I remember the time I was in the army reserve. I got in a month after dad died. It took the army reserve from October of 1987 to February of 1988 to realize that I didn’t need to go to boot camp because I had been in the air force.

I was a sergeant when I got out of the air force and I lost a stripe when I joined the army reserve. In February, they took my order for my uniforms and I got them in May, two months before I went to Fort Chaffee in Fort Smith, Arkansas for two weeks.

I went there for training as a clerk typist. I called it “My two weeks in hell”. I got blisters about four inches wide on the back of my heels and had to wear tennis shoes the whole time. Then, I got a tooth pulled.

Before I left, I found out that I had to run one ½ miles within seven minutes. I ran it in 13 minutes and started crying. The C. O. asked me why I was crying and I told him because I failed. He told me that I passed because I wouldn’t give up and because of the blisters and the tooth extraction; he knew I wasn’t a quitter.

I’ll never forget him for that. In October of 1988, I transferred from the army reserve unit in Lubbock to Fort Snelling. I found out later that my reserve unit from Lubbock went to the Gulf War a month after I transferred.