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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

The Slice

Thursday Slice annex

Today's print Slice briefly refers to how children of military officers got along with children of enlisted personnel. Here are a few actual excerpts from readers' submissions.

"I was a military kid my entire life but only lived on a base once as an older child," wrote Hank Greer. "It was Dyess AFB, Texas, just outside Abilene and we were there from '68-'72. My experience there was that it was the parents who were more concerned with separation of officer and enlisted.

"The biggest difference I saw was between the military kids and our civilian counterparts. Being bused to school in town, it was the base kids effecting social change at the junior high and high schools much to the consternation of the local parents and authorities. Sometimes we did it just by being who we were and sometimes it was more direct. Girls violated the dress code by wearing pants. Boys grew their hair long. Although imperfectly, we military kids were accustomed to being integrated. There were behaviors and attitudes from the non-military kids and/or school authorities we worked to change either by our actions or our voice. We looked at the officer/enlisted thing as something that applied to our parents' work and not to us personally." 

Jacque Sanchez remembers it the same way. "When I was 10 and riding my bike all over the historic post (Fort Monroe) I never ever heard any kid say, 'What rank is your dad?' We all just blended together -- same school, same bowling alley, same movie theater. It was the best."

Bob Douthitt, a former Army brat, put it simply. "It just wasn't cool to ask people what rank their fathers were. It was like asking how much money your parents make in the civilian world."

Bill Stickler, who grew up in an Air Force family, added his voice to the chorus. "I never once witnessed, heard or heard of any animosity -- not even a hint of such -- regarding what rank someone's father was. ...I'm not so naive as to believe there might not have been feelings of resentment regarding parental rank differences, but I wasn't aware of any."

Of course, not everyone was rank-blind.

"I remember on Halloween when we went to an enlisted house we said 'Trick or treat,'" said Jim Gyarfas, who lived on a Navy base when he was little. "When we went to an officer's house, Mom told us they were officers and we had to say 'Happy Halloween.'"

Tim Yeager remembers being 11 and arranging to walk to a movie with a girl he liked. But when he got to her house, her officer father opened the door and informed Tim that he didn't want the girl being escorted by a sergeant's son.

Linda Angel offered a blunt assessment somewhat at odds with most responding readers' take on this. "Officers' brats treated all the enlisted brats like we were dirt. The enlisted kids stuck together and the officers' kids stuck together."

But Karen Swanson, whose officer father was known to say "If the Air Force wanted me to have a family, they would have issued me one," saw a different defintion of Us and Them.

"Civilian kids were much more difficult."



The Slice

The online home for Paul Turner's musings and interactions with disciples of The Slice.