Thomas Holladay:  

After graduating Flowing Wells I went to the U of A for a semester before going to sea on a Norwegian freighter to Japan ending up on Long Island working for Bill Swan, a friend of Mona Dayton's. David McKibben was there in charge of a beach hot dog stand and parking area. I did handyman work by day and waited bar in a disco by night. At some point John Newsome and I almost lost it trying to climb Mount Orizaba in Mexico. After another two semesters at FW I again needed a break and headed out as an English as a Second Language teacher to Micronesia in the Peace Corps for two years learning the Yapese language well enough to run training programs in it on Truk and in Yap. It was then back to the U of A for a final run which ended in 1971. Did one year in the Student Senate. I graduated just in time to win the lottery for Viet Nam which sent me on another one of life's little detours. I had already passed the Foreign Service exam and tried to get a deferment to that higher calling to no avail. Marty Baldwin, a has been U of A jock, plastering contractor, and friend of the family was the Chairman of the draft board. He said if he let me go to the State Department, whis was a deferrable event, I might end up normalizing relations with Cuba, practically accusing me of being a subversive. I will never forgive him though I value the Army experience as the great leveler it was at the time (with a draft). The war was winding down so after a little over a year in the Army I headed for DC to recover lost Foreign Service time. With the help of Mo Udall's office I was able to get hired in November 72, the day after the elections that put Nixon back in office despite Watergate which was unfolding before our eyes during the campaign. So I was sworn in and after training and Dutch language went off as vice consul to Paramaribo, Suriname, then a Dutch colony for two years. There I met my present spouse. After two years back in Washington, in 1977, with our young daughter born in 1976 pr...Expand for more