Blog 2013 – 03.30.2021

1854 Meet Kirsten, Chapter 3

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WkW14nHTvWNnTtR-RVVnKp58L_40dDak/view?usp=drivesdk

1854 Meet Kirsten, Chapter 3

Some friends we meet but briefly and others we may travel with long upon life’s path, but say “see you later” we must eventually to all. It is a fact of life. I was happy that a buddy I had attended a six month teletype repair school with at Fort Gordon, Georgia would be traveling to South Vietnam at the same time I was going. I watched all night at San Francisco International Airport hoping to see his familiar face. I did the next day while reporting for processing at Oakland Army Depot. We processed for ‘Nam together and made the twenty-one hour flight together on a Pan American charter flight. We awaited our orders together for several days after we arrived in Saigon and both even stayed at the Saint George Hotel. Alas, he was assigned to a company in Phu Bai and I at Tan Son Nhut Airbase just outside Saigon. It would be eleven months before I saw Vito Ventimiglia again. He processed out to return home through my unit a few days before I did. We had both gotten to go home a month early as the war was winding down.

It would be another forty-two years before I saw Vito again and got the chance to meet his wife and him for pizza at a restaurant in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan while I was on a work assignment there. I was told recently that there was a chance that there might be a work assignment for me in the Detroit area again in a month or so. The prospect of seeing my friend again is one that appeals to me. Making new friends and seeing old friends again are two of life’s greatest pleasures. Somewhere along this long and winding road we may meet and walk together awhile and share a smile or a thousand. A little traveling music please.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eSS6TLl3wHhaDO5tCe65GYwhE-4toycR/view?usp=drivesdk

The Long And Winding Road