So now me and the wife will be leaving Utah and the United States around the 19th of September. It feels so weird to be leaving Hill AFB after three years here, I m
ean it's the place where I really did grow up life wise and career wise. I of course met my beautiful wife here, deployed to Iraq, and took many TDYs from Wyoming to Florida! I even met the best friend I probably could ever of had in Mikhail (Mike) Strong and unfortunately lost my best friend in a tragic traffic accident. Either it was the pleasure or the displeasure of being the last person he spoke to before he died, I remember that morning well, I was at the Air Force Academy and had been woken up by Mike's call, he was still trying to talk me into letting him pick me up at the airport in Salt Lake but I told him I was just going to have Erin do it, then we talked about the bad weather he was having and the crazy weather and snow at the Academy, we said our good-byes and maybe now I would of thought of something better to say than just "...take care, talk to you later."That night I got a phone call from Andrea at work at Hill and I thought it was going to be the taunting phone call making fun of my blindness from the PRK, but it was the unimaginable. She told me to sit down and that she had terrible news. She told me of the accident and at first I thought it was a joke and then I realized it wasn't. I sat there for a few minutes and had no tears (other than my eyes were teary due to the PRK surgery) or emotion after I hung the phone up. I sat there and sat there, doing nothing, in this lame hotel room all by myself. I called Erin and we talked about it for a good half-hour, a few tears were shed. That night I cried like a little baby and went to sleep without any medication for the eyes. The next day I got a phone call from a friend at work and they told me when the funeral was going to be, the day I got back to Utah, I couldn't even go to his funeral, I was never so depressed. All my life I've had very few friends and the ones, especially Mike, that were able to crack me have become my best friends. So leaving Utah will definitely hurt me, though I may not shed a tear, as I'm very stoic, I will have a broken heart leavin
g this very special place in my life, the place where I met my wife who I love so dearly, the place where I grew from a high school graduate to a highly respected and decorated Airman, the place where I met and lost my best friend ever, and the place where all of these memories will rest in my heart.In the words of Confederate General James P. Longstreet: "I may be a Georgia man but part of my heart will always lay here in old Virginia." Speaking of his service in the state of Virginia under Robert E. Lee.
