Some of the different stages and windows of my life while growing up as a military brat (brat being the operative here hehe...)
Cathy Newman Brown '68 told me to get off my butt and write some more on August 25, 2011
vistors since October 20, 2000 who always dressed up like cowboys...
All about me... Well ok, not all - I don't think the world is quite ready for something like that yet so maybe that should be more like a little about me.
But first, a little bit about my parents...
Well let's see - my Dad was in the United States Air Force and was a career military man (he was in the AF for 27 years). He was originally from Ypsilanti, Michigan but spent most of his younger years growing up in Saginaw. He joined the Navy after someone from his neighborhood was killed at Pearl Harbor, and after the war he went into the newly-created U.S. Air Force. I don't know that he originally intended to make a career out of the service, I think it just sort of happened to work out that way. That's him in his early AF days...
My Mom was born and raised in Ely, Cambs, England. That's her and my Grandfather on her wedding day. She was a teenager during WWII and still talks about the German bomb that blew up her apple tree in the back yard one day. Like many of the English families during that war, she too lost someone when her brother Walter, aged 19, was killed while fighting the Japanese. After the war, she went to beauty college and was working as a hairdresser when she met my Dad, who was stationed in England at the time. One thing led to another and they were soon married.
This is where I enter the picture (literally, here's me and my Mom). I was born in Ely, Cambs, England too - in the same hospital my Mom was born in. Since my Dad was an American, that made me an American, and since I was born in England, that made me English (some of my friends would say that explains a few things hehe). Anyway, I'm now a naturalized citizen of the United States.
My Dad was stationed in England on several occasions after I was born. Here's me and my brother Brian at our house in Maids Morton around 1956 or so. We lived off base until base housing was available so I attended an English school for awhile (minus the cowboy outfit). We were in Ohio prior to this assignment, at Wright Patterson AFB, where Brian was born.
We left England in 1958 and went back to the States, this time to Lowry AFB in Denver, Colorado. This turned out to be our longest stay during my Dad's enlistment, about four and one half years. We lived in the base housing off Colfax but then we moved to a different section, over on Olive Street, so even though we were still at the same base, we had moved again. I attended Whiteman Elementary while we were there, the first American civilian school I had ever been to. I was now old enough to notice when friends moved away, something that happened on a regular basis during my time as a military brat. So far it hadn't really had that much of an effect on me, but that would soon change as I reached my teenage years.
At Lowry we lived in base housing but we didn't live on the base, we lived next to it. When we lived off Colfax, we had to ride a bus to Whiteman Elementary, but when we moved over to Olive Street we were close enough to walk. This was back in the late 50's and early 60's. This country was a different place back then, kids could walk to school by themselves and not worry about any child molesters and crime was unheard of in our neighborhood. We spent most of our play time outside, playing baseball and football and cowboys and indians. In the winter we would go sledding and have huge snowball fights that involved 50 kids or more sometimes and nobody even dreamed about slipping a rock into one of the snowballs. We would watch tv for a little while in the evening sometimes, like Walt Disney on Sundays, or Mighty Mouse on Saturday mornings, but we'd much rather be outside with our friends. It's kinda sad these days to drive through the neighborhoods and not see any kids outside playing. It's a different day and age I guess, kids now are watching cable or satellite tv and are on the internet, or are blasting aliens on their Sony Playstations. Maybe if we would've had all this stuff back then we would be doing the same thing the kids are now, but I like to think we would still be playing outside, you know?
Even though our neighborhood was near civilian housing areas, we pretty much hung out with our AF brat friends. I don't really remember any specific reason why. Some of the brats went to a Catholic school instead of Whiteman so we'd hook up after school. I had civilian friends at school, but that was the only time we hung out together. After school, we went our separate ways even though they only lived a couple of streets away, and in the summer I never saw them at all. At the time it seemed normal to me, the civilians lived "over there" and all us brats lived "over here". If there was any animosity towards us, I was never aware of it, that would come later. For now everything was cool. I was in the Cub Scouts, going to summer camp on the base, playing little league baseball on the base, going to the movies on base... everything was on the base, except the school, so I guess maybe that's why we never hung out with the non-brats. Of course at the time we weren't called AF brats, we were AF kids or military kids, we never called ourselves AF brats. It would be a few more years before I would first hear that particular expression.
In the summer of 1963 we moved to Williams AFB in Chandler, Arizona. At the time, the base was out in the middle of nowhere. It was ten miles to Chandler, and about as far to Mesa, so most of my time was spent on the base. I attended the junior high school on the base and hung out with all the other brats. In seventh grade I suddenly realized that girls weren't so bad after all. Up to this point, they had pretty much been a pain in the butt, someone to antagonize - unless we needed someone to play right field. And even then they couldn't catch or throw very far ;) This was different though, girls suddenly looked cute and we didn't care if they couldn't catch or throw. My first crush was on Cathy Tallman. Her Dad was an officer and they lived on the other side of the base. We had just started seeing each other when her Dad got transferred. I was crushed - it wasn't fair - there was also nothing either one of us could do about it, except say goodbye. It was then that I started thinking that maybe living on base wasn't so great after all. I eventually got over it but it would happen again a few more times over the next few years, each time a little worse as I got older. True, we got to travel a lot and see a lot of different places, and meet lots of people, but none of that seemed to matter when someone you had the eternal hots for had to move away, or your best buddy was no longer around to hang out with, or you had to go to another school in another state or another country in the middle of a semester. At Chandler High School I met lots of people who had known each other their entire lives, by the time I was 19 I hadn't known anyone longer than 4 years or so.
During my teenage years I found out more than I wanted to know about discipline in the military way of life. As a kid I never really got in much trouble, except for the occasional times when I'd pound my younger brother or disagreed with my Mom about something, and then it was "you just wait until your Father gets home..." Of course most of the time she wouldn't say anything to the old man and I was home free, except for the worrying all afternoon about whether or not she was gonna actually bust me. I'm sure she figured that was punishment enough. My Dad was old fashioned in the sense that he believed a couple of swats on your butt with a belt was the best way to get the point across and after that it was the fear of it that kept you in line. That worked until I reached 7th grade - by then I knew that he wasn't really swatting us that hard. He knew that we knew though, and he had something far worse than any swats waiting for us if we screwed up - taking away your ID card. The military holds the sponsor, in this case the old man, responsible for the dependents, namely the wife and kids. So if I got caught throwing a rock through a window, for instance, the Air Force would come down on my Dad, not me, and they'd generally leave the punishment up to my Dad (depending on how serious your screw up was of course). For the longest time I thought my middle name was "you're gonna cost me a damn stripe..." I used to think that sounded kinda funny until I realized the implications of losing a stripe... that meant a loss in pay and maybe even the loss of his career - that most definitely wasn't so funny. So you knew you had really done it when he took your ID card. If you've never been in the military, you might not realize what that meant. Those of you who were brats though know that it was the worst thing that could happen... without your ID card you can't go to the movie, the pool, the BX - you name it, and if you're on a base out in the boondocks, you're sunk, especially if it's summer. During the school year it was bad enough, but at least you'd see your friends during the course of the day. In the summer though, they were all off doing stuff that you needed an ID card to do.
Fortunately, there was only one time when my Dad took my ID card away from me - in the summer of course. I wasn't involved in any vandalism or anything like that. Me and my best friend in the 7th grade, Jim Clines, would climb up on the school roof and just sit up there and talk about anything and everything... we weren't hurting anything or causing any property damage or anything like that, we were just hanging out, listening to the radio and scheming on girls and wondering if Susan Odom could throw someone out from right field, the usual teenage guy stuff. So one night while we were up there sitting and minding our own business, an MP (we called them AP's back then, for Air Police) saw us and turned on his spotlight. We panicked and decided that the best thing to do was run but they were waiting for us as we slid down the poles and we were caught. The standard protocol is to take you down to the station, and then they'd call your dad to come and get you. Jim's dad happened to be an AP, the NCOIC in fact, and also happened to be on TDY (temporary duty) at another base. My Dad was home though, and it was amazing how fast he managed to make it to the station, breathing fire and brimstone and telling me about how I was gonna cost him a damn stripe and telling Jim how he was gonna cost his dad a damn stripe. The AP's who had picked us up told him we hadn't actually done anything wrong and that they'd gotten us off the roof for our own safety, but it didn't matter. He just told both of us to get in the car, after he took away my ID card. For a minute I thought he was gonna take Jim's ID card too, just on principle, but he changed his mind about that. Anyway, he kept it for a month and I couldn't go anywhere or do anything without it and that was probably the longest month of my life!!
Life as a townie, back to England and then we go to Mississippi (yikes) if I ever get around to fnishing this...
MSgt USAF (Ret) Russell A. Crandell
March 31, 1927 - March 12, 1995
1957 school photo.
First grade, Upper Heyford Elementary School.
I went exploring one day and found the old barracks. Guess I was scoping out Hadite turf nine years ahead of time. Or else I was running away from home for having to wear that bow tie hehe...
My world famous art gallery web site (ok, so it's not so famous, I'm working on it ok?)
