Robert Curtis:  

I should have graduated with the class of "67 but did not. In any case, I consider myself one of you. Does getting a GED in '67 count? Married in Nov '67 and by November '68 I was in the Army as a helicopter pilot. Dodged the draft, you see. Ha. By Aug '70 my son Rob was born and I was on my way to Vietnam when he was three weeks old. I flew Chinooks with C Co 159th (call sign Playtex - motto, "We give living support" The unit still exists but they have changed the name to something more politically correct), 101st Airborne (Airmobile). I made it through only slightly damaged. By 1972 I was back in Kentucky and flying Hueys and OH-58s in the KY National Guard while attending UK. I intended to become a lawyer and was even accepted at Kentucky and Florida but right before graduation I decided I wanted to do some more flying. So, in '75 I joined the Marine Corps (again as a helicopter pilot, although I started out wanting to fly jets, early in training at Pensacola while flying T-28s I found out that the top of one cloud looks pretty much like another and helicopters are much more interesting). In the Marines I flew Ch-46 SeaKnights (everyone calls them "Frogs" because when they ground taxi they look like they are hopping down the taxiway). Among many other things I did three six-month deployments in the USS Guam(The Guam is now at the bottom of the sea, having been used as a target ship. A much better fate than being cut up for scrap) as part of the Landing Force, 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean. My fourth and final Med cruise was in the USS Nassau in 1988. After that I was sent to Washington to become a military bureaucrat as the MV-22 Osprey training systems manager. In due course I retired from the Corps in 1993 while living in Washington, DC. We, my first wife and I, did a lot of traveling during those military years, including all over Europe when I was assigned as an exchange officer with the British Royal Navy. My first wife and I divorced in 1998 and I re-married in 1999. I still live in Washington and spent the last five plus years working on rebuilding Iraq working for the Corps of Engineers. I went there a couple times and it is not a place to go on vacation. Or for any other reason I can think of. Since Nov '08 I work on a Congressional commission, the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a senior professional staffer in logistics (not nearly as boring as it sounds). I went to Kuwait, Doha, and Afghanistan in Apr 09 and none of them are on my recommeded vacation list either. When it's not actually raining in Afghanistan it is very dusty there. Yes, the armor we have to wear gets heavier every trip. I may be back in sometime in the next year, oh joy. Besides work travel my wife and I travel a lot for fun. My wife and I decided to miss the Pr...Expand for more