mccainjs at ya h o o McCain, Jim:  

If you wish to send a note to me just send to mccainjs at ya h o o dot c o m As far as school goes, I got my start at Ursa Minor Elementary on Ft. Richardson, Anchorage, Alaska where my father had been assigned for three years with the 172nd Mechanized Infantry Brigade. I spent 1st grade learning under Mrs. Pierce and remember being madly in puppy love with a cute little gal named Susan Severence. After a successfull beginning at Ursa Minor, I was transferred to Ursa Major elementary for 2nd and 3rd grade. While at Ursa Major, I learned to play baseball and football, learned to ice skate, sled, and ski, and became a Cub Scout. I was there during the Cuban Missile Crisis and remember practicing the drills they made us all do in case we came under missile attack (after all, Russia was just across the Bering Strait). I remember being chased by a momma moose while salmon fishing with my father. I remember playing tackle football in my yard until nearly midnight because darkness never quite fell during summer, and I remember surviving the monster earthquake in '64 that shook me off of a neighbor's porch (while selling Cub Scout raffle tickets) and sent me sprawling uninjured onto the front lawn. Visions of missile silos atop majestic mountains, the Aurora Borealis, lots of snow and ice, salmon fishing at Eagle River, a week spent on an island in the middle of Big Lake, and sledding down the ice runs on base are still etched in my brain. We left Anchorage (and the view of beautiful Mount McKinley) when Dad got re-assigned to Ft. Benning (Columbus), Georgia for training on the UH-1 Iriquois (Huey) helicopter. Here I attended St. Mary's Elementary for the rest of 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. And after about a year in Columbus, my father's unit was deployed to Vietnam. He spent from August 1965 to August 1966 with the 1st Cavalry Division (Air Mobile) in the remote highlands near a town named Ban Me Thuot on the Cambodian border. When he returned, he had many fascinating stories to tell. My favorite and most memorable teachers at St. Mary's were Mrs. Boutwell (home room), Mrs. Swanger (music), and Mrs. Johnson (science). Some of my friends, neighbors, and playmates for whom I have fond memories are Roger Phillips, Buddy Polhamus, the Parsley sisters (Patty and Peggy), Robert Britton, Chucky Harvell, Perry Spear, JD Johnson, and Robbie Jernigan. And it was here that I began my love affair with sports (and an athletic little blonde named Ramona McCormick). Ramona was a better athlete than me and was the best female athlete in the school. We used to train (or practice) nearly every day in preparation for the annual St. Mary's field day. When the big day finally came (in 6th grade), Ramona took home 7 first place trophies. I took first place in the high jump, softball throw, and 4 x 100 yard relay, and 2nd or 3rd in rest of my events. As a boy, it was a bit humbling to have your "girl friend" win more events than you. But Ramona was probably the best pound for pound athlete I've ever known. I can only wonder where she and many of my other old friends from St. Mary's are today. That summer, after I had graduated from 6th grade at St. Mary's, my father returned from his deployment and made a career decision to switch from the U.S. Army (after 10 or so years and one tour in Vietnam) to the U.S. Air Force. His new career field would be (Rescue and Recovery). We moved to Tampa (McDill AFB) for 1 year while Dad learned all about his new job and the new aircraft he would be flying (HH 43 Huskie). I attended Monroe Junior High and flirted with trying to make the Monroe football team. But I felt I was too small to compete with some of those monsters I saw in gym class who were on the team. So instead, I signed up to play in the Tampa youth league. It was here that I got my first taste of organized tackle football while playing for the McDill Falcons. I loved living on McDill and used to go fishing at the base fishing pier every day after school. I became quite the angler and brought home a fresh catch to Mom nearly every evening. The base swimming pool sported a very high diving board and I'd spend nearly every day at the pool during the summer months. Some good friends, neighbors and school mates were Jamie Harrison, Danny Faulkner, and Keith Watkins. We used to make our own golf clubs and played a very crude brand of golf in an empty lot near our homes. And to make some spending money, I used to wade anywhere from waste to chest deep in the muck lined bottom of some of the water hazards on the base golf course to retrieve lost golf balls (to sell back to the golfers). It's no small wonder that i survived. My father finally got his re-assignment orders after completion of his school. We were all excited when he got orders to Misawa AB, Japan toward the end of summer 1967. We arrived at Misawa Air Base (near the northern tip of Honshu) with no available base housing. So we spent our first year living downtown about a mile from the front gate of the base. We lived in an ethnically "mixed" subdivision called "B Battery" that was about half Japanese families and half American military families. Living in B Battery was a neat experience and allowed me to learn first-hand about Japanese culture and customs. I attended 8th, 9th, and 10th grades at Misawa Air Base High School. Sports were still an important part of my youth and I enjoyed wrestling, basketball, water polo, soccer, and baseball. I enjoyed all of them but my fondest memories are of playing short stop and leading the team in batting average for the senior league Astros who won the league title both my 9th and 10th grade years. Another fond memory of my time in Misawa was the 30 or so mil...Expand for more