October 16-17, 1971: A Visit to Chicago
	July 10-16, 1971: A Week in Hawaii
	Return to the Index for 1971

I have to report to my next duty station- the Finance Center at Fort Harrison- on August 7th. I took my initial training there before being stationed at Fort Lee, so I am somewhat familiar with Indianapolis and the Fort Harrison area. I need to be in the area ahead of time in order to secure off-post housing. So I can spend some time at home in Charlotte, visit my sister and her new family in Burlington, buy a car, and then drive to Fort Harrison- all in the next 15 days.

Note from 1979:
These notes are being re-typed in 1979, and it is difficult not to inject comments based on my knowledge of what has happened since 1971. I could say, for example, that in 1971 flying in an airplane was for me an unusual occurrence, but that five years later I would be doing it often. I could say that you haven't seen the last of Hawaii. I could say a lot of things, but the point of all of them would be that it is of constant interest to me how life seems to come full circle. Maybe it is just me, but I continually see those closings of circles; I have always had an urge to go back to places I have been before, why, I don't know.

Some Time at Home in North Carolina

My parents picked me up at Douglas Airport on my return from Hawaii. It was early in the morning, and we went directly home where I spent the next day or so just relaxing and hanging out.

One thing I definitely wanted to do was to see my sister. Her daughter, Jennifer, had been born shortly before I left for Korea, and I definitely wanted to see her and her brother Ted; they should be one and two now, or perhaps two and three.

Dad drove Mom and I up to Burlington for an overnight stay with Judy. Dad still had the white Oldsmobile Starfire that he had gotten before I left for Korea, and I enjoyed driving it most of the way. I also made a separate day trip up to see her again the week I was at home, and I even stopped to see her a third time as I was driving from Charlotte to Indianapolis. This pictures in this section were taken at different times, but I am simply going to include them all here.

Judy and Bob are living in a small house in the northwest part of Burlington at the moment. They have had a second child, a little girl they have named Jennifer, and now they are making plans to build a new house on some acerage over near Elon, NC, a university town just a few miles west of here.

Right now, though, they are living in a house that is convenient to where Bob works at his family's drug store in Burlington, the eponymous Barbour Drug.

This is not a picture I took of the house. Rather it is an image showing what the house looks like at the time this page is being created- in the 2020s. My sister tells me that she has been by the house in recent years, and that it has been completely redone numerous times since she and Bob sold it to move to the rural home they built west of Elon.

I have only very vague memories of this house itself; actually, I confuse it sometimes with the apartment they lived in for a time between when they would sell this house and when the new house they will build would be ready. The last time I was here was just before I left for Korea last year.

On my couple of visits up here, I mostly just hung out for the day with Judy and Bob, getting to know the kids and learning about how my sister's life is going- which is pretty good. The pictures I have all involve the kids, and they are pretty mundane. So without a whole lot of comment, here they are:

My Little Niece, Jennifer

Judy, My Nephew Ted, and Jennifer

Below are two pictures of Judy's children, Ted and Jennifer, playing in the front yard of their house. Jennifer is about a year old here, and Ted is about two.

Most times the kids were together- right next to each other. But there were a few occasions where I tried to take pictures of each one singly. Ted's at left and Jennifer's below:

It has always a pleasure to visit my sister (well, at least after we became adults), and the arrival of two other little humans has made it more interesting as well.

That's a neat picture of Ted, taken one evening just before bedtime. That evening I got a quick look at how little kids get cleaned up when they are too young to do it themselves. The pictures I snapped should have made good blackmail material, but, sadly, neither one refused permission to use the photos when I created this page in 2022.

As I have probably already mentioned, my sister is very much "into" all things equine. And now, living out on her own in a semi-rural area like Elon-Burlington, she has been able to indulge her passion by owning horses of her own. I did not know it at the time, but this would become a life-long passion, and much of my sister's life will revolve around the horses she owns. That little girl in tub above will also get bitten by the same bug.

My sister has two horses that she keeps stabled a short ways from where they live, and on one of my visits we (my Mom and I who had driven up with my Dad in the white Oldsmobile Starfire he had, my sister, Ted, and Jeffie) went over to the stables off Front Street near Elon College to see them.

The chestnut mare (seen in the two pictures above) was Naughty Baker, and you can see her, my sister, and I at the now-vanished Alamance Saddle Club stables. (I would show you an aerial view of where they were, but since they are no longer there, having long since been replaced with a residential community, what's the point?). Judy and Bob leased the three stalls in the background, and Judy tells me that

"I still have one of the stall doors and four of the oak boards that lined the stalls. We rescued them before the barns were demolished and condos were built on the property. Baker, a Thoroughbred, had three foals for me: Mighty Naughty ("Peanut"), Notabit Naughty ("Sissie"), and (I forget his registered name) a colt we called "Goober"."

The gray gelding )seen at left) was, at the time, a two-year-old half-Arabian named "Sur Affy". You can also see pictures of him below. Incidentally, in the right-had picture of Jeffie being held astride Sur Affy, that's our Mom in the background. Never without her purse.

In a 2022 conversation with my sister about these pictures, she went on to tell me that the Saddle Club was on W. Front Street, on the land between Truitt Drive and Saddle Club Road. There's a solar farm across the street now, and a condominium/apartment complex where the Saddle Club used to be.

A Visit to Davidson

It has been almost three years since I graduated from Davidson, but even so I was a bit nostalgic to go back up to the campus for a little while. Since the College is only about 15 miles north of Charlotte, it was a quick trip up and back one afternoon. Since I am working backward from present day, I can say that there will be upcoming pages devoted to various visits I made back to Davidson, my 50th Reunion in 2018. But this is the first time chronologically that I've had pictures of Davidson to include, so perhaps you should know a bit about it.

Davidson College is a private liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina, established in 1837 by the Concord Presbytery and named after Revolutionary War general William Lee Davidson, who was killed at the nearby Battle of Cowan’s Ford.

Chambers Hall at Davidson College

Davidson is a four-year undergraduate institution with about 1000 students, almost all of whom live on the secluded, tree-shaded, 500-acre campus 19 miles north of downtown Charlotte. I applied for early admission during my senior year in high school, and matriculated in the Fall of 1964, graduating in June of 1968. Davidson had then, and continues to have now, an excellent reputation for scholastics. When I attended, we were humorously known as "The Princeton of the South", although today Princeton would more properly be known as "The Davidson of the North".

The friends I made here have become life-long. Particular among them Peter Guerrant, whose home I visited in the summer of 1968 before entering the Army and who I would visit years hence when I was in Washington, Steve Lee, who would go on to attend SMU, become a Methodist minister, and both visit me in Dallas and host me in North Carolina, and Ed Shuping, whose academic career would continue long past 1968 and who would actually share an apartment with me in Chicago for a time a few years from now.

The first students graduated from Davidson in 1840 and received diplomas with the newly created college seal designed by Peter Stuart Ney, who is believed by some to be Napoleon's Marshal Ney. Two of the older campus buildings will, some years hence, be added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In the 1850s, Davidson overcame financial difficulty by instituting "The Scholarship Plan," a program that allowed Davidson hopefuls to purchase a scholarship for $100, which could be redeemed in exchange for full tuition to Davidson until the 1870s. The college's financial situation improved dramatically in 1856 with a $250,000 donation by Maxwell Chambers, making Davidson the wealthiest college south of Princeton. The Chambers Building was erected to commemorate this gift. On November 28, 1921, the Chambers Building was destroyed in a fire but was reconstructed eight years later with funding from the Rockefeller family. The Chambers Building continues to be the primary academic building on campus.

Certainly, my visit and campus wanderings this afternoon were so recent to my graduation that the eventual impact of my attendance here cannot now be described adequately. If you would like to know more about my time here, meet many of my friends, and learn more about the College, I encourage you to head over to the year index for 2018 and select the album pages for my 50th Reunion.

A Visit With Ed Shuping

I spent almost more than a week at home in Charlotte, at my sister's, and at Davidson, and I enjoyed catching up after my 14-month absence. But all too soon it was time for me to head to my next duty assignment at Fort Harrison, Indiana, at the US Army Finance Center.

I have bought a new car- a 1971 White Dodge Charger- and have loaded up for the trip to Indiana. Lots of people, I suppose, photograph new cars, but I didn't. Nevertheless, you will see it in pictures later in this photo album.

I could have driven pretty much straight north and a little west to get to Indianapolis in a couple of days, but I thought I would stretch the trip into four days by taking a circuitous route that would enable me to revisit old haunts and close a few circles.

Being even at my young age I have begun to have a fascination associated with visiting people and places I have been before, and when I do, I have the feeling of a "circle closing". I suppose this is the same feeling people will come to refer to as "closure", as when a traumatic event occurs and one finally feels "over it". Having worked backward through my life to get here, I can tell you that there will be numerous situations in which my own form of "closure" will have an effect on what you see here.

For example, I intend to stop at Fort Lee, Virgina, my duty station when I departed for Korea, to see who is still there and if the place looks the same. That's one reason I drove up to Davidson, just to see again a place I'd spent so much time. Visiting Fort Lee for a second time will give someone who sees everywhere the closing of circles, I have planned to make two stops on the way. The first will be to drive by Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to see my friend, Ed Shuping.

Ed Shuping

I'd asked Ed for directions before I started out, and we were able to meet up near his residence hall. I am, as you know, actually creating this particular Web page in 2022- April, to be exact. I can say here that the few pictures on this page won't be the last pictures you will see of Ed; you'll see pictures of him in Fort Collins, Colorado, and in Dallas, Texas, but why those particular locations and when the pictures were taken is a story for future pages.

However, there will come a time (January of this year, 2022, in fact) when I will have occasion to recall all the times that Ed Shuping intersected with my own life, and that will be his death in North Carolina at his home. On this page, along with these pictures, I am going to use the "In Memoriam" entry I wrote for Ed for publication in the online Davidson Journal.

"Ed and I and a few others were close friends at Davidson, and I thought myself fortunate to have had intermittent physical contact with him in the years since then. In fact, Ed and I shared an apartment in Chicago for a year while he was on assignment in Wisconsin and Minnesota for HEW in the late 1970s."

Ed and I took a walk around the tree-shaded campus of UNC, which of course is much bigger than Davidson. Ed was taking a few course to finish his degree. To continue my "In Memoriam" post:

"I stayed in touch with Ed when he left Chicago and had a series of jobs throughout the 1980s. I saw him again in Fort Collins when he was in real estate working for RE/MAX. He came to Dallas twice, once when he was on his way to a sojourn in Mexico, and another time when he was on a trip back East to North Carolina. While we corresponded a great deal after he moved back home, I did not see him again prior to his death."

"Ed was one of the most unconventional of our classmates. Many of us went on to become physicians, teachers, lawyers, or business people, while others of us followed our guiding stars into the clergy, the arts, or into a career of service to our fellows. Ed did not choose any of those careers- although one could easily say he chose a little bit of each of them. Conventional wisdom might say that Ed spent his entire life on a journey to find his “path”, but for Ed, it always seemed to me that the journey was his path."

"I have some understanding of Ed’s mindset. Unlike most of you, I did not know, while I was an undergraduate, what I wanted to do after Davidson. The fact that I had an ROTC scholarship dictated the next four years of my life, but after that, it seems, looking back, that the path I took was determined by chance events, like the post-Vietnam military wind-down, meeting a recruiter from a major Chicago bank, or giving a presentation for the Bank in San Francisco. And there were the chance meetings with people, too, most notably a software developer from San Francisco and an IT consultant from New York. And it was the IBM 1620 in Chambers basement the got me interested in IT in the first place. I enjoyed every job I had (including the Army), but it seemed that something else better came along fairly regularly. But I don’t recall a conscious effort to define my own path."

"I think Ed felt the same way. He had interests in everything, but nothing consumed him so much that he could see it as a career path he had to nurture, plan for, and advance through. I think he was content to let events guide him. Perhaps this was a result of what seemed, at least for a while, to be his only passion- astrology. I still have the 20-page horoscope he cast for me, and it is one of my treasured possessions. I don’t think I am far off the mark if I say that Ed might have thought that the universe had its own plans for him. Ed was happy on the Eastern Slope, but this never kept him from wandering across the globe and from subject to subject; the Internet saw to that. I would dearly have loved to have conversed with him after his move back to North Carolina. I imagined that as coming full circle, but I would have wished to know how Ed saw it."

"Another of our classmates has also died recently. Mike Coltrane, a good friend, had a major influence on Concord and in North Carolina. And I have heard, via the Class Notes that Bruce puts together, how so many of you have gone into medicine or other professions through which you have had major influences on the lives of others- improving those lives (here and in far-flung places), guiding those lives, and even saving those lives. I think that Ed was continually trying to find his place and his purpose. We all do that, of course, but for Ed, well, his life reminds me of Humanities under the dome- an effort to understand the synthesis of it all."

The Circle Closes: A Return to Fort Lee

I left Fort Lee about fourteen months ago, and I thought I would enjoy circling back to visit the Finance Office again to see who was still there.

Fort Lee is a few miles east of Petersburg, Virginia, which is, in turn, about ten miles south of Richmond. I spent about a year there after my original training at Fort Harrison, and I also spent part of the summer of 1969 as a Class B Agent Officer near Fredericksburg at Camp A.P. Hill- a summer training camp for reservists.

From my visit with Ed, I just continued north up I-85, through its junction with I-95, and then to Virginia Route 86 east to the Fort. Little had changed, although I noted that they had constructed a new entrance gate.

Fort Lee is the HQ of the United States Army Combined Arms Support Command (CASCOM); underneath that command are the U.S. Army Quartermaster School, the U.S. Army Ordnance School, the U.S. Army Transportation School, the Army Logistics University, the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), and the U.S. Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA). Also on post is the U.S. Army Quartermaster Museum.

The history of Fort Lee dates back to World War I, when Camp Lee was first established as a training camp. It continued to perform that function through World War II, at which time it was renamed to Fort Lee, made a permanent installation, and became the headquarters of the Quartermaster Corps (as Fort Harrison is the headquarters of the Finance Corps).

On the way to Fort Harrison, I spent a day at Fort Lee, my station prior to Korea, saying hello to Major Cratty, Abby Cole, Lt. Yonz, Wayne Stoeber and others. I had left these people in their same jobs (and at their same desks) when I went off to Korea fourteen months ago.

I would show you an aerial view of Fort Lee and where the Finance Office was, but the current installation has changed so dramatically that nothing is where it used to be. So we will simply go right to the pictures.

The Finance Office at Fort Lee, Virginia.

Here is another civilian clerk who worked in the office.

At this moment in time, the Army pay system is largely manual. A conversion is in progress, known as JUMPS-Army, that will computerize much of what is now done on paper. Indeed, my work at the Finance Center will be involved in this development and conversion. But for now, the Joint Uniform Military Pay System is still years in the future, which is why you see all the piles of paper and documents in the office.

I have forgotten this sergeant's name; he was the ranking NCO in the Finance Office.

Abby Cole, secretary to the Finance and Accounting Officer, and LT Yonz- an officer who arrived after I left for Korea.

As you can see, air-conditioning is another improvement that is still in the future for the Finance Office here at Fort Lee.

This is LT Wayne Stoeber, who had taken over my job when I left for Korea.

Here are Major Cratty, the F&AO, and Abby Cole.

Although I only spent a few hours at Fort Lee, it was a little like Old Home Week, and I enjoyed seeing everyone. If I'd had time, I might have visited the Bridge Club in Petersburg where I used to play bridge regularly during my tour here. But I needed to get going.

I continued on my drive to Fort Harrison, Indiana, and went through the Washington, DC, area on the way. I spent the night at Colonel Fuentes' home in suburban Washington. The Colonel's last major duty station was as the Finance Officer for the Second Division; he retired shortly after his return six months ago.

On the day I left Washington, I headed west through the Shenandoah Valley and over the Appalachian Mountains. The road was quite scenic, and I tried taking a few pictures out the front window as I was driving, but they didn't turn out very well. Nevertheless, here they are:

A day later I found myself at Fort Harrison, going through the in-processing routine. I will be living off-post in the Park Harrison Apartments, but more about that later.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	October 16-17, 1971: A Visit to Chicago
	July 10-16, 1971: A Week in Hawaii
	Return to the Index for 1971