The Summer of '63 - US Army or How I Grew Up

When I was a senior at Olympus High School (Utah), some of my pals and I figured out that it might be fun to join the National Guard. We found that we could join while were seventeen if we were in our senior year and, after graduation, go on six months of active duty. I looked into it and went along.
This was 1963 and Viet Nam had not become much of an issue and being drafted wasn’t even on my radar because I was still only seventeen years old and that wasn’t a big deal at the time anyway. It just looked like a fun thing to do and for whatever reason my parents went along with it.
The plan was we could join with parental consent upon reaching the age of seventeen and then go on six months of active duty for training upon graduation. After that we had to stay active in the Guard for the remainder of a six year obligation. Realistically, I was such a poor student that I believe my parents hoped that a stint in the military might actually be good for me. I’m not sure why they agreed to let me go, but I think that was a big part of it.
I turned seventeen on January 2nd, 1963, during my senior year at Olympus and went with several classmates and enlisted in the 144th Evacuation Hospital, Utah Army National Guard.
We graduated in May and I believe we flew the next day to Fort Ord, California. Some of the guys who went with me were Larry Ludlow, Richard Mott and John Jackson (all from Olympus High), as well as John’s pal, Steve Rippon from East High School. There were several others from our unit, but their names escape me now. It was a sizeable group though and because of that and our life styles we became known as “those Mormon kids from Salt Lake City.” We pretty much stayed together through Basic Training at For Ord and then Medical Specialist Training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
Upon arrival at Fort Ord we were assigned to the Reception Center for the first week while we got shots, received indoctrination about Army “Opportunities” and other things to spend our money on. We were not treated with much respect, not that we expected to be. At the end of each day we had to stand in a formation and several of us were picked out to do extra details (mostly picking up cigarette butts and other trash). After two days I realized I was always being picked because I’m so tall and my head stuck up above the others making me easy to see. So I started falling in at the rear and bending at the knees until I was about 5’8” instead of 6’7”. It worked for the rest of my military career.

The second week found most of us assigned to C Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade, also known as C-1-1 or colloquially as “Charlie Run Run.” That, of course, meant that we ran everywhere. It was a great physical training tool because we really did run everywhere. We ran to eat, we ran to training and it seems like we ran whenever we were together as a company. We lived in what were then new Company Barracks that were three stories high. There was a platoon “Bay” at each end of each floor where we had our upper and lower bunks and foot lockers. That was it. A foot locker where underwear, socks and personal hygiene items were required to be situated exactly the same as everybody else. We also had a shelf with a bar under it from which we could hang our uniforms. Each hanger had to be spaced equidistant from all other hangers.
We were told to pack up all of our personal civilian property and clothing and it was all shipped home.
We were issued everything we would need including all uniforms, an M-1 Garand rifle, two pair of combat boots and a pair of “low quarters” (shoes). We learned how to make bunks so that a quarter, when dropped on it, would trampoline back into the inspecting officer’s hand. We learned to spit shine our boots and shoes and stage them for daily inspections. At first we would come back to our barracks and find all the boots thrown in a pile in the middle of the floor, and our bedding torn from our bunks. We didn’t really find out until later that, by definition, no one could properly shine their shoes and the bunks could not possibly be properly made up until you had at least four weeks in training under your belt. Piling our shoes in the middle of the floor helped us learn to put our names on things that were ours. Fortunately, my size 15 footwear made it pretty easy to pick out my stuff but some guys had real problems.
The pay was $72.00 a month, which seems like not much, but if you didn’t drink beer or smoke, there was very little to spend money on. We got paid once a month in cash so there was no need for checking accounts or other financial complications. I think the pay went up to $83.00 by the time our six months active duty tour was over and I actually owned one sixth interest in a car and had saved about $100.00 by the time we went home.
I think we mostly learned how to do “Close Order Drill,” (“Left Face,” “Right Face,” “Column Left,” Etc.), Physical Training (pushups, pull ups, burpees, etc.), shooting (we could knock down silhouette targets at 400 meters) and other things vital to knowing how to be a grunt soldier. Some of the highlights include the “infiltration course” where we had to low crawl for I think 100 meters with live machine gun fire being sprayed at about three feet above the ground we were crawling on. There were also pits along the way with explosive charges going off that simulated artillery rounds hitting. We were advised to stay out of those pits for obvious reasons. A twenty mile march with full packs (tents, sleeping bags, food, ammo, etc.) was done on one nice day.
After eight weeks we were trained and salty soldiers. We got a leave of one week and then it was on to Fort Sam Houston where we were going to get eight weeks of Medical Corpsman Training and an additional eight weeks of advanced Medical Specialist training. Our MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) was Medical Specialist which qualified us to be assigned to a military hospital if we were ever on active duty for other than training.
So I returned to Salt Lake City for my leave and a couple of us figured out that we could trade in our plane tickets to San Antonio and get cash. We then bought train tickets for a lot less money and we took the train to San Antonio. This turned into a tortuous journey with stops at Denver and about 2,348 other places that had places for trains to stop. Our accommodations didn’t include sleeping quarters so we slept on impossibly uncomfortable seats in pretty crowded conditions. I wouldn’t do it again, but at seventeen years of age, it was one of those educational experiences.
At Fort Sam, life got a lot better. We had fewer than half the soldiers in our barracks bay than we did at Ord and all of our bunks were single level. We also got to have a few “civvies” to wear playing golf or going to church or other places we got to go from time to time.
The training was actually useful and I was able to later work in hospitals with my military training. We learned to give shots, draw blood, do suturing, and other interesting skills. One of the axioms in the army medical community was “pain are good,” which was the sum total of our “Bedside Compassion” sensitivity training. “Hey doc. This really hurts!” The response is “Pain Are Good.”
Another fascinating thing we learned was that whenever you leave one post and arrive at another, you are given a Physical Fitness Quotient (PFQ) test that consists of a 40 yard Low Crawl, Obstacle Course, Grenade Throw (for accuracy), Hanging Ladder (where you hang by your hands and then moving them from rung to rung see how many rungs you can go before you drop, and a mile and a quarter run.
You could score up to 100 on each of the five tests (total score of 500), but had to score a minimum 300 to get a passing grade.
When we arrived at Fort Sam, we were put through this ordeal for the third time and as I recall, our unit averaged somewhere north of 490 which was a Fort Sam record. I assume that a bunch of seventeen year old Mormon guys were in above average condition.
As we neared the end of our training, it became known that we would again be subjected to a PFQ. Judging from the interest from some of our Regular Army leaders we strongly believed there was some sort of betting pot being run to see if we could beat our earlier score. Steve Nelson and I had the bright idea to start a pot of our own. For a nickel, any of our guys could join, only the goal was to get the lowest passing score rather than highest. In the event of a tie, the person getting the lowest score in each event (60 being optimum) would win the pot.
Almost everyone joined and the total amount of potential winnings was somewhere north of three dollars, maybe four.
Bottom line, we, as a unit, scored lower than any unit in the history of grand old Fort Sam Houston, causing the puzzling result of one unit going from best to worst in 16 short weeks.
I think we were right about the betting at higher levels because an investigation ensued the surprised us all. If you can believe this, no one copped out and Steve and I were done with the rest of the group.
Another thing that has to be recorded for posterity is the “Great Blue Cadeuces,” a truly ugly, blue 1950 Buick. We determined that a car would be needed to get to Church, Corpus Christi, Mexico, etc. and we found this thing that ran and a guy wanted $60.00 for it. Six of us kicked in $10 each and it was ours. Then we found out we had to get it insured in order to bring it into Fort Sam. Believe it or not, that cost us another $7.50 each (good old days). We had a lot of fun in that car that we would never have had without it including, as I mentioned earlier, trips to Corpus Christi, Mexico (Nuevo Laredo), and several fun Church functions.
When we went home, two or three of the guys decided to drive it to SLC. I wasn’t one of them, but it was later reported that they had transmission difficulties. They actually had to back into Cedar City. They apparently used almost as much transmission fluid as gasoline to get that thing home and we sold it for $21.00 ($3.50 apiece).
So that was how I spent the summer of ’63.
The day after I got home, I went to meet Steve Rippon (one of the group who flew home) and he told me that President Kennedy had just been shot. That was pretty troubling for even seventeen tear old me, but I remember being glad I wasn’t still on active duty. I probably did a large part of my growing up that summer, including the events of November. Onward and upward.

Intelligent Design or Primordial Ooze?

Mom and I needed to get out of the house yesterday because our hardwood floors were being refinished. One of the things we decided to do was take in a movie. We chose Ben Stein's "Expelled" and really enjoyed it.

I highly recommend it, especially to young people who might be struggling with the concept that science and religion cannot accommodate each other.

The movie is a documentary dealing with several cases where college professors and other academicians were actually fired, and even blacklisted, for suggesting that Intelligent Design be explored as a possible explanation for the existence of our world and all that is in it.

Ben gives representatives from each side of the issue an opportunity to present their case and defend it. The actual hatred toward religion expressed by some is breathtaking in its lack of true scientific principles of seeking truth.

One of the most interesting segments was where Ben interviews avowed atheist Richard Dawkins and just lets him talk. This guy, while talking without a script, actually reached his own conclusion that there was, in fact some intelligent design at some level. It was actually funny to watch him arrive at this conclusion on his own and then realize what he had said. He had to somewhat clumsily add that this intelligence was absolutely not God though.

Boiled down to basics, we have to decide whether or not life as we know it was caused by lightening striking primordial ooze and causing some accidental reaction, or was it a "Big Bang" of some kind or was it some intelligent being. It had to be one of the three.

It was interesting and well worth taking time to see it.

Becoming A Cop (Amended)

As I look back on my life and realize what great experiences I've had as a policeman, I sometimes think about how it happened in the first place.

I suppose Jack Webb deserves some of the credit. Until 1974 I never even thought about being a Los Angeles Police Officer. Until 1969, I never thought about being a police officer anywhere.

When I came home from my mission in 1967, I began doing what a lot of RMs do. I went to school at the University of Utah and loved everything but going to class. I worked at ZCMI in downtown Salt Lake City selling men's shoes. I also took a shot at working as an Operating Room "Scrub" technician at Holy Cross Hospital in SLC. That was interesting work and I got into it based on my military training as a Medical Specialist in the US Army.

"Scrub Techs" actually scrub (hands, wrists and forearms) and dress up in sterile garb and pass instruments to surgeons performing surgery. I worked with surgeons doing everything from knee surgery (actually caused me to faint once), to ear surgery to C Sections. Extremely interesting work.

Once, during a visit to Berkeley, California with my parents to visit my Dad's relatives, I happened to see an ad in the paper for Berkeley Police Officers. On a lark, I went down to the police station and talked to them. One thing led to another. They had a condensed application process for out-of-state applicants so I plowed on with my head sort of swimming. We went home to SLC and a few days later BPD notified me that I was accepted and could become a Berkeley Cop.

This was all too much for my 21 year old brain and I let that opportunity slip away. That was, in fact, the first time I had ever thought about being a police officer.

A few weeks went by and a girl I had been dating sort of rejected me (actually she got engaged to someone else). I thought that a change of scenery was in order. My sister, Beth Merrill, who lived with her husband in Castro Valley, California, told me I could stay with her for awhile if I wanted to seek my fortune in the Bay Area so I sold my trombone, packed a few things in my very own 1960 Mercury Comet and took off for California.

In Winnemucca, Nevada, I had two flat tires within a mile of each other (I guess my spare wasn't much good) so I used a few of my precious dollars to buy two used tires, and onward I went.

Upon getting settled in Cal, I sought employment as a Operating Room (Scrub) Tech and was hired at Washington Hospital in Fremont. I can't remember how much I made there but I DO recall that when I had a chance to move to Providence Hospital in Oakland for $500 a month, I jumped all over it.

After I started making some money, I moved into my own little one room rustic cottage. I doubt if I could find it now (if it's still around) but it was in Oakland and was one of several such cottages in a shady little group all belonging to one owner. My recollection was that it was a pretty cool set up.

So, I'm reading the paper one day and I see an ad for a Police Radio Dispatcher for the San Leandro Police Department. The pay was significantly north of the $500 I was earning as an OR Tech so I applied. When I took the oral interview (I still remember the three men who interviewed me, Lt. Bob Wilson, Lt. Joe Beck and Sergeant Jim Fugate)and it was just about over with, Lt. Wilson said that they only had one question for me: Why didn't I want to be a police officer rather than being a dispatcher?

By this time the thought of being a cop was not as daunting as it had been the previous year (in Berkeley), so I agreed to go through the process. I was hired and started at nearly $800 a month.

I worked for SLPD (San Leandro) for a few years and even took the first Sergeant's test I was eligible to take. I actually passed and came in number seven on the list. That sounds really good until you realize that there were only about 90 cops of all ranks on SLPD and seven was the total number of us who passed the test at all. So whereas on LAPD (9,000 cops) being seventh on the list would have meant nearly instant promotion, on SLPD there was absolutely no possibility.

While all of these fun things were happening, my dear mother constantly made it clear that to her, being a cop was slightly better than being a criminal. I was far short of reaching my my potential and I should really try to get a college degree, etc. As a side note I DO believe that college is good and it would have opened a lot of doors for me even in my law enforcement career, but most of the people I know who actually graduated from college didn't do as well in their careers as I did when one considers wages, benefits, retirement, etc.

I finally agreed to move home (SLC) and try the college thing again and did so in 1972. I soon found that I really missed having my own income so, while attending classes at the U of Utah, I first tried selling shoes again, this time at J C Penney, a Cottonwood Mall and when that didn't seem exciting enough I told myself "I'll join the Salt Lake City Police Department while I continue my education."

I tried it for awhile (school, SLCPD). In California we already had computerized warrants and DMV info access. We could pick up our radio and get all sorts of useful information by asking our dispatcher who simply got it all from her (or his) computer. In Salt Lake City, if I wanted to check a suspect for warrants the dispatcher had to call someone who looked in a hand-written book. Sometimes the information was actually accurate. For DMV info, the Salt Lake City Police Department had to telephone the State offices and someone there looked it up. Talk about circling the wagons. I finally realized that what I wanted most was to be a cop and where I would really like to do that is where Jack Webb (Adam 12 and Dragnet) made it look like the greatest place on earth to do it. So I applied to LAPD and was hired.

September 28, 1974, was my last official day as Salt Lake City cop making a little more money than I had at Providence Hospital and I started the LAPD Academy on September 30, 1974, earning about $1,000 (nearly double).

And that's how I became an LA Cop. I know there are cops who yield to various temptations of greed and excessive force and we have some of that on our Department. But we still don't condone it and we do a good job of fixing those problems whenever they arise. On Friday, July 18, 2008, at about 4:30 PM, I'll go EOW (End of watch) for the final time, nearly thirty-four years after that first day at the Academy. I am as proud as I can be of having been a part of the Los Angeles Police Department and there will be much about it I will miss.