by Galen Daugherty

Created on: November 14, 2008   Last Updated: November 17, 2008

This quiet man was in my life for such a short period of time, nine, almost ten years. I knew so little about him when he was still alive; I knew he was below average height and weight, but had above average looks and intelligence. I remember women wanting to talk to him when we would go to the grocery store, my mothers friends commenting on his looks. I remember his friends were very similar to him. All wore some kind of olive drab, either a hat or a vest, spoke with very deep voices, due to years of smoking, and all very rarely ever smiled.

I remember being young, and seeing this man come home after a hard days work, in uniform. He was 10 feet tall to me. He was a UH-1 pilot, and he flew DUSTOFF (medivac). I knew he loved his country, and he loved his family. I knew this because he was always willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for his country, and, his family. At times it was scary, yet, comforting.

My mother spent a lot of time alone, because he was always flying, somewhere in the world. Unfortunately, this made my mother a target of the meanest neighbors we had. They viewed her as a "single mother", which wasn't looked at as an admirable position to be in during the late 70's. We had a neighbor, and he was mean, cold and calculating. He kept watch over our home and our lives, and would call social services on my mother every time my father would get deployed. He would show up at our doorstep, question my mother, with the rudest and most inappropriate questions. Fortunately for my mother, and not so fortunate for him, he showed up on our doorstep with his son (who was polishing a Nazi helmet), after grossly miscalculating the man of the houses return. When the man of the house heard the neighbor at the the door, he pushed past my mother to the white haired, mean old neighbor and his son. I remember the words he said to the both of them (sorry, they are way to innapropriate to repeat); I was horrified, terrified of this man who lived with us, he just made two full grown men cry. Our neighbors never returned after that. Even though this made me terrified of the man of our house, it also made me comfortable to be in his presence.

It was Aug. 5th, 1986 when we got the news The man of the house had been out of the military for a year and eight months and It was my mothers birthday. We had gone to the mall to do some shopping, and returned home for about an hour, when my mother turned on the news just in time to hear "Helicopter Crash Kills 4", simultaneously

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