A brand new Lieutenant

Stan received a business card as a brand new Lieutenant in the Air force. He received his commission in AROTC at the University of Utah, where he was a distinguished cadet. The following January, when Kathy was six weeks old, we loaded up the car with a bassinete in the back seat and headed for San Antonio, Texas.

Stan reported in at Lackland AFB. We were in a motel for a month on Culebra Road. This is where we met Paul and Jackie from Connecticut who were also reporting in. We have stayed in touch with them through the years which included visiting them in Connecticut and their visiting us in California..

Stan's first assignment was in Hondo, Texas, about 45 miles west of San Antonio. Captain Biff Baker was the LDS group leader. Stan began his pilot training in a T-6. The following photo is a favorite of mine. I guess we were too poor to have prints made up, but they gave us the "proofs" of his military photos.

After six months in Hondo, we went to Enid, Oklahoma where Stan got his wings in a B-25 in 1956. His next assignment would be Harlingen, Texas flying a T-29 (called a flying classroom) which was filled with desks for the navigators. This was one of the bases where Navigators were trained.

In Enid, we had bought our first Television set. When we moved, we were pretty naive and we were nervous about trusting our TV to the movers, so we elected to take it with us. However, when we got it to the car, it wouldn't fit into the back seat so it had to ride in the front and Kathy and I rode in the back. I was in my 8th month of pregnancy. In fact Shauna arrived on St. Patrick's Day-- two weeks early.

The day we arrived in Harlingen, we saw a car with Utah license plates going in the opposite direction, so Stan turned around and followed it. The couple had pulled into a parking lot of an apartment building and the wife was waiting in the car. We found they were the Thorstensens, and were LDS and were in fact the brother and sister in law of the fellow my missionary companion was married to. They put us in touch with the Montgomerys who were in Dental school in St. Louis when I was on my mission. The Montgomerys were wonderful to take care of Kathy the morning I went into labor.

We had a wonderful church group in Harlingen of military families and some civilian members. Stan served as a counselor in the Branch Presidency and then later as the Branch President.

I think the above photo of Stan was either in Harlingen or San Antonio.

From Harlingen, we moved to San Antonio where Stan became an Academic Instructor at the Officer Candidate School at Lackland. This photo shows Stan in front of his classroom. While teaching at OCS, Stan was awarded his first Commendation Medal. We moved to San Antonio August 8, 1958 and in keeping with tradition, this was just 12 days before Chris was born at Wilford Hall Hospital at Lackland on August 20th.