In June of 1978, I was 18 and heading to basic training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio Texas.
After I arrived there, I received six hard weeks filled up with learning about Air Force history and the military discipline that was expected of me while I served my country as an enlisted man in our countries United States Air Force. Six weeks later, they sent me to Lowry AFB in Denver Colorado to learn my "462 AFSC," or said another way, my "462 Air Force Specialty Code." The code simply means Aircraft Armament Systems Specialist, which was to be my job during my military career. The Air Force has an awesome battery of tests that show your propensity and aptitude to perform jobs without really knowing how to test your mind's capacity to accomplish high-stress technical jobs day in and day out; the testing also does not account for the psychological strain that doing those high-stress technical jobs might put on a person's capacity to live and thrive in a military environment. What the military didn't test for was my memory or my ability to process audio and visual stimuli sufficient to perform such a technically demanding job. I only know now, looking back years later, that my brain wasn't up for those tasks. I tested with an aptitude and ability to work around bombs, missiles, rockets, guns, their racks and launchers in both their non-nuclear and nuclear formats. That nuclear part, it meant I had to be FBI investigated to obtain a secret clearance. But life isn't simple, what the Air Force didn't know was that I was a man who'd lived his entire life with depression, generalized anxiety disorder, memory problems, audio processing disorder, and visual processing disorder. Spoiler: these issues, naturally, caused many failures, which then just made me feel stupid, inferior, and incompetent. Reflecting now, I understand none of those self-imposed thoughts and impressions I forced on myself was real or even true. But at the time it caused me to segregate myself, even in the Air Force by requesting a downgraded transfer to a job relegated to basically passing out tools to people working on multiple aspects on the planes by airmen of all aircraft related AFSC's.
There were some objectively good things that came my way in the Air Force, though with my mental and emotional issues I struggled to see them as such. First, damned if I didn't have plenty of friends I hung out with throughout my four-year career. That's because you're forced, for lack of a better word, to become comrades. After all, you have all focused on the singular task that planes are merely totally awesome platforms to carry weapons to the enemy so we can kill their personnel and break their things in the process. Being stationed in Germany as my first Duty Station and attending a local church over there, made two disparate things seem alike. There was the time spent working as an airman with all my comrades on the United States Air Force Base in a foreign land that made us feel "called out" from the people of Germany's local economy. Then, when we were off-base, those of us who were military Christians became a band of brothers as well, or maybe better said, we were a brotherhood of the local fellowship. In both instances, it was really kind of biblical; it made me consider how in the Bible we're told "to come out from among them and be separate"—that is: be a fellowship of friendly people among people who neither think or believe what you do. Being Christians who were also foreigners in a foreign land made the verse seem almost literal. Honestly, the life experiences I mention here benefit most people who've lived them. The same might have been true for me but for the mental and emotional issues I was facing. Even while my time in the Air Force wasn't a positive experience personally, I reflect on it fondly. I still had two more years of my service contract remaining.
I think it was in October of 1980 when I left my old duty station, Ramstein AFB in Germany, and arrived at my new duty station, Mt. Home AFB in Idaho. There I attended Mt. Home Bible Baptist Church. Sometime in 1981, there was Tina, a young lady I really knew little about, other than she was a Christian who faithfully attended church, played the piano, sang, and was around the age of 18. Considering the type of woman I contemplated marrying, a Proverbs 31 woman, she should have been a fit. At that time my conscience didn't have much of a guide and it popped up in my mind that marriage might be a thing to do, so one day I asked Tina to marry me. Thankfully she had enough sense to turn me down.
It was probably late summer or the beginning of autumn in 1981 when I meet KT, a.k.a. Kenneth Treadway. We both attended Mt. Home Bible Baptist Church and eventually became close friends. Not only were we close friends, but KT would also become my much needed Jiminy Cricket! To this day I realize not only do I lack a friendship as close as KT and I had, but I also miss him not being around to tell me in real-time when I’m being unintentionally (and sometimes unconscionably) rude to people. I ended my four-year tour of duty in June 1982 and left for a bible college near Seattle/Tacoma Washington. However, I returned to Mt. Home sometime around October of that same year. Ken was still in the Air Force and I began preaching at the church's half-way house we affectionately called The Lighthouse. One night, I was preaching at the Lighthouse when an Airman from the base visited. Her name was Sheila Jones. She was a tall, beautiful woman and a new Christian with a beautiful testimony. I took a liking to her and KT, well KT was nowhere around that night. You've probably already guessed it, KT and Sheila eventually became close. And even though I often reminded Ken I'd met her first at a time when he was nowhere to be found, they went on to get married in a wedding where I'd be KT's best man. Anyway, a while after being KT's best man at his wedding and after he'd been dispatched to serve in the UK, Sheila had met a Christian woman in this small town of Mt. Home and introduced me to her. We would meet up, talk, and she'd come to The Lighthouse a few times to hear me preach. I don't know if things would have gone differently had KT been around to act as my surrogate Jiminy Cricket, but I don't remember much about her beyond desire and satisfaction.
Eventually, I'd be asked to leave the Light House for—reasons—(I should have been asked to leave; it was the right thing to do). I not only left the Lighthouse, but also decided I'd be too embarrassed to return to church, so I decided to make a clean break and leave Mt. Home altogether. Before I left, I thought I'd take a "chance" and ask the woman Sheila had introduced me to if she'd marry me. She told me no, someone else had recently asked her. I knew who he was and that he was actually in jail for financially taking advantage of women. So I half-heartedly tried to convince her it would be a mistake to wait for him to get out of jail to marry him and that she should reconsider. I told her it would be best for her if she told him no, that she had changed her mind. Of course, I told her it would be best for her to say yes to me, but that she had to say yes now otherwise I was leaving town for good. She was firm. A few hours later I was well on my way to Atlanta, Georgia, the city where I grew up.
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