The Air Force is one of the reasons I’m even here on this planet today. The Air Force brought my mom’s parents together. My Nana is from Ohio and my Paw is from Arkansas. I have no clue how else they would’ve met without the Air Force. This is my Nana and Paw’s story from my Nana’s point of view:
"It was July of 1962. I had just graduated high school in Hamden, Ohio. It’s a small town with not much to do. I graduated with 19 other kids, and five of us joined the Air Force–there were two girls and three boys from my graduating class. We couldn’t afford college so we all decided to join together. Soon we were in basic [training] in San Antonio for 8 weeks. I was stationed at the Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California. From September of 1962 to July of 1966, I was stationed there. While I was stationed there, I worked as an Administrative Specialist, which means I worked the whole 601 MAC department, flight line OJT training and the shipping department, which means we sent the personal items to the deployed.
Jim and I met in April of 1966. We were on a double blind date with different people when we met. After the date he called me and asked me on a date. Three months later, we were married. He tells the proposal story like this: “I looked at her and asked her, ‘You wanna get married or what?’ She fell out on floor and I had to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
Anyways, on July 17th 1966, three months after our first date, we are married. Jim was out of the Air Force in March of 1967. Once he was done, we moved back to his home state of Arkansas. He was from Bradley, Arkansas. We moved to Ogden, Arkansas and lived there for seven years. Jim’s first job was working in an ammunition plant in Hooks, Texas, and mine was building ammunition boxes in Texarkana, Texas. We had two children while living in Ogden. DeAnn on January 27th, 1970, and Dani on October 20th, 1973. Dani’s birth was memorable for us. A cow had been lost in Bradley, Jim and Claude Tate took off to go get the cow. I assured Jim I was okay to be left alone, turns out I wasn’t. They took two trucks and left one in Texarkana just in case. In ’73, cellphones weren’t much of a thing, but Jim stopped in a man’s shop to call and check on me. I told him he needed to come home now and we needed to go to the hospital. So Jim sent the now-recovered cow with Claude and he hurried home. He took me to the hospital and about 15 minutes later, Dani was here. After Dani was born, we moved to Ashdown for about eight months. We moved to our current home in Horatio, Arkansas in 1976. Our youngest son, Bradley, was born in 1982. And then the rest was history. This year will be our 50th anniversary."
