PRIDE AND HORROR IN A LOVING PERSON

FEATURED POSTS

February 20, 2024

20-SOMETHING CARMELA AT WORK

Around midnight on February 2, two B1-B Lancer stealth bombers used 125 precision-guided missiles to strike 85 targets in Iraq and Syria. The bombers had flown all the way from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas, then returned home in what was a 44-hour mission. The targets included command and intelligence centers, rockets, and drone storage and supply chain facilities.

The politics aside, it had special meaning for my wife Carmela Cunningham.

Back in the early 1980s – when a mid-2os Carmela was still Carmela Castorina – she worked in public relations for the B1-B program at Rockwell International.

She interviewed the people who built the plane from the folks who carefully laid out the complex electrical connections that controlled the aircraft and its moveable swept-back wings, to the engineers who helped design everything from the landing gear to the avionics, and to the company executives that oversaw the program.

And she often had to babysit sometimes-hostile members of the press.

She had the privilege to climb aboard the aircraft while it was being built and after it was completed. She helped host celebrations in Palmdale with test pilots, Air Force brass and aviation legends such as retired Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, who led the B-25 raid over Tokyo in 1942. One of her work friends was test pilot Doug Benefield, who died shortly thereafter when he crashed in the Mojave Desert during tests of the B-1B’s low-altitude, radar-avoiding avionics.

It wasn’t all test pilots and chasing down the runway during takeoffs and landings. There was also the politics – the retired generals who used their influence to land cushy executive positions with the company; the congressmen who toured the plant, gave a talk after lunch and received an “honorarium” for their efforts; and the grown children of politicians and military brass who spent their summers in well-paid and cushy jobs at the company.

And though she grew weary of the politics and the never-ending corporate meetings on how to improve employee morale and how to boost the company’s image, she remained proud of the aircraft and of the hard-working people who had poured their talents into developing technology and making it all come together.

So, when she read about the mission and how successful the plane fulfilled the purpose for which it was built, she couldn’t help but feel at little proud of the small part she had played. She was also sad and a bit horrified about the people who had been killed and injured in the bombing.

The numbers of casualties depend on which side is doing the counting, but there were scores of fatalities and a larger number of wounded. And there is much controversy over the politics of the mission and the political fallout, but that will be an argument for those so inclined.

Carmela remains proud of the aircraft she wrote about and promoted and the smart and hard-working people she met during her time at Rockwell. And the blood on her hands? That’s something she also has to acknowledge.

It may not make her happy, but she knew 40 years ago what the plane was designed to do, and what it finally did. And she’s willing to live with that.

– George Lee Cunningham

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News

April 17, 2024

Minor Character

Sometimes I feel like a minor character in one of those really long James Michener historic novels. I’m one of the guys they check in on a couple of times during the course of the book and one more time when he finally kicks the bucket. In truth, that suits me just fine. I don’t want to be one of the major players – those guys who lie, cheat, sleep around, make a lot of money, kill a lot of people, and then then suffer a tragic death on Christmas Eve. I just want to be me – plugging along, having some fun, loving the same woman for years, and then quietly passing away.

March 25, 2024

Cereal Killer

I have almost given up on cereal. As a younger man, I loved a sugary treat. As an old man, who has to watch his diet, I find myself checking labels on everything. Sugar is the enemy. For instance, Cap’n Crunch – a former favorite of my wife – contains: Corn Flour, Sugar, Oat Flour, Brown Sugar, Palm and/or Coconut Oil, Salt, Reduced Iron, Yellow 5, Niacinamide, Yellow 6, BHT, Thiamin, Mononitrate, Pridoxined Hydrochloride, Rioflavin, and Folic Acid. My choice: plain old Shredded Wheat. Ingredients: wheat and BHT (a harmless preservative). Not a taste treat, but at least I’ll live to tell about it

Highway Memorials

Driving across country nowadays, we notice a growing number of roadside displays – flowers, crosses, and ribbons – marking the sites where people apparently died in traffic accidents. I do understand mourning the passing of somebody you love, but I’m not sure I see the point of putting a display at the place along the road where they died. Even sadder is the fact that flowers wilt and highway trash piles up around the displays, making them just another sad reminder of life cut short.

December 5, 2023

Love Motives

I often tell my wife I love and adore her, mainly because I do and also because women like to hear the man in their life actually say the words. But during one conversation I had to confess that some times when I say it – especially when she is irked and giving me the deadly silent treatment – I am also reminding myself of that fact so I don’t start yelling and slamming doors. Is that so wrong?

Being Mortal

I am officially an old man. Sometimes I forget, then I look in the mirror and there it is. The truth is that life has its limits, and that is how it should be. There are new generations coming up, ready to step up and take our place. They are welcome to it. If you have reached old age, you have made some blunders in you life. If you think otherwise, then you are indeed a fool. You can warn the new generations about the mistakes you made, but they are oblivious. This too is as it should be. It’s their world, and it’s on them to screw it up for the generations to follow, just as we did for them.

Good Deeds

There is a saying that no good deed goes unpunished. It’s mostly – but not always – true. The problem with good deeds is that most people who do them expect to be appreciated. In actuality, good-deed recipients are more often resentful about it, rather than grateful. Nobody likes being the person who has to rely on the good will of others. So do good deeds for your own sake – because it makes you feel better, not because you want to be feel appreciated.

Recreational Bitching

Did you ever notice that some people – maybe more people than not – like to complain about everything? In the summertime, it’s too hot. In the wintertime it’s too cold. Health care is too expensive. Young people are too rude. Old people move too slowly. There ought to be a law against anything and everything that might make one unhappy. It’s recreational bitching, and we all do it to greater or lesser extent. Maybe once in a while, it might make sense to listen to how we talk and how we think. Most of us are just doing the best that we can.