by Curtis | Volume III
We had our second three month home leave in the spring of 1952. We flew to Beirut in the ARAMCO Convair and checked into the Normandie Hotel, our operating center the whole time we were in Lebanon. Roger owned the hotel and took care of the guests with nice rooms, a...
by Curtis | Volume III
The Army and Navy Academy was located in Carlsbad, CA, right on the beach. The enrollment was small, about 235 students in the lower and upper school. The dress was modeled after West Point, and the thing about this military school was, every minute of the day was...
by Curtis | Volume III
After the American Community School (ACS) in Beirut, Lebanon, there was still life but the distance from home in Dhahran became huge. Now, I was separated from my parents and sister by half a world including a vast ocean. At times, my home in Dhahran was more like a...
by Curtis | Volume III
My sister had not been to school in the States, so when I went off to my freshman year at Iowa, my folks rented a house for a year; it was down the street from E. F.Lindquist, my dad’s cousin, a professor. His family helped us get situated. JK went to junior...
by Curtis | Volume III
These days, International air travel is met with a host of controls since terrorists look for soft targets, air travelers being a good example. But, in the 1950s, the restrictions on air travel were minor to the traveler. The limits were mostly about your passport...
by Curtis | Volume III
In the spring of 1970, I learned to fly. It was March and the winds blew most afternoons. My flight instructor, Marv Knipp, and former B-58 Hustler pilot and Air Force major, took me from ground school through my commercial ticket with instrument rating. I took most...
by Curtis | Volume III
Dhahran was a different place in 1982. It was bigger! It was busy! It was growing and it was missing the main ingredient, my old friends. All the buildings and memories were in place, but my friends had gone off to start their lives elsewhere. Steve Furman was a...
by Curtis | Volume III
In the fall of 2013, after being away from Dhahran since 1985, an email arrived from a Saudi ARAMCO pilot- Court Gunderson. Court was tasked with re-writing the 2008 ARAMCO aviation story along with his regular flying duties. Court saw our Dhahran Diary website and...
by Curtis | Volume III
Going to Misawa, Japan, was not one of my expectations for teaching. Our son Curt went thru his senior year of high school and told us one day, he was not ready for college. He was going to the Navy. He tested well and when a billet opened he was off to boot camp in...
by Curtis | Volume III
I received the terrible news that my father had passed in Escondido, California, after a brief illness. He was 85; it was December 7th, 1994. I was teaching at Sollars Elementary School in Misawa, Japan, when the news came from the Red Cross. I hurried back to...
