Category Archives: Air Force Brats

“When my mother left my father, she found, to her great distress, that she was leaving the protective embrace of the Corps that she’d served for more than thirty years.  She was shaken and disbelieving when a divorce court granted … Continue reading →

“I had already begun the first chapters of The Great Santini.  I wrote about a seventeen-year-old boy, a military brat who’d spent his whole life smiling and pretending that he was the happiest part of a perfect, indivisible American family.  … Continue reading →

(I know this ‘thread’ is getting a bit ‘lengthy’ here, but I didn’t write the Introduction!  LOL). “In 1972, my book The Water is Wide came out when I was living in the Beaufort, South Carolina.  It was not the … Continue reading →

“I brought so few gifts to the task of being a military brat.  You learn who you are by testing and measuring yourself against your friends you grow up with.  The military brat lacks those young, fixed critics who form … Continue reading →

“This is my paradox.  Because of my military life, I’m a stranger everywhere, and a stranger nowhere.  I can engage anyone in a conversation, become well-liked in a matter of seconds, yet there is always a distance I can never … Continue reading →

“I thought I was singular in all this, one of a kind.  From Mary’s book, I discover that I speak in the multi-tongued, deep-throated voice of my tribe.   By writing this book, she handed me a visa to an invisible … Continue reading →

“The military life marked me as one of its own.  I’m accustomed to order, to chain of command, to a list of rules at poolside, a spit-shined guard at the gate, retreat at sunset, reveille at dawn, and everyone in … Continue reading →

“To this day, my father thinks I exaggerate the terror of my childhood.  I exaggerate nothing.  Mine was a forced march of blood and tears and I was always afraid in my father’s house.  But I did it because I … Continue reading →

“My mother would not let us tell anyone Dad was knocking us around.  My silence was simply another facet of my patriotism.  My youth filled up with the ancient shame of a son who cannot protect his mother.  It would … Continue reading →