{"id":114,"date":"2008-04-07T23:52:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T23:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/04\/two-air-force-friends-ill-miss-you-part-1.html"},"modified":"2008-04-07T23:52:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T23:52:00","slug":"two-air-force-friends-ill-miss-you-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/04\/two-air-force-friends-ill-miss-you-part-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Two Air Force Friends…I’ll Miss You! Part 1."},"content":{"rendered":"

This has been quite the past two weeks. Two deaths.<\/p>\n

You might remember me mentioning<\/a> that I’d had a slow day because I was upset about a high school friend’s death<\/a> in combat in Afghanistan. When I’d found out Willie Jefferson was a fellow Airman, and I’d learned more about what he was doing for the Air Force and what he was doing when he was killed, I grew even more emotional. I have to admit, I don’t think Dave had ever seen me this down.<\/p>\n

I found out he went by “Will” in recent years. I apologize for still calling him “Willie”, his nickname in high school. Here’s his obituary<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, March 26th, Wendy watched my boys while I drove down to Pope AFB<\/a>, just south of here and I had the honor of seeing Willie’s military memorial<\/a>, and it was done with grace and dignity. Willie was an Air Force Special Operations NCO and he was working with Army Special Operations while in Afghanistan, and it was quite a sight to see both the Air Force Special Operations<\/a> and Army Special Forces commanders at the memorial. This was my first military memorial for a fallen Airman, and I held my emotions in check until I saw the faces of his wife and daughter as they were leaving the ceremony with the offical party. The pure sorrow was heartbreaking, and upon seeing them I felt a pang of sadness I hadn’t felt since I came home from the hospital after Jacob’s birth without Jacob (who remained in the NICU for his first 6 days).<\/p>\n

It was also bittersweet to re-kindle some friendships that had slacked off over the years, as many of my high school friends took time to look on MySpace and Facebook and apparently came across my profiles. Von and Melba, it’s great to hear from you again!<\/p>\n

Like I’d mentioned on the 24th, Dave told me he was surprised at how hard I had taken Willie’s death, since I hadn’t seen — or even HEARD about him — in the past 17 years. I was surprised, too.<\/p>\n

So, in honor of TSgt William Jefferson, I’ve found this really nice picture of him that I took at the 1990 Lake Taylor High School Ring Dance. That cute gal next to him is Susan<\/a>, still one of my best friends.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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From 2008 04 07 Od…<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

But then, exactly one week later, I received news of another death in my Air Force family, someone much closer in my recent life. I put that into a separate post — the second part started to get long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This has been quite the past two weeks. Two deaths. You might remember me mentioning that I’d had a slow day because I was upset about a high school friend’s death in combat in Afghanistan. When I’d found out Willie Jefferson was a fellow Airman, and I’d learned more about what he was doing for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[],"tags":[622,14],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ycQ0-1Q","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":108,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/03\/its-been-one-of-those-days.html","url_meta":{"origin":114,"position":0},"title":"It’s Been One of Those Days…","date":"25 March 08","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been sorta, well, SLOW today. Last evening at about 11:30pm, I received an e-mail from my friend Susan in Norfolk about her seeing news of one of our high school classmates getting killed in Afghanistan. So I did a little research and found out that our friend, William Jefferson,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":115,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/04\/two-air-force-friends-ill-miss-you-part-2.html","url_meta":{"origin":114,"position":1},"title":"Two Air Force Friends…I’ll Miss You! Part 2.","date":"08 April 08","format":false,"excerpt":"Anthony Pearson is someone who has been part of my Air Force life since Day 1, quite literally. It was 1995, and I had my orders to my first duty assignment at Fort Polk, LA. I happened to report to the base the same week that MSgt Tony Pearson and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":517,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/02\/how-to-be-an-air-force-wife-2011-style.html","url_meta":{"origin":114,"position":2},"title":"How to Be An Air Force Wife, 2011 Style…","date":"10 February 11","format":false,"excerpt":"The reason I was inspired to post about that 1957 Air Force wife book last week was because I was thinking about getting some \"calling cards\" of my own. \u00a0I've done this in the past, it's great for trading playdate information on the playground. \u00a0It's also much classier than scrawling\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force wife\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lh5.googleusercontent.com\/_yz59FVsseJY\/TVQODsuGjHI\/AAAAAAABQ5k\/6d8YoyKUOcM\/s400\/IMG_4255.JPG?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":609,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/07\/change-of-command-time.html","url_meta":{"origin":114,"position":3},"title":"Change of Command Time!","date":"12 July 11","format":false,"excerpt":"Hey -- is this lady really juggling for you? \u00a0In my blog post draft this is animated!Today I'm doing a \"reset\" of sorts. \u00a0As great a time as we had at Disneyworld, on our road trip, and hosting our North Carolina friends\u00a0showing off the sights of the Florida Panhandle, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":871,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2012\/04\/working-some-magic-here-please-comment-to-help-me-test-things.html","url_meta":{"origin":114,"position":4},"title":"Working Some Magic Here…Please Comment to Help Me Test Things!","date":"13 April 12","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm trying out a new commenting tool on my blog: LiveFyre. \u00a0I've seen it work well on a friend's blog, so I thought I'd give it a go over here. \u00a0One of the things it's supposed to resolve is tying together Facebook and Twitter comments with the blog's own comments.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force wife\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/IMG_2943-1024x768.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":701,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2012\/01\/my-very-own-little-tin-tin.html","url_meta":{"origin":114,"position":5},"title":"My Very Own Little Tin Tin!","date":"18 January 12","format":false,"excerpt":"I know, I've been pretty scarce. \u00a0Sorry. \u00a0I was in quite a funk the 1-2 weeks following Christmas. \u00a0Then I spent last week in Nebraska doing some Air Force Reserve work.Nothing in particular with the funk, I just didn't feel like writing.I also have been pretty slow with the camera\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-3Nli9KV39Wc\/TxYvlpJL9RI\/AAAAAAABc0c\/EjgIwE7GCiU\/s640\/TimmyTinTin.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}