Dad's Air Force pictures (1954-1957)

 

My father, Charles R Kuhlemeier, on the lower left.  The picture is labeled 55U Cadet Class Lackland, Malden, Enid

Well, I started the process of uploading my father’s photolibrary to Flickr.  In about 2005 he retired and was trying to manage all the slides and family photos he had collected (I think I see a pattern here!).  My husband and I made a deal that we would buy a film scanner and loan it to him long term.  At that point in our lives we had no time to do anything with it ourselves.  That was one of the best things we ever did.  Over the next few years, Daddy scanned and labeled a couple of thousand pictures using that little film scanner.  I can’t say how much I appreciate the work he did.  I have countless pictures of elders with names that I never met on both sides of my family and without those, I could not hope to label most of our old family photos.  There are pictures of vacations that we took as small children, our homes in California and Michigan, birthday parties and girl scout activities.  They are all precious to me and they give me a baseline for identifying many others as yet undiscovered.

That little film scanner, by the way, was obsolete technology by the time we were ready to use it.  I think the software that supported it couldn’t be updated so we replaced it.  I still have the replacement and have used it quite a bit.  We also purchased a flatbed photo scanner that is capable of scanning slides and negatives.  I now know that the resolution of the flatbed scanner is vastly superior to that of the film scanner so I will be judicious about using the little guy in the future.

I began by uploading about 500 of my father’s pictures from his days in the Air Force. 

Cadet parking lot Vance AFB '54 Dees (?) -  love this because of all the cars!

Charles Kuhlemeier in a B52 at Selfridge AFB

He went through basic training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio TX (1954), pilot training at Malden AFB in Missouri and was stationed in Salina KS with the Strategic Air Command (SAC) where he met my mother. There are pictures of many different bases that he flew from but Vance AFB in Enid appears in many pictures.

Guard gate at Vance AFB

While they were engaged, he spent time stationed in Reading, England (1957).  The pictures from those few months are definitely some of the most beautiful.  He told stories about visiting homes in post-war England and thinking that he was going to freeze.  My dad was raised in Michigan and experienced many very cold winters there, but the coal shortage made fueling coal burners in England difficult and expensive so homes were frigid, even by Michigan standards.  Another lingering memory was a poor opinion of English cuisine, especially overcooked steaks which he took a very dim view of.  When he and Mom got married, he decided against a career in the Air Force but did continue in the Air Reserves for a few years.  He loved flying and I think did regret not continuing as a commercial pilot.

Market on the square Newbury 1956

Many photos in flight

"Kuhlemeier studying" 

Love the caption on this one "Probably not a crew member"

I have not been able to locate anything to confirm that I remember this correctly, but I believe that the air show in Oklahoma City was narrated by Colonel (later Brigadier General) Jimmy Stewart.

OKC air show guests - Patsy, a cousin of Mom's, Mary Lee Byrne, her friend from OU Nursing, Mom and her sister Juanita.

From that same show, there are pictures of John Glenn setting a speed record for a cross country flight.  I know my dad admired Jimmy Stewart tremendously and mentioned that narration many times.  I need to put my librarian skills to work and dig a bit.  I doubt I dreamed this!

Navy Crusaders and John Glenn OKC air show 1956

I have lingered quite a bit with these pictures.  The fact that he spent so much time adding names, places and aircraft models to each photo, is a reflection of how much he loved flying and how important that time in his life was. It was also fun to see his sense of humor shine through on some of the picture captions.  I don’t know enough about aircraft to appreciate all the finer points but seeing my dad looking so young and handsome gives me a lot of pleasure.  I hope that others in our family and beyond will also appreciate them. 

Grandma Henry

A very belated tribute to my grandmother.  I wrote this in April 2009 and it has been sitting in a file waiting to be shared.

Great Grandma Buchanan, me as a baby and Grandma Henry

Grandma Henry as a young mother with my mother Wilma

Me, Great Grandma Buchanan and Grandma Henry in front of the lilacs at the side of her house in Enid, OK.

My Grandmother Henry died last Christmas, just a couple weeks short of her 95^th birthday.  For several years she had lived in a nursing home, where she gradually got smaller and frailer and less able to get around.  Her mind began to take excursions to other places that weren’t always happy, apparently in search of resolution of earlier pains and wrongs.  When family members would come visit her, she could often surprise us by willfully pulling back to a completely aware present, with wit and insight intact.  But you never knew.  It was also possible to find her fretting over her husband spending the night with some floozy or her grandson selling drugs right outside her window.  The irony being that these things were terrible injustices to my grandfather, who was a rock of love and faithfulness though their long marriage, and to my cousin, whose long distance activities were occasionally irresponsible but a long way from the nefarious things she began to attribute to him.  By the time she died I had begun to pray that an angel would come at night to gather her up in his arms and take her to reunite with the husband she had lost some thirty years before and the son who died about the same time, much too young.  It was a much happier vision than that of the shadow living in her much reduced body.  I could write an entire book about her.  She was not only the matriarch of our family but a strong, no nonsense woman who never quit being compassionate and interested in those around her.  The CNA's in the nursing home would come to fluff her blankets, but mostly to tell her their problems because she was always a listening ear. 

I miss her terribly and find that I grieve for her almost daily in small ways.  She had been only an occasional part of my west coast childhood, but she had played a solid, comforting role in my adulthood since she lived close enough to be able to celebrate holidays with and to be present for the small and large celebrations of my young family.  Today, I found myself thinking of her as I planted the pots of flowers that will border my patio.  I caught myself correcting the label on the plastic pots from the discount store that read “moss rose”.  “That’s not right, it should be rosy moss!” I said to myself.  Because that is what Grandma called it and it grew in the margins of her flower beds at the back of her little house.  When I visited her she would take me on a guided tour to see what was blooming, what had to be divided and what she had put in the ground after cultivating it in the pot all winter long.  She had a fabulous green thumb, mostly the product of the joy she received from growing things and her careful interest in the successes and failures of each year’s garden.  I also pay a small tribute whenever I make her banana bread or vegetable soup recipe; when I use one of the tea towels that she embroidered or when I do an all-too-hasty job of wrapping a gift while remembering the beautiful, creative packages she used to wrap for us all every Christmas.  She was the product of another era, with an eighth grade formal education, but she never lost her interest in learning new things, her willingness to have an adventure or her almost infinite capacity to love and care for those around her.  I hope that I can have the same kind of influence on those around me that she did in all those small but important ways.