This is an example of a biography written in a previous class.

Biography: Sylvia Jean Tinker
by Sylvia Chafin

In 1910, Rose and Robert Tinker fled Oklahoma in fear for their lives, avoiding the Reign of Terror upon the Osage Indians, the richest single group in our nation's history. Opportunists were lurking on every Pawhuska street, knowing their prospective victim's disappearance or death would receive little attention and no investigation. Indians were not only expendable, tremendous profits could be made in the inheritance of those treasured Indian headrights curiously bequeathed to non-family members.

Indians celebrating their new found wealth in the early 1900's threw caution aside, purchasing new Rolls Royce's when the current one had a flat, buying airplanes for all the children before they know how to fly, and wearing mink on everything, coats to house robes. Such was the life of my parents. Each of my cousins had his own airplane; Clarence Tinker did apply his wealth to something tangible, he was the first Indian to make General, a two star one at that, and he was a World War II hero, dying at Midway. Oklahoma was so proud of him, the state named Tinker Air Force Base after him. Hero Indians were rare; most of them boozed and twittered their lives away; diseased of the feeling of unworthiness, the world agreed, leaving them nothing but the slow suicide of drinking.

My parents left Oklahoma, traveling to Houston, Texas, where I was born in 1920, the first poor Indian in our family. I had arrived too late for my own headright, but my parents' headrights allowed my crib to be lined in fine Egyptian cotton and European goose down. When my grandfather died in 1924, Mom and Dad returned to Pawhuska to claim the farm and to prevent its misuse, leaving me in the safekeeping of my Auntie Lee.

Mom was out for a ride just outside Pawhuska City limits, with her best friend, Sophia Little Bear, when Sophia's recently dismissed legal guardian ran her new black Packard sedan off the road, and shot Mom and Sophia in the face. The local white sheriff ruled it a double suicide, and Mom was a statistic. One year later, Dad remarried a twenty-five year old blond white woman with two small children still in diapers. Anna complained about having "one more brat in the house," and I hated Anna. Even though Dad was heartbroken, eventually, I chose to be with my Auntie, who had truly been my practicing mother. Neither of my mom's was a real caretaker to anyone except herself, according to Auntie Lee.

In the thirties when the Great Depression caused long bread lines, Auntie Lee spent her time baking bread and pies in her beautiful new baked enamel cook stove purchased in Paris, and handed them out at the First Baptist Church. I tagged along in my silk dresses and hand made kidskin leather shoes because Auntie said she needed help, and besides, I should see what the real world was like. As I watched the men and women, dressed in denim overalls and khaki work clothes, pass by, heads hanging low, I felt great empathy for their shameful situation. Father was right, I needed to know firsthand the work ethic and the problems associated with it.

Graduating from high school as valedictorian, I was offered a place in Texas Tech's program for exceptional students, which I accepted. An intellectual half-breed Indian going into redneck country! I was miserable, and quit after two years, returning to Houston to work at dad's friend, Frank Phillips company as a lowly secretary. Dad supplied me with charge accounts for clothes, but I had to "learn to make a livin' if I was too shy on courage to face rednecks," he declared. Secretarial work was definitely a punishment; I looked for an escape.

Dad had learned to fly in 1918, purchasing a plane and building a small landing strip on the south side of the farm house; I spent week ends with him flying around the country barnstorming. Sailing through the sky, wind nearly blowing the curls out of my hair, I was ecstatic; I got hooked on the adrenaline flying rush. Having obtained a commercial license, I was invited by Jackie Cochran to join what would become the Women's Air Force Service Pilots. World War II had hampered our lives with the rationing of things like sugar and butter, but the stories of the suffering and deaths of our boys created in me a great desire to actively help.

In the WASP's I learned to fly every kind of military aircraft our factories produced. A few close calls made me temporarily question my choice; and AT-6 stalled out on me heading toward Amarillo; Doris and I made a crash landing on the edge of Palo Duro canyon, saved from sliding on an icy crevice into that great chasm by a lowly mesquite tree, and then, again, heading toward Love Field in Dallas, nearly crashing with a little BT-13 Valiant trying to land on the same strip.

Although I felt sad to leave the WASP's when it disbanded at the end of '44, I applied to Tech with the new found confidence of a World War II pilot, taking along some friends who liked me even though I was an intellectual half-breed.

Graduation, in 1946, brought new challenges, and I immediately traveled to Europe to be a part of the recovery from the war's devastation there. Traveling around in France and England, I was appalled and deeply depressed viewing the deluge on buildings and the lives of the people, especially the children. Again, I participated in the church relief work, but I felt this was putting a small patch on a gaping wound, so I began writing about my experiences with these people, submitting articles to news services and magazines. My background as a WASP got interviews with many famous people anxious to meet a WASP, also, Jackie Cochran and General Chennault opened doors closed to most beginning writers.

Jackie had invited me over to Bern, Switzerland and set an appointment for me to have my first interview with a foreign dignitary. On June 1, 1947, as I looked out my hotel window at the red clay rooftops laced along the winding River Aare, I was aware I would soon be having lunch with currently the most noted cowardly leader, Ferenc Nagy, Premier of Hungary. This mild, wistful-eyed man had tried making friends with everyone, even the Communists, likewise was a true friend to no one, was terribly uneasy, and definitely not enjoying the overwhelmingly beautiful scenery of Bern, Switzerland.

As we sipped French wine and ate shrimp with linguini, he spoke of his earlier conversation with Matyas Rakosi, boss of Hungary's Communists. In a quavering whisper, he described Rakosi's order, "You must place yourself at the disposal of the authorities to answer to the people's court. Tell me at once when and where you will enter the country, lest anything should happen to you when you cross the frontier" (Time, June 9, '47).

"I am not going to accept his invitation!" he decided, raising his voice higher and higher as he spoke, "I am going to call Budapest to negotiate." He abruptly stood and left the restaurant, leaving me to pick up the tab.

When I called his hotel later that evening, the operator said the phone was disconnected, and no, she would not send someone up to his room, because he was sleeping. His fellow countryman later said, "Nagy must have been the only Hungarian in Bern who slept that night."

His deal with Budapest communists was the safe delivery of his four year old son to join him in exile. One has to feel compassion for a man who has arranged for the safety of his own child, and even more empathy for a once powerful leader reduced to one last request, one which, in a country led by a government that valued human life, would never be needed. The political climate in Hungary had that drastically deteriorated within months.

Although Nagy's Smallholder's party had won 59% of the votes in the recent January 1946 election, Rakosi had predicted his 17% of the votes was only the beginning of the story. Soon after, a number of Smallholder leaders were arrested, and then Communists and their close allies grabbed 64% of the top government jobs. Rakosi, short, fat, bullet headed, shark-mouthed, aggressive Communist with little regard for human life, was relentless in his pursuit for power, moreover had Nagy's friends and the former inner circle members of government arrested, and further obtained "confessions" of dangerous plots.

President Truman called the Hungarian situation an outrage, and Rakosi crowed that the Hungarian government had been "seized before the U.S. could rub its eyes" (Time, June 16, '47). He was right. While the communists were celebrating their victory, they were finalizing details on their next coup; Benes of Czechoslovakia would be their next victim.

A tall gray-headed and mustached statesman, Eduard Benes, commanded complete attention as he spoke of his beloved Czechoslovakia in terms most men reserve for their wives. He had devoted his life to caring for the people of this country, fought to prevent the annexation of Bohemia's Sudentland, resigned on October 3, 1938, when it became inevitable, and returned from exile only days after the German occupation ended; he was the prewar president of Czechoslovakia and afterward, allowed to resume his position as head of state.

Sitting next to a small green marble table, at the tiny hotel restaurant, sipping black European coffee, Benes confided to me "I'm just trying to adjust to the situation; by granting some concessions to the Communist Party and to the Soviet annexation of Carpatho-Ruthenia."

I asked, "What do you think your old mentor, Tomas Masaryk, would say about your decisions?" He replied angrily, "I know many people say I lack my old friend's idealism, but he never had to face negotiations or annihilation."

Wondering what I might do in the same situation, I decided I could not answer truthfully, because my home and family were not being threatened by communists, and I guessed if they were, I would do most anything except renouncing God, to save them.

My thought wondered to the next possible weak link the communists would attack, and the answer came shortly, Berlin.

In 1948, when Britain, France, and the United States had decided to merge their zones into one unit, the Soviet Union withdrew from the council in protest, and began the blockade of Berlin's rail, highway, and water communications with the west. The United States and Britain air freighted supplies to the besieged city, circumventing the blockade, until the Soviets relented.

Our train arrived at the Charlottenburg Station just as the morning sun rose over the jagged skyline of this besieged but not broken city, ending twelve months of blockade by the soviets. At one minute after midnight two jeeps and a convoy of busses had roared out of Helmstat headed for the Western zones to reestablish the land link with the west.

We had been required to keep doors locked and shades drawn for the duration of the trip, although most of us peaked out at the bleak dark gray landscape, giving all of us a very uneasy feeling. For some reason, conversations about Jews being transported to concentration camps had dominated the night, which increased the apprehension even more. A sigh of relief was expressed by all the reporters in the car as the soviet zone locomotive pulled our sealed rail car into the station, and no soldiers were pointing their rifles in our direction. They were, in fact, ignoring our arrival.

Our combined British-American train had consisted of twelve cars full of 140 Western nationals including 73 British troops and a score of reporter, who were the first to travel through the Soviet zone for twelve months.

We were proud to be a part of the great liberation of the city, and for a few days, we all basked in the glory. Wherever we went, young and old, shopkeepers or house wives, shook our hands and smiled; handmade posters on street corners announced, "Blockadefrei" (Reston, May 14, '49)!

I loved my job when I was able to look at our great United States and feel proud to be one of its citizens.

Returning to the States, in Washington in December of 1948, I stopped to visit my Auntie Lee and her family. Her white and gray hair only maintained its henna tips with streaks of black; rolls of fat replaced the wrinkles under her chin, and she looked happy. Her eight year old son, Joshua was a clone of Jack, who still looked like a young Clark Gable, but taller.

Jack was attending a luncheon, and asked me to go along. There I met Mademoiselle Chiang Kai-shek; she had arrived by 10:00 a.m. on President Truman's former airplane, the Sacred Cow, and was brought to the luncheon by the Chinese ambassador and her brother-in-law, Dr. H.H. Kung. She was a beautiful, tiny, delicate woman dressed in a sleeveless silk blue and white floral print kimono style dress with white leather shoes adorned with white leather bows; she had such a graceful but sad demeanor, I felt so sad for her. Civil war was raging in China; Chiang Kai-shek increasingly relied on the United States for aid, and the American government was impatient to wean him, giving her an extremely cool reception this time.

The next day, when Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek announced he was retiring as President of China, after having fought communism for twenty years, I truly understood her sorrow. I could relate to being pushed out of a country by a new government anxious to have its resources for its more loyal citizens.

Later that evening, probably at Auntie's urging, Jack introduced me to a strikingly handsome six foot two inch, two hundred, five pound widower, a brilliant Washington lawyer, Gary Noble. Gary was finishing up the Rosenberg case as assisting counsel and involved in trying to nail down Senator Joe McCarthy.

June 15, 1950, David Greenglass had named "Julius Rosenberg as the man who had recruited him to spy for the Soviet Union" (Radosh and Milton 1983, 3).

The Rosenbergs were the epitome of the kind of communist one fears will be the nation's downfall. Luther Huston's New York Times article, quoted President Eisenhower as stating, "I can only say that by immeasurably increasing the chances of an atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world" (June 20, '53).

For this great sin, I wanted them to burn as much as Gary did, and burn they did. The first couple to receive the electric chair as punishment. The graphic description in the Times repulsed my senses, forcing a part of me to question, "Are you sure?" The reply, a resounding yes. Perhaps this was the attitude McCarthy tried to cash into a career boost.

McCarthy had encompassed the whole nation in a wretched hunt for the communists lurking in everyone's back yard, recklessly accusing without cause. Ruined reputations and careers finally forced him to defend his activities on the Senate floor.

As Senator Mundt rapped for order with a glass ashtray, Senator McCarthy was the first to take advantage of his rights within seventeen minutes into the Senate hearings by calling a point of order in the midst of the roar of twenty people clamoring for the floor.

"I may say, Mr. Chairman, that I have heard-may I have the attention of the chair-may I say Mr. Chairman, that I have heard from the people in the military all the way down from the generals with the most upstanding combat records, down to privates recently inducted, and they indicate they are resentful of the fact that a few Pentagon politicians, attempting to disrupt our investigations, are naming themselves the Department of the Army, " Senator McCarthy declared (Lawrence, April 23, '54).

He got nowhere with his point, but he did get to make his speech assailing Stevens and Adams. The hearings continued seemingly endlessly with McCarthy innuendoes and clear testimony as to the inaccuracies of McCarthy's accusations of communist activities in government, entertainment, education, and everyday citizen duties. McCarthyism had created a suspicion that the Reds were running amok in high places, and Joe McCarthy had sworn to flush out everyone of them.

Even after McCarthy's television appearance on Edward R. Murrow's "Murrow Meets McCarthy: A Moment in Television History," McCarthy had a large and loyal following. By the end of that television show, Murrow had disproved all charges McCarthy had lodged against everyone from a former Columbia University student, Reed Harris, to the Democratic candidate for president, Adlai Stevenson (Christianson, Mar. 6, '94).

Murrow ended the program urging the American people, "We will not, we cannot live in fear of one another. This man has made us spy on each other; that's not what this nation's about" (Christianson, mar. 6, '94).

Murrow was correct; this nation is not about spying. McCarthy had preyed on our deepest paranoia, fear that the atrocities we viewed distant from our homes, might truly be lurking next door, or in our schools, or, worse yet, in our government. When the threat was in our own back yard, we acted irrationally, and believed irrationally.

Wondering about the miracle of that belief, I recalled McCarthy's speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, at the Republican Women's Club, in 1950, when McCarthy declared "I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five--a list of names that are known to the secretary of state as being members of the Communist party and who are nevertheless are still working and still shaping the government" (Brinkley, 1995).

After his death, I asked his secretary, Mary Driscoll, a good friend of mine, "What did he have in his hand that day?"

"He had a few scribbled notes to use in his speech. Nothing about Communists. Mostly about housing for war veterans. That was his big interest when he came to Washington."

She told me in his quiet time, McCarthy sat at his desk, lovingly fondling the newspaper clippings, muttering words of encouragement to himself.

As David Brinkley commented, "What finally brought him to his knees was not his five foot shelf of lies, but his abuse of witnesses before his committee. For this offense, he received a motion of censure, destroying his career. He never found one Communist not already known to be one."

His career destroyed, McCarthy turned to drinking heavily, liquor finally took its toll on his body and he died of cirrhosis of the liver.

I did not mourn his death, but grieved over the evil which wrecked careers and lives before he was stopped. Deciding to focus on the people who were doing good things with their lives, I moved permanently to Washington D.C. to be near Auntie Lee.

In 1954, Gary and I were married in a small family ceremony at Auntie Lee and Jack's home, with the Reverend Bob McManus, presiding. Mack had become a Bible toting evangelist; he said the fear of the Ku Klux Klan had brought him close to God, the real one, who loves all colors. Effie still looked the same, three hundred pounds of energy, and little Half Moon was a great baby-sitter of Gary's two little ones, managing them with the skill of a veteran school teacher. Effie had done her mothering well.

We honeymooned in New York City, riding subways, seeing Broadway shows, and eating in the ritzy restaurants on the tops of the hotel buildings.

Back home, hearing the news of the impending Suez crisis, I flew in to Tel Aviv on the last commercial plane to land from Athens and drove on the main road to Jerusalem. by the time I arrived in the ancient city, air raid sirens were howling and the sounds of machine guns and mortar fire permeated the air, frightening me. I was doing a 360 degree turn on a two way road overlooking Jerusalem when an Israeli Army truck loaded with young and old rumpled soldiers passed by waving and happily singing national Israeli songs.

The bright school boy look of the Israeli Army gave me a sense we were sending our children to war for us, but they were highly skilled and motivated, and had easily cut through the Sinai Peninsula to within miles of the Suez Canal. They reported back to us the devastation of Egyptian villages in the canal region; British and French aerial bombs had been effective, villages were leveled. Their actions, however, were not popular with much of the rest of the world.

As the U.N. called for withdrawal, Israeli Premier David Ben Gurion announced he would keep Gaza for the time being. The British claimed victory, however they did not topple the Nasser regime nor force upon it the control of the Suez Canal; Nasser had control now.

Nonetheless, I developed a great admiration for the courage of the Israeli's; and I felt deep compassion for a people always in the process of defending themselves from aggression, but doing it with style and boundless energy.

The Middle East seemed to be a continual boiling pot; one never know what would spew out next; I just watched in awe, knowing something would soon come rolling out of the discord.

On March 9, 1958, a joint resolution of the Senate and the House of Representatives had passed after some debate despite the endorsement of the Democratic Senate majority leader, Lyndon Johnson; signed by President Eisenhower, it declared the United States is "...prepared if invited, to use its armed forces to help any Middle Eastern nation against aggression by any country controlled by international communism" (New York Times, July 16, '58).

July 14, 1958, in Baghdad, elements in Iraq strongly sympathetic to the United Arab Republic seem to have murdered, or driven from office individuals comprising the lawful government of that country. On July 15, President Chamoun, of Lebanon, made an urgent plea to President Eisenhower to protect Lebanon's independence.

Eisenhower responded with seven ships of the Sixth Fleet and 3,600 marines, along with promises of economic assistance.

Judging the venomous nature of the anger residing with the religious differences there, I knew our first intervention in Lebanon would not be the last, but I was homesick and lonesome, so I headed for the states.

The United States was not without its own venom. In 1961, I first noticed the depth of the racial problem in the south. I flew down to Albany, Georgia to the alleged heart of the black nation at the Gaston Hotel where the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King temporarily resided. King was orgaizing a demonstration of picketing the courthouse with the express purpose of being arrested.

"Fill the jails," He whispered with heavy emphasis on the vowels, making the words three syllables long, "and when they runout of room, sombody will pay attention!" With a face full of determination, he cut short the interview, and he and his party of twelve supporters stood in unison, and walked silently from the room, leaving me still sitting in the faded brown Naugahyde chair, worrying about the fate of a man with so much determination to have a peaceful but meaningful demonstration in a country where people radically believed they were a superior race to negroes, and lunch counters and busses were going to continue to demonstrate that belief.

King was arrested at Albany, but after a few days of demonstrations, he got little publicity, and he was released with little fanfare. Walking from the jail, head held low, King looked like a bewildered and beaten leader.

Following him to Birmingham, Alabama I watched King's subsequent arrest along with 2,500 juveniles wearing white shirts and jeans or felt skirts, who were chanting "Freedom, freedom, freedom," as they boarded the school busses supplied to transport them to area jails. King had learned youth have all the time in the world, and no family to support. As Sheriff Bailey arranged for more jail space in surrounding jails in wider and wider circumferences, King filled them with more youths. Sheriff Bailey was putting seventy-five teenagers in cells made for ten men, and still running out of space.

The thing that stands out in my mind about King's accomplishment is the following he naturally atttracted; others had tried organizing demonstrations before, during, and after, but none succeeded as effectively in attendance and response.

I met many people like Sheriff Pritchett, a 250 pound blond headed, cigar toting, redneck Chief of Police. Pritchett's contention was he did not care about negro rights, because they did not have any. The south was full of Pritchett's and Bailey's.

I followed the movement all the way to Washinton D.C. to the Freedom March there on August 28, 1963, where I helped prepare 80,000 cheese sandwiches for the Nationa American Labor council. Over 200,000 black and white labor leaders, clergy, Hollywood stars, and ordinary citizens crowded the area from the Washington monument to the Lincoln Memorial singing, "Free at last, free at last." The miracle was its success at staying peaceful and yet being a large enough demonstration, Kennedy could no longer ignore the negro issue (Vecchione, video).

Back in Washington, I planned to rest a few months, and begin compiling notes for my book on the Osage Indians, but November blew in terrible news about President Kennedy in Dallas. In Washington, the district grieved in agony as the new president, Lyndon Johnson, took over; we passed the day in shock. Kennedy's body lay in repose in the East Room of the White House and then it was removed to the rotunda of the Capitol; from there on the catafalque which had borne President Lincoln's casket.

As Gary and I walked to St. Mathew's Cathedral on that frosty Monday, the roll of the drums spoke our anguish, pounding our senses, allowing no interruption of grief. Mrs. Kennedy walked in the procession flanked on either side by President Kennedy's brothers, Robert and Edward; following them were 220 foreign leaders.

The wildly twittering birds at Arlington National Cemetery distracted my attention from the grotesque situation and the smooth flow of the Potomac momentarily soothed my soul. I was reminded of Paul's Roman promise that nothing can separate us from God, and I cried at my own loss of a beloved president. Gone was the cool wit, the zest for life, and the confident leader with an innocent school boy look.

As Mrs. Kennedy lighted the eternal flame, I was reminded of my English professor's thoughts on the grief of parting. "Friends are not lost as long as one can cherish their memory." Her words were of little comfort; I wanted only to grieve.

Schlesinger describes the mood still in existence weeks later:

On December 22, a month after his death, fire from the flame burning at his grave in Arlington was carried at dusk to the Lincoln Memorial. It was fiercely cold. Thousands stood, candles in their hands; then as the flame spread among us, one candle lighting the next, the crowd gently moved away, the torches flaring and flickering, into the darkness (1965, 1031).

In Kennedy's death, I felt a tremendous loss, but soon, I had a different kind of emotional toll, Gary's oldest son, Jacob, fled to Canada to avoid the draft. Althought I dislike the idea of draft dodging, I hated more the prospect of losing a child to a war no one understood anyway.

June 5, 1967, when heavy fighting broke out between Israeli and Egyptian forces, I recognized the Israeli's had no choice but to risk loved one's lives. Egypt closed the Suez, and broke ties with the United States as Israel seized Gaza. Then Israeli's occupied Old Jerusalem.

No one knows who had fired the first shot but Israeli forces quickly swept throught the Gaza and vaulted through the Sinai almost to the Suez Canal. Israelis had destroyed 50 Egyptian tanks and disabled 150 more; more than 400 of Nasser's planes were shot down.

Jews poured into the walled Old City, weeping for joy; soldiers with machine guns worshipped at the Wailing Wall. Israel has regained her honor and her holy places, the Arabs have a defeat without honor.

The Six Day War was one of the best routs in histroy. In an interview, the dashing Israeli Defense Minister leaned forward, green beret angled across his forehead, his black patch covering the right eye, beamed a crooked smile, and jubilantly announced, "We have returned to the holiest of our holy places, never to depart from it again."

As the Jews celebrated their victory, Asa, Gary's youngest son, flunked out of college, unable to deal with the preppie liestyle of his chosen Boston University. He performed a total flip flop and joined the United States Marines.

Gary's blood presure hit new highs, and I decided to return to Washington to finish those notes and my book. I cranked out two books, which sold well only in Oklahoma. I was much to sympathetic to the plight of the American Indian, and the world does not want to hear about atrocities unless it can point finger away from self; my books would not allow that. The Indians loved them; I was called Indian and Jew lover. Good. Loving them was not difficult.

One of the most difficult times I have faced was in 1983. Watching the flag draped casket being removed from the belly of the military aircraft, C-74 Globemaster, a deep steel chard of pain passed through my heart and exited; I loved this young man as my own; he was Gary's youngest son. Tears flooded my inadequate handful of tissues, as the casket was loaded into the brown '83 Cadillac funeral coach. We had decided on burial at Arlington; as we headed toward the Potomac, my thoughts drifted back to the man who had caused it all, Amin Gemayel.

A man who makes enemies of his neighbors to the left and right, and the front and back of him, must be a fool or a friend of the all powerful United States Marines. President Gemayel of Lebanon had recklessly succeeded in offending the people of his country on all sides: Gemayel had ignored the Druse leader, Walid Jumblat, treating him as my friend, Thomas Friedman, the noted Middle East expert, commented, "a mountain peasant, unworthy of even being invited to the presidential palace" (1989, 192). Gemayel went even farther in allowing the Phalangist militia, with Israeli help, to take over a former Druse area at the southern end of Mt. Lebanon; war sizzled between the Druse and Phalangists. Gemayel even offended the Sunni Muslims who had supported his election by allowing some 1,000 of the to disappear without a crackdown, therefore the Muslims were sizzling. In East Beirut, Gemayel allowed his father's Christian militia to run rampant, failing to deploy any Lebanese army there; Muslims sat locked in their homes listening to the radio report discos open in East Beirut twenty-four hours a day.

Last, Gemayel ignored Syria's demands and entered into direct negotiations with Jerusalem over withdrawal of troops and trade and tourism.

As a mother, the bombing of the embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983, would have been enough for me to grab my handsome stepson, Asa, out of Lebanon into safer quarters.

Asa had gone into Beirut with the first group of Marines assigned to oversee the withdrawal of the PLO; and to prevent Israel from invading West Beirut as Arafat withdrew. Asa's company first withdrew on September 10, two weeks earlier than he had been told, and he enjoyed a two day holiday in France. September 14, President Gemayel was blown to bits and Israel invaded West Beirut; the Marines were ordered back with no withdrawal date preset.

In April, when a suicide bomber had driven a Chevrolet pickup into the front door of the American Embassy, then detonated it killing sixty people, my husband began pulling strings, trying to get Asa home, but Asa was happy to be in the middle of "something interesting."

"I have met the people," Mom, "and they like Marines! Don't worry, we're being fed burritos and every kind of homemade cake, cookie, or candy that can be mailed. I'll be fine," he added, "I'll be back at Christmas to hear those great Indian stories of yours. Bye!"

Only one Marine sentry witnessed the driver as he slammed his yellow Mercedes-Benz truck filled with 12,000 pounds of dynamite into the Marine's four story headquarters just after daybreak.

Death is a very painful thing.

Gary and I withdrew from Washington social life and recovered, over time.

On the night of April 26, 1983, my husband Gary and I had watched President Reagan's thirty-four minute speech to a joint session of Congress during prime time. Althought he failed to mention any covert operations, Reagan did warn, "We should not, and we will not, protect the Nicaraguan government from the anger of its own people."

Senator Dodd, in a Democrat version of the situation, suggested, after graphically describing morticians doing morning rounds gathering bodies in Nicaragua, stated emphatically, "We recoil at such an image for our association with criminals."

Dodd was correct in believing the extreme right wing death squads elimination of thousands of suspected leftists had gone too far, but Reagan was trying to stop the spread of Communism into our own neighborhood by supporting the Salvadorean government with military aid; the death of suspected Communists was the price to pay for freedom. Besides, he was angry with Nicaragua for supplying guns to leftist insurgents in El Salvadore. As far back as March of 1981 Reagan had been providing covert aid to modern Christian Democrats and military officers in El Salvador.

When the Boland Amendment prohibited the expenditure of funds "for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicargua, Reagan's participation in covert operations ceased.

Later, when covert operations were hinted by the media, John Poindexter and Oliver North became the sacrificial lambs. Eight months later, Poindexter testified under oath he approved North's idea to trade arms for hostages, but he stated he never went to the president for approval in order to protect Reagan from the type of reprisals he was presently enduring.

Director of Central Intelligence, William Casey, when asked how the administration had got into arms sales to Iran, replied, "The Israeli's, in '81, were telling us to work with the Iranians, for the purpose of getting close to the military," Casey said, "It seemed credible to us, based on the future, post-Khomeini era." He went on to confess the Iranians were willing to pay more than the weapons cost, thereby creating profits which could be diverted to the Contras, and that, "Poindexter just got caught" (Woodward, 1987, 500).

When the financial records were finally analyzed, of the twelve million diverted, only three million reached the contras; the rest remained in various bank accounts in Switzerland. In October, 1986, Congress lifted the ban and $100 Million was authorized for the contras.

We were totally disillusioned with Reagan. Even though he may not have been guilty of criminal activity, he was guilty of deceiving behavior. Then I had to wonder, what should one expect from a politician? A successful politician is necessarily aggressive and manipulative; he could not succeed otherwise.

Gary and I left Washinton for Dad's farm in Pawhuska. Dad's stroke has left him unable to speak; his income has dropped to less than a thousand a month; Anna complained he was penniless, and left him, taking the furniture, except for his bed and television. Gary has started hunting and fishing; I am writing some positive self esteem books for minority children. Jacob wants to plant a garden and live off the land. He and his wife are still hippies, at forty-five, and his children hate it. My grandchildren give me great joy.

Works Cited

Brinkley, David. David Brinkley, A Memoir. First ed. New Your: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995
Christianson, Richard. "Recalling Murrow's McCarthy mission." Chicago Tribune. 6 March 1994: Arts: n.pag.
Friedman, Thomas. From Beirut to Jerusalem. First ed. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1989.
Gruhzit-Hoyt, Olga. They Also Served. First ed. New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1995
"Hungary, Slow Motion Coup." Time. 9 June 1947:32.
Huston, Luther A. "Rosenbergs Executed As Atom Spies." The New York Times. 20 June 1953, late ed.: 1.
Lawrence, W.H. "Stevens Swears M'Carthy Falsified." The New York Times. 23 April 1954, late ed.: 1.
"The Nations." Time. 16 June 1947: 31.
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Author: Becky Driscoll
E-Mail: bdriscoll@dcccd.edu