I have finally succumbed...

Ok Vanessa, you should be happy. Thanks to my neighbor Angela finally starting her own blog, I've succumbed to the pressure you've put on me for MONTHS now to start my own family blog. So what's new with the Anderson family? Randy is already jumping in to his new position as Site Manager for Scientific Research Corporation's Tampa site. He spent Monday down there, coming home Tuesday after enjoying breakfast with our new realtor team, Ronnie and Ralph Evans. He spent yesterday in the office here in WR and is in Atlanta today. He'll be home tonight and back in the WR office tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday, before heading back to Tampa from Wednesday until Thursday or Friday. The week after that he'll head to Charleston, SC for a couple of days before we caravan down to Tampa for our 5 day house-hunting expedition. I say 'caravan-ing' because on Tuesday, 11 Nov, the girls and I will return home but he will stay there for a couple more days. After that it looks like he'll be in Tampa Mondays through Thursdays and then home Fridays and the weekends unless the girls and I drive down there. I know the drive is going to seem longer and longer for him. He already commented that the drive back Tuesday seemed to take forever, possibly because the prior Thursday we 'caravan'd' down to Fort Walton Beach for the Pave Low deactivation, retirement and reunion with him leaving Sunday for Tampa and me heading home.



As for our weekend in FWB? It was awesome and at times surreal. That is just my perspective. For Randy I don't think it can even be described. He saw men that he flew with in Germany in the mid-80s, he saw Lieutenant Colonels, Colonels and Generals that he new as baby pilots with their butter bars. He bid farewell to the helicopter he'd flown humanitarian missions in, he'd flown combat missions in, the helicopter that had caused the loss of life of 8 Green Hornets, as the members of the 20th Special Operations Squadron were called. Four of those Hornets were personal friends. He said goodbye to a later version of the same helicopter he was in and crashed in the mid-80s. He stood stoic and proud as we attended the deactivation ceremony in the Air Park on Hurlburt Field with the big beast behind the podium, remembering flights that were good and bad, remembering proud moments flying in multi-helicopter formations over places from the emerald coast of northwest Florida to the mountains of Albania and Afghanistan to the sands of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, remembering missions of ease and remembering missions he wasn't sure they'd make it home from and the sheer will, determination and defiance that brought them home and defines the Pave Low and everyone who flew her. There were over 500 people at the reunion that followed the deactivation and even after spending Friday and all day Saturday there, we still did not see everyone. I was able to reconnect with wives I had lost touch with after Randy retired and spent a couple of great days with my dear and close friend Tammy. For those of you who remember, Tammy's husband Tony was on the same crew with Randy in Afghanistan. Randy and I had married just before they left and I was new to the wives' group. Even though I was active duty and in reality knew more about what was going on with our husbands than most everyone else, the wives' group was new to me so Tony asked Tammy to take me under her wing and keep and eye on me to make sure I was ok while they were gone. She's been one of my closest friends ever since and Tony and Randy share a bond that none will ever break and most will not understand. The 20th's theme song has long been 'Dead or Alive' by Bon Jovi and even Lt Col Becker, the squadron's commander, incorporated the words of the song into his speach at the deactivation. He said 'It's all the same, only the names have changed,' to sum up the long legacy of the helicopter. Various Pave Lows are at museums around the country - Eglin AFB, the Air Park on Hurlburt Field, the museum at Robins AFB here in Georgia, and at the museum at Wright-Patterson AFB, in Dayton, OH. If you ever get a chance to go there, stop by and see the beautiful bird that was Randy's life for 22 years. The remaining 6 are still in the desert having retired in combat and are now waiting transport back to the US. The 41 birds that made up the Pave Low inventory and created a legacy that extends as far back as the Vietnam Conflict, along with the many men that flew them 'saw a million faces,' and she was the 'steal horse they rode.'

Randy took with him a bottle of red wine that had been part of Colonel Tommy Hull's (now retired) change of command in the late-90s. I opened the bottle and the cork disintegrated! Even so, Randy and Colonel Hull put on their bravest faces and drank the wine, walking around the reunion telling everyone how good it was. Stephanie Hull and I both thought it tasted like vinegar and I had to laugh when she commented that they were telling everyone how great it was yet they still had half of a bottle left! Check out the pictures!