As the new year opened, Brett, Patti and I treated ourselves to the engrossing film, "The Boys in the Boat," an adaptation of Daniel James Brown's 2013 best selling book. I left the theater with a memory that took me back 66 years to the same era that prompted me to write the blog entitled, "Doors and Hinges Part I." I added Part I to the title thinking that there might be more such blog episodes to come and, sure enough, Part II, another heart-stopping moment that occurred during my first year at the Air Force Academy, popped into my brain, triggered by my own experience as a "boy in the boat." That's a confusing segue I know, so spare me a moment to explain.
You may recall that I chose the title, "Doors and Hinges," to depict crucial interventions in my life by people or events that changed its course. The example in Part I captured the moment in January, 1957, in a doctor's office where I was being examined to see if I met the minimum physical qualifications for the Air Force Academy where I desperately wanted to be accepted. My hopes were crushed when the doctor informed me that I was two pounds shy of the required weight. Then a young man working in the office whom I had never met took pity; he gave me a quarter to buy a quart of chocolate milk which, after I chugged it, exactly made up my weight deficit.
However, although greatly relieved for having passed all of the medical requirements, I would not know for months how my academic and physical aptitude scores would rank me among the 10,000 applicants competing for the 300 slots available. By mid-April I still had not received word of my fate.
OK, stage set; now, back to the movie. One of my enduring memories from high school is a little pocket-Door and Hinges moment all its own. In the Fall of my junior year at the enormous high school in northern Virginia that I was attending after an abrupt move from a tiny Mississippi school, I was scurrying down a long hallway when a man about my stature who was passing me in the opposite direction reached out and abruptly stopped me. He introduced himself as Charlie Butt and asked me if I knew anything about crew. My blank look must have given him my answer, so he said, "Never mind; I think you are cut out to be a coxswain, so consider yourself recruited. I am the coach of our team. See you at the Potomac Boat Club under Key Bridge Monday after class. Bring a T-shirt, Bermuda shorts and tennis shoes.
The long and short of this puzzling intervention was that a year later I was the coxswain of the varsity 8-oared boat of the Washington Lee High School crew team. After going undefeated in our first six races, we were in Philadelphia for one of the defining races of the season called the Stokesbury Cup Regatta. We triumphed in a tight race, but for me, the greater drama was reserved for the traditional post-race ceremony which entailed the winning coxswain being tossed into the water by his crew. As I arced into the air above the Schuylkill River, I saw my father, who I thought was back in Virginia, running toward the dock waving a piece of paper--it was a telegram from the Air Force with news of my acceptance to the Academy. I was in...now all I had to do was stay in. And that brings me back to another do-or-die moment in the series I call Doors and Hinges.
To my dismay, on my arrival at the Academy, just making it from one day to the next proved far more difficult than the friendly acceptance letter had portrayed; indeed, my prospects for a four-year tenure were dimming rapidly with every passing day. Within two months, the Door to an Air Force career that hard work and good fortune had opened was once more about to be slammed shut.
The gist of this story begins with an uncanny parallel to my first week at Washington Lee High School. At the outset of the Academy academic year, after an extremely demanding summer of basic training which tested me to my limits, I confronted a full slate of mandatory classes heavily weighted toward math and sciences. Moreover, I was summarily informed that I would be assigned to the varsity gymnastics team, an arbitrary process driven by the fact that the new Academy was putting together varsity athletic teams from scratch. The officer who served as our coach summarily informed me that I would in a trampoline specialist despite the fact that I had never set foot on this dangerous apparatus. That assignment proved to be a mixed blessing: within weeks a serious mishap had put me in the hospital; the fact that I did not let it faze me kept me from being bounced from the Academy (terrible pun, I know).
This is how it unfolded. On the military training side of my life, matters went from from bad to worse from the get-go. A cabal of three sophomores in my squadron of 100 cadets decided for whatever reason that I was not Academy material and set about creating circumstances that would be cause for my dismissal. For example, every day when I returned from class my side of the two-man room to which I was assigned had been torn apart, clothes dumped from drawers and pulled from the closet, highly polished boots maliciously scuffed and my bed stripped. I would then be written up for improper care of my belongings and given several demerits. Within a few weeks, these black marks had accumulated to the point where only one more meant I would be sent home. Now, back to the gym.
I had become sufficiently proficient on the trampoline at this crucial juncture that for the first time I was about to attempt a full twisting back somersault without the safety harness. But I failed to fully commit to the maneuver. I stalled out halfway through and fell face first onto the bed of the tramp. As I rebounded, my right knee struck the middle of my forehead with tremendous force knocking me nearly unconscious.
Over my objections, an ambulance was called and I was carted off to the hospital for observation overnight. I was returned in early afternoon the following day, at which point I went straight to the gym and got back on the tramp even though my face was swathed in bandages. This time I completed the maneuver properly to the relief of my coach and the applause of my teammates.
After practice, I went directly from the gym to the dining hall rather than marching, as per usual, because I could not wear the full uniform, i.e., my bandages precluded a cap. During dinner, I was surprised to be spared the usual hazing and to my greater surprise, when I return to my room I found it still intact, just as I had left it the previous day before going to practice.
Miraculously, the uncalled for harassment stopped for the rest of the semester and with it the demerits. Only then did I learn what had transpired. The commander of my squadron had taken note of the fact that I had gotten back on the tramp despite my injury. Apparently impressed, he told the three cadets who were my nemesis to back off: I was now off-limits.
And so, the Door that was so near to being closed and locked was halted literally in the nick of time and over time it swung fully open. My cadet performance steadily improved and at graduation I was near the top of my class in every parameter of training.
So what to make of all that--the question that Brett and Patti asked me to think on as I wrap up my blogs. Well, you have probably already figured this one out: it was a painful yet powerful affirmation of a lesson that I had seen at close range as a coxswain driving my eight oarsmen to their limit when every muscle in their body was screaming in agony. I saw them continue to row through the pain time after time in order to win, including our final test: the 1957 National Schoolboy Rowing Championship.
So, there was never any doubt about getting back on that trampoline and doing a proper full twisting back somersault. I already understood the payoff of persevering under stress no matter how extreme it might seem. Perseverance, I learned, builds determination; it instills confidence, and it can makes champions of the most unlikely candidates. However, the most important lesson that I learned was that perseverance can also save your life... but those are stories for another day.
