250801 Numbers

29200 days ago I was born.

I was born in Missouri Baptist hospital in Saint Louis, Mo.
27375 days ago I started Kindergarten at Saint Paul’s School.
27237 days ago I graduated from McBride Catholic high school. Out of 125 students I was 100, not a very good showing. By then I had met Joyce and that was all I was interested in for the next 21170 days until she passed away. That was far less than I had hoped she would be by my side.
21612 days ago I enlisted in the United States Navy. I and 30 others raised our right hand and took an oath to defend this country from enemies both foreign and domestic.
We took a train from Saint Louis to Chicago where we went on a bus to GreatLakes naval training command. We arrived at midnight, slept on cots until 5:30 the next morning when we awoke to some Navy chief banging in a large steel trash can.
We were marched over to the mess hall for breakfast. From there we went to a barber shop to have our heads shaved, then to an auditorium where we stripped down, put our civilian clothes and anything else we had and mailed them home. Next we were issued uniforms from cap to shoes and then we were marched to an old WW-2 wooden barracks, where we lived for 28 days. While there we marched every day out on a concrete grinder every morning after uniform inspection. The rest of the day was schooling in navy shipboard work and navy recognition of officers and naval enlisted men’s rating. I always wondered why the navy refers to their crews as officers and men as if officers were not men.
After the first 28 days we were moved from the old wooden barracks to the nice new barracks a block away.

We stayed there for another 56 days of training until graduation. Our graduation happened to be on November 22 of 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was murdered by snipers. We were stunned and wondered how this happened?
I left on a train from Chicago to Saint Louis for 14 days of leave before reporting to the naval training center in Millington, Tennessee.
On day 22484 after birth, Joyce and I were married in a Catholic church in Millington, Tennessee and 14 days later we rented an efficiency apartment within walking distance of the naval training center.

Day 22241 I arrived on Guam, where I eventually flew in an aircrew for 1 year.

Day 22963 I was home from Guam and Joyce and I left Saint Louis for San Diego where I was assigned to an E-2a squadron that deployed to the coast off of Vietnam onboard the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier. Days prior to my deployment departure Joyce was pregnant with our daughter Annie. She was late on the prospective birth date and 3 days after I got back to our apartment in Glendale California, Annie was born. I got to be with the nurse when she counted all ten fingers and ten toes, a perfect child.
My brain is exhausted with calculating all the days between events so I’ll just use dates of events. In 1974 I was discharged after 10 years and 8 months of naval service and returned to Missouri. 3 years later we left for California where I worked for Burroughs computer company for the next 10 years initially in the product engineering department, later I worked in the computer maintenance department there.
After 10 years there, we left to return to Missouri and months later we sold our home in Ash Grove and bought our farm. We lived and worked on the farm for 27 years while also working in Springfield, MO. for most of that time.

Eventually we were too old to maintain the farm, so we sold it and moved to our current residence in town, where Joyce passed away 4 years ago, while I am still living today, old, tired, unable to keep up with the world passing by me. Sooner or later the Lord will recall me, hopefully to the good place, not the bad place where I understand it’s very hot. I hope you have enjoyed my meandering post.

Brother Bill