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Billie Tate (bstate@bellsouth.net) 6/20/08: How I got the nickname “Taterbug.” Actually, “Taterbug” is a throw off from my husband…and family name…Tate…in school, he and 2 brothers came along with the name…“tater“….later “taterbug“….then when we married…I was “MRS. Taterbug“…later shortened by our group friends to “taterbug“….and for some reason…he just answers to his name, Randy…his brothers and their children and our children came through school with the same nick names. FLIP-FLOPS: When 6 years old and returning stateside from my dad’s tour in Puerto Rico…my sister and I were wearing the first flip flops ever…I think… late 50’s…my mother says the GA. Relatives were just amazed at those things on our tine feet….well we went on to Savannah..Ga. Coast line for 5 years…a few short tours later…Bermuda…then the rest of my life here in Ga. And visiting St.Simons all these years…well I’m still wearing flip flops…. I know this is not the Billie Booklet…but my Bermuda/Kindley memories are so good…some very vivid…and still make laugh. Okay…we called Teen Town…Teen Club. Col. Dowdy was over the Teen Club while I was in B’da and my mom was Col. Dowdy’s assistant. My mom had an opportunity to work full time at the base exchange, so she left her little job at the Teen Club. Before leaving, she suggested me as her replacement. I was doing a lot of babysitting on base and tired of missing a few weekend activities. I was 16 and Col. Dowdy said sure. My duties…1. Some typing…I was terrible at typing… but he was so patient… 2. Hanging out in the club in the afternoons after school and some weekend days while Col. Dowdy stepped out. 3. Straighten bumper pool tables…pick up around the club…put away small games..etc. 4. My biggest responsibility…on Teen dance or party night on a weekend…straighten and a light clean up around the place….but the most important….get the Sara Lee Brownies out of the freezer so they would have time to thaw…and ready all the prep’s for other refreshments and drinks…then Col. Dowdy would handle the evening…all I had to do was go to the party with friends. One Sat. the Teen Club dance would have a live band…I talked one of my best friends…Terry Price to go and help me ready the club for the dance so we could get in Clearwater Beach nice and early. Well when we walked in the Teen Club…all the band instruments…amps… microphones…and much more electrical stuff was just sitting there. We could not resist picking up guitars and plugging things in and playing real loud…extra loud noise…we were laughing so hard…we hardly noticed the loud pop and all the Teen Club power shut completely off…After a few moments our loud and horrible guitar noises stopped…we noticed something was bad wrong in the Teen Club…we looked at each…screamed…ran around..getting Sara Lee Brownies..punch bowls…panicked…got on our bikes..(mine was a Cyrus)..(Terry’s a bright shiny new Moped)…we flew to the beach…As the evening approached…we hid and watched the comings and goings of the great dance going on…but I knew my mom was a chaperone that night and I just could not face the trouble I was in…The band was so good…we could hear every song in our hiding place…we were miserable…and so dreading the restriction on the way. Later that night we bit the bullet and Terry came home with me to spend the night…we walked in…and my mom said…Girls where in the world were you tonight?…Did you forget the dance?… The band was so good. Terry and I quickly realized…Col Dowdy got the power on and never suspected us as the culprits…

Skateboarding was popular on base. The Mosher boys moved in across the street. Lucky Mosher boys…this was their dad’s second tour to B’da…My sister and I fast became friends with the Mosher boy neighbors. Don Mosher was big athlete on campus…and Wayne Bauer…was long gone…Mike Mosher…to Kewl for words…great guy…and so much fun…little J.T. Mosher was the skateboarder…and a skateboard maker…so he makes a skateboard (our very own) for myself and sister. My little sister became quite the skateboarder…we had a great hill on our street…slowly but surely..I mastered the hill…long after my sister…and with much Mosher brother encouragement and lots of practice. One day…very cute Danny Hawkins came to skate our hill (he was very popular)…he was a boyfriend of one of my best friends…Darlene Jensen…he was my very good friend…until he talked me into climbing on his shoulders and he and I on the skateboard…go down de hill…Well obviously we didn’t die…but for a while I felt as though I was in a skateboarding dream. By the way Danny was still my friend…Months later…I went down again…on his shoulders…and we made it without fall or injury. Mike Mosher also made braided leather bracelets…he did this right on your arm…when he was finished…we would go wet the leather and stretch the bracelet and it was so kewl…we wore the bracelet for a long time…and when tired of the bracelet…P.S. a side note regarding Wayne Bauer…I think Wayne graduated ‘67 as I was just getting to Bermuda in my 8^th grade year…all you heard about in Kindley sports was Wayne Bauer…I heard the high school girls practicing their cheers…always using Wayne’s name…example…Wayne, Wayne, he’s our man…so 2 years later when friends and I try out for cheerleader…we tried out and continued using Wayne’s name in all our tryout cheers and at our practices as real cheerleaders…we still used Wayne’s name in all our cheers…Wayne was pretty famous in Kindley sports and maintained a long history…especially with the cheerleaders. - Billie

Tim McCarthy (Class of ‘65): The first base I remember was out in El Paso, Tx, called Bigs AFB. I can barely remember taking a train out there and being in the sleepers at night listening to the tracks. I must have been 3-4 yrs. Old but can remember sleeping like a baby which was much like a rainstorm now relaxes you. I think our tours were 4 years a shot and that must have been about 1951. I was born in ‘47. Our first house out there was full of black widow spiders and we had to use DDT to kill them before we could move in. Then we went to Tampa, Fla. And were at McDill AFB until ‘57 or ‘58. We bought our first house there and had a new ‘57 Chevy that I’d sure like to have now. Almost as soon as we finally settled in, we got orders for B’da. Had no idea where B’da was and of course my mom raised hell because she figured we were finally through moving around. We were in B’da for 4 years and came back to McGuire AFB in ’62 for my dad’s last station. Through all these bases we were back and forth to New Smyrna Bch., Fla. Where we had hundreds of relatives. We lived at my grandfathers house usually when pop would go to Thule or the Azores and families couldn’t go. Remember unscrewing the tops of the glass containers (at the Air Terminal cafeteria) putting a napki over the open end and setting it back on the table with the top laying on the bottom which became the top. It wouldn’t take long a a travel weary passenger to grab the sugar jug for his/her coffee only to see sugar fly all over the table. Tee-hee. Tim.

Suzanne Perry Spann (class of ’64): We arrived in paradise in August of ‘60. In Norfolk, my Dad had come home with the news that we weren’t going to San Diego, our orders had been changed. Instead, we were going to a beautiful place called Bermuda; it was an island and British. Ok, it took us about 10 minutes to find it on the map, and we were just a little uh, horrified (?) at the location, and the size.. little did we know what lay in store… I started my freshman year (form 4 lower) at Sandy’s, then transferred to Whitney, and in ’62 transferred to KHS. My brother Gordy was at Sandy’s until he transferred to Kindley in’62. Daddy was a meteorologist/oceanographer and we lived on base at NOB. Our home was wonderful! We were across the street from the tennis courts, the Beach Shack, the O’Club pier - a short walk to the outdoor theater and the hobby shop. We had Teen Club, bowling, Youth Fellowship - who could have asked for anything more? In 1963, Hurricane Arlene hit. Since my Dad was the “weatherman,” he had to be at the “office” during the storm, while everybody else got to be at home. Chuck came down from his quarters and helped us sop up the water. Houses are made of coral - not only did the rain come in around the windows, but the wind blew rain through the walls. Our house was small, but we used every towel we had, packed on the floor against the wall, to soak up the water. Starting first at one end, Chuck and I would each grab an end of a towel and wring the water into tubs, then move to the next towel - by the time we got to the end, we had to turn around and start over. My Mom and Gordy did the same downstairs. Seemed like it took hours for the eye to hit, but when it finally did, Gordy, Chuck and I took our aching arms and ran across the street to the tennis and basketball courts, and stomped around in the water, checked on the O’Club pier (which was demolished) and the Beach Shack (a little the worse for wear). The eye passed fast, and we started hydroplaning across the courts on our bard feet - and we started wring out towels again, this time on the front side of the house. And sunfish sailing! We had a beautiful sound to sail in, and the hobby shop was always giving lessons. We were in the middle of one of the sailing lessons when, in the space of about 30 seconds (maybe longer, but it seemed shorter!), a fog bank rolled in and there we all were, completely disoriented and not knowing if we were out in the middle of the sea lane or not. The other thing about the sound was that we had to share it with the seaplanes landing and taking off - and the fog bank successfully ruined our sense of hearing, smothering and magnifying and otherwise messing with the noise of the planes’ engines. All our little sunfishes ended up huddled in a circle, expecting at any moment to see the shadow of a plane bearing down on us. Wasn’t long before the fog rolled off, and we found were about 20 feet from the hobby shop dock. The plane we’d heard was a good half mile off, and was only testing it’s engines. Yeah, well, we weren’t scared anyway. Our family loved to play tennis and we were very fortunate to be given a membership to the Coral Beach and Racquet Club. Every Sunday, the club mixed doubles round robins there, with a break at 4 o’clock (regardless of what was happening on the courts) for tea. The carts were brought out from the club house to the courts, complete with silver tea services, porcelain cups and saucers, lemon wedges, sugar and cream, and some of the best crumpets I’ve ever had in my life! Gordy was a great tennis player (even in 6^th grade), and the annual tournament at the club pitted him against the reigning senior champ in the finals. It wasn’t an easy match, but Gordy won! When a reporter asked the runner-up how it felt losing the tournament which he had so handily won the last several years, he said he didn’t mind losing to a better player, but he sure hated that the player hadn’t even reached puberty yet! However, the most memorable event that occurred while we were stationed in Bermuda happened on November 22, 1963. We were in the buses heading back to NOB after school, and several kids had their transistor radios on. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing. The younger kids didn’t quite understand what was going on, but they knew it was momentous. It felt like all the air had been sucked out of the bus, it was hard to breathe. There was no music on the way home. Dismay - defined as being deprived of courage or the power to act as a result of fear, anxiety, or disgust. That we the first time I realized that that feeling could leave an unmistakable taste in your mouth. The only other time I experienced that taste was on September ll, 2001. My husband Chuck and his family arrived in Bermuda in the summer of 1962; his Dad was a Navy dentist, and Chuck graduated from KHS in ’63. We were married in ’67 in Maryland at Andrews AFB, Maryland. After undergraduate (UT in Austin) and graduate school (Dental School in Houston), he joined the Navy; he has just retired after 30 years. While he was stationed at Norfolk, he was involved in making sure the Navy Dental Department at Kindley was shutting down properly, so on one of his last visits there, I joined him. That was in ’95, and we stayed at Longbird Cottage on Kindley, rented scooters and had the time of our lives (again). Fortunately, neither of us went back expecting things would be the same, trying to capture a bit of our youth; I think that’s why we had such a great time. It is true, however, that you can’t go home again. But the most important part of B’da will always be with us, the friendships we made and the memories we have. I loved my base, the Island, the people. Paradise Lost? I don’t think so - more like Paradise Found! - Suzanne

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