V 1 N. 25 My First Parachute Jump, 1969

 

My First Jump From an Airplane

                                                                         George Brose

            I recall that it was just after December 6, 1969 in Bad Tolz, Germany that I took my first jump from an aircraft.   I remember that date because on our way from the Black Forest  to the training site at Bad Tolz in Bavaria, we saw St. Nicholas walking the streets in the evening and stopping at each house with a light on indicating children were present.  It was the custom in Bavaria that some ogre dressed in a Middle Ages monk’s outfit would interrogate families to see if children had been good or bad.  If good they got a sweet from the lout, and if bad the guy went into Gestapo mode and gave the kids a hiding they would not soon forget. 

Five of us in a military van arrived at the old Wehrmacht military base at the foot of the Alps .  That base had an interesting history before and during WWII.   In researching this article I learned that in 1934  the first commandant of the training school in Bad Tolz called the Junker Schule was Paul Von Lettow Vorbeck, the German officer who had been in command of German forces in East Africa in WWI.  That hit home as I had been stationed in the Peace Corps in those African lands just before entering the military as a draftee.  The Junker Schule was part of the SS but not the horrific Waffen SS.

We  had come to Bad Tolz to be trained in the art of falling or being pushed out of a plane with a parachute attached to our backs and a reserve chute to our chests.    I never thought things might go wrong at first, but when the instructors explained what could go wrong, I began to think, “Oh Mama Mia why did I volunteer for this?”   “For the $55 extra each month” came the voice in the wilderness.   So in two weeks, a group of the  7^th US Special Forces taught us what  back home would have taken three weeks, divided into  ‘ground week, tower week and jump week.  We skipped ‘tower week’.    In that second week we trainees would do our five mandatory jumps from a real aircraft in the air rather than a tower.   Remember this was December, it was in the Alps, it was cold, and it was snowing.   One week less was a blessing.

 

We learned the basic Parachute Landing Fall, PLF, by jumping off a bench onto a concrete floor and rolling to one side or the other landing first on two toes, knees bent , rolling over and letting the calf muscle take the next hit and work our way up the thigh, rib cage, and shoulder.  The fun name for this type of landing was  ‘two toes and a nose’.   If we banged the ground with our helmet we immediately got ten push ups to do.  I can assure you that a PLF will give you a very tired neck which after about ten jumps from  a bench will not keep that helmet from banging the concrete.    A thousand push ups later we moved on to the swing landing trainer which was a set up about ten feet high.  You stepped off a platform and being suspended by ropes and pulleys  were gradually lowered while swinging and allowed to hit the ground fairly hard.  The rate of descent was controlled by the instructor.  Eventually they just let go of the rope and let you fall onto the frozen ground that in summer had been sawdust but was now hard as concrete and terribly rutted as well, so the landings were really bruising to the legs.  

 

During that week we did not get the usual harassment associated with parachute training, I think because the instructors just didn’t care.  They had families, it was Christmas, all the wrong reasons for going light but I consider myself very lucky to have been trained that way.  Needless to say I also didn’t mind that it was only one week and then we jumped five times in the second week. 

One other little tidbit,  the commanding officer, an American, had the incredibly Germanic name  Lt. Colonel Ludwig Feistenhaimer.  Affectionately known as Mad Ludwig. 

 

Anyway first jump time came.  We received our briefing, selected a chute and strapped it on.  The guys who packed the parachutes were called ‘riggers’ and theirs was a very special profession.   One of their privileges was they got to wear red caps instead of the time worn olive drab.  They also did not get harassed by anyone associated with jumping, because they were they guys who packed your chute.  When officers came by before a jump to get their chute, they always chose their own.  They would never take a chute a rigger handed them.  Never know if that rigger had it in for you and gave you a badly packed chute, eh Sir?  I wasn’t worried, because I was a lowly Specialist Fifth Class, trained by the Army as a translator of Goethe’s tongue though I wasn’t trained well enough to read Goethe’s works.  Still haven’t. 

Our planes that we would jump from were WWII vintage, the old Gooney Birds or C-47’s.   Twin engine, piston driven, as reliable as any aircraft in the world.  Our briefing before our jump went over what happens in case of emergency.  The main emergency that they could think of telling us was what to do if the static line that is attached to the plane and pulls your chute out of the pack as you fall away from the aircraft fails to break and release you and you find you are being towed at ninety miles an hour (top speed) behind the aircraft.  You actually have a choice if you recall the briefing.  If you wish to be cut loose and try out your reserve chute, you need to put your hands on your head to signal to the Jump Master to cut your line. You fall and then deploy your reserve by pulling on the D ring or handle on the reserve.   There is no back up to your reserve if it does not deploy.  At that point you are FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition).   Is there a Plan B?  Yes, there is.  The Army always has a plan B.

Plan B.   The jump master then told us the details of plan B.   Initially Plan B sounds reasonable.  You do nothing, you land with the plane.  But…..you will be outside the plane being towed behind it.  No coffee, tea, or milk will be served.   The jump master says he will pull your static line in toward the plane with you attached to the end of it, but he won’t be able to get you into the plane.  On this snowy, icy day he did mention that the runway where the C-47 will be landing will have a lot of ice on it and you  will probably slide very easily behind the aircraft.  Gee, sort of like water skiing in the winter at maybe 70 mph behind an aircraft on the ground.     If it happens I think I will choose the first option.      

Any other instructions Mr. Jump Master?    Just a few, remember if you are coming down in the forests around here, keep your feet together.  You do not want a tree going up your rectum.  Yes, Mr. Jump Master.  At that point you could not have gotten a darning needle up my rectum with jar of axle grease to aide the attempt. 

So “Off we went into the wild blue yonder”  as the old song contrives to make this all seem like fun.  Really that’s an old Air Force pilots’ song.   The paratrooper’s song it “We Have a Rendezvous with Destiny”.   You are never sure what is your destiny until you land safely.   It was incredibly noisy in the plane,  we hardly had time to think before, during or after take off.   Everything in those first jumps is done by rote action that you learned during ground training.  Only after five or six jumps do you start thinking about what is going on before and during a jump.   The aircraft wound it’s way up to 1200 feet on that dark grey day over the Bavarian countryside.  I hardly had time to look out a window to see the mountains before the Jump Master signaled with his hands that we should  “Stand Up” , second signal “Hook Up”.   This meant that we should connect our static line with the clip on the end onto the cable going through the plane.   By this time fifteen or so jumpers are on their feet, trying to keep their balance, trying not to piss their pants, and looking at the open door near the tail of the plane.  The Jump Master now signals us to move toward the door.  All this time a red light has been shining until we are on the approach to the drop zone.   As we get over the drop zone, the light turns green and we are going out the door one at a time.  We have been taught to put our hands on the sides of the door and project ourselves outward.  If you don’t project yourself you will be too close to the plane and get a thumping on the fuselage as you go away.    No problem today.  I’m out that door like a bird out of cage.  It’s windy and cold, I count to three or four by thousands and look up and see a beautiful site.  My parachute is open, and I am drifting slowly toward the snow covered ground.  The silence is peaceful.  The next jumpers are too far away to talk to or yell at.  I look down, no trees to contend with, just float down to that snow covered pasture.  Wait, is there  something out of synch here?   There are three feet of snow on the ground, I know, but that snow looks very discolored.  It looks rather yellowish  brown.    WTF?   I am about to learn that the Bavarian farmers are practicing an age old tradition of spraying their fields with a mixture of cow dung and urine that is collected in the barns.  The smell wafts up as I descend closer and closer to my first landing, and suddenly I’m down on the ground with no injury hitting into those three feet of snow.  But I am covered in the spray of those German cattle droppings and kidney effluent mess on the surface of that snow.   Yuk.   But as trained, I keep my mouth shut, I don’t eat yellow brown snow, and I gather up my parachute and put it in the bag we carried with us and start hiking back to a truck waiting at the edge of the field to take us back to our barracks.  We all are smelling like the proverbial Rose of Sharon. 

The stench in our barracks is strong and there is no place to take our outerwear to be washed.  We go through the week with those ripe uniforms.  The Special Force barracks have not smelled like this ever.  We complete our five jumps and are deemed to now be paratroopers in good standing and our paychecks will reflect such.   Over the next year and a half I will have twenty-two more jumps, sometimes from helicopters, sometimes from German planes, and or one or two occasions from a KC 130 jet powered craft.  The brotherhood of paratroopers lasts for life.  Everyone else in the military is known to us as a ‘Leg’.  We know two things.  Jumping from an aircraft is the greatest thrill you can have with your pants on.  And what comes out of the sky besides bird shit is paratroopers. 

                             The author about to slide out of a CH 119 over Malmsheim, Germany

                    The guy standing above me Captain Scheer (origin Switzerland) had jumped at night into North Viet Nam and did reconnaissance and walked out to South Viet Nam.  

  Chopper coming into landing zone, Malmsheim.   German soldiers getting ready.  In 1969, some of these guys were WWII combat vets, having jumped into Crete.  

Ground treats

Out the back door of a big chopper

Two dudes on a Rendezvous with Destiny

(l )David Himmestein  (r) George Brose

V 1 N. 24 Slices of Life and Death

 Please note:  This piece is not for the squeamish.  If you have just had lunch, you may wish to refrain from reading right now.

Slices of Life and Death

George Brose

            In 1977 I was exposed to a world I could only imagine while reading Mary Shelly, crime fiction, or watching some Brit TV series about forensic pathologists.  I was a graduate student at a college in rural Indiana.  Having completed my graduate degree in exercise physiology, I was offered a one-year contract to teach anatomy, physiology, and exercise physiology to undergrad students.  I was happy to get that job even though the pay was a pittance, because it enabled my French Canadian wife  Marie-Andree a chance to complete her graduate degree before we returned to Canada.

            While living in East Central Indiana Marie-Andree had become friends with Corrine,  the only other French Canadian in town.  Her husband Billy Bob was the local pathologist for the county, and knowing my limited experience in the field of anatomy, he offered me the opportunity to assist him in doing autopsies at a nearby VA hospital. Billy Bob also offered me the princely sum of $50 to assist with each autopsy.   Not only did I get to see fresh human cadavers up close, I got to help dissect them and remove organs and look for causes of death.  Admittedly, the cause of most of the veterans’ deaths was old age and combination of heart disease, emphysema, dementia, and ….well this list goes on.  We weren’t dealing with victims of crime.  Prior to this opportunity, my experience in dissection of a mammal was with a fetal pig. 

            It was a 38 mile drive north, just beyond  Gas City, IN where the veterans hospital was located.  There had once been an oil and gas boom in that part of the country and Gas City got it’s name from what lay under the earth’s surface.  The hospital housed hundreds of old veterans who had no homes or health insurance in their last days.  Some of them had been there from the time they had left the military.  I remember reading through one old gentleman’s records and discovering that on his way home from WWI he had gotten intoxicated in the Indianapolis railway station and been arrested for drunk and disorderly.  He was headed out west to Denver perhaps but was sent to the local veterans' hospital to dry out rather than the county jail.  He never left that hospital.  No family ever asked what happened to him, never came to claim him.  He had lingered in that place for almost sixty years.  Today we talk about the homeless veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, suffering from PTSD.   Back then the story was the same, just the diagnosis was different.  It was shell shock or battle fatigue in those earlier wars.

            To dissect a member of one’s own species is something few of us will ever do.  It definitely leaves a lasting impression on one’s psyche.  Billy Bob had a defense to confront such work and that was humor.  I must admit that I rarely laughed so much on any job I performed.  Maybe it was Billy Bob’s way of protecting me as well as himself.  Our subjects had been dead only a few hours and were not in an advanced state of decomposition.  This made our task much more manageable.  It is a part of the job we never see portrayed in great detail on modern media.   However in most anatomy labs in university medical schools where doctors learn their trade, cadavers are not new and fresh.  They are usually floating in a tank of chemical preservative and fished out for a class of wannabee doctors to learn where the muscles lie in relation to connective tissue, organs, bones, and nerves.  Their color no longer resembles a human being and the smell of the chemicals often permeates one’s skin. 

            We usually began our work with a look at the thoracic and abdominal cavities.  This was accomplished by a long slice from the top of the sternum down to the top of the pubic bone.   The skin was pulled back and a rib cage exposed.  To get to the heart and lungs required removal of the front of the rib cage.  A pair of snips was used to cut through the ribs and eventually lift off a section of the chest the size of a dinner plate to expose the heart and lungs.  We would cut the aorta and  the pulmonary veins and arteries and lift the heart out of the chest.  We would then begin looking for blockages in the coronary arteries indicating that the patient had had coronary heart disease. Those arteries were on the outer surface of the heart. We could also look at the state of the heart valves  and thickness of ventricular walls to see if the heart had been under extreme stress.   From there the lungs could be removed again to look for blockages in pulmonary circulation or blood clots.   We might also look to see if there was an obstruction in the larynx and bronchial tubes for causes of a choking death. 

            I don’t recall doing a lot of searching in the abdominal cavity for causes of death as the patient  may already have been diagnosed with some type of cancer of the intestines, stomach, liver, spleen, kidneys, pancreas or adrenal glands.  But Billy Bob did give me a chance to do some exploring down there  to learn more about location and juxtaposition of the human organs. After all I was supposed to be teaching this information to undergrads.   If the patient had been diagnosed with diabetes, we often confirmed the effects which could be seen in the lower limb deterioration.  Some of the men had already had amputations of toes, feet or legs from that disease.

            Our next area of research was the head.  This may make the reader a bit queasy.   They don’t show  much about head forensics on the tv shows.  Our interest would focus on blockages in blood vessels in the brain that might be contributing to the cause of death.  First we had to get to the brain and that meant cutting through the scalp down to the skull and then removing enough of the skull to then remove the brain.  First things first, an incision needed to be made across the top if the head from top of one ear to the top of the other.  Doesn’t matter which side you begin on, but you do have to go deep enough to reach the skull on that incision.  If the person was bald, it meant a lot more work for an undertaker to cover up that incision with make up.  Once that cut was complete, the investigator must pull the front of the scalp forward over the face.  The scalp comes off quite easily and is pulled forward about to where the eyebrows are located.  Then the rear section of the scalp is pulled backwards to expose the rear portion of the skull.  The skull is now the only thing between the investigator and the brain.  But how to get through all that bone?  A saw is needed.  Today a modern cutting tool with a small circular blade is used and the top of the skull is circumnavigated until it can be lifted off the top of the head.  Once that is done the front of the brain can be lifted up and then in the back side of the head the spinal cord can be cut and the brain lifted out of the skull.  There are also a few nerves at the front underside that may have to be severed as well such as the optic nerves from the eyes so that the brain can be removed.  The pathologist in those days was required to remove the pituitary gland from the underside of the brain and send it to a lab for extracting pituitary growth hormone for treating patients with dwarfism.  Today that hormone can be synthesized.  Then the brain would be sliced like a loaf of bread from one side to the other.  Once that was done the pathologist could look for signs of deterioration from Alzheimer’s disease as well as cerebral vessel blockages.   This would pretty much be a wrap on our autopsy.   Then we had to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.   Any organ which indicated a cause of death was preserved in some kind of pickling solution to be sent to another office.  The pituitary gland was forwarded to a lab. And then all parts went back to their original resting place.  The top of the skull replaced and the skin lifted off the face and pulled back to the top of the head.  I think Billy Bob stitched it back in place.  Heart and lungs replaced, the rib cage and sternum set back in place and skin pulled over the chest cavity and stitched back.  They often show that part in the tv dramas. 

            Did  I mention earlier that I laughed a lot during these sessions?  “How could he possibly laugh?” you must be thinking.  What is the old saying? “Laughter is the best medicine?”  Well the initiate and the expert often need some humor to get over what they have been doing, especially knowing that someday they may be the one lying on that table being dissected by a medical student or a crime scene investigator, or just a regular old pathologist looking for answers to supply to statistical research files.   I remember Billy Bob sometimes singing a parody of the old song Y.M.C.A.    “Young man are you looking for a home.  I said young man,   Y.M.C.A."   He would change some of the song to "----- VA"  instead of "YMCA".  He would regale me with stories from pathology journals about bizarre cases.  He did confess that a pathologist cannot work on someone he knows.   He told me that once he pulled back the sheet from a cadaver, and it turned out to be one of his former high school teachers.  He completely broke down and had to leave the job to someone else.  Once too he had been called in to do an autopsy on a victim of a mob execution.  The guy had been floating in a pond for several days and was very ‘ripe’ to put it mildly.  They had to work outside in an open garage and everyone there was given a strong cigar to smoke to overcome the smell they were enduring.

            Ten years later on our way to a job assignment in China, we stopped to see Billy Bob and Corrine where they were then living in northern New England.  When we arrived Billy asked me if I would like to do an autopsy with him for old times sake.  Especially as the client was Chinese and we were heading to China.  Well, how could I resist?  When we got to the clinic,  we learned that the deceased had swum out to a boat at the marina and had a few beers and attempted to swim back but didn’t make it.  He had drowned apparently.   There was the guy on the slab.  Billy found that the clinic scale was not functioning.  He asked me how much I thought the man weighed.  I said I had no idea.  Billy Bob replied, “Well pick him up.”  I complied.  I said, “about 140 pounds.”   That weight went into the official records.  We completed the autopsy.  The lungs were full of water.  It was clearly a death by drowning.   No other signs of trauma.  A blood sample was taken to be analyzed for alcohol content.  Our work was observed by a deputy sheriff who was himself a case for another story.  All I care to say at this time was he was not a person who should have been on a police force.  He had recently taken the job in northern New England after years work in an Ivy League town in the East.  He said he just got tired of busting heads.   We now refer to  him as Deputy Kowalski. with no intent to stigmatize the Polish culture.   Then Deputy Kowalski went on to tell us his worldview.  He said that he for a long time thought Koreans were the dumbest people in the world until he moved to his current town on the Quebec border.  Now he was certain that French Canadians were the dumbest people.  Billy Bob and  I told him that was an interesting viewpoint as we were both married to French Canadians.  Years later in a correspondence with Billy Bob I asked him if he had had any later encounters with Deputy Kowalski.  He said the deputy wasn’t in the department anymore.  Apparently he had stopped someone for speeding out in the county and left his squad car parked on some railway tracks.   While he was writing a ticket, the 8:15 came by and wiped out his cruiser.  The sheriff decided that Deputy Kowalski’s services were no longer needed in Northern New England.

Comments:   Sometimes they are better than the text.

First, Billy Bob, really?  No one is named Billy Bob that isn't a character in a TV series set in rural Alabama.

Before reading this my day was planned around an afternoon delight session with Molly.  Provocative videos that will provide incentive to travel the path I've selected are set.  Two full length mirrors are stationed next to the bed to reinforce her recent discovery that "I like to look at myself having sex". Her arrival in six hours was greatly anticipated.

After reading this, I am curled up in a ball, sucking my thumb and rocking back and forth. Jesus H. Christ, you did this and are comfortable sharing the details?  Do you have any idea how difficult it is to type while rocking back and forth?  The first couple sentences of your next offering will be read slowly and carefully, a sort of sticking my toe in the water before jumping in maneuver, and then only after I have repeated the "You can do this, you can do this, you can do this" mantra.

Anonymous

V 1 N. 22 How I Became a Mediator

 

How I Became a Mediator

George Brose

            This story begins in May, 1988, shortly before our family was scheduled to leave Canada for a year of teaching in Beijing, China.  My wife Marie had been hired by a Canadian organization to upgrade the English capabilities of Chinese graduate students before their departure to study in Canada.  It was hoped that they would then return to China with a favorable outlook toward Canada in their future jobs back in China.  After all, if every Chinese bought a pencil made in Canada it could denude the forests of British Columbia, or so it was hypothesized.

            A month or two before we were due to leave Canada, my father, living in Ohio, had a stroke and was left in a vegetative state in a veterans’ hospital in Dayton.  My mother, in her late 70’s was now alone to look after the family homestead, and I was divided on whether to stay with her or go to China with Marie and our two teenage children, Dominique and Jacques.   After a quick visit to Dayton, my mother gave her blessing to us to go on our way to China.  And we did.  By November, my father had died and I came home for the funeral and knowing our contract would end on the following August, I told her we would come back to Ohio to live and look after my mom.  It didn’t quite work out that way.

            Our year in China only lasted ten months and was cut short by the Tiananmen student uprising that left us in evacuation mode about four days after the massacre of the Beijing students.  The kids and I  had been on the streets that night and had witnessed some of the violence.  It left us scarred in ways we didn’t comprehend at the time.  Nevertheless, we came back to Ohio, and Marie, a Canadian, applied to renew her Green card in the US.   Then she headed up to Canada for a visit with her family but was denied re-entry to the States, because the law stated that you had to remain in the US while the Green card application was being processed.  It forced us into a separation for a year that we had not planned on.  My son and I stayed in Dayton to look after my mother, and Marie and our daughter Dominique stayed in Quebec. 

            During that separation, we did see each other once when I went up to Montreal and then once again when Marie entered illegally for a quick visit in upstate New York.  It seems that back then it was the license plate number that set off the immigration red lights and she was driving a different car from the one she had been in at the first refusal of entry.  That first refusal co-incidentally was the day the Berlin Wall came down.  Freedom was proclaimed by the West.   It made cynics of all of us.

            By June, 1990 Marie’s Green card had been approved and she prepared to move back to the US.  Dominique would remain to attend college and university in the French schools.  Unfortunately in early June, my mother was killed crossing a major street near her home while going to see a sick friend.  I had offered to walk with her to see her friend.  She said she would be fine and went on her own.  That's the last time I saw her alive.   This really upset the family apple cart.  I had not been able to find full time work in the teaching or coaching field and had begun working in construction and house painting under the tutelage of my old high school track coach, Ed Jones.  I did have a part time job at Wittenberg University as a track and cross country coach but the pay was a pittance.

            One Sunday afternoon, Marie and I and my 80 year old Aunt Adele were taking a walk on the bikeway that runs off Irving Ave. near the University of Dayton.  We had my parents’ dog with us, a Schnauzer named Fritz.  I had let Fritz off the leash for a bit, when a jogger came by all fired up on his adrenaline and endorphins and told me if I didn’t put the dog on a leash he would kill it.  That threat to my deceased parents’ dog was the spark that sent me off the rails, and I replied that the only thing going on a leash would be the jogger.  This led to a physical confrontation while Marie and my Aunt looked on rather horrified to put it mildly.  At one point I was on top of the individual and was holding a grapefruit sized rock.  I could have inflicted some serious damage, but somehow I held back.   We were on the boundary of the municipalities of Dayton and Oakwood, and since it must have been a slow Sunday afternoon for the police, a total of five squad cars from both towns showed up. They separated us and no charges were filed.  A lawyer later told me, I could have been charged for failure to control the dog.  Failure to control myself would probably have been more appropriate.  I encountered that jogger one more time a year or so later.  He was in line ahead of me at the Post Office.  I chose not to say anything to him.  Not sure how it might have ended.  

            A couple days after the fight while reading a free community paper I saw an ad for a course called Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) taught by the Quakers.  At my age of almost fifty, I didn’t see a long future with my anger management issues, so I decided to take the course. I'm not sure what stage of the grief process I was in at the time, but I was ready to look for some way of dealing with my anger.   The course lasted twenty-four hours and was spread over three days.  I found it helped me a lot and decided to take the next two levels of the training which would be taught at the Dayton Correctional Institution (prison) by Quakers alongside prisoners who would also be teaching.   After completing those three courses I was a qualified trainer or facilitator of AVP.   As a volunteer, I taught over forty of those courses over the next five years.  I moved up the ranks a bit in AVP and attended several national level meetings and workshops.  I also taught some courses in other prisons in Ohio and even in Greenhaven prison in New York.    While attending one of those national meetings, in Plainfield, NJ,  I took a twelve hour course in Mediation.   I thought this was a cool thing and with my twelve hours of training, I offered my services as a volunteer in the mediation program in Greene County, Xenia, OH courts.  I did three cases under a bit of supervision with the professional mediator in Xenia, and suddenly found myself with a full time job offer in the Springfield, OH juvenile and domestic relations court.  At that time I was now working at the University of Dayton as the women’s cross country coach and assistant track coach.   The pay was a little better than Wittenberg U., but still not enough to support a family of four.   The mediation job along with the coaching made everything possible.

            Initially my mediation work was with the city and county schools regarding truancy and behavior by juveniles that would prevent court involvement.  At that time truancy was a crime that could result in  incarceration of children.  In cases where parents contributed to the truancy, that too could result in incarceration of the parent. That could snowball into removal of the child from the parent’s care.   There were lots of mediation trainings offered by the Ohio Supreme Court in those days and I eventually had over 400 hours of additional training including a week at the National Judicial College in Reno, NV.   I eventually got into mediation of more and more serious criminal cases where victims and offenders were brought together to talk about what happened and how it affected the victim or the survivors of the victim.    I also thought this might be a good skill to transfer to Africa where I had worked in several countries in the past.  I got connected with the Quakers in Africa and went there four times for training mediators in conflict zones including Rwanda, Burundi, the Dem. Rep. of Congo, Kenya, and Tanzania.  By that time, back home I had also moved into other types of mediation in the Domestic Relations and Civil Courts in Springfield. While in that capacity I mediated thirteen cases involving homicides.   I worked there fifteen years until I retired in 2013.  We subsequently moved to British Columbia and I took up the profession again on a part time basis only retiring this year after approximately 3,500 cases.  I have no degrees in mediation; I never wanted to be a mediator, it just happened as a result of life experiences.

       I can also say that I never joined the Quaker church although I've worked with them extensively in the US and Africa.  Were I to join a church it would be theirs.  They saved my life and enabled me to find a profession when I needed one.  

      

Comments:

Most of us have had moments where odd circumstances have given us another direction.  As Yogi Berra said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it".  Had you not been confronted about the dog, especially so soon after losing your parents, you might have had a lengthy career as an elevator operator or a mixed martial arts instructor.  As it turned out you had a positive effect on many people through your mediation, coaching, parenting and just being George.  I remember spectating at one mediation.  Forgot how you introduced me to the client but it was something more than "my buddy from California".   Roy M.

Really enjoyed the piece, George.  A well written account of life‘s unpredictability.

If you’d been a responsible dog owner and hadn’t let your mutt run loose, no telling where you might have ended up. 

Dave H.

V 1 N. 21 My First Marathon

 Since starting this blog of short stories,  I have yet to include anything about my favorite sport of running.  For almost seventy years beginning in 1957, I have been a runner, starting with my high school years, then on to university years and afterward as a member of several clubs in the US, Canada, and Africa.  I've only run eight marathons, not many by comparison to a lot of folks, but I'm proud to say all of them have taken me less than three hours.  I ran my last one in 1982.  Maybe I did go over three hours once, but that was when I entered the London marathon, but could not make it to the race, and a British schoolboy used my number to run with my name.   My best was 2 hours 35 minutes and 55.92 seconds in Quebec City in 1981.  You will note that runners like to be specific when talking about their performances.   When I realized I would not get any faster due to aging, I said, "Enough".  But I didn't stop running, just stopped running marathons.

Recently while cleaning out the stable, I came across a reflection I wrote the day after that first marathon.  I put it below in it's original typewritten form.  There is also a picture of me at the finish of that race.  This was the 1976  Ottawa marathon.  It was also the Canadian Olympic trials as Canada was hosting the Olympics in Montreal that year.  You may note that I mention there were only 550 runners in that race.  That number is miniscule compared to the popularity of today's marathon competitions which go into the tens of thousands.  And the fee to run was probably only $5.00, whereas today's organizers bilk runners several hundred to get into the 'big' races.  I also mention that I finished in 40th place, an absurdly good finish in today's races where the top times are much faster.

In the story below, I don't mention it, but if you look at the picture of me at the finish you will note that my shorts look rather tight.  They were.  I forgot to pack a pair in my kit, and Sunday morning when the race was scheduled to start in Ottawa, I discovered that I had no lower gear to run in.  There was no such thing as 'running stores' in those days, and if there were, to find one open at 8;00AM on a Sunday in Ottawa would have been impossible.  Fortunately one of my fellow travellers, Bernard Beland had an extra pair.  However, Bernard was about 5 feet 3 inches tall and had a much smaller waist than I had,  but I managed to squeeze into his spare pair and run a somewhat strangulated race.  

Here is my account:

The Finish

Of note:  No automatic timers, only a single individual recording our number and time by hand.  Also notice that my number is hand lettered.  Nothing like this anymore.  And where is the finish line?  When I moved to British Columbia in 2013, a lady in my new club the Comox Valley Road Runners told me she had also run her first marathon that day.  Her name  Diane Palmason.  Diane became one on the great Masters runners in Canada in the following years. 

From my friend and fellow runner Roy Mason:

 My best was 2:37:something.  I was 17th in a field of 600+ but have a vivid memory of the last 100 yards where there was an older guy carrying his shoes.  Put on a spurt and I could pass him.  No, 16th place was his as he toughed up and sprinted the last few yards barefoot.  The picture of a guy limping, holding his shoes beating me is my memory of that race.  

The lack of an exact time is evidence of cognitive decline. 

(I had a results list.  That's how I knew my time, Roy.) 

Used to be, wake me in the middle of the night and I could supply my best times at any distance down to the tenth.  It is also evidence of the ravages of age which keep me in the recliner instead of going through drawers and exploring shelves where, in 10-15 minutes, I could find the notebook that would supply that info.  That said, I've come to the realization that much of the material I have saved falls into the "nobody gives a shit" category.  

Unfortunately this classification also fits the collection of photos, results and newspaper articles about the La Mirada Meteors girls team I coached in the late 60s and early 70s which I found while organizing a couple rooms.  I assembled this disorganized memorabilia in a large 80 page scrapbook.  Leaf through it and memories flow.  Debbie's record mile is the highlight but I had others that were near her level and a couple with more talent.  Six kids competed internationally and we won a national championship.  

That scrapbook sits on my desk, needing only the subjects of a few photos to be identified.  When that work is done, the book will go on a shelf to be tossed in the trash when my children  clean out the house in preparation for sale.  I could pass it along to one of the few kids with whom I have contact. but while they would enjoy leafing through it and showing it to grandchildren, they aren't kids.  These are 70 year old women.  The book would have the same fate when they pass.  

A last note. The photo you included forces me to comment on your lack of dedication and effort.  This is the finish and you are not leaning at the tape?

 Reply:   Hey do you see a finish line in that photo?  How could I know when to lean?  

V 1 N. 20 An Embassy Adventure in Burundi

 

 

 

The following piece was written about 2007 during one of my regular trips into East and Central Africa to train community mediators.  I would travel for six weeks from country to country teaching seminars organized by the local Quaker community through their organization the African Great Lakes Initiative.  At one point in Burundi I had to go to the American embassy to get some pages added to my passport for several new visas I needed.  Then I went across the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  The folowing are two little adventures along the way.  A third brief story is on buying eye glasses in Burundi.

An Embassy Adventure in Burundi and Crossing the Border into the  Not So Democratic Republic of the Congo

by George Brose

 

Final bits and pieces of things I did and saw but didn’t fit into my earlier letters.  It went extremely fast and even more so when I realize that today is Wednesday and on Monday I’ll be back in my office in Springfield, Ohio wearing a necktie after 6 weeks of liberation from that western  curse.  We are allowed to dress down at work on Friday’s and I have some flashy African shirts to hang on me then.  I’m ready to come home.  Not sure I’ll be needed out here again next year which is a good thing, because I feel that there are enough local trainers who can do the job now.  There will still be a need for funding further training but not a great need for ‘foreign experts’.   Where shall I go next year?  Will Zimbabwe be ready for an aging mediator?  The African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) does not have any contacts down there.

 

 

 

Inside the American Embassy in Bujumbura. 

 

I managed to get through three layers of security and into the consular section of the embassy on a Tuesday.  You only get a shot at it on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s.  Once they had me in there, I knew  there was no getting out until they said I could. Hoped I wouldn’t have to wait in there until Thursday.  All the way inside, not a single American made personal contact with me except maybe  indirectly on a TV monitor that could identify me by some secret electronic device.  The first ring of guards were Burundian, and well armed I might add.  The next outside ring of protection was also manned by Burundians, and the third ring inside the first door was still covered by Burundians.  I guess that way if any malcontent Burundians decided to storm the embassy and got themselves killed, it could only be blamed on Burundians killing their own, which they are very experienced at doing.  American staff could  then walk away uncriticized.  “Hey we didn’t know what those guys were capable of.  Blackwater said they did the background checks.”   If anyone from the NSA is reading this, please note that I have not fully described the rings to give away any of my country’s secrets other than the Tuesday/Thursday schedule.  All other days of the week, check the golf course or the beaches for consular officers.

 

Finally got to a thick plate glass window where I was able to speak to a pleasant British woman with a lovely accent.  Wait a minute, didn’t we liberate ourselves from y’all?  Spared me having to deal with a New Jersey screech and a diplomatic attitude.   I sifted through the reading material on the coffee table in the lounge.  Nieman Marcus catalogue, latest speech from the president of Ghana, and an agriculture journal specializing in bull semen this month.  Homing instincts led me to the Nieman Marcus catalogue hoping for some sexy ads.  Alas all the models look like androids on crystal meth.

 

Meanwhile a lot of people who knew the magic code, had a micro chip embedded in their forehead,  or were recognized by an invisible guard at security ring number four could walk through a prison strength door and into  the waiting lounge and on outside.  Obviously a military operation of some sort was in progress, because four people in  uniforms  two  navy(one of the female persuasion), one airforce and the fourth army came out all revved up like they were going somewhere important.  There was a big black SUV outside with a diplomatic flag on the fender, the ambassador?  I have no idea who the ambassador might be woman or man.  In a small country like Burundi,  it could have been one of those androidian models from Nieman Marcus.  Discussions were going on about who would ride shotgun.  Then talk about where they were going.  Sounded like it was two blocks away.  Should I be worried?   Was there an imminent threat from Al Queda?   I had just walked those two blocks alone and unarmed, holy shit!

 

Finally I launched an icebreaker.  “What did you guys screw up to get stationed here?”  That got me a lot of cold stares.  Careers obviously were on the line.   Only later did I realize I could have gotten a hot lead enema from these guys and gal.

 

 

Chinese Army on Bad Road to Nowhere

 

Between the Burundi capital of Bujumbura and Uvira, the first big city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo lies sixteen miles of roadway, two border checkpoints, several MONUC (United Nations Military) fortresses, manned by Pakistani troops, smugglers disguised as taxi drivers and three wheeled bicycles manned by polio victims also in the smuggling game.  On the Burundi side of the border a small town of Gatunda lies alongside  beach resorts for the diplomatic corps and aid worker communities. On the Burundi side the road is paved and there appears to be some infrastructure.  Once you enter into the DRC, all bets are off.  Patrols of MONUC, run up and down the rutted and pock marked dirt and gravel road.  Did an artillery barrage do this or forty years of non maintenance?  The Pakistani’s I assume are counting their worry beads, glad they aren’t running up and down the Swat Valley looking for terrorists.  Somewhere out of all this confusion and mayhem, a small team of Chinese UN soldiers is working a mechanical shovel trying to repair the road, but making a bigger mess of it.  When my overheating taxi gets up to the repair crew, the shovel has half the road blocked by its presence and the other half blocked by its digging.  The operator appears to be getting on the job training (OJT) , because I don’t believe a tank could pass the open half of the road where he obviously has been digging.  Suddenly a Chinese sergeant orders us through.  I see no opening nor does a Congolese policeman who runs up to the mess and starts picking up boulders and tossing them off to the side.  The arm of the shovel is elevated now and the sergeant is insisting we drive under the elevated arm so thoughtfully held there by the nervous trainee.  We approach slowly.  The Sarge’s name tag is in Roman letters, probably by some MONUC directive.  His name tag reads  Sgt. I. P. Wang.  I’m not making this up.

 

By a miracle , we pass unscathed to head out of the DRC and onto the Buj.  Each time the Burundi cops stop us for a shakedown, the taxi heats up worse.  I know now that a 92 Toyota Corolla station wagon with hundreds of thousands of miles on it, really doesn’t need a lot of oil to keep running.  We make it into Buj with pistons and connecting rods to spare.  I ask to get off in the middle of town to avoid a final calamitous breakdown. 

 

Buying Eyeglasses in Burundi

 

Travelling last year through Burundi, I learned that eyeglasses are relatively cheap.  In fact there are many optical shops in the city, most run by the Indian community.  I stopped in one and noticed they had a very stylish selection.  Talked with the proprietor, a very pleasant fellow and asked about prices and delivery.  His price was good and delivery was ten days to two weeks.  That fit my schedule as I’d be leaving the country in two weeks.  He copied my prescription and did bifocals instead of tri focals which I had been using for a long time.  The order was then emailed to a manufacturer in India where the lenses are made and fitted and then air freighted back to Bujumbura.   Sounded like a winner to me except my hosts scheduled me against my insistence to go straight back to Kigali, bypassing Bujumbura.   I asked one of the Quaker ladies to pick up the glasses for me, giving her my receipt.  The owner had said that if I didn’t show up he would send them to the States as I had paid in advance.  The lady was my back up plan just in case.  She could also pick them up and mail them.  After six months , I gave up the ghost about getting the glasses and just about forgotten  them.   But when I came through Bujumbura this year, I made plans to try to remember where the shop was and go ask about the glasses.  I talked also to Joyce the hamburger lady to whom I had given the receipt to pick up the glasses.  She said she went numerous times,  but the manager wouldn’t give her the glasses, saying she must have stolen the receipt.  Eventually she gave up, but she insisted on going with me,  so that I could inform the owner that she was not a thief.  I was willing to do this for her pride and also to see if the glasses were still there.  When we walked in, he saw her and was about to exit quickly then saw me, and said, ‘Oh, I’ve been waiting for you Mr. Brose.  I sent the glasses to your home but they were returned.’   I verified with him that Joyce was indeed not a thief, though he seemed to take no recognition of this.  But it satisfied Joyce to hear me say it.   After a year to the day, I got my glasses.  Irony is they don’t seem to be very easy to get used to.  I’ll have to have them checked out at home to see if there is anything that can be done. 

A comment from an old Peace Corps buddy.

George, 

I very much enjoy your essays. Thank you for all of them. 

A year to get a pair of glasses has to be a record. 

I may have set a record in the opposite direction. 

Sometime in late 1966 or early 1967 I was in Dar and couldnt check into one of the dirt cheap places I favored and was darned if I was going to pay for one night at the Twiga, let alone the East African. 

To save money,  I did what any 23 year old idiot would do. I went down to the harbor, found a stone bench, took off my shoes, put them under my head and laid my glasses on the ground. In the middle of the night I woke to find my shoes and my glasses gone. I still had my wallet. And my life. 

I spent the rest of a fitful night trying to sleep at the door of an optical shop near the Askari Monument. When the shop opened I was of course literally on their doorstep, with, by good luck, my prescription, which was in my wallet. 

By noon I had my new glasses. And a pair of Bata sandals. And a resolve never to sleep in the open in Dar es Salaam again. 

Charles

V 1 N. 19 A Memorable Plane Ride

 

A Memorable Plane Ride

 

By George Brose

 

 

On August 13, 1985 my family were preparing to go home at the end of our teaching contract in  Zimbabwe.  We settled into our seats on the KLM Dutch plane in Harare.  Why KLM?  Because they offered a nice ‘missionary’ discount to foreign nationals working in the developing world.  They didn’t know I was a hard-core agnostic at best in those days.   All seemed to be going well until the steward distributed newspapers to the passengers.  It was always nice to get fresh papers from Europe in those days, because the local papers though timely and occasionally covering major international events were often filled with local news that only the locals could manage to find interesting such as the current price for tobacco at the tobacco auction in Harare or the latest rantings from Robert Mugabe and whatever dignitary might be visiting the country. 

            Tragically the day before our flight a Japanese air plane (Japan Airlines Flt. 123) had crashed near Mt. Takamagahara  and all had perished. Actually four people survived of the 524 on board, making it the most deadly plane crash of all time.   These were the headlines on the paper that was passed to me from our well intentioned servant of the airways.   He must have known what was there and probably should have withheld distributing those papers.  Not just about the event but some of the gory details.   According to the story in the paper, the aircraft had had some kind of mechanical failure but instead of heading directly back to Haneda , it had had struggled to regain control, an impossibiltiy because a loss of hydraulics that controlled the aircraft.  It struggled for more than thirty minutes, but ultimately had gone down near the mountain.     The story noted that several of the passengers had had time to write letters of farewell to their families before the crash and some of those letters had been recovered and were transcribed in the story.  So with that unsettling news, I buckled the seat belt a bit tighter than usual and hid the paper from the rest of my family.     

            The plane went on its way and I white knuckled the flight north and finally felt that all was well as we were crossing southern Europe and began our descent toward the landing  at Schipol airport near Amsterdam.   Looking out I could see rather foul weather and  almost without warning there was a tremendous bang on the aircraft, the lighting went out,  and it buckled and took a few twists and then righted itself.  The captain came on quickly to try to calm the passengers in English which was clearly not his mother tongue and said,  “We’ve just been hit by a . ………..long pause…..  hit by a aaa a  a .    Me, I’m thinking SAM missile (surface to air).   After all there were terrorist acts going on in those days.   And then he came back with the word  ‘blitz’.    I was relieved. I remembered my basic German.  Dutch was close in some ways, and that was one of the ways.   'Blitz' meant ‘lightning’, as in the familiar WWII term 'Blitzkrieg'  'Lightning War', but the pilot couldn’t think of the English term.   Eventually someone helped him with the translation and he did say ‘lightning’ and I’m sure many bladders were relieved to hear that news.  We landed without further incident. 

From UPI Archives  Aug. 18, 1985

TOKYO -- A terrified passenger aboard Japan Air Lines Flight 123 scribbled a note saying, 'I don't want to fly anymore. God, please save me,' as the jumbo jet tumbled through the sky before crashing into a mountainside, his family said Sunday.

Rescue workers combing the wreckage of the Boeing 747 said they found two emotional 'last wills' written by passengers before the plane plunged into a mountain in central Japan last Monday, killing 520 people. Four passengers survived in what was the worst single-plane accident in aviation history.

"We’ve just been hit by a . ………..long pause…..  hit by a aaa a  a "   

That had me sweating just sitting in my recliner.   Re the crash that killed 520 but had four survivors, any mention of their religion?   I don't travel much but an ounce of prevention, etc.   Roy,  Ukiah, CA

The actual cause was determined to have been an incomplete repair job done be Boeing technicians.  Nevertheless the plane had made over 12,000 flights after the repair.  Picky Picky Picky.   

Comment from Grace Butcher:

Hi George. 

I was heading home from a visit with poet friend Ann Menebroker (now deceased) in Sacramento many years ago. I forget if my return flight went to LA first, then Denver, but on the way from Denver to Cleveland, we had lunch (it must have been many years ago!) and  then were just droning along, passengers settling in for a boring few hours.  I decided to use the restroom before trying for a nap, and made my way back towards the back of the plane, locked myself in, pulled down my pants.

At that moment, without the usual warning, the plane hit sudden turbulence. I was thrown up against the mirrored door ( I wonder what my expression might have looked like), then slammed down on the seat, then back up against the door again, back down on the seat. While I was flailing around, my pants seemed totally out of reach, as did the door latch, and I had a brief image of my body being discovered in the smoldering ruins thirty thousand feet below with my pants still down around my feet.

Finally I got the door open and lurched out, my pants sort of pulled up. "Sit in the nearest seat!" the flight attendant commanded. But determined to die with my possessions, I kept going, However, by the time I got back to my seat, the other passengers were all just sitting there reading or dozing. My brief glimpse of my mortality was over and would quickly fade along with the bruises on my butt.

Cheers, Grace