I Cried Myself to Sleep

Okay, this most likely will only be of interest to family members… if anyone at all. I am not quite sure why I got to thinking about this.

We moved to Italy in 1964 for a stay of a little over three years.  My father would have been 33 and my mother 30, turning 31 in September of that year.  I don’t know about you, but in my early 30s I still had a lot of growing up to do, but then again, I took a long time to mature.  I am not sure I am there yet, and I hear my second childhood knocking (down?) on the door.

I would have just turned the ripe old age of 12 when we moved there.  My father had already been there for two or three months, and he had an apartment rented in the city of Naples for us. My mother came after the school year ended, towing four little boys with her. I remember our first day there that I was so distressed to have left everyone and everything I knew that I crawled under a bed and cried myself to sleep, only emerging hours later.

As a child I was extremely shy which only exacerbated the tribulation I felt as seemingly always being the new kid on the block.  This was occasionally mitigated if it was a school with other military brats.

Before I graduated high school I had been to eleven different schools, changing schools thirteen times. This does not include a school somewhere in Connecticut that I attended for a single day before Kaman Aerospace decided they wanted my father at a different duty station.

Schools that I’ve attended: This gives a pretty good indication of what my early life was like:

• Kindergarten
  • Lancanster, CA
    • September 1957 to October 1957
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    • November 1957 to June 1958
• 1st Grade
  • Lafayette Elementary, Fredericksburg, VA
    • September 1958 to June 1959
• 2nd Grade
  • Longfellow School, Checotah, OK
    • August 1959 to October 1959
  • Pine Beach Schools, Pine Beach, NJ
    • October 1959 to June 1960
• 3rd Grade
  • Pine Beach Schools, Pine Beach, NJ
    • September 1960 to June 1961
• 4th Grade
  • Longfellow School, Checotah, OK
    • August 1961 to November 1961
  • Town Creek Elementary, California, MD
    • December 1961 to June 1962
• 5th Grade
  • Town Creek Elementary, California, MD
    • September 1962 to December 1962
  • Toms River Schools, Tom River, NJ
    • December 1962 to June 1963
• 6th Grade
  • Toms River Schools, Tom River, NJ
    • September 1963 to June 1964
• 7th Grade
  • Forest Sherman Junior High, Naples, Italy
    • Navy Overseas Dependent School
    • September 1964 to June 1965
• 8th Grade
  • Forest Sherman Junior High, Naples, Italy
    • September 1965 to June 1966
• 9th Grade
  • Forest Sherman Junior High, Naples, Italy
    • September 1966 to June 1967
• 10th Grade
  • Wakefield Schools,Wakefield, RI
    • September 1967 to April 1967
  • Central High School, Muskogee, OK
    • April 1968 to May 1968
• 11 Grade
  • North Kingstown High School, North Kingstown, RI
    • September 1968 to June 1969
• 12 Grade
  • North Kingstown High School, North Kingstown, RI
    • September 1969 to June 1970