THE FIRST 100
The life and times of a woman Air Force pilot
by Wendy Rogers
- part one -
Birth
The other evening, I asked my husband how I should start my book and he said, “Well, just start at the beginning.”
I come from a family of a mom and a dad and two older brothers. Before I was born, absolutely no one in my family believed I would be a girl. So, the entire time my mother was pregnant with me, the family thought up boys’ names and never thought up a girl’s name. They had two boys already, so the idea that the new baby could be a girl never occurred to them.
One evening, my two older brothers, six and eight at the time, went to see the Disney version of Peter Pan. As any two boys given a vision of swashbuckling parentless adventure, they were abuzz with excitement. A few nights later they were causing trouble and generally being six and eight, so our parents told them to leave the room to go “think up a girl’s name” as a punishment of sorts, My parents thought they had pulled a fast one by getting rid of the boys for awhile, but little did they know that the Lost Boys would still have Peter Pan on their mind. Clearly, what other name were they going to come up with but “Wendy”? They came back to my parents with their choice. Our parents just said with resignation, “Sure. Fine.” They didn't exactly take their suggestion seriously.
When the middle-of-the-night urge to bear child came, my mother woke up and said to my father, “Harry, it's time to go to the hospital.” My family was living in a small 2-story apartment on the Army post of Fort Knox, Kentucky. They came down the stairs to find a half dozen cockroaches running up and down the wall. Mother said, “Harry! I will not leave these quarters to go have this baby until you kill every one of those cockroaches.” So my obliging dad took off his slipper and thwacked every last one of those cockroaches. Then my mom said, “OK, now I can go have this baby.”
So there was my mom at age 35 in a spare Army post cantonment area hospital when the doctor said to her, “Virginia, you have a baby girl.” She replied, “Just tell me if my little boy is all right”, but the doctor was insistent: “No, no you have a little girl!” She refused to believe him, insisting he tell her that her little boy was OK. Nothing was going to convince my mother, so the story is that he just thrust my behind in front of her face and let human anatomy do the convincing.
Of course, in the midst of the insect killing, gender confusion, and all the new baby jubilation, there still was no girl’s name picked out. So they brought me home, when – you guessed it – my brothers very quickly reminded my parents that the Lost Boys were responsible for baby naming, and if you knew my brothers, you would know that they certainly held my parents’ feet to the fire on that promise.
So, I was named Wendy. When my mom laid me on the little family couch to ask my brothers if they thought I was beautiful, they ho-hummed, said “sure” and walked away.
When I was just about to start kindergarten in 1960, my father was reassigned to the overseas theater in Germany. This was at the height of the Cold War and we were stationed not far from the Fulda Gap in Frankfurt and then later in Gelnhausen. We took a day trip during the transition from the first posting to the second place where my father was to be assigned. We went to the housing area to look over where we would be staying for the next two years in Gelnhausen. My mother asked me what I thought of the neighborhood kids, phrasing the question as, “Wendy, what do you think of your troops?” I apparently answered, “I think they'll shape up.” My mother thought this was hilarious, even though I was dead serious. What it spoke to though was the larger reality in my little world.
These neighborhood kids would be my friends, my confidantes, my day-to-day pals for the next couple of years. Our favorite activity back then was to swing as high as possible in those rubber-strap swings on swing sets and then jump out onto piles of dirt, which made us feel very macho and brave. Once in awhile, if feeling particularly wealthy, we would saunter into the teeny tiny German dry cleaner’s shop on the corner near our housing area to buy cone-shaped Toto suckers. Those cost one pfennig, which was equal to about one-fifth of an American penny. A packet of genuine German gummi bears were 50 pfennigs (about 12 cents then), which were way out of our price range.
That little shop was on the same corner where I’d turn to go down the street to my elementary school. If it happened to be a day when the local German sheep herder was shepherding his flock down that ancient cobblestone road, then I was going to be late for school. This was because the sheep filled up that little cobblestone road from side to side and front to rear. There was no way I could navigate through those smelly sheep. The odor was as memorable as the souvenirs left behind.
I had wonderful grade school teachers in the Department of Defense Dependent schools. Interestingly, my 1st grade teacher was a black woman named Miss Matthews in Frankfurt. For 2nd and 3rd grade in Gelnhausen I also had female teachers. My 2nd grade teacher, also black, was named Miss Yvonne C. Foster. To this day, I would love to be able to locate Miss Foster just to talk to her.
She was raised in Greenwich Village NY and was an erudite, demanding, but compassionate teacher. As a bunch of military kids, we never really thought about ethnicity though. Half of my class consisted of minorities, but I never remembered it that way until I recently looked at my elementary class photo. This was typical of military life. Contrary to what people may think, martial law was not the norm in our school, even though it was a school for military dependents. No one was spanked or yelled at or swatted in any way. I do remember in 3rd grade, a boy named Billy. Billy could not stay in his seat because he was up and around meddling into everyone’s business. Today he’d probably be on Ritalin. I remember one day our teacher became so frustrated with him that she said, “Billy, I'm going to tie you into your chair if you don't stay seated.
Billy just couldn't restrain himself, so he was up in no time. He began walking around, so our teacher got some thin parachute cord and tied him into his seat. Unfazed, he still couldn’t sit still, so he walked around with that seat strapped to his rear the rest of the day. I'll never forget that picture in my mind of Billy walking around the classroom with his school-desk chair tied onto his posterior.
Baseball
I love baseball. Anyone can picture the cliché of “throwing like a girl”. Well I’m a gal who doesn’t “throw like a girl” because I apparently learned early how to throw as guys throw. So somehow one day this came up in conversation among my family when we were living in Gelnhausen. My brothers and my mother said to my dad, “You're the battalion commander. The battalion has a Little League team. Maybe Wendy could be on the battalion team somehow, maybe as the batboy. Certainly since she's a girl, she can’t play on the team, but you could phone the sergeant-coach to see if they would let her practice with the team and maybe be the batboy during games.” He shrugged and said OK and phoned the sergeant who coached the team saying, “This is Colonel Rogers. My daughter Wendy plays baseball outside a lot with some of the boys. I would appreciate it if she could attend daily practice with our team and then maybe you could use her during the games as the batboy or batgirl.” (I did NOT like the term “batgirl” so I was thereafter known as the batboy!) Well of course, what could the sergeant say other than, “Yes sir.” I realized even then in my little pea brain that I was being given an opportunity and that I’d better measure up and then some.
I would go every single day after school to baseball practice. I lived for it. My 8- and 9-year-old teammates were surprisingly good players, especially the pitchers, who could burn in those pitches. There were no such teams as T-ball, Machine Pitch, or Coach Pitch back then. I could not throw as fast, but I did my part by playing catch, running the bases and working out with the team. One of the coaches was a old crotchety sergeant who was a down-home, good old country boy, who wasn't notable in my memory other than for his complexion which was kind of ruddy and craggy. I seem to recall he smoked. Maybe all three of our coaches smoked. Probably so, now that I think about it.
The next coach was a younger sergeant, a black guy who was really strict and didn't have too much patience with me. In particular, I remember we won some games toward the end of our season. We got to go to an away-game in Aschafenburg, Germany. This was a very big deal and apparently we had a shot at something even bigger, because he said if we won this game, he would buy each of us a banana split. Well, banana splits were 35 cents back then and that was the priciest item on the ice cream menu at military post snack bars (movies were fifteen cents and the Stars & Stripes newspaper was ten cents.)
I didn’t particularly like banana splits. So after we’d won the game and were all lined up waiting for our hard-earned banana splits, he came down the line and finally got to me to ask what I wanted. I politely said, “I’d like a Coke and french fries, please.” I thought he'd be up for the deal. After all, it was cheaper than a banana split, right? Nice idea; bad timing. He looked at me as though I were being a real royal pain, because I was deviating from the norm. And that look of exasperation on his face is one I shall never forget. So that's what I remember most about coach #2.
Then there was coach #3, a private first class. He was by far the most junior man, and I remember how he had his name “Frank Sawyer” written in ballpoint ink inside his utility fatigue-uniform cap. Frank Sawyer was this tall lanky sandy-colored-hair 18- or 19-year-old who would walk my best friend Howard Reeves and me home, back up the long hill to our housing area where we lived. There were three large apartment buildings where the officers and their families lived called the Northern Area. Then there was the Southern Area where many officers also lived, but also NCOs and enlisted families. Ball practice was in the Southern Area every afternoon.
Frank Sawyer was very kindhearted to walk Howard and me back up to our housing area. I can't remember if he did this every day or if he had an arrangement with our families, but the memory that remains with me is that he always made sure we were safely walked home. I held his left hand as we walked home while Howard held his right as we would trudge up that very long hill after practice. We were also allowed to call him Frank while we walked. One day, I asked, “Frank, do you know my dad?” He tremblingly said, “Yes, I met him once.” “Just once?” I asked. He replied, “Yes, he was in a room where there were many of us GIs and he actually might have known somehow who I was because he called me ‘Sawyer’. Maybe he was just reading my nametag; I don’t know.” I asked him if he was scared of my dad and he said he was. I told him my dad was a really nice guy, but Frank wasn’t convinced. If it were all the same to him, being scared was just fine for a private first class to be of the battalion commander, thank you very much.
Now here was this regular-guy soldier who was shepherding my friend and me home, who on the other hand stood in near mortal fear of my father, the battalion commander of hundreds of troops. I see that now as a metaphor for those times: an unflinching resolve to protect and be kind without having to be on an equal footing or with an expectation of anything in return. Obligation without entitlement. And Frank nor my father probably ever even thought twice about it. I miss those times.
The game
I did get my one chance to actually be in a baseball game. There was an internal on-post practice game contest we had among the three battalions at Gelnhausen. There was the 48th Infantry, the 6th Artillery, and my team, the 33rd Armoured. We got to play the 48th Infantry. The 48th Infantry had a pitcher who was walking a lot of our batters. There were so many batters who had been walked in, that they decided there was nothing to lose by putting me up to bat, since it was a practice game after all and the league’s rules were more lax. As I mentioned, these Little League pitchers really burned in the pitches.
So I resolved to myself that I was not going to swing at all, because there was no way I was going to be able to hit the ball. I told myself to just stand here and let the fireballing pitcher walk me. My older brother – a jock always trying to toughen me up – was in the crowd behind home plate, as was my mother. This was the only game I remember them attending, so this was my big chance to shine. The first pitch went by for ball one. The second pitch went by...ball two. After four pitches and four balls called, I got to walk to first base. Then the batter after me was walked, so I advanced to second base, then to third base. This was in my opinion, the highlight of my entire 8 years of life to that point. I was envisioning actually crossing home plate to score a run.
And then it happened. “Petey” Drake was the catcher for the 48th Infantry’s team. Though older than I and possessing a real cocky streak, he was our neighbor and a family friend. His dad was the commander of the 48th Infantry and he lived in the building across from ours. Petey shouted out to me, “Wendy, the ball is out in the field. You can run home!” Stupid me, I believed him, so I began to run toward home plate. The problem was he had the game ball in his own catcher's mitt. Before I realized I had been taken by the old “hidden ball” trick, he tagged me out. I felt so low. I'm not a crybaby, but I did have to choke back a few tears. I could see my mother behind home plate in the stands looking at me and saying, “Wend, it’s OK.” I get choked up thinking about it still to this day. Not for my failure, but for my mother's understanding.
My mother and baseball
My mother really loved baseball, not because she could necessarily throw the ball well or had played as a child growing up. She just loved the game. There was a story I heard just a few years ago from my dad which I’d never heard before. My mother and dad were watching a baseball game in which my older brother was playing as a Little Leaguer. Apparently my mother was harassing the umpire mercilessly. She berated him for every call and was unflinchingly vocal in her opinions on a play-by-play basis. My father sat there quietly, knowing his wife would express herself regardless of anything he might do or say, so he just tried his best to enjoy the game. Or so that's what he told me.
About two-thirds of the way through the game, the umpire became so incensed, that he’d finally had enough. He threw off his mask, turned around, and marched right up into the stands, getting into my mother's face. The umpire said to my mother, “I am sick and tired of your comments and your heckling. If you think you can do a better job of umpiring, then you get the job! Here!” And then he thrust his face mask into my mother’s hands and stormed away. My mom was caught off guard, but without missing a beat, she handed the umpire’s mask to my father and made him umpire the rest of the game. So it went with my parents.