Moving Forward While Looking Back
Some of the boys (and spouses) at Hoover Dam.
I just got back from a road trip to Las Vegas (I like seeing the countryside) where I reconnected with several Air Force mates from RAF Lakenheath, U.K. This is the fifth time a group of us Air Force firefighters from that period (late 70s, early 80s) has gotten together — three times in Las Vegas, once in Reno, Nev., and once in Dayton, Ohio (home of the National Museum of the Air Force — worth visiting if you like military aircraft).
The older I get and the more I try to figure out how I got here (in my life), the more important reconnecting with old friends and colleagues becomes. To that end, it’s been a good fall.
It started in early September with the CCHS Class of 1978’s 45-year reunion. Man, class reunions get better as time passes. My favorite part of class reunions is that you never know who might show up. At both our 40th and the 45th I saw people that I haven’t seen or heard from in years — in many cases since high school. And the ties often go back further, into elementary school and junior high. These are the people who’ve known you, and you them.
It was different for me this time because I live back here now, in my hometown — I’m not the one who’s come in from away. It’s still fun and satisfying but it’s just different, for me, to talk about living here to people who don’t and haven’t for a long time. That used to be me, the one from here but living away. It’s a different kind of reflecting.
Early October marks the annual Graham reunion, another gathering where you just don’t know who might show up. My dad’s immediate family is dwindling and I was away for a long time so it’s important that I keep these connections alive. The reunion and other gatherings are a big part of that. Even more than high school, these are the people who’ve known you, and you them, all your life
It was in Las Vegas this year, at breakfast with a small group on our last day, that I had a moment of clarity — finally realizing that I may never know what drove the love, the passion, that my dad, Wayne Graham, had for Cumberland County and the Cumberland Plateau — the Mountain.
Just through conversation a couple of the women talked about how their dads had abandoned their families while they were growing up, and how each had no use for her biological father as an adult.
That struck me hard because I often think about losing my dad — but through different circumstances. My dad died after being sick for a while, when I was 12. He didn’t leave by choice. He’d still be here if he had lived, and I can’t describe how much I miss him, even — especially — today. I often wonder how my life might have been different had he lived.
Would I be that passionate about the Mountain? My dad considered the Mountain and its people his own, and they him. His Cumberland County was a different age, a different time, a different era. His Cumberland County is hard to find here now.
In that moment at breakfast I realized that I can’t keep looking for something that I likely will never find. I recently heard Mick Jagger (he’s 80!) tell an interviewer that he’s been offered “a lot of money” to write his memoirs, but that’s two years of his life looking backward, and he doesn’t want to do that. I understand. (Jagger is still adding to his memoirs — The Rolling Stones continue to tour and just released an album of new material.)
Watching my mother reconnect with her longtime friends is satisfying. She has a core group of high school friends that do lunch and short trips together — all for fun, fellowship and support. The camaraderie is easy for them —they’ve known one another a long time.
I reconnect annually with those I served with because that was an important time to me. Most of us were first-termers, fresh out of basic training and fire school, at our first duty assignment, which I learned at this reunion was not ideal. RAF Lakenheath was home to a wing of F-111Fs, an aggressive, swing-wing, supersonic aircraft with advanced electronics (for the time) that could accurately deliver a particularly mean payload, if you know what I mean.
We practiced our mission, a lot, and the Soviets knew who we were. The situation called for experienced troops, but it got us instead. We were thrust into positions of responsibility and did the job because we didn’t know any better.
The Cold War wasn’t a shooting war then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but tensions between the West and the Soviets were high, and as U.S. military in Europe, we felt that tension every day. My time at RAF Lakenheath has always been special, likely the two most important years of my life. The job needed doing and we were there to do it. I’m proud of that. Two years in England wasn’t bad either.
I like visiting with people from my past. But like Mick Jagger, I can’t always look back. There’s still a lot to do.
rpdgraham@gmail.com