Linda Samuelson:  

Linda Lewis left Camp Hill, Pennsylvania in the tenth grade to move to Scotch Plains, New Jersey. Leaving good friends and familiar surroundings wasn't easy. But the gods were smiling when my senior class schedule was prepared and I was assigned to Mrs. Mako's third period Chemistry class where I met my future husband, John Samuelson. Do you remember the 60's Darlene Love song "Today I Met the Boy I'm Going to Marry"? Well, it was something like that. After high school graduation I went off to Maryville College, a small Presbyterian college in eastern Tennessee and John went off to the Air Force, but despite the separation love grew and after my junior year we were married. John was a flightline crew chief on big jets and being an Air Force wife was an interesting life for a "Maryville Girl." Then John earned his degree and a commission in the Air Force and all of a sudden I was an officer's wife. Air Force assignments took us from New Jersey to Indiana, Kansas, Texas, Turkey and England (where I finished my degree through an on-base University of Maryland program, and where I then worked for three years as a Field Registrar) and finally to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs where John retired in 1985 after 21 years of active duty and 5 years as a faculty professor teaching economics, finance, accounting and Federal income tax, and of course helping to prepare the future leaders of our Air Force. We have now lived in Colorado Springs for 44 years. During our Air Force years we moved many times, as military families do, and I set up our home more than ten times in places as diverse as Topeka, Kansas; Adana, Turkey; Wichita Falls, Texas; Mildenhall, England and beautiful Colorado Springs, Colorado. Living in Turkey was an adventure in the early seventies, when Turkey was really a third world country. A "hardship tour" for some, but for us an amazing international experience. John was a 1st Lieutenant and due to limited on base housing for junior officers we lived in an apartment in the city of Adana. What a blessing that turned out to be. We were the only Americans in our apartment building and our Turkish neighbors across the hall had two children the same ages as our children. They played together and our neighbors became our friends; for 50 years now. They looked out for us and helped us navigate the Turkish language and culture. We visit them regularly now in Turkey and they have visited us in Colorado; a friendship that transcends the miles and the years. And we have vacationed together, here and i...Expand for more