Doors and Hinges: Part One

 I have just finished reading the last of Thomas Cahill's six volume work entitled, "The Hinges of History."  He describes his purpose as "...a recounting of those essential moments when everything was at stake, when the mighty stream that became Western history was in ultimate danger and might have divided into a hundred useless tributaries or frozen in death or evaporated altogether. But the great gift-givers, arriving at the moment of crisis, provided for transition, for transformation, and even for transfiguration, leaving us a world more varied and complex, more awesome and delightful, more beautiful and strong than the one they had found."

That set me to thinking about the great gift-givers in my life, and serendipitous little moments, that changed its course, that time and again set my feet on a path I would never have imagined, one that ultimately led to a destination beyond imagining given the point from which my journey began.  So, if you are of a mind, set out with me.  Along the way I will recount events that in retrospect seemed either fated or even miraculous; and introduce the remarkable people who bet on me, took pity on me, rescued me and pushed me up ladders whose first rungs I could hardly reach.

The first act in this drama--well, blog, but hey, it's my life so humor me–is set in a little red brick building that housed the post office of Oakland, Mississippi, population 1,500 (the number on the incorporation sign marking the city limits announced the number of its citizens as 500, but in 1954 the 1,000 black folks weren't considered citizens).  This deeply segregated community was home to me, my mother, my year-older sister and six-year younger brother whenever my Army father was away on a non-accompanied assignment.  We lived in a, how shall I say, very modest wood house about a mile from town, which brings me to the point of this stage-setting: somebody had to walk that mile and back to the post office every day to check on the mail and that somebody was me. 

A summer morning in 1954 found me waiting for the mail to be put up, spending time checking for any new posters on the walls, especially the eagerly awaited FBI 10 Most Wanted List. Then my eye caught a new posting, depicting a stalwart young lad clad in a blue uniform saluting the American flag as an airplane flew overhead.  Blazoned across the bottom were the words, "Come to the Air Force Academy".  Some unknown Air Force public information officer had done his work; if I had looked at that poster a bit harder for a bit longer I might have seen it for what it was: the door to the rest of my life.  Peering closer,  I might have seen that it lacked hinges.  But for the moment, this brief encounter receded into the deep recesses of my memory.

Come the fall of 1956, I was starting my senior year in high school in Arlington, Virginia, home to the Pentagon where my father had been assigned after his return from Korea a year earlier.  Hearing my classmates chatter excitedly about their college applications, I asked my dad about my prospects.  He said, "Son, let me explain the economic facts of life in this family. Your sister's college tuition is eating up every dime of our extra income. Sorry, but you will have to find a scholarship or join the Army like I had to when the depression hit."

Memory of that poster came flooding back like a tsunami.  Without thinking, I blurted out, "I want to go to the Air Force Academy."  My father thought I meant West Point but I stammered about the poster.  After confirming that such an Academy did exist and had admitted its first class in the fall of 1955, he reached out to our Senator who agreed to nominate me for the third class. Shortly thereafter, I received a letter scheduling me for an entrance examination in early 1957.  For the first time, I began to imagine myself as that young lad in the poster, saluting the flag and picturing himself flying the airplane overhead.

Taking the entrance examination turned out to be a mouthful (hang on to that last word).  For the first several class years, qualification testing took an entire week, covering a vast array of Air Force concerns: intelligence (my gene pool served me well here); several academic disciplines (my two years of Agriculture in Mississippi were no help); vocabulary (I had never heard the word, "tutu"); a battery of psychological tests (I found them pretty puzzling); and finally, physical prowess (here is where today's story begins).

I reported to Bolling Air Force Base, just south of Washington, D.C., at eight o'clock on a Monday morning in mid-January, 1957.  I was, how should I say, very slight at 5 feet 6 inches and just north of 110 pounds in a rain storm.  I had worked hard to improve my physique, including a lot of running and three workouts a week with a set of Charles Atlas weights.  However, as I surveyed the other three hundred or so candidates gathered in the waiting area, they all kind of looked like Charles Atlas.  My spirits sagged as we lined up for an initial battery of tests to ensure we met the rigorous physical standards we had to meet in order to become Air Force pilots.

We were lined up alphabetically, so my name was called early on.  When I stepped on the scale, the young airman taking the height and weight measurements said, "Height within standards, weight five pounds under standard". The doctor recording his comments closed my application folder and unceremoniously dropped it in the trash can. I had not even made it out of the starting blocks.

As my short life flashed before my eyes, I did the only thing I could think of:  I got down on one knee and pleaded with the doctor for another opportunity at the end of the week.  He smiled and said, "Young man, I'll bet that you have never gained five pounds in a week in your life."  I said, "Sir, if you give me a chance, I'll bet that I can make this the first time." 

He must have gotten a wink from the angel sitting on my shoulder because he dipped into the trash can for my file and set it on the corner of his desk.  He told me to come back after my last test on Friday morning and he would weigh me again.  A first small hinge on the very large door to my future was put in place--at least temporarily.

I asked the young airman where I could find a phone and he told me to use the one on his desk in the outer office. I called my father and told him my predicament.  He had an immediate answer: "Go to the mess hall, tell the Mess Sergeant that you are Sergeant Butler's son and you need to put on five pounds by Friday noon." I don't know why he called himself a sergeant.  Although he wore that rank for many years, that was long since and my dad had retired as a colonel.  I guess he had his reasons, but no matter now, although I did have to ask, "How will I know who is the Mess Sergeant if there are a lot of people?" "Don't worry," he said, "you'll know when you see him."

The minute I saw the well fed NCO in a well worn apron I understood what my father had told me.  After listening to my plight, he went to his kitchen and returned bearing a plate piled high with mashed potatoes he was making for the lunch hour (now you see why I flagged the word "mouthful"). He told me to eat my fill and come back every minute I could spare from my testing so he could fatten me up.  Another gift-giver had appeared with another crucial hinge.

But the portal to my future was not to be so easily swung: this would be the best of weeks and the worst of weeks.  As the days crawled by, my weight crept higher.  I took one test after another, ate voluminously, slept fitfully and weighed myself at every opportunity, as if just stepping on the scale would help me gain weight.  

The numbers did inch higher.  After a huge breakfast on Friday morning, the needle hovered exactly over what I would require...in two hours.  In the meantime, I had one last hurdle to clear: the physical tests I had worked so hard to prepare for.

For an hour, in a sweltering gym with several hundred other sweating bodies, I did calisthenics, push-ups, situps, medicine ball throws and a 600-yard shuttle run.  After a quick shower, I was back in the doctor's office promptly at ten o'clock and stepped on the scale.  The same young airman who had weighed me on Monday intoned, "He is still two pounds light."  The doctor complimented me for having gained three pounds but reaffirmed that he could not sign my application.  Back into the trash it went.

The assistant and I went back into the outer office where he took a seat at his desk and I pretty much collapsed onto a nearby couch, tears coming down my cheek.  Seeing my distress, he asked why failing the physical was such a big deal to me. After all, many other candidates had not passed.  I choked out something about no money for college and having to join the Army which I desperately did not want to do.

Without explanation, he reached into his desk drawer, pulled out a quarter, gave it to me and told me to go down the hall to the clinic food outlet and buy a quart of chocolate milk.  I was completely unaware of what he was getting at but in my dazed condition I just did what he asked. When I got back I gave him the milk, but he gave it back to me.  Realizing I was absolutely clueless, he said, "It's not for me. It's for you. Drink it. It weighs two pounds."

He was right. When the puzzled doctor agreed to his assistant's firm request that he weigh again, not 15 minutes later, I was spot on. Out of the trash came the well traveled application folder, the doctor signed his name and four months later I received a letter informing me the Air Force liked what they saw.  A third hinge was now securely in place, the door with my name on it swung wide open and I began a very long journey, one that would bring me to, well, the end of this blog.

This is the point where Brett and Patti would ask what I make of all this.  I answered that question for myself many years ago when I became mature enough to ask it.  Why would these three people, a learned doctor, a rumpled sergeant, and an airman about my age respond to my plea for help?  It was certainly not my charm or charisma, which I would peg at absolute zero.  Mine was a plea from a stranger, someone they would likely never see again. None of them needed to help.  All of them could have been forgiven had they not. They were busy people who had no need to take heed of me. And yet they did.

What a simple but powerful. prescription: they listened, they  cared, and they responded.  Is there any better guide to how we might live our lives?  Sounds like something that might be stamped in gold.

Until next time.  Perhaps we shall  talk about more Doors...and Hinges in the weeks to come.

Grief...and Death

My daughter-in-love recently eased open the door to my room and, with her knowing smile, informed me that she had an exceptional idea. Over the 20 years I have known her, I knew her ideas were unfailingly exceptional so she had my undivided attention. "You," she said, "need to do a blog."  Pretending to understand, I nodded. Still with the smile, she told me she would let me know when it was up and running and gently closed the door.  

And so, at the age of 84, I am now a "blogger," as Google so informs me, having never even read a blog.  When I asked Patti what I might write about, once more with the smile she said, "Whatever comes to your mind, Granddaddy," the title by which I am known amongst family and close friends.

Well, dear reader, she casts a very wide net.  After three careers, encompassing such diverse worlds as national security, the energy business and a number of public policy issues, I can still speak to a wide array of questions with some authority.  I have also long devoted as much time as I could muster to studying an eclectic mix of disciplines that ignite my passion for learning.

Much of this history is recorded in my two-volume memoir, "Uncommon Cause: A Life at Odds with Convention," upon which I shall draw from time to time.  However, since it's publication in 2016, a recurring theme in its pages has increasingly consumed me: Grief, too often inseparable from its devoted companion, Death.  So, however painful for me and likely for some of you, dear readers, here is where I shall begin my blogging...if there is such a word.

After 84 years of well, life, I carry a lot of baggage here. I have cared too much about too many people and too many things to expect otherwise.  That said, unlike for so many young people, through my early years Grief and Death left me largely untouched.  We were not introduced until an bright April morning in 1963.  I was a freshly minted instructor pilot on my first mission with a student.  We had just lifted off the runway when the engine of our single engine jet trainer seized and caught fire.  After spending precious seconds commanding the terrified student to eject, I was certain I was too low to survive my own ejection.  But, Death rolled the dice and literally left me hanging; after one swing of my chute I slammed into the ground.  My student and I both eluded Death, and Dorene was spared the Grief visited upon every military wife who opens her door to the unexpected arrival of a chaplain.

Five years later to the day, that brush with Death played out again.  I had just arrived at my base in South Vietnam as a freshly minted F-4 pilot.  I left this war torn country a year later having felt the sudden jolt of Grief after seeing the rolled-up mattress of a squadron mate who had not returned from his evening mission; stared Death in the face once more while dangling in a parachute at 14,000 feet above the South China Sea after ejecting from my crippled aircraft; delivered Death to untold numbers of Vietnamese in the form of bombs, cluster munitions and flaming tanks of napalm; and, in the latter half of my tour as a general's aide in Saigon, watched the Grief on my four-star boss's face as he signed letter after letter of condolence.  By the age of 30, I was already a Grief- and Death-scarred veteran.

Grief receded for the next 13 years, supplanted I suppose by profound regret after becoming a stranger to my family during the three years of my first Pentagon tour.  But it was waiting and watching quietly before returning with a vengeance.

After two rapid promotions and four succeeding tours, in 1982 I realized my dream assignment: command of a B-52 unit.  That happiness was short-lived. A week before Christmas, one of these eight-engine machines crashed on takeoff, leaving ten lives snuffed out in a blacken field of burning wreckage just off the end of the runway.  Dorene and I were pummeled by Grief as we endured eulogy after eulogy and whispered inadequate words of condolence to ten distraught families.

By now, I had learned to take happiness with a grain or two of unease.  That lesson proved well founded when, a year later, I was given command of a second, much larger B-52 wing.  Again, the weight of responsibility for the mission and the lives of now 6,000 people bore down, even more heavily.  Several of my young airmen found ways to severely injure or kill themselves, whether on motorcycles, drowning or drug overdose, deaths that could have been avoided had proper training and disciplinary programs been in place.  I was filled with sorrow, anger and dismay at this senseless loss of life and the Grief it entailed for the families.  I was also deeply embarrassed that these incidents were occurring on my watch and took actions that put an immediate end to them.  

After a year, the success of my unit brought me another tinge of happiness when I was promoted to my first star.  I had delighted in calling my father, a retired army colonel, with the news (the operator relayed to him, per my request, the words, "Colonel Butler you have a collect call from General Butler").  Within a month, Death called for him instead, as it did in the following month for Dorene's two older brothers.  Grief just piled on.

Forward with me now as I pass rapidly over the Grief I felt, as have so many other grandparents, when the ravages of autism began to present in our daughter's first child three years after his birth.  And again, when my son's marriage failed after 10 years and two children.

I am happy to say that our resiliency as a family brought us through these challenges to very fortunate outcomes.  However, Grief and it's devoted companion were making a journal of what my life would hold, to be slowly revealed over the decade beginning in 2011 when a virus eased into my right plural cavity and began nibbling away at the lining of first my right lung and then the left.

That was the beginning of a long saga filled with puzzled medical specialists, unrelenting pain, and a pharmacy's worth of medications. After two agonizing surgeries, I fell from peak physical health into a medical no man's land where an idiopathic condition robbed me of my vitality, compromised my autoimmune system, and is destroying my central nervous system. It will also shorten my life presuming that some other eventuality does not intrude.

I must say, in all candor, that Grief visited me with a pretty sharp pang of regret for the loss of my hopes for this period of my life.  And while I am grateful that Death dealt with me kindly, the fact that I was spared the worst again proved cold comfort.  In early 2020, just as Covid was settling in, wreaking global Death and sorrow, I lost my brilliant younger brother to cancer, contracted when he was exposed to Agent Orange during his own tour in Vietnam.

I come finally to two cups of Grief that Death set before me and my family to end one decade and begin another. The first was filled with a long and bitter draught of a dreaded disease: dementia. 

Brett, Patti, Lisa and I did not understand the unsettling signs of Dorene's s affliction until a brain scan in the spring of 2020 revealed the frightening hole in her brain.  At some point she had suffered a stroke which in turn triggered what soon proved a severe form of dementia.  She was gone in 18 months.

No, better said, she left every day for a year and a half. Every day a new mystery to unravel as her persona slipped back toward childhood; every day a struggle to put on a forced smile and play children's games with her or say childhood prayers; every day not wanting to accept that this was really happening.

But it did, at two o'clock in the morning of October twenty-fourth, two thousand and twenty.  Yes, that's the way I will always remember it, written out the long way, not abbreviated, because it was not abbreviated--it was painful every hour of every day of every month.

Brett, Patti and Lisa enveloped me with compassion as each of us dealt with sorrow in our own way.  We soon discovered, though, that Grief had no intention of abating.  Just over 2 months later, Brett and Patti's son--my oldest grandson, still in his early 20s, died from an inadvertent drug overdose.

I was sitting near Patti when Brett told her that Jake was dead. He just spoke the words straight out with no embellishment; there was no way to soften them. Her anguished wail rose and rose until it seemed the room could not contain it. She fell to the floor, disbelieving, cursing Death, screaming as if she might drive it away.  But Death, of course, does not yield not even to distraught mothers. It's simply ushers in Grief at its most profound.  Grief that burrows deeply, that turns back every page of motherhood, back to the first sign of life in the womb.  My compassion for Patti cannot be measured; her painful cries will be in my head until the day I leave this earth.

We carry on, the four of us, knit by common bonds of suffering.  Lisa still has more than her share of Grief to deal with, while Brett, Patti and I moved to Kentucky where Patti has extended family and happy memories to lean on.  We acquired an inviting house that Patti's touch has transformed into a beautiful Kentucky home, sitting amidst seven acres of bucolic countryside.

I now spend my days helping with the chores, reading deeply into subjects that fascinate me, enjoying family gatherings and deepening my faith after it has been sorely tested (I should say this pursuit is greatly facilitated when one's son is a minister).

After reading through this in draft form, at my behest, Brett and Patti did pose one important question: what was my takeaway? That is a fair question, and after some reflection, my answer would be simply this. Death and misfortune happen.  Grief follows.  But that is so because Life happens.  And I would not trade mine for any price.

And so, I have blogged.  I don't really know if this will be just a one-off little excursion or if it will capture my fancy.  Or I suppose I could be hounded back into my more insular life by an army of insult hurling trolls.  But in any event here it is, a blog, general-ly speaking (the title I really wanted but someone beat me to it).  In closing, I will readily admit that this may not have been the best topic for my first outing.  It's just that I have thought about Grief and Death for a very long time and finally decided to talk about them...while I can.