Presented as the program for the Lion's Club Today

Some of you knew me before...before I had to leave Munday to find a job and before I became Buddy.

I was born here in Munday, mainly to be close to my parents. I just can’t imagine what my early life would have been like without having my parents around. I thank God today that I was fortunate enough to have grown up in a home with both parents around.

I was the eighth child in my family. Three died at child birth. Both my parents were middle age of course when I was born. To me they looked a lot older than the parents of my classmates. That’s because they were. My oldest sister, Bertie Mae was 20 years older than me. Her oldest daughter was only two years younger tham me.

My folks were poor, but in those days it didn’t seem to matter. It didn’t make any difference to us. We did well in school, particpated in everything, especially sports. If it hadn’t been for sports I could have dropped out of school and toughed it out, like so many did in those days.

All said and done, I had a happy childhood growing up here in Munday. I don’t think a child could have had a better place to grow up. Munday was a lively place in those days, with a business in every building in town. There were three drugstores in downtown Munday. Three car dealerships. Two variety stores. Two or three barber shops. Several grocery stores. A couple of gins and several elevators. I don’t know how many service stations, not just a filling station either.

And a depot. I remember when there were railroad tracks dividing the town. At one time there was a doodle bug that traveled from Wichita Falls to Abilene. That was when I was very young.

Stores stayed open late in those days, especially on Saturdays. There would be more people in town on Saturday night than at any other time. There were two picture shows here then: the Roxy and the Roy. English and Spanish.

I could go on and one about what was here and all the things we did as kids. I remember one experience in particular that brings a smile whenever I think of it. I had just bought my first bicycle. I had saved up $10 to buy it. I was riding toward Munday Lumber Company where my dad was working on a job. It used to be behind where Phillips Bait shop is now. I was riding along north of the court house when I had a blowout. It was summer and hot and the guys were playing dominoes on the lawn, just a few feet where I was riding. It was a loud blowout, sounded like a gunshot. And everyone of those guys jumped like they had been shot. Dominoes went everywhere.

We had no idea that things could or would change. Things hadn’t changed in Munday very much in the last 50 years. But these last 50 years have seen unbelievable change.

It’s demoralizing to dwell on the changes that have happened to every small town in America, and to the country itself.

When I left Munday the first time it was to go to college in Abilene. I had been further away from Munday, like to Lubbock and Waco. Like all kids who go away to school, it was an experience to latch on to responsibility. Moma couldn’t get me out-be-bed anymore. I didn’t have her fresh biscuits for breakfast anymore. I had to look after myself for the first time: it’s a cruel world out there.

When I applied to Hardin Simmons I used the only name I had then, Bunny. The form didn’t ask if I was male for female. So when I got to HSU to move in and all they had put me in Behrens Hall. Well, that’s the freshman girls dorm. When I showed up ready to move in they had a problem. Well, it was really my problem, but they were not going to let me move into Behren’s Hall. Well, where am I going to live? They didn’t know and didn’t care, but I was not moving into Behren’s Hall. That chapter in my life was closed as far as they were concerned.

Later that year the girls at Behren's Hall selected me as the Behren's Hall Beau. So, in one respect I did move in after all.

After a year and a half I dropped out to work and save some money. But the United States was involved in an undeclared war in Vietnam and the draft board was recruiting for the Army. When I reached 21 I would be drated into the Army, which meant I would soon be on my way to Vietnam. I joined the Air Force instead.

When I filled out the papers to join I used the only name I had, Bunny. To make sure Bunny had been born the Air Force looked at my birth certificate. I had
never seen it, didn’t know it existed. When I started to school I guess people knew I had been born and who to, and all that, so I didn’t need a birth certificate.

Bunny Norville didn’t exist. I walked and talked and breathed like everyone else but that recruiting sargeant told me I didn’t exist. But it just so happened that there was a child born to my parents on my birthday, the same day same year, same parents, but it wasn’t Bunny. It was Buddy. Can you imagine what a shock it was to learn you had been using the wrong name your whole life?

Doc Smith must have heard it wrong, but he was the one that filled out the birth certifcate. He probably just couldn’t believe what he heard so he ablibbed a little bit.

However, it was probably a blessing at that particular time in my life. What if I had gone to boot camp as a Bunny? The drill sargeants would have had a time with that. It was bad enough being a “Buddy”.

When I came home on leave before shipping out to Japan everyone in town wanted to know why the FBI was asking so many questions about me. They were concerned that maybe I was in some kind of trouble. The work I was going into required a Top Secret clearance, so that’s why the FBI agents were around asking questions. When I got to Japan there was this guy in the squadron who wasn’t allowed “upstairs” where all the secret stuff took place. He was waiting on the FBI to come get him and take him to prison. It seems he had driven the gettaway car during a bank heist in Mississippi. The background check found him out.

They called by branch of the service “The Security Service.” Some folks think right away that was the APs. Not by a long shot. We were really spys: we spied on Russia, China, North Korea and even on ourselves. It wasn’t as fun as the 007s and guys from Langly. We were really communications spys. My training thus far had been in morse code. I was taught how to read morse code. I was sent to Japan to be an airborn radio intercept operator. Some of our guys went to school for two years to learn Russian, Chinese and other languages.

We flew c-130s out of Japan, to spy on Russia and China, sometimes North Korea. These planes were loaded with the latest communications technology. We had receivers tuned into every frequency that our cold-war enemies operated on. All of this traffic was recorded and sent back to the squadron to be transcribed, translated and codes broken.

Sometimes the flights got a little rough, like when Russia would pick us up on radar and scramble their MIGS. That’s when our pilot got on his radio and requested, “Mother hen scramble chicks.” The F-102s would come to our aid and escort us out of Russia. However, sometimes they didn’t get there soon enough, and the MIGS opened fire on our craft. We didn’t lose any of the 130s, although one of our U2s wasn’t so lucky. We weren’t supposed to have U2s in Japan, under the agreement with the Japanese government. But we had them. They didn’t usually fly day time, but sometimes they got delayed and couldn’t get back under the cover of night. One such time a Tokyo television camerman saw a U2 landing just after daybreak.

We always knew when a U2 took off: they made a lot of noise.

I would love to take our present Commander-in-Chief up on one of those missions and see what he would say when the plane got caught over Russia. What would he say then about our “wornout ways”? I think he would be on his knees quicker than any of us. I’ll tell you one thing, there were no athiests on those missions.

After two years of all this excitement I was cross-trained into another career field. Sometimes too many people are assigned to any organization and they have to get rid of some of them. For awhile I was parked at a desk doing computations for bombing strikes. I was with the First Shoran Beacon Squadron, Yokota Air Base. Our squadron flew B-57s, a light, short-ranged bomber. Each aircraft had a pilot and a navigator. Shoran is short for short range, so we computed information for short range bomb runs. Everything we did was just for practice.

Then someone in Washington had the bright idea that the B-57 would work great in Vietnam. Before long my boss and I were on our way to Vietnam. Our orders said we were going on a surveying mission. We were to survey the whole country and be ready to do bombing computations for the B-57s. Would you believe I was excited about going. We packed all kinds of equipment and rations, but no weapons. At this time our guys were only advisors and not allowed to shoot back. So, somebody thought we wouldn’t need weapons, since we weren’t allowed to use them anyway.

While we were enroute our orders changed. No surveys would be done. We came home. Soon the B-57s were on their way to Vietnam to be used as support aircraft for short range missions. The rest of us were sent back to the states to other assignments. Before the planes could be used in Vietnam they were all destroyed during one raid of the Viet Cong on Da Nang Air Base.

These planes had seen some combat in the Korean conflict, now they were all gone. What a sad ending that was.

It was sad too to leave the squadron, which was now defunct. It was a small outfit and we got to know each other and enjoyed doing things with each other. We had a basketball team, which never won a game but we had a good time. I played football on the base team, which had a better record. We only lost to the Army team from Korea. Those teams had drafted professional players on the field. That’s all those guys did was play.

I’m going to stop here for today. Maybe the next time I’ll finish out my Air Force career and begin with the next life-changing phase of my life.