kept skimming right along. Well, that wasn't supposed to happen, he was supposed to land and let this young man out in a hurry and then take off and not let the helicopter stay on the beach. As we looked the helicopter descended on a grassy spot up the beach (Where the civilian aide for the Army, the VIPs who attended all of the parties and things the military gave the liaison I guess it was with the military - where he had his lovely beach home.)

The helicopter was there and this young man sprang out of the helicopter, full camouflage thinking he was on a secret mission on a maneuver- carrying this package. We were trying to yell "come back, come back, come back," but of course he couldn't hear us with that engine going, so we sent Bucky and fortunately he was fleet- footed and he went running down the sand and we said, "Bucky tell that young man he is in the wrong place, tell him to come here, tell him to come to us." So, Bucky ran down there and he told him and he said, "No, I'm supposed to give it ... " and Bucky said, "No sir, my Mom says for you to go to our house." So the helicopter pilot took off again and came down and landed and let the young man hop out in a hurry, and then because we were sure we were going to be caught (you know helicopters are pretty noisy on a quiet beach) and the young man went running up in Patsy's yard and Patsy was at the door saying, "Come on in, come on in, hurry, hurry, hurry." He thought we really were crazy, he was being kidnapped, I guess, and here was this woman saying come on in to her house. He had no idea that his bride was there waiting for him. She had no idea that her husband was supposed to come. She understood that Patsy had been nice enough and kind enough to invite her as a newcomer to come down and spend the night and enjoy the beach and now look who's here - her bridegroom. Oh, then Patsy turned the house over to them and they had the punch and the food and everything else and Patsy and I rounded up the children (swore them to secrecy - and swore each other to secrecy again for good measure) and went to my house with Patsy and her family (they stayed with us while her house was occupied) Patsy and I have to confess looking out the window at her house some that night and Patsy kept getting fussier and fussier about it. She said, "would you believe that he's asleep on the couch!" We stayed up as late as we could.

We thought- well we've done all that we can, if we can just get that young man in the helicopter at the right stop tomorrow morning/and he must not be late because they barely stop long enough to throw him aboard' and then he can go merrily on his way. So we never did tell anybody our story and we were a little uneasy and a little leery that something might be said. But, as it turned out a month later, Patsy was at a party and heard Col. Metz talking and he was telling someone our story, and there we had been so quiet about it. But anyway, we don't know whether the young couple enjoyed their anniversary or not but we do know that we gave it our all.

From the Island of Oahu I'll say aloha now.

Cindy Adams

------------------------

Only David, then about 10 years old remembers oddly being asked to sleep at Cindy's house, instead of our house, when that happened. Rebecca, younger, didn't remember it at all. I never knew, being gone at the time, anything about it - until now. 60 years later.

Leavenworth and more Schooling

When we were ordered to Fort Leavenworth for me to take the year long Command and General Staff Course, we got our little Morris Minor back to the United States, and our household goods out of storage and shipped to our on-post quarters, we were beginning to feel like 'old hands' at this Army moving.

While the card, below, my dear Patsy gave to me on our anniversary day in 1988, it summed up what life was like as an Army family. 

Yep! And it was when we got settled into Leavenworth with our 10 years of furniture and collections from our and my travels, that I realized with a start one morning over coffee, that I was already 34 years old! An old man too old for fighting wars on my feet?

Hmm. I hope not. Besides we had two wonderful kids to raise. And by the time I thought that, Patsy was pregnant again! Hoorah. I was relieved that her losing a fetus in a miscarriage in Hawaii was not an indication of something seriously wrong.

We were reminded of all that could go wrong during a pregnancy, when a classmate's wife who had served in Germany, rather than in the Far East where we served, had a deformed 'Thaladomide' baby. A drug given to many women in Europe during pregnancy for morning sickness, but resulting in many deformed babies.

It was pulled from the shelves after an epidemic of deformed babies, but the damage was done for that classmate - a Major as I was - and his wife. They lived in our same cluster of quarters.

To their GREAT credit, they loved that child and cared for her without reservation. Even 15 years later when were on another post, they were there and happily coping.

But enough of the sad news.

Rebecca remembers: "At least this is how I remember it at age 5 to 6:.

"In this photo, mom is looking a little peaked. That's because she was pregnant with Edward in the fall of 1962.

I should have known something was going to happen because mom used to exercise with Jack LaLanne every morning on the 'hidden' TV (behind a closet door since our parents did not believe we should be watching that awful box.)

While mom would do situps, I'd sit on her stomach and giggle. Mom said I was a big help.

Pretty soon, she was no longer doing situps, and her belly got big.

Next thing you know,  Edward was born."

Rebecca remembers 1963 Taken at Leavenworth on my 6th birthday. About 10 days before Ed was born. Of course mom would buy me a baby doll carriage~~her influence started early on me."

And she points out that my hand made large Bozak speakers are in the background with the Wi-Fi radio in view.

And I recall:

This was the year of the Cuban Missile Crises - which we monitored while in Class.

Edward Justin Hughes was born on May 8th, 1963 at Fort Leavenworth. I had plucked his middle name out of history - the great law giver Justinian.

And so, for Mom Patsy and with her little helper Becky, much of the rest of the Leavenworth Year was spent tending to little Edward's growth.

Now, no family members visited us at Leavenworth that year of 1962-1963. They knew we lived in somewhat small quarters with our bedroom, one room for David and another for Becky. And Edward slept in a crib at the foot of our bed.

But they knew we would be on the road again in the summer of 1963,  and would be visiting them sooner or later, as our military assignments took us from one end of the country to another.

So, except for my keeping my nose to the studies grindstone, life was pretty uneventful that year.

About the only family news was our formal portrait when at  Leavenworth

 The most exitement came when my Orders came, telling us to report to the Army Staff in the Pentagon, for my next assignment.

For the question was where to live and whether to rent or buy.

Classmate Paul Gorman had already been in the Pentagon a year, lived and had bought an acceptable house on Bradley Circle, Annandale, Virginia. He thought we too could buy there.

And so we did - two doors from the Gormans.

And we were off  again after my Leavenworth Graduation.

Here is an excellent picture of young David and his Mom

David and Mom

David remembers " 

 As far as this photo goes, I remember those glasses very well and am trying to remember, where.  I remember the feeling I had when I was told I needed glasses and being very unhappy about it.  Later, I remember it turns out I didn't quite need them as much and for whatever reason today believe my vision hovers slightly above the 20-20 area tho I sense change may be coming.   I want to say this is Leavenworth because I remember the facilities and the trees of Leavenworth,  but Rebecca is right and it may be just before that."

Enroute to the Pentagon

Enroute to Annandale from Kansas to the Pentagon, we took a summer vacation break in Denver. Part of the families met with Aunt Arleen at the Petroleum Club.

Everyone was dressed up - especially Aunt Arleen - for a change. Bette and Jay Sproul family is on the far right. Patsy, David next with Becky across the table. Then the Warren Wilson Family - on Arleen's side of her family - on the left with Warren smiling, and two children. They were obviously visiting in Colorado - for everybody visited Aunt Arleen and her mansion in the summers.

Arleen and Becky, Jay, Steve,Karen, David, and two of Warren Wilsons kids

Steve, David, Jay Goofballs

There is plenty of civilian housing within daily driving distance of the Pentagon - in Northern Virginia, the District of Columbia, or Maryland.

The more important issue for me was whether to buy or rent. I knew that the probability was that, after a 2 or 3 year assignment in the Pentagon I would likely be sent to do duty in a troop unit again. And with US Military getting already more and more involved in South Vietnam, that is where I would be sent. And the family would have to remain in the States.

So the sensible thing would be to buy for our first time, rather than rent, a house. But where?

Classmate Paul and Ruth Gorman had already purchased a home in Annandale, Virgina. They suggested we look around there. That would have an added advantage. Both Patsy and Ruth had children close to the age of our youngest. It would be of great help to Patsy to live close to the Gormans, so the wives could share knowledge of schools, churches, medical facilities, stores and raising their kids.

And it was a reasonable 30 to 45 minute drive to the Pentagon, up the 'Shirley' Highway.

So I did indeed look there, and serindipitiously, a house owned by a Federal public servant was announced for sale - by owner. And it was only 2 doors away from the Gorman home on Bradley Circle! The price, as I recall, was $20,000 - which we could afford with a reasonable bank loan. Since the owner had said he was directly selling the house, rather than try to negotiate a better price I was ready to buy it for the asking price, and use only a lawyer for the closing, rather than pay 7% to a realtor.

That worked. We swiftly closed the deal, I got a loan from the First National Bank of Highland Fall, New York - the one I started with on graduation. And we moved in.

One of the pleasant surprises about that house, and the others along that side of Bradley Circle, was that their back yards dropped away to a wooded glen with one of those Virginia 'runs' - (creek in Colorado terms). A place where the kids would have to play out of sight, but not out of voice from the house.

The rear of the house being lower than the front, gave a bedroom and a recreation room looking out over the back yard and the woods. Very pleasant for a quite moderatly priced house.

Here is a front view of it from across the street. And you can note our trusty little Morris Minor, top up, in our driveway.

Rebecca in the foreground admiring our first owned home

v

Rebecca rememers "The Big Experiment"

Right after we arrived in Annandale in 1963 and bought the Bradley Circle House, someone(who was that?) decided that we needed a cat and a dog to complete the family.

So Sammy and Tinkerbell were purchased and promptly banished to the basement bathroom for the paper training and sleeping time.

I remember 'somebody' yelling about having to be the one to clean up every morning. I think it was David. Or maybe it was Mom. It certainly wasn't me for all I knew was that I had a kitten to dress up in baby clothes.

And the 'experiment' worked out so good, that we had kittens within 8 months."

                                Bailey and Mary Simpson's Visit

The Grandparents while Bailey was in Walter Reed Hospital in 1965

As Rebecca remembers it:

" My Grandfather Bailey Simpson had a heart attack around Easter of 1965 and was brought to Walter Reed Hospital. (He recovered!) To go visit him with my grandmother Mary Simpson was a big event for us kids.

 This day was remarkable in one other way.

Ed and I had been told to take a nap before we set out on our big adventure. I think I did. But Ed had other plans.

While in his crib 'napping', he reached over and grabbed the big tube of Desiten  that mom used on all her babies bottoms. When my mom came into wake him up, he had white Desiten cream smeared all over his body. I suppose to disguise himself from the enemy?

I heard a quick scream from mom "Oh, EDWARD!"  and then the bath tub being filled with water. But if any of you have ever tried to remove white gooey baby cream, well it takes hot hot water and hard scrubbing. Something mom had no time for, nor did Edward have the tolerance for anything more than tepid water.

 David and I were subjected to the smell of Desiten in the long long car ride and the whole time we visited the hospital. All the wrinkled noses and discreet sniffs were directed at ALL OF US.

Dang it if we couldn't get far enough away from Edward to show it wasn't me or David!

It took days for that smell to stop clinging to Ed. I think our clean laundry smelled like it for a week.

 To this day, I still get that memory when I smell Desiten and I have tried mightily not to use on my children or grandchildren.

Thanks, Edward!"

Edward and Rebecca on Carriage Outing

Rebecca memories "This picture is funny for several reasons.

One is that Edward is now baby number 3 to get "the carriage treatment". My mother was enraptured with English baby carriages all her life. It is a reoccurring theme that shows up to this day with  grandkids and then great grandkids getting their picture taken in the latest version of "The Carriage".

David(1954) was the first to be spun around the neighborhood by dad, then I (1957) was duly spun around the sun porch at West Point. Edward got the little sister treatment by being spun around the yard in the fall of 1963!

Where this original carriage ended up I have no idea.

But when I was pregnant with Jennifer in 1982, mom 'suggested' that we buy a REAL ENGLISH CARRIAGE. Sure enough, she found a used one and presented it to me. She made sure I knew it cost a whopping $100 and to NEVER get rid of it.

It will make its appearance in photos of my family. David and Justin got the carriage treatment too in this same hand- me-down carriage. Now the great grand kids are getting "the carriage treatment". And the hand me down carriage resides in my basement waiting for another generation, much to my husband's dismay.

All because of mom's obsession with carriages.

 The other part of this photo is the PROOF that Dad did do household maintainence at one point in his life.

Here he is painting the fence.

Edward and I must have been helpful entertainment. I am pretty sure I never dumped him on the ground from pushing him around. However, he did have a mishap that involved a basket."

Edward at 5 days old, 1963

 Rebecca remembers: " This is a photo of Edward in the "family baby basket" at 5 days old.

Now in those days, there were no car seats or other means of securing the baby while driving.

This big boat of a car had loads of space in the way back, so that is where Edward would end up.

Mom says that one day in summer of 1963 we were sightseeing in our new home state of Virginia, and were coming off a round-about in Washington, DC when all of a sudden a thump and a "Waaaaaa" came from the way back of the car. Poor Edward had been rolled out of his baby basket onto the hard floor of the car. It was all quiet before so he must have been sleeping.

David had to reach over and grab shrieking Edward and pass him up to mom in the front seat.

I recall that mom was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes....

Poor Edward, he was always crying about something in those days!"

And that is because my duties, first in the Army Staff, and then on the Secretary of Defenses Staff in the Pentagon were so demanding I seemed only to be up and driving up the 'Shirley Highway' to the Pentagon before light, and driving back home at dusk or later - all three years. Patsy had largely to raise the kids. Enroll them in school, support their outings. And she religiously attended as much as possible the nearby St Albans Episcopal Church Service on Sundays and at other times as a volunteer. When I was home on Sunday's I was usually too tired to go to church with her, getting the kids dressed and all. So Sundays more often, if I was around and not at the 'office' was when I got to know my three kids, while she went to church alone.

Rebecca remembers  The Little Brother during the Pentagon Years

"Poor Edward became my baby doll until he learned to walk. Instead of dressing up the cat, I had a real live baby to work with! Then he learned to run, and wouldn't let me do it any more."

Little Brother, 1964

Uncertain Date -Ruth Gorman and Patsy - best friends living close by in Annandale - and away from their kids for some outing purpose.

The Pine Tree Incident  1966

Rebecca remembers "We had a big pine tree in the backyard at Bradley Circle. Good for taking the obligatory Easter photos of us all dressed up. (Mom worked hard at dressing us in all our finery. Everything itched from the starch on the clothes, and I managed to find the nearest mud puddle as soon as possible, according to mom.)

 However, this pine tree looms larger in my memory because of the PINE TREE INCIDENT.

 You see, I was just minding my own business one day when myOLDER BROTHER David decided that it would be fun to climb up the pine tree and slide down on the big sloping branches.

By golly, it was! We got stickier and stickier from the pine sap that slowed down and made it a soft landing.

 Until mom saw us and said "GET out of that tree! You will break the branches!" We complied for about 5 minutes, when my OLDER BROTHER David grinned and said "Let's do it again!" 

Of course we did! And it was fun!

 Mom came out of the house with her wooden spoon swinging (it never was close to my bottom but always in my little psyche I could feel it!) and said "Wait til your father gets home! You disobeyed me and I'll let him take care of it! And David! You should have known better than your wee little sister!" (OK~~ I made that up, but I think that was her general feelings at the time. I know it was mine.)

So for the rest of the afternoon, I sweated the outcome and looked toward David for OLDER BROTHER guidance. He had abject fear on his face and went  to hide in his basement bedroom. The coward!

 Where Ed was during this, I do not know. Probably being adorable and hiding under mommy's skirts. No sense of adventure that kid.

 So Big Bad Dad came home tired and worn out from the pentagon which usually meant grumpy and stay out of his way for at least 10 minutes. And soon the whispers in the kitchen (I was now hiding in my room.) grew until I heard my name being called byDAD.

Mom gave me a stern look while I was led downstairs to the bathroom to receive my punishment. I think they agreed that downstairs was better because the neighbors wouldn't hear our screams.

Dad wielded a broken pine branch and I knew then that denial was not in the cards.

Then I saw a smile start to break through as he lectured me on how long trees take to grow, and how this one in our yard was just beautiful until David and I had ruined it. Mom was heartbroken over the damage to the tree. Now he was here to exact justice on my little bottom.

And by the way, do not listen to your older brother when you know it is going to be something BAD.

 Now he couldn't stop grinning, turned me over his knee and gave me some light swats with the branches. I think I squealed from the certain pain to come,  but then peed my pants and wept with relief.

David was standing outside the closed door, so when I emerged he saw my tearful face and the pine branch in Dad's hand and knew he was about to GET IT BAD.

All I heard was one sided talking, maybe a swat and then David marched out crying just like me....but no screaming.

I thought David was the bravest brother I had ever met for not yelling out in pain.

 The lesson was learned for sure. My tree climbing days were over. And mom with the wooden spoon meant business (next step was Big Bad Dad) so watch for early warning signs of her hysteria building.

And I still listened to my OLDER BROTHER because he was now the BRAVEST BROTHER a sister could have!

 So, David, did you get it BAD for leading your wee little sister into doing this horrible thing? Or was Dad having a hard time keeping a straight face and only wanted to show mom HE WAS IN CHARGE!"

And David remembers "I remember more about the other scrawny tree in the middle of the backyard.   Climbing up to the top of the tree where the air and branches were rarified.  I was able to look over and a little down through the kitchen window.  And I remember learning that what goes up must go, or in this case, almost fall down. 

That didn't stop me however for when dad returned from Vietnam he brought a flare parachute and I guess heights still resonate because I remember pondering about flight off the roof.  Still hadn't put together aerodynamics yet.  I was on the roof, can't remember how I got there but think it was a ladder on the side of the house, had the parachute, everything was a go, but for some reason, and maybe it was I instantly acquired the power of reason-ing, I didn't jump.   I recall sister and some other kids in the yard tho.  I don't recall if they were yelling "jump" which would have been appropriate.

That pine tree was just in the way tho, of running down to the creek.  Had to go all the way to the left side of the yard, like 20 feet, to get through the wire gate to get down to the creek.  Annoying."

-------------------------------------------------

Domestic Life

Rebecca found this picture of me at home during my Pentagon years. That I am in civilian clothes tells me it was when I was working in the Secretary of Defense's office where we did not wear our uniforms.

Rebecca notes: "Although Dad says he wasn't around much, this shows that he was!

Many of the items in this picture are still in our home.

  Note the camera in David's hand.....the future photographer. Is that the Rollaflex?"

Yes it was my very, very good Rolliflex Camera I bought in Germany when I was a cadet. Cost me a bundle on cadet's pay.

Young David started taking to it and photography. And says he later shipped it off to a company in Seattle to repair it, and they manage to lose it! (or let it get stolen???)

Big loss. Many of the Black and White pictures in this web site were taken with that, and all the pictures I took as a Cadet in "West Point Years" was taken with it.

At the end of my Pentagon 3 years, I was on orders to attend the Army War College, at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. We kept the house in Annandale, Virginia, rented it out for one year, since I would be on orders to Vietnam at the end of the 1 year course, and it seemed most sensible for Patsy and the 3 kids to move back into it for the one year while I would be in Vietnam. The Gorman's still had their home two doors away, so Patsy and our kids could be in close touch for that year, at least.

So the Army moved our household goods to Carlisle Barracks while we took my 30 days leave and ended up there in August, and moved into one of the old large buildings, with apartments for the War College Students.

(outside building view photo I think we have, will be here)

All the kids were enrolled in schools, and I buckled down to got to to War College Classes by September.

The Hughes Scouts

Becky remembers: "  Someone thought it would be a good idea for David and I to join the Scouts while at Carlisle.

I think it might have had something to do with the camping out part to give mom a break.

Anyway, notice my sash of badges. Oh, that's right, I never earned one stinking badge!

For me at least, it wasn't the best idea.

David, however, got to go to West Point for his camping trip......."

The Three Stooges

Becky Remembers

" It became apparent that my parents thought that television was a bad influence. So it was always kept out of sight. In Leavenworth it was in a closet, at Bradley Circle it was in the farthest corner of the deep dark basement, and at Carlisle Barracks it was in their bedroom.

Bad thing was, we all thought their bed was the most comfortable watching area and didn't want to leave. Just think, we might have had a sibling if we had skedaddled sooner.

I think the TV was finally moved to David's bedroom by my dad.

Edward and I knew that David was ahead of his time, for he started hogging the remote before they were even invented.

I know that Ed got TV time while David and I were in school, but I was out of luck. Don't ask me what was showing on TV during this 'lost' year."

And of course Christmas rolled around, and my mother, Helen, came from Colorado to visit.

Here is a picture of that Christmas inside those 'Old Army' high ceilinged rooms.

Grandmother Hughes, Patsy, David(12), Ed(3) and Becky(9

Rebecca remembers:

"This was in the 'long' living room.

Our quarters were actually in the Barracks 'Old' Hospital which made for oddly shaped rooms and long wide hallways.

We were on the 1st floor of this building. It overlooked a big parade ground.

The curtains were from Aunt Arleen's house and mom thought they were “rich” looking.

Dad 'studied' in a huge linen closet full of shelves."

Which I, Dad, don't remember.

Chuck and Cindy Adams got to Carlisle a year after I did. I am not sure where this picture was taken. I don't recognize the dining room table or chandelier. Must have been at their house - but where?

Our David, with Becky in the Middle, then Christie and 'Bucky' Adams at the Charlie and Cindy Adams home. From the time when Patsy and Cindy met in Haddonfield in 1954 then 3 years at West Point, then 3 years on the Beach in Hawaii, then Leavenworth, these four kids really grew up as Army Brats together. Bucky then grew up and stayed in Alaska, after they were assigned there,  and Christie was in Seattle last I knew, while Charlie and Cindy after years in Virginia, went into an assisted living home near DC in the 2000s. But Cindy was on the phone to Patsy until just days before Patsy died. In 2011. While Charlie had severe mental losses as he aged. There were no truer friends than Patsy and Cindy in all our military and afterward years.

My dear wife of 57 married years, Patricia died the morning of March 4, 2011.  It has taken me a year to get to the point that I can write about her last year and death.

I am here dictating through my voice to text program what I remember during her last year and all the things that remind me of her now - the little things she did that I now have to do for myself this year since she died. The reason that I am dictating this to create this remembrance is because I can tell it better as a story than I can by pecking it out on my word processor. For I am more a storyteller than a writer.

How It All Started

I was sitting at home sometime in early April 2010 while Patsy was in the dining room in her comfortable chair with a board across her lap playing solitaire - which she frequently did in the evenings as she got older. She was 81 years old that year. I was already 82.

I remember her calling out for me to please come to her. When I got to her chair she looked up at me and said “My right hand isn't working.” She lifted her hand and tried to work her fingers. I could see that her hand was pretty much not functioning. She discovered that while she was trying to pick up her cards.

I immediately knew what those symptoms were about. At least three years before I had what is called a TIA – a minor stroke which disabled my right hand for a time. It also garbled my speech for a briefer period of time. But I also knew that it was very important to get her immediately to the emergency room in a hospital. For I knew that a TIA could be the harbinger of a more serious stroke. Which only doctors could ward off if she got there in time.

So I quickly got her into our car – she was not affected in any other way at that time as I noticed – and I drove her to the emergency room at Memorial Hospital East of downtown Colorado Springs. It was about eight o'clock in the evening. The valet attendant parked my car while I took her into the emergency room. There were a few other patients waiting but soon enough we were ushered into a small room where, first, a nurse attendant asked her questions, followed by a doctor who heard her story and examined her briefly. He then said he wanted her admitted at least overnight. And she was put into a hospital room. I was not concerned too much, having gone through the same kind of a TIA episode followed by medication and physical therapy for my hand which regained its full functioning in about a week.  And only later when the Air Force Academy hospital did other tests on me did they determine I would need more extensive treatment related to my heart and circulation.

 I filled out her Medicare and Tri-Care insurance data and my own as her sponsor.

I stayed with her for a time, and called Rebecca, David, and Edward from my cell phone to tell them what had happened and she is in the hospital. I later I went home

The next morning doctors ordered up a brain CAT scan which they had done for me also, to see if they could identify what part of her brain malfunctioned.

Then came the bad news.

While the doctors did not detect anything directly related to the TIA they spotted an alien lump on the right side of her brain. It was pretty small but appeared to be possibly cancerous. And as I learned once they found suspected cancer in one part of her body they wanted to check out all the rest of her.

So what started out as a TIA that is not unexpected in people as old as we were, turned out to be a cancer.

But the news following her full body scan was more disturbing. For they found Stage 4 – advanced - cancer in both her lungs. That was much more serious, harder to treat, and much more problematical given her age.

I knew immediately that lung cancer came from her years of smoking. Which she stopped about 13 years before when Edward and Haning asked her not to take care of baby David as long as she was smoking. Rebecca had objected to her smoking around her babies Jennifer and Lindsey even earlier.

Neither I nor my three children ever smoked.

So now even though I knew my Tri-Care for Life insurance - which my 27 year military career earned me and for my dependents - plus Medicare which covered Patsy as well as me also would largely if not completely cover the costs of treatment, my dear Patsy was facing a very uncertain future. My heart sank.

But even Patsy who had managed crises and fears for the future, especially of me, all our 57 married years took the news calmly. In fact she even said she didn't know how she had lived as long as she had already. She was 80. We had both already outlived the life expectancy of Americans. And except for my having to have a defibrillator installed in my chest three years earlier, no life threatening crises had bothered our lives before this.

Now came the difficult year

Immediately Memorial Hospital referred Patsy to both a doctor Mark Hazuka for her head tumor, and another doctor, Dax Kurbegov both of whom worked in the Cancer Annex to Memorial Hospital.

Both doctors separately but with each other, put her through a number of tests to diagnose just how serious and advanced the cancers were. And both of them started counseling her, and prescribe medications. The major medicine was Tarciva. Which the doctor explained would not destroy the cancer but hopefully retard its growth. That it had worked on a variety of his patients. Given her age he just didn’t advise using much stronger treatments.

The Tarciva was very expensive, $4,000 a month for daily doses. When she started taking it she did not seem to have any bad reactions from it.

 I started driving her to the hospital for her appointments.  Both Rebecca who was not working and David, who had spent years nursing wife Diana after her liver transplant, wanted to attend most of the meetings we had with the doctors and nurses. I was fine with that so we all did that throughout her treatments and consultations.

Another consideration was dealing with her illness at home. Patsy was very independent minded. At our age in our 80s we had long slept in different bedrooms so as not to disturb each other. So I had to start worrying about the stairs to the second floor knowing that at some point she would not be able to negotiate them safely up or down, I was aware that – unlike me - she did not like to walk down the stairs in the dark night to go to the bathroom. She preferred to use a can kept under her bed and the next morning when she got up she carried it downstairs, cleaned it and returned it. I knew that arrangement could not last forever. Or even for long.

Now since she was not in  any noticeable pain from her cancer she wanted to continue her independent actions, and  drive herself to King Soopers grocery store and to go to frequent estate sales. She loved to go to those sales and bought all kinds of small items both for me and the house and the children and grandchildren. Antiquing was her hobby.

David, since he had spent years nursing and tending Diana from the effects of her liver transplant 15 years before, had become quite knowledgeable in lots of medicines and treatments. So he delivered to her many potions and aides that were not prescriptions but she had come to appreciate and rely on for her various aches and pains.

I saw no reason to try and curb her independent trips so long as she did not complain or seem to be distracted in her driving.  So for the first several months after learning of her affliction, she followed her normal routine. She would listen all night to her AM radio, and then of get up around eight o'clock, even though I would frequently be up as early as 5AM. I would sometimes go in to see how she was doing, wake her, turn off the radio turn on the light and she would get up at her own speed to go downstairs. I would have started the coffee earlier that she made the night before and read the newspaper. She would then make our, or my, breakfast. And then she would read the newspaper. That continued to work for at least 6 more months.

When she went to King’s Soopers, she would ride in the battery powered carts. I had only infrequently gone with her in years past. She simply tipped the attendants who put the groceries in the trunk of her car, and I would get them out and carry them in when she got home.

About then I bought a nicer, used Saab, that she started driving. She never liked my run-about, ugly, 1993 yellow Saab that I used. So I bought the nicer one, with even seat warmers, sold the yellow car and started using an older Saab we had. She really liked the ‘new one.’ In all our 57 years of marriage she never had an accident with any of our cars.

Lucy, our dog seemed to take everything in stride since we had little dog steps against both beds, Lucy would just decide who she was going to sleep with that night though Patsy usually called her as she started upstairs and she slept with her. Lucy was always a comfort to Patsy. When her chores were done Patsy would sit in her big chair in the dining room,   sometimes put her legs up on a dining room chair and then Lucy would frequently jump up in her lap.  Patsy would often brush her hair which would get pretty tangled after a while. At least once during that year I took her to be clipped and bathed but began that year to forgot about it.  I had other things to think about.

She continued to faithfully read the Gazette Telegraph paper end to end, every day. And she especially was delighted to run across something I had written, whether in the HUB, or in the weekly Fresh Ink system or in letters to the editor. She would clip them out, and often as not tell me when she saw them that I would have forgotten about.

It was her reading what I wrote, that, as much as anything motivated her to tell me, and our 3 children to tell me, to ‘write,write,write’ after she is gone. Which I have tried to do. And am doing here.

 I repeatedly took her to both the regular Cancer hospital wing of Memorial, and the hospital close to the Printer's home which had more advanced screening facilities. She had to be scanned several times, and even a plastic mask made for her – to keep her face absolutely still during scanning. It was an ugly thing that, when we took it home after that kind of scan was stopper looked like a ‘death mask.”

We still had some faint hope she would be alright, but the march of lung cancer never stopped. The Tarciva arrived on schedule and she took it, faithfully.

I took over paying the household bills after she asked me to do so. 

By then it became obvious we needed to take her bed downstairs so she could use only the downstairs bathroom off my office, and stop using the stairs.  So the other men in the family carried it down and set it up right next to the door in my office.

She was able to navigate in and out of the bigger bathroom by herself, where her clothes closet was.

She had to have a type of colostomy to see if any cancer  had spread. It hadn’t. We had a hard time finding that hospital across town.

I can't exactly remember what month the tests proved that she wasn't getting any better, but I remember well the day we went in, David and Rebecca were there, when  Doctor Kerbegov explained that the Tarciva had not worked in her lungs. But that the radiation treatment on her head had worked and her small tumor had shrunk. He said that there was nothing else that could be done, and that she and her family should consider her treatment being stopped, and only palliative treatment should be given and that by a Hospice facility. That he would prescribe the Hospice and recommended Rocky Mountain Hospice. He let us react. We didn't.

 That was the death sentence day. He left and another nurse, trained to discuss with the patient and family what that all would mean, came in and amplified things. That nurse talked to us all, and said that the end would be a matter, not of years, but of months.

When we left, David and Rebecca having left first, she said she wanted to go back and see that nurse again, alone. So I waited around until she emerged again in about 15 minutes. She showed no visible emotion then, or at any time in this last year. I am sure she just wanted to be sure that she was at her end.

We were then visited by the hospice staff administrators at the house to insure that I, David and Rebecca knew about all the decisions which had to be made – such as “do not resuscitate” instructions. The end of the year or just after it we all accepted the inevitable. The hospice staff was very professional. They provided excellent service. The priority then was to comfort her last days and not try and treat her.

I ordered a hospital bed put into our living room in lieu of the smaller bed that we had in the other room which did not have the ability to be raised or lowered.

I had gotten a wheelchair for her. She only used the wheelchair one time.  I was given quite an  honor by Coronado high school students for my work on the westside - to be the grand marshal at their homecoming parade in September. They were going to march down Colorado Avenue, then gather in Bancroft Park for their festivities.  I was made an honored guest and rode in a car. Tom and Rebecca rolled her over to be on the south side of Colorado Avenue when I rolled by. That was the last time she was out. When the parade ended I came back to where she was and wheeled her back to the house. She enjoyed the outing and the event. She was always so proud me when I got recognition for my westside work.

I had cable television routed into her room, with the screen sitting on top of the piano that she could see easily.  

Fortunately in our 1900 house there were large sliding wooden doors into that room so which gave her privacy when she wanted it. Edward and Tom worked on the doors, cutting away the heavy rug, making sure the doors rolled smoothly. I set her up with her favorite radio and station, KVOR she wanted to listen to at night. David mounted the 'Frame' - automaticic large scrolling computer screen on the wall, full of pictures of our earlier family years.

We started into a routine where, approaching nine o'clock she would still be in her dining room chair, watching television after I had fed her whatever she would eat, usually soups. She sometimes would watch the first part of nine o'clock Fox news and then want to go to bed.

To the end, she did not believe Obama was native born. And she wanted me to change her voting registration from Democrat to Republican. She voted by mail, with my help that November.

 I would assist her in to the bed, or get her started toward the bathroom where she put on her pajamas. For a time she used the walker to get from her bedroom to the bathroom and back. She would go in and clean herself up and do her normal ablutions in the bathroom before she got dressed or undressed. But one day she looked at me while she was in bed, and said “My legs won’t work any more!” And stopped using the walker.  She had  insisted also upon using her can rather than going to the bathroom in the night until one day she fell while using the can, and complained that that was the first time ever she had fallen.

She was bed ridden from that time on.

David and Diana  brought many meals to us. I set my smartphone's alarms to wake me every few hours so I could go down and check up on her.

She just never complained except for sometimes feeling a pain in her side, or back.  And her eyes began to hurt, and were dry. She was prescribed eye drops of some type.

In spite of all these things, everybody, including Patsy decided to have – as we had for over 35 years – Thanksgiving and Christmas at our house. The other women doing all the cooking. Over 15 children, their spouses, and grandchildren attended.

She never left the house locally after that time. Except she wanted to sit in the sun on the front porch a couple of times to get some ‘Vitamin D.’ 

Then she had to have a somewhat painful procedure that put tiny camera down her throat and snipped some samples, to see could be determined.

The news was not good.

This 2010 year it made no sense to put up the large Christmas Tree we always had. I went out with Rebecca and Tom, and bought a small, table top tree to put it on the piano top in the room where her bed was. And presents for the grandkids would be there on the piano. as not good. But I still, as I always had, put lights up across the porch. And decorated, as she would have, the chandelier with all – perhaps 10 – ‘White House’ hanging decorations she bought every year from the White House designers. And added the small red glass balls.

Nurses checked her vital signs every two to three days.

She  begin to be uncomfortable and was prescribed some pain medicines more frequently.

While Rebecca’s husband Tom took it on himself to do all it outside yardwork snow removal and otherwise supported us.  And faithful German cleaning woman Anita, kept cheerfully cleaning the house, first weekly, then bi weekly.

Tom would sit and chat with ‘Grandmother’ in her bedroom each time he came by.

{access Family}

And of course David showed up frequently and Ed and Haning stopped by. The grandkids started showing up more frequently, and young David and Justin played the grand piano next to her bed several times. She liked that.

While this next video is hard for me to watch, the day Haning brought her two boys, David and Justin over, and they wanted to play for her, on our family Baldwin grand piano which my Aunt Arleen had owned, I tape recorded their playing right next to her in bed, with two glimpses of her lying there, and once short glimpse of Haning tending to here. As I say it is painful to watch, but you can do so by clicking on PATSY'S LAST CONCERT. Young David plays Mozart's Concerto in C Major. Justin plays a shorter piece.

{/access}

Her general Constitution was getting weaker. Her oxygenator was as high as it could get.

From that time on we has turned to her much more than nurses continue to come they knew that she would simply weaker and weaker over time though every night of course I would go in by this time oxygen was being strong oxygen system was being provided her and I would start checking up on her several times a night and she was beginning to take two or three medicines I can't remember various times we had little box that had the everyday's pills to give her. The nurses would come and fill out the boxes.

I would fix her breakfast usually simply boiled eggs in the bed could lift up she would take that nourishment and then at lunch time from that point on grandchildren Rebecca Tom Diana who course was still partly crippled from her difficulties with her knees and ankles. But everything was around their Patsy take care of her and I was there 24 x 7

By February it was clear she was sinking quite a bit and while I can't remember the exact sequence, first nurses and then me and of course Rebecca was helpful because she had been administrator to nursing homes would administer to her everything including under her tongue medicines and finally morphine.

Into February it was clear that was just a matter of time and I intensified my paying attention to her but also calling Hospice on the phone as necessary to be exactly how I should do certain things.  It got to the point in her that Rebecca and I or a nurse and aI would have to lift her body up and move her forwarded in the bed and lowered the back at night so she could sleep. We had nurses come in and made her  bed completely and bath her in bed.  I helped out and with Becky sometimes but unfortunately from my age and fading strength the  constant lifting apparently tore my rotator cuff in my right shoulder. After she was gone it took me almost a year of therapy before that improved. I did not notice it at the time. I just wanted her to be as comfortable as possible.

I put a pair of Baby Monitors in her room which were connected to a television in my bedroom upstairs. And I checked almost every hour. And went down to turn her on her side as she was too weak to do it herself. 

I was using my smartphone and its alarm capabilities to wake me every couple hours to go downstairs and give her medicine, especially morphine. Finally I started sleeping on the couch at the foot of her bed and at the very end I was putting morphine under her tongue continuously. One thing she never got used to were the outlets to the Oxygen hose that went into her nose. Repeatedly she would brush it to the side for it irritated her nose which is understandable. I would put it back.

Even young David about almost a week earlier when I needed to go out of the house for half an hour and called for Haning to help. But David wanted to do it and  his mother said okay.  And he showed up and made and he fed her soup by the spoonful while I was gone. That was really important for he and Patsy, his beloved grandmother.

We warned all the children the end was coming the first day of March.  I went out of my way to call both Patsy  relatives in Georgia (Lucille Simpson, Scott Simpson)  and I held up the phone to her ear. She was very weak but she  listened and mumbled thanks. I think she appreciated that.  I also notified her close  friends Ruthie Gorman, Ann Berry and Cindy Adams that she was the end of her life. Cindy especially called back and I tried to let her tell Patsy she loved her and hear her mumble back. It was very hard on Cindy, for she was older than Patsy, very hard of hearing, in a retirement home, Patsy had been her VERY closest friend for 56 years, Charlie had severed dementia and it really tore her up to know her greatest friend was dying. Cindy wrote which I received after Patsy was gone, two stories of them in Hawaii and in Haddonfield, which I put on the legacy site.

Becky noted that Patsy seemed to be fighting back at the end. Both the hospice Dying literature we had, and Rebecca from her experience in retirement homes said she was probably trying hard to stay behind for me – that I should tell her its ok to let go. So I did, telling her how much I loved her, but it was ok to let go, and I would join her some day. Becky says she, relieved that I said it was ok, went down much faster after that, several days before she died.

We began to gather on Friday, 3 March coming and going. We called all the immediate family in for Saturday morning.  Rebecca and I we were able to test her blood pressure, which was very low. And I used the finger oxygen meter to check her oxygen and pulse. We were told near the end her legs would begin to get cold as her organs  shut down and up until Friday that had not happened but by the next morning it was clear she was very cold. I was sitting next beside her while Becky was there in the room. We invited all the grandchildren to come in privately and see and kiss her.  They were all able to do their goodbyes.

My sister Betty had come down also from Boulder and the mountains. She was here she was actually out walking our dog Lucy when I realized there was no more oxygen reading and Patsy had taken her that last breaths. She died while Bette was outside. I was sitting next to her and Rebecca was in the room. The finger pulse and oxygen meter showed nothing there. She finally died about 10 o'clock that morning March 4, 2011.  After I said my own goodbye, I  first of all let the three kids to spend a moment with her privately.  Then all gathered in her room and Prayed over her and read the 98 Psalm over her, from a very old small leather covered pocket Bible my father had 75 years ago. 

We had had a Hospice Chaplain come in  being a Saturday he was not available last hours so I performed what rights I could

Then I called Hospice so they could come and certify her death. Having warned them in advance we called Blunt mortuary which quietly appeared and took her remains away out on a gurney through the front door.

Patsy  had made clear she didn't care how she was buried, she just didn't want to know in advance. So I said she was to be cremated. And that was done, while we planned her graveside burial service, where the Hospice Chaplain – who had been an Army Chaplain – presided. A suprisingly large crowd gathered.

We played her favorite piece of music at the graveside Service – Claire de Lune

After 57 years of marriage Patsy passed on to the ages  and into the  hands of God. And I was alone.

-------------------

Our 'Married Life' ended with this posting. But this Family  Biography continues with branches for each of our three adult children, and their lives. I continue under 'Other Careers'

Final Survey of our Home's Memorabilia

He took a position with the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS) in the Athletic Department between 2003 and 2006)

In 2006 (when DavidXIII was 10 years old and still attending Chipeta Elementary School, he was tasked to put up a school project in an auditorium alongwith other students. Since he was already taking Piano lessons and showing real talent, he chose as his subject Ludwig Van Beethoven. I videotaped his elamorate display and his oral presentation, while his aunt Rebecca, and grandmother Patsy, and I listed to (and critiqued his project. Already it was clear he was a good scholar, mastered his subject, put up an excellent display, and showed his command of his subject as he spoke.

Below is a videotape of his display, presentation, and I and his grandmother's critiquing him. Its impressive.

Just click on the words below to access it.

DAVIDXIII SCHOOL PROJECT

About the same time frame, both young David and younger (by 3 years) brother Justin had begun serious Piano study. Their Mother Haning was the prime mover in their family for that past of their education.

Below is a very short Video I taped at our Home, before me and Patsy, as young David plays and practices a piece by Bach on our grand piano. There too young David shows talent. It was March 29th, 2006. He is just short of his 10th birthday.

Click on DAVIDXIII PLAYS BACH

In 2007 their father Edward was able to secure a position in Verizon, who bought and reorganized World Com.

Then he took a contracting engineer position between 2007 and 2012 with El Paso Natural Gas, during which time he earned an MBA through Colorado Technical University.

Caitlyn was born to Jennifer Clark and Andy Tilton July 2003. They were married in 2005.

Nathan born 2006

Evelyn April 2009

Lindsey Clark gave birth to Brynn Dec 2008

Rebecca marries Tom 2001

David Jr took a position in a technical Internet Communications Company in Dallas, Texas in 2001. Patsy flew down

to visit them that same year. I took her to the Colorado Springs Airport, and while waiting for her flight, videotaped

a 1 minute chat with her. This tape is one of the few chatting with her while viewing her face. She rarely wanted to be

on tape.

Now here is just a video of our home life and home. A kind of cooks tour around the first floor of the house -

from kitchen through dining room, living room, and my office den - with clips about many of the things we have

collected over the years - which give the house almost a Living Museum look. (Later I will be zeroing in on almost

every item on the Bric-a-brac shelves, with a brief description of each item which largely Patsy collected clear back to the years when she live with

hher parents in Germany, right after WWII)

But for now, here is your 5 minute conducted tour of our home in 2007 at 6 North 24th Street, Colorado Springs.

Just click on ->  Brief Tour of our Home

Now just a little home life - 2 minute or so video of Mother's Day Cleanup of 6 North 24th outside on May 9th 2004, while Tom, Ed, Haning,David 3d, David XIII, Justin, Jeniffer, clean up. Just click on

MothersDayCleanUp

PatsyTriptoDallas

Now just a little home life

By 1978  after we got settled into our Westside house, Patsy was able to search out the neighborhood. She always was willing to reach out for bargains or things worth collecting at places like Army Thrift Shops or in Goodwill Stores. One store was only a walking block from our house. She visited there many times, even picking up a very good sofa with ornate design that still graces our living room.

But the facility was also the headquarters of the entire Colorado Springs Goodwill Industries operation. She learned that, among other things, it had a sheltered workshop where handicapped adults worked. Some lived in a neighborhood Nursing Home, but others were bussed to the front door on Colorado Avenue, or even dropped off and picked up by their parents, who themselves were middle aged and older themselves.

It was a pretty large operation.

It was probably 1979 when Patsy, who had done plenty of volunteer work in various Army Post facilities as an Army wife, thought she would go over and volunteer for some work in their workshop. She could easily walk to and from the facility. Our kids were, or becoming, gone from our house. So she was free to do what she wanted independently. To her surprise she was offered a paid job supervising and organizing the work of Goodwill's handicapped adults. It would take some training, for most of those in the workshop had not only physical limitations, but mental problems ranging from having the general intelligence of a young child, to erratic behavioral problems - many only handled by careful taking of medicines, at work as well as at home.

Unlike many normal adults, who avoid the handicapped and 'crazy' people, Patsy took to the job readily. She liked it, she liked her group of 'clients' - who rapidly came to like her. It was icing on the cake that she was actually being paid to do that work. Which earnings added to her Social Security trust fund that which, when she turned 62 in 1991, delivered her $550 a month. HER money. Which she liked.

She worked there at least 15 years.

She would occasionally tell me of incidents which happened there, some of which made me wince when I realized that many of the men clients could get out of control and be a danger to the half dozen supervisors over clients.

But nothing happened to her, for she had great skill at persuading even the biggest male workers to do the right thing.

I had a few occasions to come into the workshop to see here, and I was always struck how happy so many mixed-backgound, mentally handicapped, 'workers' were.

I wondered why the entire Goodwill operation seemed to be run so well, and was frequently cited as one of the best, and most efficient, Goodwill's and sheltered workshops in the country.

I finally figured out why.

I knew while I was at Fort Carson, that both that Army post and the surrounding Colorado Springs had a reputation for having good 'mental health' facilities. That had metamorphised from lung-health and tuberculoses disease sanatoriums in high dry Colorado from the 1880s, to 'mental health' facilities by the 1970s. Not only did the Army send families to Carson to avail themselves of such facilities, but many civilians who had mentally handicapped children to adult age, moved to Colorado Springs, worked and even retired there. One City Manager I knew, two City Council persons. Businessman families. 

I realized that the Board of Directors of Goodwill, Colorado Springs was made up of many such accomplished successful - in government and in business - parents of such adult children. Goodwill was a place that their adult children could be supervised, trained, and even earn a little money during the day.

Goodwill was run by a high class volunteer Board, which hired capable top managers. And it was able to get Contracts with many large local companies - from greeting card companies to light manufacturing company need for low skill 'packaging' and other work. Where not only the clients did useful work, they got paid for their often 'piece work.'  Everybody won - the parents, companies, Goodwill, the clients, and those, like Patsy, who handled them in spite of their limitations!

I was so impressed that I wrote an editorial letter that praised the entire operation and cited how 'happy' Goodwill Clients were in its sheltered workshop. Reminded me of the happy cartoon 'workers' singing as they went to work in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 

Patsy was so liked by clients - when they walked outside, into Bancroft Park, or to or from nursing homes or on the Avenue they would greet her "Pat! Pat!" Soon enough they figured out I was her husband, and they would greet me happily too. 

And one of them, who was least likely to be in normal social gatherings, asked and she invited her to attend the reception at our house when Rebecca was married in 1981.      

David, having graduated from Colorado College in 1977, where his great uncles David and Walter had graduated from in about 1918, and after having had some success on the public stage as a dancer while there, decided to give Broadway a fling. In 1979 he moved to Manhattan.

Ironically, with his western upbringing and style, he got attention when he made the rounds of the theatrical shows.

Meanwhile Edward completed his high school at Coronado on the westside of Colorado Springs. And graduated in 1981

(pic of grad)

By then, Ed was hooked on Hockey. No doubt influenced greatly by the fact that Colorado Springs - with its many skating rinks, and Olympic level figure skating at the Broadmoor - was an Ice skating town.

He wanted to go to a college where he had some chance at playing intercollegiate hockey. After researching many for several criteria - including Computer Science programs, he settled on Quinnipiac College.

I drove him cross country and delivered him there for entry in the Fall of 1981.

He selected Computer Applications as his major and settled down to study, practicing to make the hockey team, and to earn money helping run the campus bar. We managed to pay for his college, but it was tough.

At one Christmas he brought a cute girl home with him. That didn't last.   

He graduated May 1985. Patsy travelled back there to attend his graduation. And she was able to also visit the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC, and her friend Cindy Adams who lived nearby in Virginia.

After coming back to Colorado after graduation. Edward got a job working for contractors for the Defense Department. He did that until February, 1989

Rebecca Grows Up

 Attractive daughter Rebecca lived on the second floor of our little Cottage behind our house and took some interest in what I was doing on the lower floor with my Radio Shack computer bulletin-board and separete computer with Spread Sheet and other useful programs. I was using the cottage as the genesis of my 'Old Colorado City Electronic Cottage' that became rather famous later.

She dated, got involved with the sport of scuba diving, going on a number of outings, on one of which she met Rod ....They became engaged, and we helped plan a quite traditional, even if small, wedding.

That included, the usual wedding gowns, a small beautiful church wedding, reception on our home. 

They married in 1981.

But that did not last, and they seperated and divorced within a year.    

Rebounding from that, she met Mike Grossman, and they went at it hot and heavy and married in 1982. In sharp contrast to the wedding to Rod, they were married on horseback, while a Fort Carson Chaplain we and she knew from years back, officiated.

Sep 82 Jennifer Born

Sep 85 Lindsey bor

David went to Hollywood and stayed at Kretchmenr place in 1984

Then went to Broadway between 1979 and 1983, Brigadoon

Edward, our youngest child, was always a tag-along of his older sister and brother who had rather exiting lives until I retired in 1973. But his time was about to come.

He attended and graduated from Quinnipiac College in 1986. After having attended and graduated from Coronado High School. He, more than his brother or sister was always pretty naturally 'techie.' I observed from his earliest boyhood he was an imaginative Lego Virtuoso. With a temper to match when things didn't work right. 

His first job was with a Defense-NASA contractor  Martin Marietta doing celestial mechanics programming. Their main offices were in Denver. He had lived here in our Old Colorado City home except when he was at College.

But he somehow felt he missed out on all the exotic places I, Patsy, David and Rebecca had lived in - such as on the beach in Hawaii. Though he said his years at Fort Carson and in Colorado where we vacationed were the best early years of his life.  

Somehow he got interested when we got settled on the Westside in Tai Chi  and things oriental. He learned some of his moves from his brother David.

So when a program called 'Princeton in Asia' circulated offers to Americans to join a corresponding college in China he jumped at the chance. He would go for at least a year into a Chinese education institution to help them learn spoken English. Orientals have difficulty speaking vernacular English. He would be in an 'English' department. He did not need to know Chinese.

In preparation he contacted all the Cinese he could find in Colorado Springs, most noteworthy the owners of a Chinese Restaurant on Academuy Boulevard where both the owner and his wife came from the same area in Northern China where he was going. The wife had been a Tennis Table champion in China. He picked up many helpful tips. Later that contact would be important to the Chinese here in Colorado.

In preparation, I knew that though China had no 'internet' never-the-less he could do his work better if he took his Toshiba Laptop computer with Windows operating system with him. 

So he made his travel plans to fly from Los Angeles February 1989, first to Tokyo, then fly into Dalian, China where  the Laioning Foreign Trade School would be expecting him. His agreement was to work there from at least March 1989 to March 1990.He would, first in Los Angeles stay overnight at Joan Kretchmer's home. She was my cousin, and he was able to spend one summer during high school (when 16 years old) with her,his Aunt Joan. Ernesto Panigua, her Mexican born husband to which she had been married many years had died. She was a wonderful and practical influence on Ed that teen age summer. He wouldn't pass through LA to China  several times more without visiting her. And both Haning and their boys - David and Justin - got to meet her.

{access Family}

Joan, whose once-promising life and career was dashed - in part by Aunt Arleen's undiguised racism - became the family 'outsider' over the decades. Her mother, Mary Hughes Kretchmer - my fathers younger sister when they lived on the Hughes Ranch in the early 1900s - became, with John Kretchmer her husband successful professional Photography business persons in Omaha, Nebraska. Their Children were Kieth and Joan. Kieth went on to become, after a stint as a junior officer during the Korean War, a very successful stockbroker like his Aunt Arleen had been.

But Joan's mother died of a heart attack in 1951 when Joan was still a high school teenager . Her father, John, never remarried. But in some kind of arrangement between John and Arleen Joan was able to live at Arleen's Colorado Springs house and attend and graduate from Colorado College (she didn't have to board at CC, because Arleen's house at 1225 Wood Avenue was only one block from CC.)

Joan was always naturally bright - too much so for her feminine good. In any case she was recruited by and worked for the CIA for several years - in difficult - for her - 3d world circumstances. (I think Indonesia was one station of hers) Then when in Los Angeles she met, and married Ernesto Paniagua, a Mexican National, with a large extended Mexican family in Mexico. Joan and Ernesto had no children.

Her (and my) Aunt Arleen never forgave Joan for marrying a Mexican. As a result she never gave Joan any further tangible help, In fact in Arleen Hughes will, while she provided long term (21 and more years) Trust accounts for several 'Wilson's on her side of the Family, and for her dead husband Edward Hughes nephew and nieces (me, David Ralph, and Bette) she gave Joan only a few years worth which then terminated)  

At this writing, Joan still lives near Los Angeles, but is barely scraping by on her own. Her brother Kieth, though quite affluent - a millionaire - has done nothing for her circumstances. It fell to Joan who had to tend to their father, John, who lived in Los Angeles his last years

{/access}

Tiananmen Square

In any event, Ed arrived in Dalian, China, and checked into the Laioning Foreign Trade School. One of the reasons that China opened such 'trade' schools was that it was opening up to the West, including its economic system. Dalian already had a 'Special Industrial Zone' where manufacturing plants from other countries - the US, UK, Germany were invited to set up inside China, and operate with low wage Chinese workers who, never-the-less, had to begin to learn workable spoken, if not written, English. So that trade school had students, some of whom would become 'teachers' to the peasants who would work in the foreign plants.

In any case, Edward was not required to know Chinese - for he would be in an 'English Department' whose Chinese instructors would already have some degree of fluency in English. It was his native voice, diction, and pronouciation that the school needed.

So he was given a room to live in, and he set about making it as livible as possible, using the power adapters and other devices he had brought with him. He even, on his request, was given a telephone in his room.

He had barely gotton settled and before we had gotten any mail from him when the unprecedented Tiananman Square Uprising happened which became world news.

The more complete  story of Ed's 18 month stay in China - from March 1989 to October 1990 is detailed in another section of this Web site. You can [Click here for Ed in China Stories] to read it from another menu, suffice it to say, Patsy and I were very interested in these events. While Beijing was a long way from Dalian the press conveyed that 'student' uprisings had sprung up in many places in China. Being a Communist dictatorship, I knew anything could happen, and did. d

But the most noteworthy thing that happened - which permitted me to keep him informed from the US press and television reporting, and he detailing exactly what he was seeing and doing was the unprecedented 'China Modem Link' he and I set up over plain dial up AT&T long distance telephone circuits between me in my home office with my ordinary home telephone and he in his room. With 11 hours time difference. It was right under the nose of the Chinese Secret Service who had armed guards at every Fax machine in China. But they never knew what was going on and had they run across the link, all they would have heard was a digital buzz and because we Archived all the messages between us (using arc.exe) to compress them - they would never have been able to read what were saying to each other.

If you click here  [Click here for Ed in China Stories]'you will be able to read two sections - the first one exactly how we technically did it, and the second comprised of a large number of HIS messages about what was going on there in china.

Here is the first photograph taken on the day Ed and Haning were married in Dalian, China.

Worked for Sichuan University April 1990 - September 1990

Returned to US October 1990, bought House on Kiowa Street.

Son David born 6/16/1996

Son Justin Born 6/29/1999

1990-early 1991 Softronics

1991- 93 Colo Interstate Gas

1993- 2002 MCI

2003-2006 Univ of Colorado, Athletic Dept

2006-2011 XXX Gas Supply Company

David Jr worked with me, and separately at Big Sky Telegraph in Montana  1987-89

Lindsey Allen (David's son) born in 1985, known to David 1992

He met lived with Diana Sanchez 1990

She had Liver transplant 1992.

Took a technical position in a Unix Internet company in Dallas, TX (dates?). Bought a house, which vandals burned down in ????  Company started collapsing. They moved back to Colorado Springs

Bought house in Old Colorado City area 1994

Here is a very short video I took of wife Patsy and myself together. Tricky to set up the video camera to do this. But it is an ok view of our life as he both aged. I was 79, Patsy 78.

Just Click here on "Two Love Birds"

In 2006, Jack Price, Class of 1964, who created the large West Point Web site for all grads, visited us in Old Colorado City just for over night

This is a short Video Clip of he and his wife Sam when I gave him a walking tour of Old Colorado City.

He paused and told me we had bees - he is a Bee Keeper back in Virginia.

This is about the only video in which he appears. The narration is self explanatory.

Click Here For Video

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This next video is named our 'Last Family Christmas 2009' - which is the last time before Patsy sickened and

died in 2011, when we had the usual Family Christmas at our house.

It is a 9 mimute video.

Click on this

Our Last Family Christmas Video

Painful as it has been, the time, by 2012, had come to dispose of Patsy's things, mostly through our family.

Some of Our Silver

All the Family and All the Silver and special baby clothes for when they were our babies

Marlborough Silver Cutlery Set

For Rebecca Clark and Tom

Anniversary Gift from Dad for Patsy

For Son David 3d and Diana Hughes

Original Ed and Arleen Hughes Tea Service

For son Ed and Haning Hughes

We bought it. I called USAA got it immediately insured, put a temporary CA plate on it, and we were
soon off for San Fransisco - 500 miles further north - as happy campers.
We also visited Dorothy, my older sister whom I think lived in Oakland then, across from San Fran.
We tootled around, and as I recall, drove into one of the very first McDonald's in the US.
 

Then came the time to turn the car into Camp Stoneman, so they could, on their schedule, ship it after
we had sailed on the passenger-type ship. Dorothy chauferred us around. And with her following  me
I drove to Stoneman to turn it in, with my orders as documentation. It was NOT clear when we would
see it again. It would show up in Honolulu, eventually. Maybe from a later supply ship.

But the day we showed up to board the Military passenger liner, I was thrilled to learn, that our small
Morris Minor has already been tucked into the same ship, with a few other cars! What good luck!
Dorothy, with I think her youngest son, Eric, saw us off at the Dock at Stoneman.

So we sailed for Hawaii with other relocating military families, knowing our little blue new Morris
Minor convertable was on the same ship as we were!

I hardly remember the 7-10 day's ocean trip on a less-than fancy Ocean Liner.  

We arrived, got into some temporary place via taxi, overnight, and then, next morning I was able to go
to the dock area and take custody of our little blue Morris Minor!

Here is a photo of Patsy, young David and younger Rebecca in our new Morris in Hawaii.

Picture below is "Dad" (me) standing next to it November 20, 2013

So here it is Christmas 2013, and I am 85 years old, approaching 86.

Its been over 2 years since Patsy died, so I live alone, with our dog Lucy, in our 100 year old house we bought 35 years ago. It is very much still, for me and my children, Home.

Now, while I never was a cook, the miracle of Microwave Ovens, permits me to eat 90 second breakfasts, 90 second lunches, and 90 second dinners. So I get along just fine, while each of my children - all of whom live in their own homes less than 2 miles of mine, feed me at their place at least once a week.

Since Diana is from an Hispanic family, Haning is Chinese, and Rebecca is WASP, I really have a balanced diet. Once a week I eat Mexican, once American, and once Chinese!

Partly because I have the only fully expandable dining room table around, Thanksgiving's and Christmas meals since 2011 have been held here in my house. The ladies in each family prepare the meals. I simply preside over the proceedings.

Of course with the ever increasing number of grand and great-grand children, that becomes quite a crowd.

In fact, yesterday's Christmas meal was surrounded by no less than 15 people. Very festive. With me carving up the large turkey.

----------------------------------------------------.

Patsy and I always loved Classical music. Not only did we have a large library of audio discs and tapes we listened to, we, and now I, have listened for decades the local all-classical FM radio stationKCME, I continued to donate to it every year, up to several thousand dollars.

With a new large screen Television, connected to cable television, and with ever more advanced technical features, such as voice command control, and 'program memories' I expect to enjoy it to my end.

And while I am working at my computer, I always listen to the Operas when they are in season. In fact, right now I am listening to Puccini's Turandot.

I am gradually getting acquainted with the story lines of all the great operas.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is now nearing the end of the year 2015. I am now 87 Years Old, and doing fine, still living alone (with my adult married children still living nearby, I am well cared for. So, besides keeping up with International News, and walking my dog Lucy every morning after driving to the Country Dog Track, I spend some time refining and updating this Legacy Web site.

In September of this year, I travelled, unaccompanied, to France, for a week long conducted Tour, that included, besides Paris, both the World War II battlefields - Omaha and Utah Beaches - where the June 1944 Invasion by the US and it allies took place.

I especially wanted to see Utah Beach, where the same 4th Infantry Division I served as a commander in 1968-72 at Fort Carson, landed on D-Day June 6th 1944.

It was a splendid trip - Paris, the Eiffel Tower, the large and beautiful American Normandy Cemetery. A visit to the great Rheims Cathedral, the world famous Mumms Winery, the small Rheims School House/Museum where General Esienhower accepted the final surrender of the German Army in 1945.

I returned to Colorado, unable to attend the Last Reunion of the Korean War Chapter of the 7th Cavalry veterans. They did a CD video of that final gathering of soldiers who were as young as 17 when I, 22, fought in the Korean War.

So, time marches on. But I look forward to my 88th Birthday, come May18th, 2016.

Since returning from China. married, in 1990, and residing at 2219 West Kiowa Street in Colorado Springs, both Edward and wife Haning pursued their own careers. Edward, with technological and management skills has worked at several firms the last 20 years. He also earned a Management Degree from Colorado Technical University. 

Haning, first tutoring local Taiwanese parent's youth, first pursued her Masters Degree at the University of Colorado, Boulder, was then hired by the Air Force Academy to instruct cadets in Chinese, then progressed over 19 years, including earning her Phd from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. And by 2015, she - as a DOD - civilian, manages the four Strategic Languages taught by the Academy - Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and Arabic.  

Annually for many of the last 6 years she has had to accompany cadets to China for their further Chinese language and Cultural education, while also visiting her very elderly parents in Dalien, China. 

Edward and Haning produced two boys - David XIII and Justin, 3 years apart. 

Both boys attended only local School District 11  public  schools - Chipeta Elementary, Holmes Junior High, and Palmer High School.

Both have done well, though David has excelled. By the time he was 15, he tested out as a Mensan (top 2% of the population in general intelligence) and has been accepted into that exclusive group.

Then when he reached High School, he was placed in advanced classes, including the Baccalaureate Programs, scoring high and very high all 4 years (even while he had to be treated and be operated on for Thyroid Cancer the last 3 years)

He applied to several Colleges, and, out of 450 Palmer High graduates in June 2014, he was the ONLY student accepted with full scholarships to both Harvard and Stanford.

He accepted, and is, as of 2015, attending Harvard. 

Justin, 3 years younger than David, is still (1915) at Palmer High School. While he is not as advanced as David academically, he is a good athelete - a Hockey Player. And is proving to be one of the best players on the Palmer High Team, scoring in most games.