Michael A. Burke:  

A Brief Biography of an Odd Duck and Military Brat : 27 Oct 2023 I'm an odd duck. I'm an only-child military brat (Army) and was born in 1944 (during World War II) at the Army base, Fort Monmouth, in northeastern New Jersey, where my father, Ray, was studying to be an officer in the Signal Corps. My mother, Dorotha, and I followed Ray around the planet from one duty station to the next (when he wasn't in combat) for the first 17 years of my peripatetic life. Ray was emotionally distant and an alcoholic and that, along with my being shy, quiet, and having no siblings, led to my becoming a bit of a "loner". But I'm also a survivor and smart and have lived an intellectually adventurous life. I'm an American mutt, equal parts Ukrainian and Polish from Ray, English and Dutch from Dorotha, and love being an American (but boy, do we have serious problems to deal with here in the U.S.A.). I also consider myself to be a citizen of the planet - everything on it is one connected system and everyone else's problems are our problems too, as we'll all see in the years to come (and right now in Ukraine). Dorotha was raised in Groton, a small town in central New York state after she and her parents moved there from northeastern Pennsylvania. This was the closest thing I had to a hometown since it was where Dorotha and I stayed with her parents whenever we were between overseas or stateside tours, also for two years during the Korean War, and for a year after Ray retired from military service for good and loafed (and drank). The largest industrial company in 1940's Groton was the Smith-Corona Typewriter Company with offices and factory located in downtown, and it was the economic backbone of Groton. Ray, after having spent three years in the Army, mustered out and came to town to see his older brother, Bogan, and older sister, Stella, and soon was working in the factory alongside Bogan. His being in Groton created the proximities and coincidences that allowed Ray to eventually meet ten-year-younger Dorotha - she was a knock-out in a shy and wholesome way and he was an intense, intelligent, brooding, and handsome Slav. He swept her off her feet and thereby ensured my arrival on the planet two years later! The courtship and marriage coincided with Ray's reentering the Army, this time as an officer candidate. Ray, along with his two brothers and two sisters, had grown up in Youngstown in northeastern Ohio, but their immigrant parents died young and the children scattered away from Ohio, most during during the Great Depression. I've had an unusual education, what with all our traveling and crazy schedules. I even spent part of the 5th grade in a country one-room school house in New York state near the Canadian border. I could write a book about education of children just from that experience. Learning took place while riding in cars and trains, on ships and planes, because I've always carried books to read and study when traveling. Dorotha made those times fun as well as educational, so I was seldom bored. I'm largely self-taught in the things I'm interested in, facilitated when I started reading at age 3 and doing arithmetic at age 4 (thanks for all the great tutoring, Mom!). Also, I have some understanding of why home-schooled children seem to do better than their classroom-educated peers. I skipped Kindergarten and was later advanced from 3rd grade to 4th in Jan 1953 while living at Pershing Heights, an Army Base in Tokyo Japan (from 1952 to 1953). Since then I've been at least a year younger than my classmates. Here's a brief history of my high school years. Note: All my references to Germany from this point on are to West Germany - it had been partitioned into two countries, West and East, after WW2 (and reunified in 1990). Ray had given up his officer's commission and was now a Master Sergeant. In 1957-1958 he was stationed in Kaiserslautern (called K'town by the Americans) in southwest Germany at Kleber Kaserne, one of a number of American military bases on German soil with the local names left intact. We had lived in Germany previously from 1946 to 1949, so this time around dealing with the culture and language was going to be a piece of cake - literally as well as figuratively - my favorite German dessert was "Schwarzwaldkirchtorte" aka Black Forest Cherry Chocolate Cake! We lived "on the economy", which means in a German apartment in town rather than in military housing on base. As a result I was speaking German (again) pretty quickly and generally "going native" - I even looked like "ein deutscher Junge" (a German boy). The reason Ray chose to live "on the economy" rather than "on base", in addition to the educational value of immersion in local culture and language (and despite Ray's alcoholism, he was still a self-taught, well-read intellectual who spoke German and had German friends), was that it made it harder for his commanding officer to track him down for after-hours duty. I attended the second half of 8th grade and most of 9th grade at Kaiserslautern American High School (KAHS). The school building was located in Vogelweh, a large residential, shopping, and recreational complex for American military families located two miles west of K'town - think of it as an American town plunked down in a foreign land. The school building also housed the junior high school (which would have its own building in Vogelweh a year later). KAHS also served Air Force brats from nearby Ramstein AFB until the Air Force built its own high school at Ramstein years later. I commuted daily via a military bus from downtown K'town to Vogelweh (and back) to attend classes. My best friend at KAHS was Robert Fuchs. We met on the transport ship carrying dependents (the families of servicemen) from New York City to Bremerhaven (on the northwest coast of Germany), and became close friends almost overnight. This is another trait of brats - rapid bonding (and equally rapid unbonding). Bob lived in Vogelweh with his family, so our social time together was mostly confined to KAHS. But we did have a couple of day-long outings in the summer. I've since lost touch with Bob (another common phenomenon among brats, especially before the advent of home computers and the internet), but if anyone reading this has any knowledge about his whereabouts, I hope you'll share it with me. I have strong memories of 9th grade at KAHS and feel an affinity for all my former "Brat" classmates. After all, we were all brats and that made us different - and special, in our own way!. The teachers were good, and I especially remember Miss Wilma Taylor, my General Science teacher, and Mr Rudolph Howze, my Algebra teacher. Both encouraged me to accomplish far more than I thought possible. The student body at KAHS included a sizeable "tough" crowd - at least, it seemed that way to me. There was also a contingent of serious athletes - KAHS was the leader in athletics and competitive sports among all the American high schools in Germany at the time. I was definitely a "fish out of water", neither a "hood" nor a "jock". I often fantasized about transferring to Heidelberg American High School located 40 miles east of K'town. It was the top academic American high school in Germany (as it should have been - after all, Heidelberg was historically the center of learning in all of Germany!), but this move was simply not possible. We left Kaiserslautern two months before the end of the school year, and I finished 9th grade at Groton Central School (GCS) in Dorotha's home town of Groton, NY where I had previously attended all of 1st grade and most of 2nd grade and which had become a familiar place to park my carcass between moves. I was jokingly known as "Invisible Burke: now you see him, now you don't" - the locals there obviously didn't have much experience with military brats! I ended up at three more high schools before graduating - 10th grade at Austintown Fitch High School (AFHS) in Austintown, OH, back to GCS for 11th grade, and on to 12th grade at Rome Free Academy (RFA) in Rome, NY. My 10th grade year at AFHS in Ohio was a good one. Ray was stationed at Lordstown Military Reservation, and we lived in nearby Austintown. AFHS was an advanced high school, and I took a lot of science and math courses and did well. I hadn't made any friends at school (no other brats around!) and was pretty much on my own at home since Dorotha had started as a sales representative for Cort Cosmetics (the in-home sales division of Cody Cosmetics) and had quickly moved up the ladder to district sales manager, and worked long hours away from home. Meanwhile, Ray was either absent from home or "out of it" most evenings (I think his troubled childhood in nearby Youngstown was haunting him). Fortunately, I knew how to cook for myself and had plenty of challenging homework to do and books to read (we had no TV) which kept me busy and distracted and free from boredom (but not from loneliness). In June Ray retired from military service. He'd been in long enough for a full pension, and we moved back to Groton (and Dorotha gave up her position with Cort/Cody Cosmetics). Ray goofed-off for a year - mostly drinking and carousing with my maternal grandfather at two local watering holes - while Dorotha worked in the Texaco gas station and general store, a very successful business she'd started herself years before when Ray was stationed in Korea during the war, and which she later sold to her parents in 1955 for the princely sum of $1 (it was a gift)! My 11th grade year at GCS wasn't so hot. At AFHS I'd already completed a number of what would have been junior-level courses in New York state, and GCS wouldn't let me take senior-level courses. So, the powers-that-be put me in the Industrial Arts (Shop) program for the year. Such are the hazards of being a brat! I specialized in Mechanical Drawing and Sheet-Metal Design and learned some useful skills, but, I was allowed to participate in several...Expand for more