by Bob Welbaum

Created on: July 21, 2011

The telephone rang at 8 am on a Sunday morning.

In anybody else’s world this would be no big deal. At the time, I didn’t think it was any big deal either. But two little facts made all the difference.

1. I was in the Air Force, living on the economy in a major city.

2. The closest Air Force Base was about 50 miles away.

Taken together, this meant I would have to go out into that city and change someone’s life forever.

“Is this Captain ________?” a young but sober voice on the other end asked.

“Yes,“ I mumbled, still trying to get the sleepiness out of my brain.

I’ve long forgotten the exact words or the bureaucratic nomenclature of the office calling me, but the truth was unmistakable: someone in the Air Force family had died, and the next of kin had to be notified. Immediately. By whomever was available. And on this day, at this time, that would be me.

Normally it would not be me. My real job was contract administration, assigned to protect the taxpayers’ interests in a nearby plant that manufactured large jet engines.

But death is a serious matter. It supersedes everything else, especially whatever personal plans I had for the morning. Granted, phone calls like this are always a shock, and the first instinct was to think of oneself - “But today I was going to…”

 
Once my brain was fully functioning, I knew what I had to do. The voice on the other end of the phone began to dictate the official notification. A young airman, someone’s son, had been killed the night before in an automobile accident. (Fortunately, we were not at war during this time, so infrequent accidents were the main culprits.) I had to copy it down exactly. Then I got dressed in the complete Class A uniform, ran to the car, and drove to the office. I found an empty secretary’s station, rummaged around to find the paper supply, turned on the IBM Selectric, and started typing.

Protocol had to be followed. The notification has to be typed, all caps, perfectly. No mistakes were allowed. That took some time, even though the notification was all business. Just the facts.

I don’t remember how I got directions. But soon I was driving into a lower-middle-class suburb of Cincinnati, looking for a specific address. It wasn’t hard to find, and I was soon walking up to the front door of a nice single-family dwelling.  An early-middle-aged black man answered the door. I introduced myself and told him

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