CLARK AIR FORCE BASE PHILIPPINES

I spent about two months in the hospital at Clark Air Force Base from Feb '62 thru Mar '62. I had an eye injury and had to have complete bed rest for the retina to heal. The photo above was taken of me in the middle with the eye patch and Mr. Hill on the left who had just had all his lymph nodes taken out from his groin up to almost his neck. They found cancer in his testicles. I remember he was from Texas, but I can't remember his first name I may have been John. I don't know what branch of the service he was in. The other guy I think was in the Air Force and he had a hernia operation...not he's not sitting.

The reason I scanned this and posted the picture was in hopes maybe someone will run across this and know the people.

While I was there a young sailor form a carrier came through in a wire basket stretcher, He was 19 years old and he had walked into a prop on an airplane. He sliced off half of his head. They kept his chest open and would massage his heart every several hours. He lived for about a week.

When I was checking out of the hospital to return to Taiwan I saw his personal effects on the desk of the man checking me out. I asked if it was the young man that had the head injury and he said yes. We both were silent as we finished checking out. It was so sad. Now I know why they stressed that we should walk way around the plane when working on the flight line. I wrote about this in another post.
http://navy-photo.blogspot.com/2009/07/norman-ok-airman-training.html

Clark Air Base is no more since Mount Pinatubo erupted and over ran most of the base. It was the largest Air Base overseas at that time. 

Families and Memories

Families and Memories

As regular readers know, Sarj Bloom was a photographer at USTDC during the early 1960s and has provided many great photographs and memories to this blog during the past two or three years.

He recently sent me these photos and comments and agreed to let me share them with you:

This is photo of my wife and me on the day we left Taiwan during late September or early October, 1963. We were standing outside the Omega Hotel that was located on the circle that lead to downtown. We were to leave right after this photo to catch our Ship the "General Mann" in Keelung to travel back to the States.

My wife and I are on the right and my mother-in-law, who just passed at the age of 101 last week, is on the left with her husband who passed in 1972.  In the back is her aunt and uncle and a nephew that I also knew very well. 

Maybe someone will remember the Omega Hotel. It was built around a garden and was Japanese style with tatamis, paper doors, etc.  I really like that style.

Last week Apo (Chinese for grandma) passed away at the age of 101. She was the mother of my first wife, whom I married in Taiwan in November, 1962.  She was also the grandmother of my 12 grandchildren and attended every family gathering graduation and other events.

She was born September 30, 1909. She lived in mainland China and during the Communist takeover, she and her family fled to Taiwan.  She eventually came to the States where she lived with her daughters in Maryland. She got lost so many times in the malls that we made her carry a note telling who to call.  She was generous and sometimes gave things to the kids that didn't belong to her.  We all loved her and her servant's heart. She lived as we are all called to live, thinking of others instead of ourselves.

This is a wonderful family photo of her taken with her brothers and sisters when she was a young lady.  She is in the back row on the right.  Most likely, this photo was taken in Canton Provence. 

 

I took this photo of her at my grandson's high school graduation in Maryland around eight years ago.

I  feel so blessed, as do my children and grandchildren, to have such a wonderful family made up of two cultures.  I don't think of it as two races. We have overcome language barriers and the younger generations now all speak English.  Even now we have one of the grandsons that can understand Hakka, an almost forgotten language of Southeast Asia.  Grandma and her children spoke this most of the time, though they could still speak Mandarin.

this was originally posted on ustdc.blogspot.com but I decided to also put it on this blog too.