Michael Matthews:
CLASS OF 1964
John Harris High SchoolClass of 1964
Harrisburg, PA
Columbia CollegeClass of 1979
Columbia, MO
Michael's Story
I left home at the ripe old age of 17. It was early November of 1964 when I enlisted in the USAF. After basic training and tech school I was stationed at Topsham, Maine. I arrived in Maine in May of 65 and stayed there until I departed for Viet Nam in October of 66. After a year of "fun in the sun" I relocated to Sweetwater, Texas. West Texas was nice and after two years there I was off again but this time to North Bay, Ontario, Canada. If you like LONG COLD winters this is the place to go. The people were great, the job interesting, and the booze cheap. I stayed there until May of 73 when it was off to Phoenix, Arizona. Just about the time my system got used to the desert southwest the Air Force decided to send me to Thule, Greenland. Yep, nothing green except the walls of your dorm and a girl behind every tree. But the job, space track and missile defense was very interesting. I left there in September of 75 and relocated to Montauk AFS, NY. That's on the tip of Long Island and once again a very interesting job of running the operations of a long range radar site. In November of 1976 I relo...Expand for more
cated to Hancock Field near Syracuse, New York. It was here I finished my undergraduate degree and applied for and was accepted to Officer Training School. I was commissioned on 14 February 1980. My first assignment was to the USAF Interceptor Weapons School located at Tyndall AFB, Florida. I taught there for four years. In February of 1984 I relocated to Pruem, Germany. From Germany it was back to Mississippi where I spent the next 8 years bouncing around in the back of a EC130E airborne command post. I retired from active duty on 1 January 1994 with the rank of Major (04). While with the airborne command post I saw service in Panama (1989/90) Desert Shield/Storm, and just before I hung up my spurs, Bosnia in 1993. I don't know where those 30 years went but I did enjoy the ride.
I'm alive and well and living in Lamar County west of Hattiesburg, Mississippi with my bride of 17 years Linda. She is a retired LtCol (05) and recently finished her second masters degree and will coninue on to her third in the fall of 10.
I have family in the Harrisburg area and try to get back each year to visit.
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