All my life I have lived in the style of a gypsy. My father was a military man; United States Air Force. Therefore, we were a military family. Our life was different than many folks I know here in Central Illinois. My husband was born and raised in Urbana, Illinois. I don't think he took a step out of that town, well maybe once during a trip to Pekin, Illinois, until he was at least twenty.
I was born in Denver, Colorado. Fitsimmons military hospital was the spot. I was less than a year old when my father got orders to go to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippine Islands. Mom moved us to Illinois for a year until we were allowed to join Dad overseas. We were a big family; eight total. Mom, Dad, Joddy, Jeanne, Karin, Kelly, John and our baby Jimmy.
Mom tells the story about the move to the Philippine Islands. In those days most military families traveled over seas by boat. Three days before we traveled across the United States, my oldest sister, Joddy came down with a fever and felt terrible. Before the next day she began breaking out with the chicken pox. You guessed it. By the time we made our way to San Francisco my sister Jeanne was so sick that she was hospitalized at the naval hospital just long enough for us to miss the boat. A week later when we finally got Jeanne out of the hospital, we boarded ship. Karin became ill a day later and our family moved to an isolated sick bay in the bowels of the boat. The captain wasn't very happy when our family was quarantined to the boat when we arrived at our destination. I had developed a high temperature and the pox. The Philippine government would not let us disembark from the ship until I was healthy, so we stayed another few days in the sick bay. Mom couldn't understand why the kitchen kept sending hot coffee for us young ones to drink. It must have been just awful for her. In the mean time, the Red Cross was supposed to have told my father where we were, but didn't for some reason. So things were bad! I don't remember any of it, but I know that Mom and Dad were happy to see each other because my little brother John was born nine months later.
