I've heard that a few classmates have been discussing Newton '74 folks who went on to serve in the military after high school. Some served briefly, while others made careers out of it. Besides these people, does anyone know of others?
Army -- Keith Armstrong, Mike Scabet, Mike Wittrien
Marines -- Will Kris Arthur, Mike Ettore, Kevin Herrmann
Navy -- Mike Many, Tom McDonald, Tom Paladini, Don Space, Doug Space
Andrea also wanted me to inlcude a link for an outreach website she's involved with. The url is:
http://www.forgottensoldiers.org
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THANK YOU ...THANK YOU...THANK YOU !!! to all who gave and served ! So many didnt come home and we are sooo Blessed to have you all ..
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice to hear if your chldren served( where and when) also THANKS!
ReplyDeleteAdd one more:
ReplyDeleteCoast Guard -- Barbara Scales Phillips
After hanging around town for a year out of NHS, Jim Baumgartner approached me with the plan to enlist in the Navy under the "buddy system". Sounded like a real good plan at the time and we went and signed up for 4 years. Guess who backed out at the least minute? Haven't seen or heard from him since, but I probably should thank him because it was certainly a defining event in my life. I did a 4 hitch and spent over 3 years at the National Security Agency at Ft. Meade, Maryland. I was home almost every other week, and was able to stop by Cedar Crest College, (where my fiance’ Robin Torppey was working on her Nursing degree) as I passed through Allentown on my way back and forth. So while I didn't "join the Navy and see the World", I did have a great experience and a pretty cool Top Secret assignment and I have been very proud and thankful for that opportunity to serve our country.
ReplyDeleteWalt,
ReplyDeleteSee, it all worked out for the best in the end! You got to see Maryland and I went on and spent the next 19 years going to college. No need to send money, just knowing I was able to help means the world to me! :0)
Jim B.
Tommy Driscoll and went into the Navy on the buddy system. We soon found out that it only guaranteed that we would be in boot camp together. We envisioned four years of galavanting around the world together. We got four months of marching!
ReplyDeleteThe second morning I was at Parris Island I met up with Chris Parr in the chow hall. He was graduating that day and was in his dress Marine uniform. We weren't allowed to talk, but the look on my face must have encouraged him to take a risk and he whispered to me, "Hang in there, it's really not that bad - just don't quit!" Easy for him to say now that he was leaving for Newton in a few hours and I had another 12 weeks to go!
ReplyDeleteKris Arthur and I joined the Marines in the Buddy Program. We knew it was only guaranteeing us boot camp together, assuming we both made it through with our initial platoon.
We got to Parris Island and I saw Kris run off the bus a few guys ahead of me. Suffice it to say the next several days were very disorienting due to lack of sleep and the frenzied routine. We learned quickly that anyone who was spotted "eyeballing the area" was immediately singled out for "special attention" so we all narrowed our field of view to what was in front of us.
After about ten days or so the thought occurred to me that I hadn't seen Kris since we got off the bus. I was kind of indignant that the recruiter had lied to us, but the thought of complaining to the drill instructors was simply out of the question!
Then one morning around 4am or so we were running down a stairway on the side of our barracks and I saw Kris on the stairs below me. Our eyes met and I think we saw the absolute terror in each others eyes and we had already learned enough that we didn't dare even nod our heads at each other or some other gesture of recognition.
I still find it somewhat amazing that we were both living in the same large room and literally had no idea that we had been within 50' of each other since we had run off the bus!
For the next 12 weeks I think I may have had a total of 10 minutes of interaction/conversation with Kris, all of which was on the sly while we were running, etc.
So much for the recruiter's assurances that we'd probably bunk together and sit next to each other at chow, etc!
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ReplyDeleteRemember, our classmate Rick House (& Son), who run a part-time photography business, will be our official reunion photographers the night of July 25 at The Barn at Perona Farms. I'm certain we can get Rick and his son to shoot anything we want that evening, and Rick promises that some pictures will eventually be on his Web site, or we could easily post them here or the class Web site or now, on Facebook. The Internet can be a wonderful thing, huh?
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ReplyDeleteBTW - Ed, those are mostly other people's pictures, which were sent to me via e-mail. I did doodle with them a little before posting them, but I certainly can't take credit for taking them all...
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