Before we left (Perham), I went to the bank and I said, Bill … Bill Lee owned the bank in Perham. I said Bill, I may need a loan. Well he said, you want a loan, how much do you want. I said, well, I don’t know I want anything. I told him I was going to Iowa for the academic year, and they were paying me this, and doing that … but, I said, I don’t know what it’s going to cost me to live there. He said, well, if you need money, write a check. Here … and he gave me some checks. He said, just write a check and I’ll turn it into a loan for you. I said, a good loan is a cheap loan. Well, the way it turns out, when the year was over I didn’t need the loan, and we had plenty to get to Puerto Rico. Geez.
We went there in 60. I was 32, with 6 kids and a wife, heading to a foreign country.
And when we had to leave there … I still think the timing was unbelievable. Mom and I were out watching satellites, and walking and jogging to the highway on our road out there. Watching satellites, and clouds, and stars and what all. And we decided that night that we would stay there. We would retire there. And we’d travel from there if we felt like it. That was our plan. This was after we’d been there for 12 years. And we were out at the house that we built.
The next morning, the paper came, the San Juan Star came, and the headline was “Ramey Will Close”. That was the first hint we had, that the base was closing. And so that was just before Easter vacation. So we spent our time filling out applications, and Health, Education and Welfare came down from Washington – I can’t remember her name, she was chief of part of Health, Education and Welfare. And they wanted Cay becuase she was the school nurse and they had 13 jobs worldwide … for school nurses. They had 157 teachers to place. And, so they said to Mom, would you accept the responsibility of being the head of the house on paper so we could send you to one of these places. I said, well sure, and she can do all the miserable paperwork – which I ended up doing anyway. But, where would you like to go. We said, we don’t care. Anywhere, anwhere on Earth, except Iceland. We had friends that had been in Iceland, and it was a very poor place to live if you weren’t an Icelander. And all they are are lost Norweigens.
So they send us to Germany, to Sembach, and we ended up Kaiserslautern and Ramstein – the best possible place. We had friends that were all over the place – Okinawa, Japan, Korea, Scotland, England – everywhere – Greece, Spain, Turkey, Italy, and we were in the best place.
120624_003.MP3 – 57:00
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