FLASHBACK! To the then-unknown village of Evergreen (later made famous in as the hometown of John Hinckley, President Reagan's wannabe assassin) above the Coors Beer factory in Golden--a 25-minute run in second gear up to 7,300 feet in my VW beetle. From atop, we were a stone's throw from the now-infamous Rocky Flats nuclear bomb-making plant, and a few miles farther down the road to the "Red Campus" as the liberal arts college at the University of Colorado in Boulder was aptly named.
Summer 1961: Evergreen High School. I was given the run of the temporary building that would be my exclusive domain. As a recent CU graduate in International Relations (with German and Russian language minors) and now a new hire of the sprawling Denver-area school district, Jefferson County had assigned me the mission to set up the first foreign language program in this obscure little community. I wasn't able to spend any money, but my enthusiasm overcame that little problem. I spent the summer ordering teaching materials from the USSR's massive propaganda bookstore and jury-rigging a make-shift "language lab" from the odds and ends I was able to cobble together from various sources--using some enlisted savvy I had acquired during my four years as a Russian Language intelligence specialist.
My first year was a mixed bag: fortunately, it included the immense satisfaction that came from bright, enthusiastic students with the guts to enroll in a completely voluntary language course. However, although I had the creme de la creme of students, I caught flak from three directions that made the year difficult: (1) A few parents who thought I might be teaching their kids Marxism (by using Soviet published language textbooks) and (2) most of my teacher-colleagues whose newly acquired radical teachers' union (the American Federation of Teachers) I refused to join. (3) My principal, Mr. Lee, cast a doubtful eye toward me when I refused "voluntary" duty as "chaperones" at local school sports events; for this obstinacy, I was in danger of Mr. Lee rating me unfavorably on my end-of-year report. He relented only when I won a Title VII graduate scholarship in advanced Russian language at the University of Indiana for 1962-1963 (with a follow-on exchange stint at the University of Moscow).
Although I tended to be instinctively conservative, JFK's inaugural speech "Ask not what your country . . . " had already infected my idealistic nature. That, added to the talk-radio buzz, which was awash in controversy about Vietnam (then, no one had the foggiest idea where this odd place name was to be found in an atlas, but there was plenty anti-war, pro-democracy rhetoric to rival today's ranting), all led me to believe I should do my "duty" for JFK and country (again), this time as an Air Force pilot. After having passed the aptitude tests and flight physical, my Denver recruiter confirmed acceptance for undergraduate pilot training after completion of officer candidate school in San Antonio. My long cherished dream of strapping a Roman candle onto my backside for fun and glory had been realized!
So goodbye
to teaching, goodbye to Indiana and Moscow Universities, and h-e-l-l-o to the wild blue yonder! Ah, but little did I know (until just before pinning on my "brown bar" a few months later) about the onerous euphemism "exigencies of the service"-- which was unceremoniously applied by an overworked personnel assignment captain who, with a couple of key strokes on his IBM punch card system, removed me from pilot training and simultaneously transferred me into the "intelligence career field." Over my passioned protest, he reminded me: "Your services are more urgent as a Russian linguist." So much for fun and glory! So it was either back to teaching at the bare subsistence rate of $1,100 a year, or taking my chances as a wimpy "intel weanie."
No comments:
Post a Comment