First Contact

The warm humid air hit me like a damp facecloth as my head cleared the door of the aircraft and I stepped onto the ramp. It was the same mix of humidity tinged with wood smoke that I remembered from Clark Air Base fifteen years before. My glasses immediately fogged, and after I wiped them off before walking down the stairs to the tarmac, my first impression was that I might have walked into a completely different world. On both sides of the Passenger Terminal was a wild smattering of different military aircraft, from T-29s, to P-3 Orions, to C-30s, to C- 141s. Ahead of me, beyond the terminal, loomed tall concrete oblong buildings with red terra- cotta roofs, surrounded by palm trees. Beyond that was jungle, with the terra-cotta roofs of houses poking out occasionally from the foliage. The hills ahead and behind me smoked with the ground-level clouds that signaled a recent past tropical rain.

It was unreal.

But, it was also very real, because the small group of folks in a mixture of uniforms and civilian clothes near the door to the Passenger Terminal were all looking at me, my wife Susan, and two daughters Gwen and Annette with interest that signaled they knew I was their new Medical Group commander.

My heart was somewhere between the glass ball in my stomach and my throat, but I walked forward with what I hoped looked like a relaxed smile.

The flight had been uneventful. Having closed the sale on our house in California literally en route to the Sacramento airport to make the mandatory port-call date, we bounced off Charlotte, North Carolina, bearing in addition two totally disoriented older cats whose catbox the night prior to departing for Panama had consisted of an improvised box full of sand furtively scooped from a minimally used cigarette-butt stand. The next morning we were up at 3:30 AM to make a 6 AM government contract flight to Howard on American Tourister Airlines. I had wondered en route whether this corporate entity might be the successor of Air America, which the CIA had operated from 1954 to 1976, but I figured it wasn’t worth (or safe) asking.

At least, it wasn’t the same contract Boeing 747 that we had ridden sixteen years earlier from Vallejo to Clark Air Base in the Philippines. That aerial Frankenstein had two engines marked in English, one in Arabic, and one in a language I didn’t recognize, and the instructions on the latrines were also a Babel of languages indicating where they had originated.

By comparison, this had been a piece of cake. I could read the notices on all four engine nacelles, and that at least was comforting.

Prior to leaving Travis, my ever-patient Medical Center Commander, Brigadier General “Randy” Randolph, had given me a wall plaque that said, “On each ship there is a man who in the hour of emergency or peril at sea can turn to no other man. There is one who alone is ultimately responsible for the sage navigation, engineering performance, accurate gunfire, and morale of his ship. He is the commanding officer. He is the ship!” Inspiring words, but daunting.

So, armed with a bravado that wasn’t reflective of my true inner state at that moment, I walked forward and gripped the hands of the current commander, Col Rechtenwald, and his leadership team, knowing that our interactions would be the difference between our ship making port or foundering at sea.

We talked and shook hands, while I frantically tried to imprint the names of these new key associates. Remembering names has never been a strong point with me. Susan sometimes wistfully commented that I carried an ID card all the time so I remembered my own name. I was constantly worried that the lack of that critical neuronal wiring might be misinterpreted as evidence of lack of interest or engagement. In a command setting it was an essential skill that I simply had to work at much harder.

Anyway, here we were, pleasantly discussing the trip, the climate, the challenges facing us, and meanwhile sizing each other up and down, thinking what the future might hold for us all. The relief in Col Rechtenwald’s body language was clear. His strenuous efforts to bridge the gap between the sudden loss of Gorgas’ medical support and the accelerated building of multiple new facilities and the leadership structure needed to support them had clearly been exhausting. I secretly envied his ability at the time to exit before it all came to a head.

After a half hour of meeting, greeting, and discussing, I was handed the keys to a staff car into which our baggage had been loaded along with the terrified cats’ carrier and told that I should follow another staff car that would precede me first to the Corazol Veterinary Holding Facility and then to the Albrook AFB Guest Quarters.

“Here we go,” I thought. Having heard stories of the legendary driving conditions in Latin America, I looked over at Susan and the girls, took a deep breath, turned the ignition key, and prepared to convoy with the driver of the staff car ahead of me. Left out of the parking lot.

Right at a turn next to the 24th Aeromedical Squadron building. A short drive toward the jungle with a large group of multistory buildings on the left that had to be Wing HQ across a large parade ground. Left again at a stop kitty-corner from a building labeled “Commissary.” A couple miles down a gently winding two-lane road past the Farfan Housing Area. Up a gentle hill to the front gate, and then to the right out through a cloverleaf onto the InterAmerican Highway, with the signs pointing to Rodman Naval Base, Arriajan, La Chorerra to the left, and Panama City to the right.

My first view of Panama traffic was intimidating, even to an experienced driver on California’s freeways. Although built to carry two lanes in each direction, the InterAmerican Highway seemed to be carrying three lanes’ worth of traffic. All at high speed. Lane-change blinkers?

Who needs them? Drivers hurtled in single-minded determination past a huge Sketchers billboard toward the Bridge of the Americas with a single-minded determination to reach their destination in minimum time, at whatever cost. Although I was following the staff car ahead of me closely, one man driving a medium-sized lorry passed on the right shoulder, slanted diagonally between me and the staff car ahead, and successfully captured an empty spot barely longer than him, miraculously without causing physical damage to either of us. The mental damage was all mine. We reached the bridge, and I saw for the first time a three-lane bridge road-coned to make two lanes toward Panama City and one outbound. All three lanes’ worth of traffic inbound to the city now collapsed into two stop-and-go lanes. I felt the bridge gently bucking under me. The fact that we were packed in bumper-to-bumper didn’t alter the intense competition for space. More than once a car barely able to fit between me and my escort muscled in between us and then muscled out. A zoo of brightly painted buses also joined the fray. It would have been fascinating if I wasn’t fixated on just trying not to lose the forward staff car or having a major accident. Finally, we hit a curving exit to the right, and followed a winding off- ramp that deposited us on the Amador Causeway. My escort turned right. I gunned the engine to avoid being blocked by a careening multicolored bus and followed him past bicycle shops, small grocery stores, and a large Panamanian Government Building to Calle Arnulfo Arias. I turned left, and glimpsed the imposing mass of the Panama Canal Commission headquarters for the first time through the buildings and trees on the right. We turned right at Avenida Gaillard and passed a sign to Albrook AFB, stopping at the Veterinary Holding Area.

As I brought the car to a halt and put on the emergency brake, my wife turned to me and said “I think I’m going to want you to be driving the first few times we go outside a Base.” After even that short drive, I definitely understood her feeling.

Still keyed-up from my first driving experience in Panama, I got out of the car and stood for a moment thinking “This is going to be a challenge on multiple levels.” We unloaded the cats and checked them into the Holding Facility. Veterinary records and immunization certificates were carefully checked, and we were shown to a room lined with old but clean-appearing metal cages. Outside was a large fenced-in grassy exercise area where a half dozen other newbies like us walked their dogs or cats on leashes. We were assured we could come to visit anytime during the quarantine and that the cats would be fed on a schedule. If we wished they would be taken outside daily. The girls petted the two disoriented felines and wished them “goodbye” for their mandatory two-week quarantine. We got back into our cars, and turned left out of the parking lot, following our escort to and through the front gate of Albrook AFB.

Within the first hour of my time in Panama, I got my first inkling of what Base closure meant. We drove through almost empty streets with visibly empty buildings and houses until we came to what had been an impressive large Officers Club that looked almost deserted. Three cars sat in a parking lot built for fifty. We went inside. I presented my ID and my orders, and was issued the key to a room in the Distinguished Visitor quarters. My escort gave me a phone number to call when we were settled in and departed back...