Throw Back Thursday - The Man Who Steered My Life

Until yesterday, I did not know the name of the man who steered my life into a new direction.  I did not remember the name of the man who is the one person responsible for where I am in life now.  That was until yesterday.  

Yesterday I opened a box of memorabilia from the Sixties.  In that box I found this newspaper clipping of when I joined the Army.  On that newspaper clipping is the name of the Army recruiter who talked me into joining the Army.  

This is the first time I've looked at this clipping in fifty-four years. Over the years, as my life has taken its course I often wished I remembered the name of that Army Master Sergeant who persuaded me not to join the Navy as I was signed up and ready to go, but to join the Army instead.  I was resigned that his name was lost to history.  But now I am happy to say, I know his name because it is stated on this newspaper clipping.  His name was:

Master Sergeant (Theodore) Wallace Syphard. 

After I graduated from high school in June of 1959 I decided to join the Navy.  I wanted to "see the world."  Besides, I couldn't get a civilian job.  I couldn't afford to go to college. My parents already told me when I entered 9th grade and had the option of choosing a college preparatory course that they weren't going to pay for my college education and I wasn't smart enough for a scholarship nor did I have the family connections for a legacy entry into college.  I couldn't get a job so I decided to get my military obligation out of the way (I didn't want to get drafted - see, I was even thinking smart when I was 18 years old).

I had already visited the recruiting offices that were located in the basement of the Coatesville post office.  I remember the summer (June 1959) day I entered that scary place (for me, a very shy and self-conscious 17 year old).  There were four metal desks, with four uniformed men sitting behind those desks. One was Air Force (which I wasn't interested in).  The next was the Marine recruiter, which I was DEFINITELY not interested in.  My whole thing with joining was to avoid combat.  I'm squeamish and I had no desire to prove that I was a man.  I am who I am, and at that time I was a skinny, awkward, fighting my gayness, teenager scared to death of what I was getting into. I wanted to minimize my exposure to danger.  I had to get through this.

Ah, there is was, the Navy recruiter's desk, which just happened to be next to the Army recruiter's desk.  I wasn't interested in the Army recruiter either, too much like the Marines and COMBAT.  

I sat myself down at the chair next to the Navy recruiter and told him I wanted to join.  He interviewed me and was, apparently satisfied that I was a worthy Navy recruit and he said he would draw up the recruitment papers.  He said he would call me a few days later to come in and sign my papers and get my departure date.

I left and went home and told my Mom I was joining the Navy.

I get the call a few days later from the Navy recruiter that my papers are ready to sign.  

Mom takes me to the Post Office in Coatesville (I didn't have my own car).  

I walk down the stairs to the basement of the Post Office where the service recruiters lie in wait for the next nubile young man (only men joined the service in those pre fem liberation days).  I look over at the Navy recruiter's desk and he's not there.  The uniform man at the desk next to the Navy recruiter told me that he was out to lunch and would be back.  He said I could sit down at the chair next to the Navy recruiter's desk.  I sat.  

Now this is where my Life Course took a major, perhaps THE major change.  While I was waiting for the Navy recruiter to come back from his lunch, my eyes wandered as they were wont to do in a room full of men (remember, I was a prepubescent, closeted, afraid of my own shadow, didn't know here the f__k I was coming from, KID).  He made eye contact with me.  He said "Why did you decide to join the Navy?"  

I told him "Because I wanted to travel and see the world" (I bought into the Navy recruiting ads).  Plus, what I didn't tell him was that I didn't want to be in combat and be shot at or shoot at people.  Way too much potential for blood for Sensitive Ron.

He said, "What if I told you you could join the Army and see the world and only spend three years instead of four?"   Hmmmm, this sounded intriguing to me.  Three years?  See the world?  Tell me more.

I moved my behind from the Navy recruiter's chair to the Army recruiter's chair.  

He explained to me that the Army had a program, the Army Security Agency, that, once I completed a six month school, I had a 97% chance of traveling the world and I would have to spend four years looking at the world through a porthole. Sounded good to me!  Where do I sign up?

Long story short, by the time the Navy recruiter had returned from lunch I had signed up with the Army recruiter.  Thus began the first time I was persuaded to change my mind by a man and which resulted in changing the course of my life forever. 

Little did I know at that time that this chance, random, seemingly innocuous decision changed the rest of my life forever.  

I joined the Army.  Went to basic training at Ft. Dix New Jersey.  Went to school at Ft. Devens Massachusetts.  Met my best friend Bob McCamley.  After school I went to Ft. Meade Maryland for the next two and half years working for the National Security Agency. While stationed at Ft. Meade I met two new friends, Ron H. and Sal who also happened to be gay as I was.  We were all closeted and survived all the witch hunts which were pervasive back in the ignorant early days of the Sixties.

Me (right) on the firing range at Ft. Meade 1962 with my friend Jim Harris - our once a year playing soldier to qualify with our rifles - the rest of our tour of duty was pushing paper at NSA (communications intercept) 

After leaving the Army I went to my first gay bar in Philly at the suggestion of my Army friend Ron H. At that gay bar (the Westbury) I met Bill Kelly, my now husband of fifty years.  

I now live in Delaware because of my friendship with Bob McCamley who had moved to Delaware in the Seventies and who I often visited, promising myself someday to retired to Delaware.  

Over the years I've often wondered, where would I be today if that Navy recruiter was waiting for me instead of out to lunch that fateful June day in 1959?  

These are the things that go through my mind as I approach the end of my tour of duty of this life.  

Sometimes I think we don't make our life choices, they're made for us.              

Thus I wonder now will I look back upon where I am now (if I survive that long) and wonder at the fateful way a certain person just happened to come across my blog and contact me and became my friend.  Someone who understands me as much as Bill does and one or two of my other lifetime friends. Someone who sees that I am not a perfect person but who likes me all the same.  Someone who doesn't condemn me because of who I am.  Someone who truly likes me.  

Folks, one of the really wonderful things about arriving at this plateau called Old Age is that things that I used to be concerned about, things and people who I used to consider important in my life, people who I have tried to please and accept me as I am . . . . I just don't care anymore. 

As my friend said this morning, trying to console me after my latest encounter with disrespect and hatefulness . . . he said "it's unfortunate but sometimes people get under our skin and often it's people we really have no interest in." 

So this morning I look back fifty-four years and now I know the name of the man who was so instrumental in where I am now.  Thank you Master Sergeant Syphard.  You were the first angel in my life. 

 I have been blessed. As I often told my dear departed friend Bob McC., "If I should die tomorrow, I'm ahead of the game.I've had a good life and no regrets. Everything worked out perfectly."  

Near Death Experience - #1

Me - 1942 - 9 months old

Each episode of the HBO series opens with a death.  Not just the death but the immediate circumstances leading up to the individual's death.  Except for episode where the old woman died in her sleep and the cancer patient dying in his hospital bed, the other deaths were accidents.  Accidents that happened while those individuals were going about their every day life.

That got me to thinking about my own life (this blog is about ME after all).  Right off the top of my head I can think of at least a dozen times that I missed death by a whisker during my seventy years on this planet.  Yes, I narrowly avoided meeting the Grim Reaper by a whisker quite a few times in my life.

Then I thought "What a great idea for a blog post, write about those near misses when I almost bought the farm."  Then I thought, "That would be an awfully long blog post" so what I decided instead was to write of each one individually.  Sprinkle them throughout my regular blog postings.  This will accomplish two things, the posting will contribute to my Life Story (my autobiography which I still haven't even started) and my near death experiences could be of interest to some of my regular followers.

So here goes folks.  I'll begin my tale the way "Six Feet Under" does:  with my name, and dates of birth and (almost) death:

Ronald Walter Tipton

1941 - 1942  

This is my story as my Mother told it to me because (of course) I don't remember a thing about it.

From an interview with my Mom September 15, 2007

Place:  Compass, PA, an old Inn that my parents rented a few rooms.  The old inn is now a museum. Below is the way it looks now.

Time:   Spring 1942

"Compass, PA is where you fell off the roof.  You climbed out the second floor window, rolled down the roof covering the front porch and hit the ground.  I was in the kitchen on the first floor and saw you 'going by' and dropping to the ground. I heard you crying.

I didn't have a phone in the house.  I ran across the street to the neighbors.  They had a cow and I used to buy milk from them.  They called the doctor to come and check you out.  He said that you would have to go to the hospital.  The doctor said 'his insides stopped working a bit", but they started them up again at the hospital.

You didn't have to stay overnight in the hospital.  The people at the hospital said you were all right and sent you home."

Me and my Mom - 1942 - already used up one of my nine lives

 Thus, I already used up one of my nine lives and I wasn't even a year old yet!  Stay tuned, the next seventy years provided many more brushes with the Grim Reaper.

Fate

Fate:
the universal principle or ultimate agency by which the orderof things is presumably prescribed; the decreed cause ofevents; time: 


About four o'clock this morning as I lay in bed as I was arousing from my deep nighttime sleep I got to thinking of how much the course of my life has taken by chance circumstance.


I am not a religious person.  Even though I was raised as a Christian in the Baptist faith, I was quickly dissuaded from that belief when I was about ten years old.  That was when I realized that the formal church had damned me for eternity because I was homosexual. I knew something was wrong because that was the way I was born.  Thus, at only ten years old I lost faith in "man made religion".  


However, I do believe in Fate.  Some may call Fate a Guardian Angel.  I do believe that my life has been Guided.  By whom or why, I don't know exactly why.  Maybe I'll find that out when I die.  I doubt it though.  I think when you die you enter a giant Nothingness.  The only thing that makes halfway sense to me is reincarnation but that's another whole blog posting.  In fact, that subject is a book.


What I think of is how drastically different my life would have been if not for some chance happenstance.  


I'll give you an example.  My life was pretty routine for the oldest of three sons of a truck driver father and office cleaning mother during the Fifties.  We were poor but so were many of my peers.  My life and circumstance wasn't a whole lot different from most of my classmates except that I was homosexual (even if I didn't know what that meant at that time).  However this blog posting isn't about my homosexuality.  It is about how my life took a life altering turn down a road due to what seems now like an accident of time.


After I graduated from high school I decided to join the Navy.  At that time I knew I didn't want to get drafted into the Army because I didn't want to shoot anybody or get shot at.  Also, I wanted some control over my fate.  And, I liked the Navy uniforms.  Such is the thinking of a 17 year old straight (well I wasn't "straight" but I lied) out of high school.  


A few days after graduation in June of 1959 I make the trip to the Post Office in Coatesville, Pennsylvania and go down to the basement where all the service recruiters each had a desk.  I was asked who I wanted to see. Without hesitation I said "Navy."  


There were four desks in the basement room.  One for each branch of the service:

Army

Marines

Air Force

Navy

The Army was out.  I would have to learn to shoot somebody and be shot at.  Definitely a "No!"

The Air Force was out.  I didn't like their uniforms.

The Marines was definitely out.  I took one look at the bulldog faced Marine recruiter and knew without a doubt that I DID NOT WANT  TO GO THERE.  I surely would break my fingernails.

The Navy was IN.  It was safe, and they had cool uniforms.  Plus, I love the water.  

So I sit myself down at the Navy recruiter's desk and we begin the process.  About an hour later my papers are completed and a date is set for me to return and sign my final enlistment papers  Ron was going to join the Navy for four years.  I left the recruiting station at the Post Office to take this news home to my family.  

About a week later I get a phone call to come in and sign my enlistment papers for the Navy.  I make the trip to the Coatesville Post Office again.  I arrived around noon at the Navy recruiter's desk in the Post Office basement.  He wasn't there.  I was told my the Army recruiter (who sat at the desk across from the Navy recruiter) that he was at lunch.  

While I sat waiting for the Navy recruiter to come back from lunch, the Army recruiter started a conversation with me.  As I remember he was a handsome, friendly man.  Of course he had my full attention.  He asked me "Why are you joining the Navy?"  I told him "I want to see the world."  I didn't want to tell him that I liked their uniforms.  I knew he would think that was a silly reason and I didn't want him to think I was that shallow (even though I am and still am to this day.) However I did him that I didn't want to be in a combat unit, which was absolutely true.  I faint at the sight of blood.  Wuss that I am.  If I was in combat I would be like those fainting goats.  I would not be a good combat soldier

He told me that the Army had a program that I could join that is "99% guaranteed" that I would "see the world" plus I would only have to serve three years.  And..........I wouldn't have to serve in a combat unit.  Well, this sounded pretty good to me.  Only three years?  No combat.  No shooting or getting shot at.  Sounded good to me!

By the time the Navy recruiter came back from lunch, I was now sitting at the Army recruiter's desk having a new set of enlistment papers filled out.  The blond haired Navy recruiter gave his friend the dark haired Army recruiter a friendly, chagrined look that said "Okay, you won this time."  I sensed that this wasn't the first time that this has happened.  I felt a little guilty but I also felt that I had made the right decision.  

Thus, by this purely chance circumstance I choose a road that would forever change my life.  

If not for the Navy recruiter being out to lunch that day and the Army recruiter persuading me to join the Army, I would not have the friends that I have today.  I would not be with my life partner of the past forty-six years.  I would not be living in Delaware.  I would never have worked in the banking industry for almost forty years.  In fact, I probably would not be alive today.  

On that warm June day in 1959 my life changed forever just because the Navy recruiter was out to lunch.  

Pure chance?  I think not.  Maybe an angel was watching over me.  

My guardian angel.

Private Ronald W. Tipton 1960