I graduated from Ilion High School in 1960. The draft was still a very good possibility for those who didn't go to college. I had applied to SUNY at Oswego to become an industrial arts teacher, but with a high school average of slightly less than 75 they weren't impressed. If they had accepted me, I probably would have flunked out the first semester with my attitude towards learning.

With Karen Scanlan off to college, I became quite close to a girl from Frankfort named Joanne Trippepi. We saw each other for the majority of the fall, although she was more serious than I was.

To avoid the uncertainty of the draft, three friends (Ed Bruso, George Long, Wayne Monteau) and I joined the Army in January of 1961; mostly based on a rumor that we would be drafted in February and sent to Fort Dix, NJ. Instead we were offered to do basic training in "warm and sunny" Fort Knox, KY, enter the field of communications, and go though basic training on the buddy system.

The day before I left, I dated three girls, I took Karen, who was home on break, to dinner, spent a few hours with Joanne and then went out with a girl from Herkimer named Bunny Foti. I was quite proud of that at the time and it helped carry me through rougher times ahead.

I must have suppressed most of basic training. I can recall getting up at five in the morning, marching forever, crawling through mud, cleaning the latrine and a number of other stupid things that seemed important at the time. We had a real good sergeant and a guy who had re-enlisted that could sing cadence songs that were wonderful. I learned that to make life easy, at least in the army, you had to be somewhere in the middle, not the best and not the worst. I can remember one rifle inspection that I, along with most of the company, was sent back to the barracks three times to clean our weapons. The third time I did nothing while at the barracks and then passed the inspection with flying colors. I did fine from that point on.

After a short leave at home, I was sent to Fort Lenordwood, MO to learn communication. Communication in military terms at the time meant learning to lay and splice communication wire. We also learned to climb telephone poles and a few other useless skills.

From there, it was to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I was only there from June until October of 1961, but can remember a great mess hall where we could make our own breakfast on weekends and spending some time in the field practicing lying wire. I think it was here that I had my first encounter with a prostitute. One Saturday my buddies and I went off base and visited a local bar. The place was crawling with prostitutes that would go "next door" for $5. I was quite proud of myself for getting one of them down to $3 and then not doing it. It was also at Fort Sill that I had a girlfriend that, at that time, had an unusual occupation - a barber.

In October of 1961, the Russians got spunky with Berlin and shut it off except for air flights. The subsequent Berlin airlift included me on a plane to West Germany. I remember writing Joanne Trippepi a "dear Joanne letter" stating that I didn't think she should wait for me. She wrote back that she was heartbroken, but married someone else about six months latter.

I was stationed at an old WWII Nazi air base called Fleigerhorst a few miles from Hanau, which was about 15 miles from Frankfort. The closest village was Langendiebach (now Erlensee). I was in the 212th Artillery Group headquarters. I started out in the communications section laying wire. Before very long I was offered the job of driving for the Major in charge of communications. My predecessor had a flat tire in the field and was without a jack and therefore without a job. This Major must have had Patton as a role model, he was as tough as nails on the outside and insisted on perfection in everything we did. I survived as his driver and remember being proud of that fact. He finally left and was replaced by a Captain Weinstein. I drove for him for a while and then asked if I could be put in the communication center. He agreed. The communication center was one of the prestigious jobs on base. It required a top-secret clearance, used cryptographic equipment and was in a secured area. In the field, we had a two and one-half ton truck that was totally enclosed with fold down bunks. Sergeant Rice, who was a small, whiny, wimp, supervised us. We used to do everything possible to make his life miserable. There were five of us in the center with backgrounds that ranged from a geek from Long Island with a master’s degree, to a hood from the Northeast; to a sissy from the mid-west we called Cherry. We learned to get along and actually learned a great deal about people from each other. One of the earlier members of the center left us a beautiful model airplane to fly. A guy from another building traded us three airplanes for that one and taught us how to fly. Three of us spent much of our free time enjoying this hobby.

I learned many valuable lessons while in Germany. I like to think of it as having time to grow up.

When I first got there I spent most of my off time at a bar at the end of the road leading to the base, drinking cognac and coke with the female bartender named Lotti. She was from Bavaria and a nice girl. We dated quite a bit, she had a car and I had the money.

Money management was one of the first lessons I learned over there. For the first six months, I spent more than I earned. In the Army you're paid monthly. If you ran out before the 15th you can borrow from your "friends" at 50% interest until payday. If you run out after the 15th it cost you 100%. I was on the wrong side of that ledger. After Lotti went back to Bavaria, I decided to stay on base until I was out of the red. I stayed mostly on base for about six months, got ahead and bought a nice Grundig stereo system. I never reverted to being in the red, in fact towards the end of my stay, I was loaning $400 before the 15th of each month and enjoying the benefits of proper financial management.

During this self-imposed isolation, I pined for Karen Scanlan terribly. I can recall being on guard duty around the ammunition dump in the winter. We would spend four hours on duty and four hours off. During the on duty time it was very lonely and I would cry because she would not write. I tried everything to get her to write including writing her sister and her parents. She never did.

One friendship I developed while there was with a young unmarried couple named Ziggy and Lotti. She liked to dance with me and Ziggy was very patient with her. We were all good friends for most of the two years and had many good times especially at Octoberfest each year.

Subsequent to my self-inflicted exile from the action, I met a very voluptuous girl named Erika Pfaff. Everyone I knew wanted to date her and I spent the majority of the next year with her. This turned out to be the most difficult relationship I have ever had with a women. It made all the others seem easy by comparison. She lived in an apartment building with her mother and son. Her four-year-old son, John was from a previous relationship. Her family was from Prague and I believe her father was an American living in what is now the Czech Republic. He died and they moved to Germany. One sister was married and lived nearby, another was in Milwaukee. Her mother could not speak English and was a timid woman. They were poor and supported by Erika who worked in a local clothing or shoe factory.

Our relationship was tumultuous, but serious. We fought constantly - both verbally and physically. The relationship would be fine for a week and then break-off for a week. This became the norm. About six months before I left, we became engaged. This lasted just a few weeks and ended in a very bad fight. I had no intention of pursuing the relationship further. I was sure our marriage would not work and by then I had decided that when I got home, I would go to college come hell or high water. I dated a number of women after that, but none seriously.

Between Karen and Erika, I had been hurt badly by the endings of those relationships. From this point on, for a number of years, I had difficulty becoming deeply emotionally involved with any woman.

While in Germany I eventually ended up working for the geek with the masters degree. He wasn't very bright, but he had the masters degree, and I figured if he could do it, then I could too. Working in the communication center we had a great deal of time to do whatever we wanted. Somehow I became interested in dream interpretation and ended up reading Freud's complete works. This was a major accomplishment for someone who had read just one book throughout high school.

I could have easily gone back home and worked in the local factory as my father had done and may have been content, but my self-esteem would no longer allow me to be content with mediocrity. By this point, I felt a real need to succeed.

I was fortunate in one respect while I was in Germany; my older sister Marilyn and her husband Bill were in Wiesbaden and I visited them quite often. Each year we would vacation together and I saw most of Europe.

I was discharged from the army in January of 1964. When I got home, the first thing I did was go to see my high school counselor Mrs. Wright. Unknowingly, she offered me more motivation by telling me I was wasting my time applying to SUNY Oswego. "They were turning down some of her better students". I applied to the local community college instead - MVCC. Because of my high school record, they wanted to interview me, which was not typical. I apparently did okay because they accepted me for the fall semester.

From January until September of 1964 I worked at Remington Arms and had a gravy job assembling shotguns.

One of the other things I did was contact Karen. On her first visit home from college, we went out to dinner and had a nice pleasant discussion. That ended a very frustrating relationship on a pleasant note. I never saw her again until fourty years later.

I met and dated a number of women during that first year home. Most of them were from Utica. One named Marie DiAngelo was quite serious, but she was a bit too domestic for my taste at the time. I also met Barbara Capelli and Gloria Gorgon at White Lake. I dated both of them seriously during that first year. Barb was a nice girl but was a bit too preoccupied with herself, so we stopped seeing each other after a year or so. Gloria and I got along very well. She was a fun date, had a hot body and drove a Corvette, so what’s not to like.