Brats: a Memoir

San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research Summer 2013 Brats: A Memoir Timothy James Heath San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Heath, Timothy James, "Brats: A Memoir" (2013). Master's Theses. 4341. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.s4y5-txqx https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/4341 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BRATS: A MEMOIR A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English and Comparative Literature San José State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts by Timothy James Heath August 2013 © 2013 Timothy James Heath ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Designated Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled BRATS: A MEMOIR By Timothy James Heath APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY August 2013 Dr. Susan Shillinglaw Department of English and Comparative Literature Dr. Samuel H. Maio Department of English and Comparative Literature Judith Hilliard Department of Mathematics ABSTRACT BRATS: A MEMOIR by Timothy J. Heath There are two Americas. There is the America where families grow up generation after generation in the same geographic location. There is another America. This America moves populations about as if they were post-it notes attached to a bulletin board. Today, Great Lakes, tomorrow, Fort Carson, next week, Fort Wainwright, and so on. In this America, children rarely spend more than two years in the same location. Many are uprooted in the middle of a school year, often the senior year. Many do not know where home is, as their sponsor (the family member in the military) has not lived there in many years. The children of this nomadic group cling to its brand name, Brats, as tenaciously as the owners of Apple or Ralph Lauren do to their products. Brats are the children of people in the military. They often go to school on military installations, belong to organizations sponsored by the military, shop at the Commissary, and buy their clothes at the “Exchange.” Whatever community they live in, they know that they are often viewed as outsiders. What is life like for these children? What is it like living in the shadow of an authoritarian organization or a household ruled by an authoritarian parent, often the patriarch? As these children shift from location to location, how are they affected by the constant creation and destruction of personal relationships? This book gives an unvarnished view into the world of brats. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book would not have been possible without the aid of my parents. I know they loved me in their own way, or at least they said they did. I am especially grateful to my father for not killing me and to my mother for constantly yelling, “Not on the head, Gene, not on the head,” when my father beat me. I wish to thank my wife, Annie Joy Heath, for coercing me into the MFA program at San Jose State University when all I wanted to do was buy a ranch in Northern California and raise goats for cheese. You might have been right, Annie, about this program doing more for us than a herd of billy goats and some high desert land in the Warner Range. There have been many professors at San Jose State University, especially in the MFA program, who have influenced me during my time in the program and as I wrote my thesis. Alan Soldofsky opened every door in the program for me and got me off to a wonderful start with his ENGL 203C course. Cathy Miller read and commented on much of the “junk” I submitted to her as I searched for and finally found my “voice,” that magic way into the mind of others that differentiates a wordsmith from an artist. Finally and most appreciatively, I wish to thank Professor Susan Shillinglaw, Steinbeck Scholar and the 2012-13 President’s Scholar at SJSU, for saying “yes” to my request to be my thesis chair. She guided and directed me to a successful conclusion of this arduous process and did not once lose her temper or become upset with me. She offered nothing but sage advice, scholarly insights, and v a helping hand that few ever get and even fewer deserve as I endeavored to complete my thesis. Thank you. I would be remiss if I did not thank my other thesis readers. It is not until you ask an overworked member of the faculty to read your thesis that you find out who your friends are. My friends for life are Professor Samuel Miao, my second reader, and Ms. Judith Hilliard, my third reader. Both of you are very special to me and I could not have achieved this measure of success without your support! Thank you. I would like to dedicate this work to my sister, Jeanne Marie Heath, and my brother, Brian Charles Heath. I will miss both of you forever. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...1 Part I Camp Carson to the Michigan State University Campus…………………….9 Part II Fort Leonard Wood……………………………………………………………………..130 Part III North to Alaska……………………………………………………………………….…..208 Part IV Fort Hood and Freedom………………………………………………………………259 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………………………..306 vi Preface Growing up in a military family is different in many ways from growing up in one residing in one residing in a settled civilian community. I lived in three different states before I was six-months old. I attended three first grades in two different states, Illinois and Michigan, and three high schools in two different states, Alaska and Texas. Ultimately, I would attend nine different schools before I graduated from high school. When I was three years old, my father went off to the Korean Peninsula to fight in a long and bloody war. He returned when I was five, and I barely remembered him. A military installation is like an island fortress. The citadels my family called home had names like Camp Carson, Fort Leonard Wood, Fort Wainwright, Fort Richardson, and Fort Hood. Residents of these bastions needed special stickers on their car’s windshield to gain access. Sometimes a special identification card was the passport to entry. These self-contained metropolises were often located in wooded wastes or frozen arctic tundra miles from any large cities or civilian settlements. A sense of insularity was ever present. Our lives were built around the facilities the military saw fit to locate on these installations. To purchase groceries, we shopped at the commissary because it advertised that its products were 25-40% cheaper than the grocery stores’ and often 10-20 miles closer. We shopped at the PX, short for Post Exchange, because items there were significantly less expensive vii than “out in town.” If we were ill, our moms took us to the dispensary for medical care. There were even dentists to fill our teeth and cheap gas to fill our cars. First- run movies and service clubs were provided to meet our entertainment needs. The offspring of members of the military are called “brats.” It is a term of endearment, a brand name as meaningful to us as Apple, Ralph Lauren, and BMW might be to users of those products. All one brat has to say to another brat is, “I’m a brat,” and there is an instantaneous connection, a bond between two strangers, because both have shared many experiences such as frequent unplanned and unwanted moves, changes of school, loss of close friends, and loss of community. Brats behave differently than their civilian counterparts. Rowdy children are the responsibility of the active-duty member of the family. Housing is free on these vast forts, but it is a privilege, not a right. An out-of-control child can cost a soldier his or her on-base housing. Parents and the military community at large keep their children under constant scrutiny for proper behavior. In my family, children were treated like valuable toys that daddy kept in a special box on a shelf in his closet. When guests came over, we were taken out of our box and put on display. We were asked or expected to do tricks and shine like very expensive toys so that everyone could witness the greatness of our father and the happiness of our Army family. My father’s behavior was not unusual. Every aspect of a soldier’s life could be used to give or deny a promotion. Many of these families operated like miniature military units. The general is the active duty member in the family. This was almost always the father. A 2 general’s orders were never to be questioned. Those who questioned orders, hesitated in fulfilling orders, or in any way acted independently of the general’s orders were severely punished until all independent thought was driven from their minds. In addition to being a military family, ours was an Irish-Catholic family as well. Daddy was the pope of our family as well as its general. Catholicism supported his form of martial law and made it stick by also making it a mortal sin to have an independent thought or an out-of-place urge. Nothing was permitted, and everything was repressed unless the general assented. My days as a brat ended just as the war in Viet Nam began to escalate and my life lacked some of the trauma that today’s brats face as one and, sadly, sometimes both parents go off to war.

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