Leon Rosiczkowski:  

Beaver River Class of 1966 Ciao, In 2014 I retired to San Antonio, Texas from my final job as a teacher for the Department of Defense School (DoDDS) system at Aviano AB, Aviano, Italy. (Aviano is 50 miles NNE of Venice and the DoDDS system is for children of military members who are overseas with their family.) My retirement meant the end of my being connected to the US Air Force for 43 consecutive years - first as a member, then as a spouse of a member, and finally as a DoDDS teacher at air bases around the world. In fact my adult life has been spent primarily living outside the United States (32 years overseas). And before I go further, I need to thank each of you for helping me! The years of college tuition paid by the government does not obscure the fact that the money really was provided by you. I know it was not free money from the government, but money that you were not able to spend on your family! After graduating from Beaver River, I attended Clarkson University graduating in 1970 and with a draft number in the single digits it meant my best course of action was entering the Air Force as an officer. Due to eye astigmatism I was never given the chance to become a pilot as I had greatly hoped. While in the serving in the military I worked primarily as a Contracting Officer (following four years as an Electronic Warfare Officer in a B-52 bomber and being sent to Thailand twice during the Vietnam war). In 1982 while working at Torrejon AB, Spain (near Madrid) I met a beautiful civil engineer and fell in love. Eliana and I have a son, Adam who is serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. After leaving Torrejon and up to my retirement, we lived only four years in the United States. Two years at Altus AFB, Oklahoma and two years at Bergstrom AFB, Texas, and in between was Howard AB in Panama (this was during the General Noriega episode in the 80s, but thankfully we missed the chaos of the US invasion to capture the general). I began my teaching career for DoDDS in Panama. Certainly, my most interesting moment in Panama happened during a lunch at the US Navy Officer's Club. Unrecognized by me, eating at an adjacent table was Debbie Wakefield Stevens and her husband Joe. When Debbie approached our table, I had every belief she was a parent of one of my high school students. I certainly never expected a Beaver River classmate to be on the isthmus. They were as beautiful a couple as I remembered them from 1965-6. Joe was a class ahead and I knew him through the football team, I was impressed with his maturity back then especially compared to our team captain, who habitually called us both "pansies". Leaving Howard AB in Panama, we headed to Texas. While at Bergstrom AFB (Austin, TX) in 1991, my wife was given orders for a remote tour (no family) to Soto Cano AB, Honduras. And for myself, while at Bergstrom, I was earning another degree as I had GI Veteran benefits remaining. With that complete and free to choose what to do without my wife? I found that I wanted to remember Asia in a positive way, not from my war memories of a decade earlier, so I returned to teaching with DoDDS at Kadena AB, Japan. Adam and I were only planning on being in Japan one year while Eliana was in Honduras. However, she arranged for her next assignment to be at Kadena and our stay continued for another five years. We greatly enjoyed our every moment of experiencing the Japanese culture except its high cost of living (like the $5 hot dog I ordered during my first trip off base ...Expand for more