Robert Bond:  

I was born Robert Clayton Duke, Jr on January 11, 1956 in Houston, Tx. As a child my family often moved around the country, and I lived in California, Texas, Kentucky, New York, Connecticut, Kansas and Illinois, with brief stays in Arizona and Baja California, MX. Through out these travels I attended 18 schools, with my last school being Westminster High in 1972. At Westminster, I was pretty much a loner, I had a few friends from the neighborhood, and a few from the AG classes, but I was not a social butterfly. I did have a few girls I was interested in, but most were only friendships, nothing serious. I tried out for the water polo team, but found that my swimming strength was not a strong as I needed to be. I loved history classes, for the most part did well in everything but Physical Education. I hated PE, and skipped almost my entire junior year, and the half year of senior classes. Once I found the Agriculture programs and the FFA, I found my niche. I had a green thumb, so this was my future. I was elected in both years as a FFA Chapter officer, and completed both my Greenhand and Chapter Farmer qualifications before leaving school in December 1973. One of my first projects was the school Rose Garden. Westminster being the sister city to Westminster, UK, and the city having a formal Rose Garden, Charlie Ramos, our Ag/FFA advisor and the FFA members, decided to have a competition for a design for a Rose Garden at the enterance to the school farm. My design was chosen for the project, and I lead the class in construction and planting of the Rose Garden. I was responsible for the daily maintenance for the 1 and 1/2 that I was in the program. Knowing I wasn't going to have enough credit to graduate in June, I left school in December 1973. 10 years later I recieved my GED. This is were I met Beckey Cross. Another FFA student, we stated seeing one another, and got married in August 1974. By summer of my junior year, I had worked in a commercial greenhouse for some months, but before the end of summer the place was raided by Westminster PD and closed down for growing marijuana. I then started working at Ward and Harrington Lumber Company, in their retail garden center. I learned so much more, and met many of the commercial growers in the area. I was there until April 1975 when I joined the US Coast Guard. The US Coast Guard was only intented to be a chance to get some life experience, get my GED and school benefits. After boot camp I was sent to a search and rescue (SAR) station in Freeport TX, south of Houston. Within a short time I found my calling, I was a damn good radio operator, could run a teletype, and could keep track of information very well. After a 3 day dredge fire, I applied for USCG Radioman A school. So, August 1977 , a very pregnant Beckey and I loaded up our car and drove to Vallejo, CA where Beckey would spend the next few months, until the baby was born, and I went on across the bay to the USCG Training Center outside of Petaluma, CA. Our daughter Jana was born in mid October, and we set up an apartment in Petaluma. I had a rough time a school, I held a 95 average on course material, but had difficulties getting up to speed in typing and learning Morse code. But at the final hour, I graduated with my class, as an E-3/Seaman Radioman. Our next stop was at Station Channel Islands Harbor, in the city of Oxnard, CA. I served in a couple different roles while there. Beside being a qualified radio watchstander, I also worked in the station office as the unit storekeeper, assistant housing officer, and qualified Petty Officer of the Day. During off duty time, Beckey and I ran a newspaper route delivering papers to stores and vending machines in the Oxnard area. In June 1979 our son Jene was born. In May 1981, orders came for Texas. We were off to Galveston, TX and the USCGC VALIANT (WMEC 621), a 210ft medium endurance cutter. Our missions were mostly 30 day drug enforcement patrols in the Southern Gulf of Mexico, Yucatan Straits and Northwestern Caribbean Sea. Sadly, things started coming apart in our marriage, after Christmas 1983, I had moved out, to my own apartment in Galveston, and Beckey had moved to her own apartment. I would get over to see the kids when I could. Little did I know that things in my life would change so quickly. Not long after moving to my apartment, I was introduced to a woman that would change my live forever. At the time, neither of knew that within a year's time we would be in a relationship that would eventually last for almost 40 years. I was a 2nd class Radioman and, Jim Owens was a 2nd class Hospital Corpsman aboard the ship. This Sunday, January 22, we had duty. I had stopped by to pickup Jim to take him to the ship. I was sitting in their living room drinking a cup of coffee, and talking with Ruth in the Kitchen, while Jim finished getting ready. A knock came at the door, Ruth hollered come in.... The door opened... and in stepped a neighbor. She was dressed in a white negligee, heels and a full length silver fox coat. Her dark black hair was done up beautifully and perfect makeup. Ruth introduced her as Rene from across the hall. Rene explained that she was fixing breakfast for friends she'd been out with the night before for her birthday and needed some sugar. We exchanged greeting, chatted for a minute, and she left to return to the continuing birthday party across the hall. After the door closed, Ruth and I talked a little more, I found out that Rene was the property manager of the apartment complex. I looked at Ruth, and said in the most serious tone "I'm going to marry that woman." Ruth looked at me and laughed "Are you out of you mind?". I saw Rene in passing a couple times over the next months. One evening Ruth and Jim were having a get together with a few friends at their new apartment. That night I decide to bring my guitar along, and was sitting there playing when Rene walked in. While I played Rene and I started talking. And when the party broke up around midnight, Rene and I went for a long walk on the beach. She told me that she was in the middle of a divorce and had just broken up with her boyfriend. We went back to her apartment and we soon fell into bed, as we both had to get up for work in a few hours. We started spending more time together, and she took me to meet her mother and dad. One week I spent helping her and her adopted sister, Cindy with a wedding brunch for 200 in San Antonio. By May I had orders to Group San Diego, and asked her if she wanted to go with me. She said yes, and we packed our belongings in June and off to the West Coast. And we had such a roller coaster relationship. After leaving San Diego in June 1987, I went back to VALIANT as Radioman in Change. I befriended her dad, who had just lost his wife, and we would hang out at his place and ran around together. Rene was still working in the apartment industries in Texas, and I would see her occasionally, and talk to her often. In 1988 she moved to Illinois to work with her brother-in-law near Chicago. I flew up a couple times, and spent some time with them. But I was also dating a OTR truck driver. Well, my trucker Margret, Rene and her sister Cindy all became good friends. That went on for a while, and it worked out well. In September 1989, Rene was severely injured in a car accident in Woodstock, Il.. Disoriented on a wet, foggy road, one that she had traveled many times, she crashed through a T- intersection, breaking her leg in four places and crushing her lumbar spine. I was in Mayport Fl going to Navy school, and woke with a feeling of sometime wrong. My first break, I called the house in Woodstock, and the neighbor told me that Rene had been in an accident and was in the hospital. The next few months were difficult, I talked with her in the hospital as often as I could. While at sea, I wrote daily, and mailed little cards to help cheer her up when mail went ashore. Although the doctors said she would probably never walk again. By Thanksgiving she had walked out of the hospital. Christmas, New years, and birthdays came and went. On Valentines day, I sent her a card asking her to marry me, for the last time. If knew if she was not ready, then I would move on, but always remain her friend. I got a card back a short time later, saying " Is this my first last chance, or my last first chance, YES!. Three days later I was on a plane from Houston to Chicago. We talked late into the morning. And soon we were looking at wedding rings and a dress. Within a few days of returning back to Texas I met up with her dad, and told him I was going to marry his daughter, his reply "It's about damn time, son" We married June 23, 1990 in a ceremony at her sister Cindy's house in Woodstock, IL. And began our life together as Robert and Rene, travelling across country to our new duty station in Long Beach, CA. In California, I was assigned to the Eleventh Coast Guard District - Telecommunications staff, problems with my clearance kept me out of the commcen, but ended up as the assistant to CWO Charlie Colburn (dttm1). Learned a lot under him, and within a year I was asked to assume the role of the district office staff computer system manager, and then Regional Systems Manager for entire district. I loved it there, my clearance problem resolved itself, and I was able to do something that would further my post CG career. While I was doing my CG thing, Rene, while battling a collapsed bone fusion in her spine, multiple surgeries, and a myriad of Cts, MRI, and other tests, completed a certification as a Nail technician, not only the top of her class, but aced the State Board fo...Expand for more