Kimberley A. Morris:  

I graduated high school in 1987 from Durango Senior High, in Durango, Colorado. I had attended Kofa High School in Yuma, Arizona for most of 9th, 10th and 11th grades, but had grown up in Durango so I ended up graduating with a lot of childhood friends. My mom actually had a stroke when we were in Arizona, so I moved back to live with relatives and be near my mom during her recovery. After high school, I attended Fort Lewis College in Durango for about a year and a half, then decided I was through with working full time and going to school full time, so I joined the Army in August of 1989. I went to Fort Jackson, South Carolina for Basic Training. I'll have to dig out the picture, but I think we were the 3rd Platoon of the 28th Infantry--we were called the Maniacs. (and some of us definitely were!) After 2 months of Basic Training, and sleeping through Hurricane Hugo, I went to the Presidio in Monterey, California to attend the Defense Language Institute (DLI). I actually had to take leave for a week before going out there because they'd just had a huge earthquake (the one where the Bay Bridge in San Francisco collapsed), and they still didn't have all the electricity restored at the Presidio. I got there in October and though I was told I was going to be taking German when I got there, I found out a couple of days later that I was supposed to be an Iraqi linguist. I did two months of "Head Start" in Arabic while I was on "casual duty" (raking the lawns of the Generals' quarters, and picking up trash) while I was waiting for my class to start. They had so many Arabic linguists that by December, a group of us were told we needed to choose whether to wait til April to start Arabic, or pick another "category 5" language to begin after the holiday break. We could choose from 5 languages, though the only choices I remember for sure were Persian Farsi and Chinese. My roommate raised her hand for Chinese, and they were looking for one more to switch, so I raised my hand for Chinese also. I went back to Durango to visit for Christmas of 1989, then returned to DLI to take a year of Chinese. After that year, I had to go to AIT (Advance Individual Training, I think that stands for) in the now infamous San Angelo, Texas. I did training in a Top Secret facility there for about 4 months, then before I would be assigned to an actual place of duty--a real job--I was shipped to one more "add-on" school at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, I'd developed knee problems over the prior year, and was told I could not attend the school, and instead that I needed to go before a medical board to determine whether or not I'd be staying in the Army. A couple of months later (in August '91, I think) my mom was going to have shoulder replacement surgery, and there was no one else to help her, so I took temporary leave and instead of returning to Massachusetts, I signed in at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, where my mom had moved. I helped my mom with her surgery, and continued to wait for the results of the medical board at Fort Carson. Again, I was placed on the dreaded "casual duty", which this time involved mostly paperwork and filing in a number of different offices and clinics on-post. I kept getting sent to new places because I actually worked and got all the filing caught up and organized, so there was nothing left for me to do, and they'd send me to a new place to get things straightened out. Even at that, the sergeants hate anyone on "medical hold", so all they did was grumble and yell at me. Finally in November (I think?), I got permission to "PCS Home". This means they'll send you home to essentially wait for your orders to get out of the Army...instead of trying to find you work to do on "casual duty" every day, and feeding you and putting you up in the barracks. I guess they figure it's a win-win situation. Anyway, I had met a guy in my Chinese class and we'd gotten engaged in February. By November, he'd said he wanted to get married now instead of waiting (he was--still is--Mormon, and he previously wanted to wait to get married til after he got out of the Army and had gone on his mission...which would have been like 4 years). So, I did a "PCS Home" to the island of Oahu in Hawaii, because that's where Danny had been assigned. We were married on Friday the 13th of December, 1991 and it turned out to be bad luck...more on that later. As for the Army, they officially discharged me on December 17th, 1991. We lived in Hawaii for another 2-1/2 years or so, and had a son. I was a stay-at-home mom and did home daycare, and then home schooled my kids, for almost the next 10 years. Then I had our daughter during the few months I lived with his parents in Georgia while Danny was away at a military school. Then we moved to Crofton, Maryland in the fall of 1994, and Danny worked at Fort Meade and NSA for a few years. After that, Danny opted to go to military schools for a year, to become an officer. A few months before Danny was finished, in the spring of 1998 (I think), I moved the house and the kids to his next place of duty, which was at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs. My mom again needed some help, and we were granted a request by Danny's assignment officer, to live in Colorado Springs to be near her. While we lived in Maryland, I had gotten a facial nerve condition called Trigeminal Neuralgia...that was in the fall of 1996. It was mise...Expand for more