Joining the Air Force

My grammar school classmate Larry Stephan was killed somewhere near the DMZ in Vietnam on May 1, 1967.  In August, 1967 I joined the Air Force.  I went into the Air Force because I had a 1A draft classification, I didn’t want to be drafted, I didn’t want to be killed, and I didn’t want to go to Canada.

In 1965 when the US was "attacked" in the Gulf of Tonkin I had been in favor of the war.  At 18 I thought I would go when the time came.  By 1967 I had no feelings of patriotic duty to save the world from Communism.  It was pretty obvious to me by then we were fighting a colonial war in Vietnam and we were on the wrong side of history.

In December of 1966 I had fallen in love with Cathy Bruemmer, a freshman at Mount St. Mary’s College and joining the Air Force seemed the best way to stay alive and plan a life with Cathy.

I was 20 years old and not a deep person.  I struggled some but when the time came, I just gave in.  It was easy enough to go to a recruiting office and start the process and then it took on a life of its own. I gave in to my dreams of being John Wayne, a soldier, like my father in World War II, prove myself.  It also ended any struggles I was having in school.  The semester I joined I had a D average.  It gave me a new start; let me run away from home.

In June I went to the Recruitment Center in downtown Los Angeles and went through the process.  I got in line with a hundred other young men.  We stripped down to our underwear and went from medical station to medical station.  At the end of it, we took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies.  We got to put our clothes back on for the oath, but it didn’t make any difference, we still looked naked and vulnerable.

As only made sense in the Department of Defense, I was in the Delayed Enlistment Program, which meant I was sworn in in June, but didn’t actually go in the Air Force until August.  In August I went back through the medical examination again.  The night before there had been a going away party for me at home and I had gotten very drunk and spent the night groping Cathy before I had to show up.  An Army doctor asked me if I was OK.  I must have looked as bad as I felt.  "I'm OK," I said, it was too late to go back and the process continued.  At the end of it, instead of going home like I had before , I boarded a bus and we headed for the airport.

I remember when my father said good-bye to me that morning.  He looked me directly in the eye and gripped my hand.  I could see sadness, love, and fear in his eyes, felt it in the way his hands held on to mine.   History was repeating itself in our family and it wasn't a good thing.  My parents had been in favor of the War, it was a sore subject between us when I brought it up, but a few months later my mother was working for Eugene McCarthy and my father agreed with her.

We arrived in Amarillo, Texas in the dark hours of the morning.  A couple of sergeants met us and took us on a bus to the base.  We passed under a sign that said something like “Home of our greatest weapon.”  I didn’t get it.  Someone later explained to me we were the weapon.  I never felt like anyone’s weapon.  We had breakfast in the chow hall and then were taken to a barracks.  Everyone was pretty nice to us.  That was the end of that.  No one treated us like human beings again for a very long time.

The next morning we started the process of becoming airmen.  I found myself among 40 other young men from all over the country.  There were a few of us from California and young men like ourselves from Kentucky, Georgia, and everywhere else.  At 20 I was one of the oldest, most were 18, just out of high school.  We told each other where we were from, what airports we flew from and what the trip to Amarillo had been like.  We gave our names to each other and then we fell in line.

The first day we got haircuts and uniforms.  The haircut was a buzz cut as close to the scalp as possible.  I had gotten a haircut before I went, not a buzz cut,  just short and ordinary.  In 1967 the length of one's hair was an important marker.  One or two of my fellow recruits had long hair and it ended up the floor along with everyone else's. When we were left free again that evening we were all shocked to see people we didn’t know.  We had to reintroduce ourselves.   We were bald headed young men in green fatigues and we had begun to look indistinguishable from one another.

The drill sergeants were mostly Southerners and had accents that sounded like the flat Texas panhandle of Amarillo.  Our drill instructor was Airman 1^st Class Steinberg.  Later Airmen 1st were called sergeants. As we marched by other flights Airman 1^st Class Steinberg was taunted by their drill instructors, all staff sergeants.  They attacked his name, his heritage and his rank.  Steinberg responded back in the same mean aggressive voice.  Taunting, belittling, degrading were the language of basic training.  Everybody did it and since there was nothing lower than an Airman Basic, we were taunted constantly.  Foul language, racial epithets, regional slurs, homophobia were all practiced and allowed in those days.

It was a long six weeks.  We marched, cleaned the barracks, got shots, took tests, attended a few sixth grade level classes, learned how to pull the trigger on an M16, got ready to do a one mile run in 8 minutes or less, smoked,” smoke if you have ‘em,” and went to the small BX near our barracks when we had free time, which wasn’t much.  The last two Saturdays we had day passes to go to town.  I stayed in the barracks the first Saturday because someone in my squad had screwed up.

We learned military discipline.   Do what you’re told.  The consequences of not doing what you were told were not good.   There was a motivation flight where those who needed it were harassed constantly.  Everywhere they went they marched double time.  With their hang dog beaten looks, they looked like prisoners.  Most of them got discharges after a few weeks in the motivation flight.  It was a way out, but it didn't seem worth it.  Whatever we were before we arrived at Amarillo Air Force Base, after that first day we were slicks, no stripes on our sleeves.  At the end of basic training we were promoted to Airmen 3^rd Class.  We were congratulated and we had a single stripe.   

During that six weeks, I scored the highest of any airman there on the language aptitude test.  That week there were no slots for the foreign language training institute, a two year assignment in Monterey, California, studying Russian or Chinese or one of a dozen other languages.  Instead I would learn Morse code at Keesler Air Force Base.  I didn’t know it at the time, but that was in preparation to be a Morse Code Intercept Operator in the Air Force Security Service.  Security Service is what they called the Air Force electronic intelligence gathering unit under the direction of the National Security Agency.  They had bases all over the world most of them close to the Soviet Union or China.  The NSA had convinced the Air Force to give them their top recruits.  I was always good at aptitude tests and scored very high.  When I arrived at my duty station I found myself with a lot of other college students now airmen who had also scored high.  The job didn’t require much intelligence but apparently NSA convinced the Air Force it did.

At the end of Basic Training I won the Airman something or other Medal, a medal given to the best recruit of the period.  I was selected to compete because as hard as I tried not to  appear different, I was picked as being above average in literacy and then drilled on nonsensical questions, such as how many stripes on the American Flag, what color, and in what order?  Airman 1st Class Steinberg had left on leave after a few weeks to get married, a welcome respite for us, the Sergeant from our sister flight who took over had a sense of humor.  Steinberg returned at the end of our training when I went to the General’s office to get the medal.  He was more scared than I was.  I was pretty relaxed; he was a nervous wreck.  Someone stole the medal from my locker at the next base I went to.

After graduation I stayed at Amarillo AFB for a few days and then boarded a series of planes from Amarillo to Midland to New Orleans to Biloxi, Mississippi. 

The Barracks

We called them The Barracks.  I was born in 1946 and I don’t remember living anywhere else before them. It was 1948.  The Barracks were Army barracks built during World War II to house the anti-aircraft units protecting Lockheed. After the war they were used to fill the housing shortage in LA for returning GIs and their families. 

Barracks similar to the ones where we lived in 1948. http://www.mtsu.edu/centennial/1941.shtml Middle Tennessee State University

The Barracks were in Glenoaks Park across the railroad tracks from Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank.  The Barracks were on the outer edge of the park starting in the middle of the Park between San Fernando and Glenoaks on Amherst where 3rd Street comes in.  In military order they ran from 3rd Street up to Glenoaks and across Glenoaks to Andover on the outer edge of the Park.  The Barracks took up about a 1/3 of the Park.  Our apartment was on a walkway between facing one story buildings, each one converted into three apartments.

My parents, my two sisters and I were crammed into two bedrooms, a living room and there must have been a kitchen.  A large bed took up most of the space in my parents’ bedroom and my sisters had the other bedroom.  I think I slept on the couch in the living room.  The front door let out onto a small covered porch with a couple of steps down to our yard bordered by a low white picket fence.  All of our neighbors had kids.  And it seemed like all the kids were my age.  There must have been a few like my sisters born before the war, but the rest of us were the post-war Baby Boom.

My two older sisters and I on the porch at The Barracks

I don’t remember spending much time indoors.  From the time we got up until dusk I ran in the park with a gang of kids my own age.  Our apartment was only a few steps down the walkway between barracks to the play area.  The oleander bushes between our house and the playground were big enough to crawl into and hide.  No one could find me.  I’d come out all sticky from the oleander.

The best thing in the park were the swings, wide rubberized straps with chains connecting to a crossbar high overhead.  With each pump we tried to get higher and higher until we nearly flew out of the swing.  There was a slide we threw sand on and rubbed into the metal to clean it and make it faster.  We climbed a long ladder up and then went down as fast as we could to catapult ourselves out into the sand.  There were a jungle gym, a huge sandbox and monkey bars. We spent most of our day swinging and climbing on the iron play equipment.  Facing the playground was a rec center where a small room on the side had a Dutch door half opened where an adult inside loaned us balls in exchange for a personal item, usually a belt.  When we were bored we would explore the rest of the park.

There were green lawns and stone retaining walls to balance walk on top of.  We could go anywhere in the park, lawns, horseshoe pits, picnic tables, ping pong tables and ball fields.  Down on the south side by San Fernando Road was a log and river stone cabin, headquarters for the Girl Scouts.  I don’t remember anyone using it but we climbed all over the cabin and its stone walls.  There was a radio tower nearby, red and white that had a blinking red light at its very high top.  We didn’t climb on the radio tower.  There must have been a good fence around it.  We climbed on and over everything else.

I saw a television for the first time in one of the Barracks up Amherst from ours.  Above us the buildings were two stories with a stairway outside to the apartments on the second floor.  We were all crammed into someone’s apartment to watch the TV.  It was a wild party of kids climbing over the couch and watching the box.  I don’t think there were any adults around, which was probably why we were let in.  One kid, I think who lived there, ran out naked from the waist down and from the back of the couch he pee’d over the crowd.  I don’t remember what was on the TV but I remember the unrestrained and screaming exuberance.  It was the beginning of a new age.

Someone owned a Flexie and we rode it down the sidewalk on Amherst Street taking turns until the owner tired of sharing took it back.  We flew down the hill without braking if we could and then walked it back up for the next kid.

Photo from the Missouri History Museum http://collections.mohistory.org/search/node/69325

The southwest corner of the park was a baseball diamond and the major league teams played spring ball there.  I remember climbing the fence to watch a Yankee’s game one time.  The game went into the night and I snuggled under a blanket with a couple I didn’t know.

I found a baseball glove wedged in some junk in someone’s yard.  I retrieved it and made my father play catch with me.  I remember the fathers in the Barracks were roughly divided between those that were around all the time and those that had jobs.  I thought of myself as one of the unlucky kids whose fathers worked.  Sometimes he worked at night and we had to be quiet during the day when he slept.

We lived in the Barracks from 1948 to 1950.  By 1950 they were tearing down the Barracks in stages.  We played in the demolished sites and across Glenoaks Boulevard where they were building new housing.  We collected slugs on the ground from the terminal boxes.  The slugs were like the steel pennies still in circulation.  We had pockets full of slugs and pennies.  A penny bought a square of bubble gum.  Slugs didn’t buy anything and didn’t fit in any soda machines.

We moved from the Barracks in 1950 and our apartment must have been demolished pretty soon after that.  The Park returned to being just a park.  On the north side they built a new recreation center with a gym and swimming pool.  Where our apartment had been was turned into tennis courts.

Seminarian

At age 17, I became a Franciscan monk at San Lorenzo Priory, a newly built monastery tucked back into the hills on the edge of the Santa Ynez Valley in the coastal mountains of Central California. I had just graduated from high school.  In August I became a postulant, the first step in becoming a Franciscan priest. 

Every morning we got up at 5, went to the chapel and chanted Prime and Matins. After breakfast we chanted Lauds, Terce and Sext. After dinner we would do Vespers and then Compline. All of this in Latin in 1964, psalms, New Testament readings, and lessons. In between the Hours of the Divine Office we did gardening, took care of chickens, rabbits, and cows. Our meals were eaten mostly in silence. We had a few classes and there was a little free time but not much. Sundays were free days, no work, but still prayers. Sometimes we got to go to Santa Ynez Mission in Solvang. 

I was at the monastery with my high school friend Joe Quattropane and three other postulants and a couple of novice brothers. The best part of it I remember was running free in the ranchland around us. We were up a hill from the Santa Ynez River, a dry arroyo with a small trickle in the center at the mouth of a canyon that climbed up Mount Figueroa. The oak grassland around us and the canyon teemed with deer, wild pigs and hawks.

Built the previous year, San Lorenzo smelled of concrete still drying. Each of us had a room, a cell, walls of concrete blocks, a desk, and a bed. Once a week we did discipline outside our cells, flagellating ourselves with a few short rosary chains without the beads, bound together; probably available in some monastery supply catalogue from Belgium or Italy. The first time we did it, it was a surprise, but reinforced our connection to very old traditions. The real penance of it was more the standing in doorways, bare asses exposed while we bent over swinging a handful of chains lightly behind ourselves. It did promote humility. It’s hard to be dignified with your underwear around your ankles and your robe pulled up over your backside.     

After three months of monastery life, we became novices and donned the full robe and hood of Capuchin Franciscans. The other monks were a couple of brothers, one was a cook and the other did maintenance work, older retired priests, one demented, one not. Another priest, a middle aged man seemed to be serving out some sort of exile at San Lorenzo away from whatever problems he had left. He didn’t seem a very happy man. And there was a novice master.

I really enjoyed the ritualized prayers of the Office, the sound and feel of the Latin. Often during meals the Rule of St. Francis was read. I enjoyed the hills and mountains around us.

At 5:30 a.m. one morning half awake in the chapel to the music of the Psalms I was daydreaming of Mary Ellen Connelly. I woke up during my daydream and thought it was time I reviewed my sacred calling. I realized I was more inspired by my wanderings around the mountain than I was by my spiritual practice. Between my daydreams and my love of the mountain I thought I probably didn’t have much of a calling to the priesthood. 

It still amazes me that I was at any time a seminarian. I grew up Catholic, attending Catholic grammar school. I was an altar boy. I went to a Catholic high school. The nuns and priests always pitched a vocation to the priesthood as the highest calling a person could have. I wasn’t a goody two shoes, but I was always trying and I appreciated any praise I got from adults. Answering the call to the religious life was encouraged. 

In high school when I had no clue what I was going to do after graduation and my best friend was grooming himself to enter the priesthood. I went along. It solved the problem of how to apply to college. My parents had not attended college themselves. My older sister had gone to the Sisters of Charity college in Iowa on a full scholarship and my eldest sister had become a nun. I didn’t know anything about applications, selecting a college or anything else about going on after high school and it seemed no one was helping me. 

As soon as I said I wanted to be a priest it was all taken care of. After the seminary I figured out on my own how to apply to Loyola University and eventually 8 years later I graduated from UCLA. 

I never put San Lorenzo on my resume or even told many people about it. I enjoyed it. I was always glad I did it; I just didn’t want to be categorized as an ex-seminarian. In my mind six months didn’t qualify me for that. It became a habit not to mention it. When I remembered, sometimes it was funny to surprise someone with the information.  My eldest son was particularly suprrised at the age of 24 to learn I had been a seminarian. As an adult no one thought of me as an ex-seminarian and in my own mind I wasn’t an ex-seminarian, an ex-monk maybe, but then for only six months. It was a short retreat from the material world. It did cost me a draft deferment. Two years later I was classified 1A because I had not been a student continuously since high school. 

It was something private that I kept to myself, but it was a good time in my life, time spent outdoors and time spent in prayer and contemplation, good preparation at the threshold of being an adult.

Wearing a Gun

I’m not a gun person.  Personally I don’t need a gun, never have.  In the Air Force, once a year for four years we did weapons training, an afternoon away from my usual radio duties.  I barely qualified.  Sometimes on vacation there was target shooting at some relative’s farm, mostly .22 rifles.  So it took a little getting used to when I started wearing a .40 caliber Smith and Wesson to work every day.  Becoming a police officer was never something I seriously expected to be, so when it happened at age 58, I was a little surprised.

At first in the Academy we wore all the equipment, a duty belt with pouches, rings and a holster.  We put red plastic guns in the holsters, realistic looking things except for the red color.  We practiced drawing them and pointing them.  One of my classmates ridiculed me for the way in class she saw me reaching for it, almost caressing it, getting used to the feel of it.  It took some getting used to.  After six weeks in the Academy we went out to a shooting range and began learning how to use the real thing.  It was a challenge.   

For three long days we fired the weapons, stood, aimed, fired, fired, and fired.  The third day when we broke for lunch we were all standing in a row in front of the targets and we all raised our hands and said, “We still have a round in the chamber.” 

“Yes,” the instructor responded, “so go to lunch.”

There we were, 30 new recruits all sitting around on benches near the range eating bag lunches, all of us with loaded pistols, cocked and ready on our waists.  I’m sure I wasn’t alone in reassuring myself we had all been carefully vetted for our self restraint.   I think until then most of us never thought about how police officers always wear their pistols hot, no loading, no cocking, no safety.  Out of the holster, one pull on the trigger and it was a lethal weapon.   From that day on at the Range we wore our guns “hot.”    

Four months later we went to work in our Parks, a uniform, a badge, and wearing a .40 caliber pistol, 11 hollow points in the magazine and one in the chamber ready to fire.  For the next three months we learned to do our job in the field under the careful eye of a training officer always watching us.  Then one day I came to work, reported in, got in my car and began patrolling by myself, wearing a gun. 

It was about two months after I started patrolling alone, two months wearing the gun, when my radio crackled, “1358” my badge number.  “Central.” 

“Go ahead, Central.”

“Report of gunfire in the Park, Mitchell Canyon area.”  

“Enroute,” I responded. 

It had been a slow day, now something exciting.  I headed for Mitchell Canyon and left the paved road travelling down into the canyon in my 10 year old four wheel drive Jeep Cherokee.  Bouncing along I was having fun, and then the thought came like a voice in my head, “Gunfire in the Park!  Are you out of your mind?”

For a moment I felt the fear common sense required.  I looked at it and consciously decided to be cautious and continued down the road.  “It’s what I do.  I’ll handle it carefully and hope I don’t get hurt and that no one else has to be hurt.”  Mitchell Canyon is an area of the Park on the edge of widely spaced suburban housing to the west and ranch land to the east.  I drove down the canyon stopping frequently to listen through my windows for more gunfire.  Nothing.  A kid with a .22?  A rancher firing at bottles?  A backfiring car?  Whoever it was, they were gone by the time I got there. 

Another day and another call at 2 a.m. was to assist a Ranger on a medical.  And then we were confronting a subject whose ‘seizures’ were related to ingesting methamphetamines or something worse.  He threatened to attack us with a knife he said he had.  He didn’t and he was arrested. 

It didn’t happen very often but once a month or every few months, something would come up and wearing a gun enroute and having it when I got there was an important part of the job.  It made it possible to respond to calls, two men fighting or the backcountry at 2 a.m.            

That’s why they gave me a gun, so that I was prepared to go into situations where common sense said  go the other way. 

There are regular reminders of how dangerous that can be.  Somewhere all too frequently and sometimes very nearby, a police officer is shot doing his duty.   They aren’t shoot outs like on television.  More often they are ordinary situations gone very bad, stopping a car, calling to someone acting strangely to stop and chat, chasing a thief, or searching a house.  Sometimes an officer is caught off guard; someone has a grudge or a mental illness or wants to make a point and decides shooting a cop is the thing to do because they wear badges and guns.   One time I attended a funeral for four cops.  For the 20,000 of us there, it was a lesson in how dangerous this job could be.    

We frequently remind each other, be safe, be cautious, be wary.   

So at the end of the day when I took off the gun, it was a great relief.  It was heavy to wear and even heavier on the mind.  Without the gun I could relax.  I didn’t have to protect it; no one was going to call on me to solve a situation beyond their threshold of fear. 

I enjoyed being a police officer.  It was cool.  I enjoyed being powerful and I enjoyed solving problems that before I would never have taken on.  I never got in the habit of carrying a gun off duty like a few of my coworkers did.  I could easily do without the power and I preferred not being so vulnerable.  As one instructor in the Academy told us, off duty he preferred being a very good witness to being an active participant. 

And when I retired I enjoyed taking the gun off for good.  I have a gun now, the first weapon I was issued.   I purchased it when they were replaced with newer models.  I have magazines and bullets for it.  I am well trained on how to use it.  But most of the time it’s securely locked up.  I never expect to use it.  Maybe on vacation I’ll take it out in the desert and fire off a few rounds.  This time I expect to hit the bottle. 

Who Am I?

I am Jack Duggan.  I’m 65 years old and I live in Oakland, California.  In November I retired as a California State Park Ranger. 

I was a Park Ranger for four years at Angel Island State Park, a one square mile island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, and two years at Mount Diablo State Park, east of San Francisco near the Central Valley.  I had a religious conversion of the civil variety.  I went from the Devil’s Mountain to the Angel’s Island.  Park Rangers in California are real cops, guns, badges and all.  Prior to that, I was a banker for nearly 30 years, mostly in Los Angeles.  In between banking and rangering I was a Juvenile Hall Counselor, euphemism for guard, in San Francisco Juvenile Hall for three years. 

My self image is of being a schlepper, a kid from Burbank who is always trying to catch up but has never been ahead of the pack.  As a leader I’m a great second man.  I like someone else in front.  I’ve been very fortunate to have had some opportunities for some very exciting experiences.  I like a challenge and I probably make decisions impetuously.  I think a decision is an obstruction that needs to be passed, it’s what you do afterwards that proves your mettle.  Yes, I’m still proving my mettle, maybe less now than before.    

I live in apartment on Lake Merritt with my partner Suzette and our incredible daughter, two year old Paloma Duggan.  “I am not Boo Boo,” she informed us yesterday.  “I am Paloma Duggan.” 

I have three grown sons and six grandchildren.  Son number one is a set designer and jack of all trades for commercials and TV in Los Angeles.  Number two son is a newly minted professor at the University of Oregon teaching political science.  Number three son is a fashion photographer and sometime artiste recently moved to Manhattan.  He makes a good living at it.  My eldest grandson is in high school and says he is the only honor student on his Junior Varsity football team.  My youngest grandchild is three years older than Paloma. 

I am an English major. We know who we are.  After two years of mediocre study at Loyola University before it became Loyola Marymount, I was nearly drafted and joined the Air Force.  I had the incredible good fortune of being stationed in England for over three and a half years.  I became a staff sergeant. Afterwards I got to attend UCLA and graduate.

After UCLA I found a job in banking and I found out I liked it.

I stopped drinking at the end of 1983.  I did that the usual way, joining a group of likeminded people who supported each other in learning to live a sober life.  I don’t struggle with alcohol any more, but I don’t take it for granted either.  I don’t drink, it’s one of the principles I live by.  Before 1983 life happened to me and I acted very badly in a number of circumstances.  After 1983 life continued to happen but I was present at all times and whatever I did; I made the best decisions I could at the time and when I’m wrong I try to promptly admit it. 

I joined a mountaineering group and climbed the north face of Mt. San Jacinto, Mount San Gregornio in midwinter and Mount Rainier from the North side.  I became a leader in community development in South Central Los Angeles in the early 90s and participated actively in the effort to rebuild LA after the Civil Insurrection.  I’ve been a volunteer and mentor to a number of young men growing up.  I have a couple of sober alcoholics who claim I’m their sponsor but don’t call me much. 

In 1995 I moved up to the Bay Area.  It was a real dislocation to leave Los Angeles, a city I knew as home for nearly fifty years, but the Bay Area is an incredible place to live.  For many years I felt like a visitor but when I started working for the City of San Francisco I realized I’m here.  This is home.   

In 1999 I quit banking and tried writing for a year.  When I went back to work I became a counselor at San Francisco Juvenile Hall and then a union steward and then a Ranger with California State Parks.  I’ve been married twice and divorced twice.  I have a two year old daughter who is incredible.  I had a heart attack a year and a half ago and I have six stents in my coronary arteries.     

I’m retired.  

Cardiac Risk?

So why did it happen to me?  Could it happen to you?  I don’t know.  I lost my faith in righteous living equals healthy.  Being righteous, at least the way I was, wasn’t effective.  I may have been able to do things differently.   Should I have stuck to a Lipitor regimen 10 or 15 years ago when I first took it?  That might have helped.  Less French fries and hamburgers? Yes, that would have been good too.

I ate a pretty healthy diet, brown rice, a lot more food from the plant kingdom than manufacturing plants, more chicken than beef.  Since my 30s I’ve tried to stay in good condition.  I’ve always been a little overweight, but still in what I thought was good cardiovascular condition.  A week before my heart attack I paddled a kayak across Raccoon Strait against the tide into a headwind for a good hour of strenuous work.  I didn’t feel bad afterwards.   

Here are my numbers, before and after:

                      Date                                     5/2009                            1/2012

                      Blood Pressure                    141/81                            112/79
                      Total Cholesterol                     205                                154
                      Triglycerides                              61                                 97
                      HDL                                           55                                 46
                      LDL                                          138                                 89

The afternoon of the heart attack, May 3, 2010, my blood pressure was 157/89

I quit smoking cigarettes and cigars in 1984.  I went back to smoking cigars in 1999 and smoked cigars off and on until 2008. 

So I probably should not have gone back to cigars.  I should have curbed my enjoyment of hamburgers and French fries.  I probably should have taken cholesterol medication before.  I could have worked on my closet Type A personality, not taken things too seriously, a little more letting things go and meditation. 

I give myself credit, my conditioning was probably the difference between a fatal heart attack and a minor heart attack.  And as one doctor said, “You sure have a talent for making plaque without that much cholesterol.  That’s genetic.”

I had a heart attack at 63, which now days seems way too early.  My good friend in high school Joe Quattropane died of heart attack a year later.  If you smoke or eat poorly, I’d recommend you stop smoking and eat decent food, less fat, more vegetables.  If you’re overweight or out of condition, do something about it.  And if your numbers are bad talk to your doctor. 

It’s been a real shock for me.  I am trying to live more healthily.  I take medicine for my heart, Lisinopril, asprin and simvastatin.  After the heart attack for a year I took Plavix and Metoprolol.  I try to walk vigorously every day for a half hour or more.  

I hope I live a healthy life for another 30 years give or take.  And I hope you do too. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2012

Have a Heart

I borrowed an image for this poem from Jimmy Santiago Baca’s poem “As Children Know.” 

I used to be a banker

not known for my generosity.

have a heart

sure, of course I do,

don’t I cry at Disney movies?

and then it failed

choked off as it were

clogged from lack of attention

it began to die on me

an infarction

sounds like something in the bowels

a plumbing glitch

was the problem

not enough blood

I had heart

but not enough blood. 

and so I stood there dying

but I didn’t. 

Moment stopped

no tunnel

just a half a minute or so

maybe longer

that I stood dying

clutching my chest

wondering why I couldn’t

breathe. 

And children leave toys

in the sandbox

overnight

abandoned

waiting

the early morning

sun rising

dew drying

And so it’s been

for two years since.

I don’t take my heart

for granted
as I once did

but I don’t trust it

anymore.  

Heart Attack, Months Later

A couple of months ago I was having lunch with my Ranger friend Denis Poole.  Denis and I went through the Academy together.  He is three months younger than I am and as the two old codgers in the class we helped each other get through.  I think Denis is a better Ranger than I am.  I’ve always felt smarter than Denis but he knows it’s not true and so do I.  He is a very good friend and has a much more subtle sense of humor than I do. 

Retirement was the main topic of our wide ranging conversation.  I was retiring shortly after our lunch and Denis is thinking about it.  I shared with Denis my anxiety about having enough income.  I have Social Security, CalPers, and my own funds and I didn’t know how much the net checks were going to be from each of these.  I worried, maybe it wouldn’t be enough, and Denis said I should think about drawing down on the principle of my savings, amortizing it over a 30 year period.  Denis like me was a banker before he became a Ranger and the two of us were familiar with actuarial tables and the concept of stretching money out over the life expectancy of someone.  Denis was right; I don’t realistically expect to live beyond 95 years. 

Toward the end of our lunch, he asked me how my heart was after the heart attack.  How was I doing?  I told him I was OK.  Everything was fine.  He knew I had gone back to full duty as a Ranger three months after the heart attack.  I shared with him I had no problems, nonetheless I was so much more aware of my heart.  Every time I thought about it, I could feel an ache in my chest and I thought about it frequently.  Everything checked out fine, it was just a psychosomatic awareness of the vulnerability I felt around my heart.  I even thought I could feel the stents vibrate or quiver sometimes.  I know I’m OK.  I told him I thought it was just natural to worry about it, no real cause for concern.      

Denis looked at me, shrugged and said, “Well maybe you can amortize it over 20 years.”