Brief Moment in Time
Page 14
Epilogue
When I left Oklahoma in 1944, Word War II had not yet ended. I enrolled in Compton College and rented a room right across the street from the college. I found work only two blocks away in a plant run by Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. That particular Firestone plant manufactured self-sealing fuel cells for U.S. military aircraft.
My time was completely occupied by classes, studying, and working; therefore my social activities were limited. I wanted to meet and date some of the pretty girls, but because my time and money were limited, I either worked or studied.
Wanda Kepner, the young lady from Indiana whom I met at the bus terminal in Long beach a year before was staying in Glendale with her sister, Alma. I went to see her one Sunday. The trip was long; I had to ride the train from Compton to Los Angeles, then walk ten blocks and catch a streetcar to Glendale, then walk more than a mile to her house. We spent our day walking in Griffith Park and lunched on sandwiches and milkshakes. Then I had to make the long journey home to Compton.
This became a weekly affair. I proposed marriage and she accepted. We were married on August 26, 1945, one day after my 20th birthday.
Dressed in my marriage finery—black suit, white shirt and tie (I had even polished my shoes)—I caught the train and then the street car to the church in Glendale where we were married. After the ceremony, Wanda and I rode the streetcar to a hotel in downtown Los Angeles for our one-night honeymoon, and the next day we took the P.E. train to our cottage in Compton that I had rented from my landlady. It was a dismal place, but I landscaped it, cleaned and painted it, and turned it into an enchanted cottage.
We lived in the cottage for three years. Wanda’s mother, father, younger sister, and brother moved into the cottage with us. Wanda went to work and I continued school, but I had to take a second job to make ends meet. I don’t know how we managed to find the time (or the privacy), but we produced two beautiful children in those cramped quarters while I worked two jobs and finished college.
I got a better paying job at the Firestone plant in Southgate and advanced to supervisor in the quality control lab. While working for Firestone, I supervised other chemists and developed and patented several new procedures. I continued working part-time jobs to earn enough money to pay the bills.
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company heard of my achievements at Firestone and hired me to train for a management position in one of their plants. I completed the two-year training and was assured a job in management. It was a wonderful opportunity, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Perhaps because of the extremely hectic schedule, our marriage began to unravel, and I had to resign my position with Goodyear. I received my diploma from Compton College with an associate degree in science in 1948, and we moved to Oklahoma.
The move proved to be a disaster. I sold insurance, and I hated the job. I had to work late keeping appointments, so Wanda took our children, Don and Sue, back to California, where they lived with her mother and father in Burbank. I returned to California a few weeks later. We moved into an apartment, and a year later Peggy was born. I went to work in the quality-control laboratory for Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. After a couple of years, one of my fellow employees asked me to join him and another friend in developing rare-earth metals. The lab was a success, but I grew tired of shaking test tubes and wanted to try something different. I had earned my pilot’s license and obtained a flight instructor’s rating. I liked flying and wanted to make my living doing it, so I took a job with the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) at the Oakland Air Traffic Control Center (ATC). While working at the ATC, I also taught flying at an airport in Hollister, California.
The Oakland ATC was housed in a confined space with no windows. I didn’t like working in a place where I never saw the sky and never saw the aircraft I was controlling, so I accepted a job at the Airport Control Tower at Indianapolis, Indiana.
We moved to a quaint little town called Zionsville, about twenty miles west of where Wanda grew up. We tried, but we couldn’t seem to get our marriage right. Again, trying a new location seemed to be something worth trying, so we transferred to Hilo, Hawaii.
Hilo was great, and maybe I should have stayed there, but I wanted higher pay—so I transferred to Honolulu.
Working at the Honolulu Radar Approach Control Tower was a nightmare. The chief was a good man, but he was weak. The assistant chief was a drunk. The facility was run by a small clique of supervisors who were drinking buddies. They were an unsavory bunch, and to be accepted as a controller, you had to buy them beer each night after work. I didn’t have the money, and I thought it was an improper way to determine the worthiness of a controller, so I wouldn’t buy their beer. They made my life miserable. My skills as an air traffic controller were good, so they had no grounds on which to reject me.
My already weakened marriage could not stand the strain. I moved into an apartment, and Wanda and I were divorced. Those were the darkest days of my life.
Millie was secretary to the tower chief. We married on October 18, 1964. Soon after, we transferred to an FAA facility on the island of Guam. We lived there for four years, and then transferred to Maui ATC Tower. We built a home in Kihei and started a landscaping business while also working at the control tower.
I planted a lawn grass that was new to Maui, so we called our business “Maui Turf.” We were successful, so we bought more land and built more homes.
During this time, Wanda married a fine man from Indiana and moved back to Indiana. Our son Don married Amy Kawakami, a beautiful girl he met in high school. After graduating from the University of Hawaii, he became an officer in the Air Force, and they had Matthew and Malia.
Our daughter Sue married Morgan Brooks, a man she met in Colorado, and started a business. They have a fine son, Tracy.
Our daughter Peggy married Eric “Rik” Toelken, a boy she met in high school, moved to California and had Beth, Laura, and Zachary.
In 1979, I retired from the FAA and worked full time as a landscaper. By 1995, I was ready to retire completely. This was a time when many middle management people were being laid off, and Rik was one of them. I thought he might like to try his hand as a landscaper, so I offered him a full partnership in Maui Turf. He accepted my offer and moved his family to Maui. He took to landscaping like a duck takes to water.
In July of 2002, I had a heart attack, underwent open-heart surgery, and turned Maui Turf over to Rik. I needed something to do, so my family gave me a computer, and I began writing. I turned another page in my life.
In November 2003, Millie and I moved to Honolulu. With her help, I’ve written five novels and the book of short stories I have revised as the memoir you are now reading.
I’m currently writing three more novels.