Dear Folks, Recently Sue from our historical society and I met in the parking lot of the Red Brick School House. We exchanged pleasantries. I told her I was in the process of putting together all of my stories and make a book out of them. She in turn told me that she was in the process of putting together a book about a different view of the history of the Town of Porter. She wanted to include as many photographs that she could dig up about the more recent years of our town. She told me that she was especially looking for photos of anyone who had been in the military from our town. I laughed inasmuch as I certainly have pictures of me when I was in the Navy, especially in the mid 1950s. That definitely caught her interest. We talked more about it and she said she'd call me. This afternoon she called and I invited her over to my house this evening to show her my Navy pictures. She sat down at my kitchen table and I pulled out all of the photographs I have about my life in the Navy. Some of them were just snapshots taken with a Brownie camera and others were taken by a professional Navy photographer. She studied each and everyone with a careful eye. But there were a couple of them that really caught her eye. There was a picture of me in a serious Navy working setting in 1956 when I was putting a pilot through the intricacies of flying on only instruments in a flight simulator (a Link Trainer). Another one that caught her eye was a photo of me in a regulation flight suit about to board a Navy jet in 1959. Both the pilot and I were holding our flight helmets and ready to don our oxygen masks for the flight up into the wild blue yonder. What was unusual about that flight was that back in 1959 few women had ever flown in a jet. All the while I was showing the pictures I have, Sue took everyone of them in and listened to the background of all of them. I believe that by the time she left she was still a bit overwhelmed about the tales I had told her of my life in the Navy. Yes, she left with a few really good pictures of a woman in the Navy back in the 1950s, but I'm certain she won't forget the pictures that I showed her with me as the only woman surrounded by a whole bunch of sailors. Hey, that was pretty much my Navy life. Surrounded by sailors! vee