CANDOER News
CANDOER News | ||
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Communicators AND Others Enjoying Retirement
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| October 2008 | Fall Issue | Volume 8 - Number 3 |
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Welcome to the latest issue of a Newsletter dedicated to the CANDOERs (Communicators AND Others Enjoying Retirement). This newsletter will be distributed quarterly. New issues will be posted on the Web for viewing on or about, January 15, April 15, July 15, and October 15. The CANDOER Web site and newsletter may be viewed by going to the following URL: www.candoer.org The success of this newsletter depends on you. I need contributors. Do you have an interesting article, a nostalgia item, a real life story, or a picture you would like to share with others? Do you have a snail-mail or an e-mail address of one of our former colleagues? If you do, send it to me at the following e-mail address: Please, NO handwritten submissions. This newsletter is available free on the Web to any and all who worked with or for members of DC, OC, IRM, IM, or LM. This publication is available on the Web only. None of the material in this newsletter has a copyright, unless otherwise noted. If you wish to print the newsletter and make copies to distribute to others, please feel free to do so. The CANDOER News will be available in three formats: the first format will be as a web page; the second format will be as a PDF file; the third as a Microsoft Word document. The PDF file (Adobe Acrobat) and Microsoft Word document will allow you to print the newsletter. If you are unable to read the PDF formatted newsletter, you can go to www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html and download the FREE reader. When installed on your computer, it will allow the automatic opening of the PDF file. How important does a person have to be before they are Cat's Corner
I played around and played around (sounds like words from a song I remember from somewhere?) for most of the last quarter before I made up the last issue (Summer 2008), and then in my haste to put it together, I left out Cat's Corner. As soon as I publish an issue I normally immediately start the next issue and then spend the next three months looking for articles and information to add to it. This issue hopefully will be more substantial but then again, maybe not. At the present time I only have three articles to publish and all three were written by Dick Kalla. The great thing about this is that I have at least one article for each of the next three issues. The bad thing is that I only have one article for each of the next three issues. I wish to thank Dick for his many contributions in keeping the CANDOER News alive. f you are a regular visitor to the CANDOER web site you will note that I have completely redesigned it. I spent several evenings on the Web learning some of the latest design formats for web sites and then decided to see if I could implement them on our web site. There are a total of 185 different web pages on the CANDOER site and up until this rewrite, if I wanted to change the format of the web site I had to rewrite the mark-up language for each and every individual web page. As you can imagine, that took a lot of hours to do. With the new format, that I am now using, when I made a change for one page I can elect to have the remaining 184 pages take on that format. This rewrite will save me a lot of work in the future. As you all may or may not know, Bennigan's, where we have held our CANDOER Luncheons for the past six months, has declared bankruptcy. This means we have had to look for another place to hold our luncheons. John Tyburski suggested that we try Bertucci's Brick Oven Ristorante on the other end of the mall and across the street in a small shopping center. The August and September luncheons were held at Bertucci's, but we found it a bit expensive and not a lot of selection for lunch. Lou and Anne Correri suggested we try Mike's just off Backlick Road, in the Springfield area. We are going to try this restaurant for October and November. If we are not happy with that one, we will try the restaurant suggested by Dan Ulrich, in the Hilton Hotel, across the street from the Springfield Mall. Keep tuned. We will find a permanent restaurant, sooner or later. The one-liners you will find throughout this issue are called "Ponderisms" and were received from Paul Del Giudice.
If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, Letters to the Editor Not everyone retires when they leave State. Ed Wilson has been employed by the Citrus Country (FL) Sheriff's Office for the past eight years. Here is a newspaper article on a recent case of his that he sent to me. Men allegedly raided collection The burglary of a gun enthusiast's private arsenal ended Wednesday with the arrest of two Inverness men. Twenty-year-olds Anthony J. Salozzo and Christopher Lynn Watts were charged with armed burglary and grand theft. The arrests came after about 100 guns were taken from an Inverness house, said Citrus County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Jason Shephard. The 77-year-old homeowner lives at a different home in Inverness, but used the second address for general storage and to hold his gun collection.
The theft was reported July 11 when a lawn worker noticed the front door open and contacted the homeowner, Shephard said. Ammunition was also missing from the house. As the investigation began, Deputy Scott Roush and Detective Ed Wilson received tips about the missing gun collection. Clues led them to Peter J. Salozzo II, 26, - Anthony Salozzo's brother who was also wanted on warrant charges. When authorities came to his house, Peter Salozzo was found hiding in the attic, Shephard said. Peter Salozzo told authorities he heard his brother and Watts talking about the guns and saw some of them at Watts' house when the men tried to sell some of them to him. Anthony Salozzo was already at the Citrus County Detention Facility when detectives arrived to talk to him about the case. He was arrested Monday on a charge of violation of probation in reference to an original charge of driving with a suspended license. During a taped interview, Anthony Salozzo admitted to breaking into the house with Watts, taking the guns and ammunition, storing it all at Watts' house and attempting to sell them, according to an arrest report. After searching Watts' house, authorities found 97 guns. They also recovered five others that had been sold and three that had been pawned, Shephard said. As of Thursday afternoon, Anthony and Peter Salozzo and Watts were still being held at the county jail in Lecanto. With the tenth anniversary of the cowardly bombing of both the embassy at Dar es Salaam and at Nairobi, on August 8, 1998, Steve Auldridge wrote an article in remembrance. I asked Steven if I could publish his remembrance in this issue of the CANDOER News and this letter gives me that permission. During those dark days after the bombing, - and they were very dark - our colleagues showed what the words dedication, truth, honor, and resolve really mean! Although experiencing this resolve earlier in my life in Viet Nam, I was nonetheless in awe of my commo staff after our IMO was severely wounded and medivac'd. They displayed that rare clarity and focus you don't see to many times in Life. Those guys and gals did an awesome job in order to "right the wrong." As for our make-shift commo office in the Nairobi AID building, we had secure commo back on the air Monday evening, August 10th, 1998. And that was NOT accomplished by using any emergency support can-do equipment! Our hearts were wounded, but not our Souls. Our bodies were sore, but not our Spirits! Such tragic and violent epiphanies clearly show America's true character ... as if we ever needed any such confirmation!
Why do you have to 'put your two cents in' . . . But it's only a 'penny for your thoughts'? A job Choice (Author's note: The following is an excerpt from my memoir which I recently self-published. While it doesn't deal directly with the Foreign Service, it involves a choice that was made for me that helped to determine my future.) I didn't know it at the time, but the decision made to send me to Radioman school would eventually play a big part in deciding my future. Without radio school, I undoubtedly wouldn't have joined the Foreign Service and, consequently, met my eventual wife, Pat. Delving deeper, I guess my children, Karen, Elissa and Kevin and their eventual offspring owe their very existence to this decision. If this career hadn't been thrust upon me, I would never have learned the skills that made me desirable to the Foreign Service. Without the Foreign Service, I would surely never have met their mom. In fact, you could say that if I had been better prepared on the day that my entire future was decided, nothing about my life would be as it is today. I could take this hypothesis much further, but I think you get the picture. One little decision changed my entire life. Of course, I had no thought of that when I, like my fellow Navy recruits near the end of boot camp, was given a pamphlet that listed all ratings (jobs) in the Navy and was told to pick something. After reading the pamphlet and much (well at least some, I think) thought, I chose a couple of jobs in naval aviation that sounded like fun. Who needed to go by ship when you could go by air? I don't remember precisely what I picked, but I think one of my choices had something to do with photography. This probably involved taking aerial reconnaissance photos or something like that, and it sounded very important and exciting. Armed with these choices, I confidently stood in line with the rest of the recruits until it was time to enter the glass enclosed cubicles where the counselors would, individually, decide our fate. Finally, it was my turn, and I marched smartly into the room with the fruits of my research into all jobs naval. I was quickly brought down to earth when the counselor irritably explained to me that the only people who qualified for jobs in naval aviation had made that decision when they enlisted. Since my records did not indicate that I had enlisted in the aviation field, I did not qualify for any of the ratings that I had chosen. "So, what else do you want to do," my counselor demanded. At this point I had no clue. I was so sure that one of my aviation choices would work that I hadn't really bothered to look at anything else. It is the job of regular Navy people to get mad at recruits who aren't decisive and who don't do precisely what is expected of them. This was one of those occasions, and my counselor proceeded to do his job. He made it known loudly and emphatically that he was very unhappy with me. Promptly and with a great deal of fanfare, he sent me to the back of his line, gave me a new pamphlet, and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I had better pick an appropriate job before my new place in line worked its way back to his cubicle. As I remember it, it was a rather heated lecture sprinkled liberally with profanity that hastily propelled me to the back of that line with my tail tucked between my legs. Back in the relative safety of the line and conscious of the stares of my fellow recruits who were undoubtedly relieved that someone else was being hollered at, I rescanned the job brochure with some feeling of panic. I was sure that if I didn't make the correct pick this time, I was in for a slow death or worse. In this fevered and panicked state, I was unable to make a definitive decision. It was clear by the time that I again made my way into the presence of my counselor that I was no longer rational and anything I picked while sweating in that line was not appropriate. After denigrating my ancestry and me personally for the appropriate period of time and making sure to let anyone in earshot know how unhappy he was with my lowly self, he warned anyone still in line that they had better be more prepared than I had been. My counselor then hastily made the decision for me. Looking through my scores on the battery of tests that recruits take early in their training, he chose my fate. I had, he said, scored high in Morse code aptitude. This made me qualified, he further said, to attend Radioman school; but, if I didn't take my unworthy self out of his august presence immediately, he would see that I spent my entire Navy career cleaning garbage cans, toilets or something equally exhilarating. His decision and my sendoff was tendered with numerous bits of additional creative profanity, some whose meaning I couldn't begin to divine at that young and tender age. Grateful to finally escape this madman, I hurried out of his office thanking him profusely for his assistance. Never once in the ensuing years that took me all over the world and gave me such a wonderful life and family did I stop to reflect that my future path was decided on that day by a nameless profanity spewing maniac who, I'm sure, never gave me another thought after I left his office. Only now, as I work to write this memoir and am able to reflect back on my life, do I realize the consequences of that day. I'm not so naive that I think that this job choice was the only factor that determined my future. There were, of course, many sub-decisions along the way that helped to influence my life direction. Choosing to join the Navy was nearly as important, I suppose, but that was a choice I made myself. A stranger made my choice of career and that choice, led directly and indirectly to everything that was to come later in my life. Likewise, if I hadn't wandered into the Federal building in Seattle during college summer break looking for work, I would never have heard about the Foreign Service. What if I had made different choices? How would things have turned out? What if I had gone to London my first tour like my original orders said? In London, I wouldn't have met Pat. Would I have fallen in love with someone else? And, if so, what would she and our offspring be like? I contemplate all these questions and look back on a lifetime of wonderful memories as I rock my way into retirement. Why do they call it an asteroid when it's outside the hemisphere, but call it a hemorrhoid when it's in your butt? Ten Years Later Tomorrow will (amazingly) become "ten years later". - An unfortunate benchmark of time that separates those of us who were there (as well as those who came to help rebuild) when our embassy in Nairobi was destroyed on August 7th, 1998. It also marks the 10 year anniversary of our colleagues who died needlessly because of the hate that fuels such acts of terrorism.
One photo shows some of the actual yellow tape used at the scene, a piece of a blown out embassy window that was on top of my vehicle parked in the front embassy parking lot, and a DTSPO plaque pertaining to the event. (On that day, I wrote "10:39" on the glass for some reason. Later I believe I heard the actual time of the bombing was set at 10:37 A.M.
Another photo is from the September 1999 DTS-PO Newsletter showing a picture of (quote) (l-r) IPO Stephen Auldridge, Steve Ackerman, Elizabeth Slater, DTS-PO's Emory Bey, and RIMC's Michael Adams pose with the completed antenna installation (unquote) at the IOB.
Lastly, I'm sending a photo of my flag at half-staff, which is how it will be flying all day tomorrow until I raise it back up, pause, say a prayer, and then lower it at sunset. (I've also requested Wendy to please rest this flag over me when my time comes.) With every passing day, and especially the last 3,650, I continue to appreciate just how lucky and proud I am to be an American. God Bless everyone and their families, and God Bless America! What disease did cured ham actually have? ENJOY!See you next quarter!
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