1938: Ghosts That I Have Known

Sitting in our lazy-boy chair, no further than ten feet from me in his signature black and tan checkered Pendleton shirt with the worn-out breast pocket from carrying sharpened pencils there, his well-worn denim jeans with wide leather belt and lace-up Canadian ankle-high leather boots with glove leather linings, my Dad looked as happy, healthy and substantial as I remembered him from his salad days. In his usual calm, clear voice, he told me that my family’s career and financial difficulties would soon end; and they did. I was overjoyed to see him. My Dad had died more than four years earlier.In 1977, at age 44, that visit was the tipping point for me. Suddenly, all doubt faded away. I became a firm believer in some kind of life after death. During that same week, Dad walked past his favorite nephew on that young man’s first morning of work at the San Francisco Examiner newspaper and congratulated him with a big happy smile and his signature thumb against forefinger salute of approval. That event was followed by a random array of gliding, touching, whispering names, furniture rearranging, noisily stalking and bed-sharing ghosts; a ghost of a young girl that glided through a closed wooden door as a dozen sailors and their wives watched in awe; the locally famous Texas Wesleyan University Gay 90’s ghost who faded from a normal appearance into an empty theater chair at a distance of five feet; playful ghosts that borrowed notebooks, keys, walking canes, etc. then several days later would leave them on otherwise empty furniture that had been fully searched several times before.These paranormal events were cited in part for those grieving the loss of loved ones. Dave’s message is two-fold: “Do not despair, if all goes well, you and your departed loved ones will be reunited in the Hereafter,” and “I am no longer afraid to die; and you should not be afraid either.

About the Author

Raised in a low-rent sector of Wichita, Kansas during the Great Depression, Dust Bowl and WWII, Dave and his brothers were unaware pf being financially challenged because everyone they knew was in the same boat. Although a high- school All-American in journalism, Dave paid his way through college by playing defensive end and kicking footballs, rough necking in the oil patch, painting airplanes at Boeing Aircraft Company, working as a 17-year old bartender and bouncer in a honkey tonk road-house, and eventually on the G.I. Bill. Disgusted with the makeshift athletic accommodations, Dave lived in a lean-to tent on a river bank outside of El Dorado, Kansas for several months while attending junior college without missing a stroke in the classroom or on the gridiron. Dave rejected a contract with the Boston Red Sox baseball farm system to maintain his college athletic eligibility.During the Korean War, Dave was a U.S. Marine automatic rifleman grunt, a military policeman, a drill instructor at the San Diego Recruit Depot while in the pipeline for Officers' Candidate School, and an intended career Marine pilot. After Dave crashed, burned and nearly drowned in 1955, he completed a tour with Sixth Fleet Air Intelligence attached to a clandestine atomic bomber squadron operating off the USS Coral Sea and the USS Lake Champlain aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean Sea and on the ground in the Middle East and the Holy Lands. On temporary loan to the real spooks operating out of Beirut and Jerusalem without the blessings of the host countries, Dave roamed the deserts of Jordan, Israel and Lebanon and was shot at by both Palestinian terrorists and Israelis!Dave was the executive wordsmith for three of the largest, most successful defense industry giants in the world: the Chrysler Corporation Space Division, the LTV Aerospace Corporation, and the Lockheed Martin Corporation.Dave is a colonel in the WWII Confederate Air Corp (fighter pilots only) since 1954. At several CAC midnight parties, Dave was the only member present who had not shot down an enemy aircraft. However, he did bugger a couple of our aircraft. Dave has published eight books.

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