Ayn’s Military and Love Life
From James Donahue‘s Journal
After Ayn left home and joined the Army our contact with her was rare. She went through boot camp in Georgia, then shipped out to South Korea for a few years. Before she left the states she called home to announce that she had just gotten married to a man she met at the base. We never knew what happened but that marriage ended in either divorce or annulment within weeks.
Ayn was trained as a computer technician and from the best we were able to determine, spent her time in South Korea maintaining the computer systems that operated the Army’s heavy equipment, including tanks and gun batteries at the Seventy-Eighth Parallel border with North Korea. Military forces have been staring down their gun barrels at one another there since the Korean War ended in a temporary truce. Thus that war never really ended.
When she came back to the states, Ayn decided she liked the military and was going to make a career out of it. While back at Fort Stewart, Georgia, Ayn met James Bishop, a tall and striking black man. She called one day to announce that she and James were getting married and we were invited to the wedding. This occurred when we were living on Elk Creek Road and while we owned the customized Dodge van. So we took the van to Georgia, with my mother and dad and Jennifer all going with us. It was a grand experience going to Columbus, staying briefly with the Bishop family, touring the Army base, and attending the wedding in a chapel on the base. We found the Bishops to be interesting and well educated people but having as difficult a time dealing with entertaining a Caucasian family in their home as we felt being with them. We learned that James had been an exotic dancer and had a wild reputation and that after meeting us, were hopeful that Ayn would have had a positive effect on him.
James was a charmer and an easy person to like. But after Ayn was reassigned to a stint at a base in Germany, James, who was not in the military and had no occupation, soon got into deep trouble. Ayn called us from Germany one day. She was all distraught because James had been arrested and charged by German authorities with involvement in narcotics. We thought it was cocaine but we never knew. Doris spent hours calling our U. S. Congressman, Bob Traxler’s office, seeking help in getting James released from German custody. Somehow Traxler got involved in the case and James was sent back to the United States.
We remember Ayn, James and their first born child, James Jr., who was called “Chucky” came to visit us while we were living in the little house on Deckerville Road. They also brought a large German shepherd dog along. It was a tight and uncomfortable squeeze getting everybody in our little house. I think Jennifer was packed off into a bed at the main house. After that visit Ayn had her second child with James, another boy named Bradley. She was pregnant at a critical time, when the soldiers at Fort Stewart were packing up to go to Iraq for the first fighting there in 1991. Consequently Ayn was left behind, much to our relief.
I think the marriage was going sour even at the time she got pregnant with Bradley and it was not long after that when Ayn and James divorced. That was when we learned that James had been beating Ayn. It was just after the Iraq fighting that President George H. W. Bush ordered a reduction in military spending. After spending 12 years with the military and reaching the rank of sergeant, Ayn was encouraged to leave the service. She was told that women would never be given the opportunity to get any higher in rank than she already was. If she retired they would give her a cash bonus of something like $20,000. She took the money and went into civilian life, but chose to stay in Georgia.
She made one last trip to Michigan at about this time. I don’t remember the circumstances, but I think she just came home to be with her family and heal. I remember that she was broke and didn’t have a car. We mustered up what money we could and bought her a used car at a Caro dealership. It was an older Oldsmobile that appeared to be a good solid car. I remember seeing her off for the last time after she stopped at my office in Sandusky. We hugged on the sidewalk by that green car before she started her long drive back to Georgia. The car broke down on the way but eventually it got her there. I felt bad that we had picked a bad car.
Ayn used the money she received from the military to try to establish a business venture. I think she went into a partnership with another person in a vacuum cleaning sales business that quickly failed. She tried other jobs and eventually got a job selling cars. She told a story about how competitive the car sales business was, and how the older experienced salesmen were beating her to the customers and how she nearly starved trying to make this job work out. One day she decided to use her one advantage over the male salesmen on that lot. She was young, attractive, and aggressive. She came to work wearing as sexy an outfit as she could find in her wardrobe, and scored her first sale the same day. And that was her winning formula. Within a short time Ayn was competing with all of the other sales people on the lot and making good money. She discovered that she really liked selling cars. By now she was living and working in Savannah.
Ayn eventually met another man, a prison guard in the Savannah area. They did not marry but moved in together, jointly buying a nice ranch-styled house on the outskirts of Savannah. That was the situation Ayn was in the day during the summer of 1995 when I got the call from her that brought me on another strange trip to Savannah. She asked if I would be interested in buying a car. She said she was in competition that month with the other salesmen for a certain number of cars sold and she just needed to move one final car to win. She said she had a used Buick that had been part of an estate left by an old man who died and thought it would make a good car for Jennifer. She assured me that it was a good car and would be very cheap. We already had two cars in the yard and did not need a third vehicle, but buying the car would give me a chance to go to Georgia and see Ayn, so I agreed.
The question was, how would I get to Georgia to pick up that car. I checked the Greyhound fares and discovered that there was a bus that ran non-stop from Detroit to Savannah once daily and the bus line was offering trips anywhere that year for just under $100. I decided that was how I would travel. But Doris was going to have to drive me to the bus terminal, and I did not want her to have to deal with driving out of Detroit. I knew the bus terminal there was in downtown Detroit, a very hard place to get in and out of. She didn’t like this idea either. So we chose to go to the Greyhound station in Saginaw where I could hop a bus to Detroit, and get there about an hour before the bus left for Savannah. We drove to Saginaw, I bought my ticket and we waited for my bus. We discovered, to our horror, that the bus was running about an hour late that day. I did some calculating and realized that unless that bus picked up some time between Saginaw and Detroit, I would miss my connection at Detroit and be forced to spend 24 hours at the Detroit terminal, waiting for the next express bus to Georgia. I decided not to take the bus and asked for my money back. The ticket agent said I had to file a formal request with the company and that a check would be mailed. (I never got that refund).
About that time, my parents contacted me to say they were driving from Kentucky to Michigan to attend the Andrews Reunion. They wanted me to come to the reunion. I hit on a plan to go to the reunion and then drive Mom and Dad back to Kentucky. After a visit there the plan was to fly from Nashville, which was not far from where they lived, to Savannah. This worked out. It was a memorable time with Mom and Dad and the last time I ever saw my mother in relatively good health. I remember that we both woke up sometime in the middle of the night, found each other wandering around the house in Kentucky, and sat in the kitchen drinking tea and talking for a long time. The next day my plane was late and Mom and Dad waited with me for passengers to board. I recall as I was about to go into the boarding terminal, looking back and seeing Mom still standing there, a sad look on her face. It was as if she knew it would be our last time together.
I took a cheap flight with an almost unknown airline that flew into Atlanta. From there I had a two hour lay-over for another flight into Savannah. I remember that there were not many passengers on that late night flight. I shared a seat with another young man and we were located right at the front of the plane near the place where the stewardesses worked. We hit it right off and when the other fellow suggested that we have a drink on the flight, I agreed. We tipped a few drinks on that brief hop into Savannah. When we landed at about midnight, Ayn was there to meet me.
She had the next day off and spent the day taking me around Savannah to see some of the historic places. She also treated me to meals at some interesting seafood haunts. One we went to was on the water. She went out of her way to show me a good time. I think I stayed with Ayn and her boyfriend about two days. They had a big swimming pool in the back yard and we spent a lot of time in that pool. One night we went to town and bought liquor and some mix and drank mixed drinks with ice from a blender together at the pool. We laughed and laughed. After so many years under the yoke of the church, Ayn said she never thought she would ever be drinking with her father. I had a good time with the boys as well. I remember one morning at breakfast when we put cheerios on our eyes like monocles. We laughed a lot during that visit.
While I did not see much of Ayn’s boyfriend, I did notice that when he was around, he was somewhat of a disciplinarian with the boys. He made them follow some pretty strict rules around the house. But Ayn seemed happy and I was glad for that.
The day I got in the old Buick and started the trip back to Michigan was hot. The weather report called for extreme heat with temperatures hitting over 100 degrees from Florida north along the Eastern seaboard. No worry, the car had air conditioning. Or so I thought. But when I tried out the car, the air conditioner did not work. I took it to a local mechanic, thinking that the problem might be something simple like a blown fuse. But I learned that the condenser was shot, and the entire unit had to be replaced at a price more than what I paid for the car. I bought a fan that ran off the cigarette lighter and mounted it on the dashboard, then started the long hot drive for home.
It was a drive I will not forget. The heat was unbearable. I had all of the car windows open and the little fan blowing directly in my face. I stripped down to my t-shirt, and the sweat was pouring down my face. My clothes were soaked. The heat and humidity were almost more than I could bear. I decided that rather than stop for the night I would just keep driving after the sun went down. But somewhere in the Carolinas, in the Appalachians, I noticed that my headlights were getting dimmer and dimmer and I realized that the car’s alternator was giving out. I had to stop. I saw a motel sign and pulled off to check in for the night. In my frustration I erroneously left the keys in the ignition and locked myself out of the car.
I checked into the motel that night without pajamas, a change of clothes, a comb or toothbrush. And I had no way of leaving without getting someone to help me break into that car. I called the local police, remembering a time when they used to help people open mistakenly locked car doors. But I was told they didn’t offer such services. I had to hire a locksmith. I could not get a locksmith to the motel until the next morning.
I got the car started and was back on the freeway briefly, but then the car began stalling, the red battery light went on. Luckily, I was near a rest stop and was able to coast off the highway and get near a telephone. But I was in trouble again. My attempt to get to a garage on battery power had failed. I waited for what seemed like hours for a wrecker. The next stop was in a garage at some town I will never remember. A rebuilt alternator had to be ordered, so I waited in that place, still in extreme heat, for still more hours. It was late in the afternoon by the time my car was repaired, and I could get back on the road. I was happy that I was carrying a credit card because it covered all of my expenses.
I was very tired by the time I was back on the road and the heat wave was still ravaging the coast. I decided to push for home this time, without any more stops. Instead of taking the regular route north on I-94, I had chosen to take I-77 which took me through the mountains and then north toward Cleveland. From there I swung west, by-passed Detroit and drove north to home. I remember how great it was driving after the sun went down and the cooler air from the lakes began to filter through the car. I tend to go into a strange kind of mental state when I am alone and on a long drive like that. I remember that the cicadas were out in great numbers, their sheer song penetrating all other sounds in the car as I drove past wooded areas with the car windows open. It was as if they were all welcoming me home. I was a happy man that night.
When I got home I learned that Doris had purchased Dusty’s trailer for $200 and agreed to buy his truck for another $2,500. He was still using it, however. Dusty had convinced Doris that we were going to need the trailer and a truck like his to traverse the roads on the reservation. I had no idea how we were going to get this equipment to Arizona. Also there was the problem of buying license plates in Michigan for a truck and trailer that we would use in Arizona. It was obvious that we were going to have to trust Dusty to drive the rig to Arizona and then take possession of it there. I smelled a rat, but Doris was convinced that it was a sound deal. Of course, it wasn’t.
From James Donahue‘s Journal
After Ayn left home and joined the Army our contact with her was rare. She went through boot camp in Georgia, then shipped out to South Korea for a few years. Before she left the states she called home to announce that she had just gotten married to a man she met at the base. We never knew what happened but that marriage ended in either divorce or annulment within weeks.
Ayn was trained as a computer technician and from the best we were able to determine, spent her time in South Korea maintaining the computer systems that operated the Army’s heavy equipment, including tanks and gun batteries at the Seventy-Eighth Parallel border with North Korea. Military forces have been staring down their gun barrels at one another there since the Korean War ended in a temporary truce. Thus that war never really ended.
When she came back to the states, Ayn decided she liked the military and was going to make a career out of it. While back at Fort Stewart, Georgia, Ayn met James Bishop, a tall and striking black man. She called one day to announce that she and James were getting married and we were invited to the wedding. This occurred when we were living on Elk Creek Road and while we owned the customized Dodge van. So we took the van to Georgia, with my mother and dad and Jennifer all going with us. It was a grand experience going to Columbus, staying briefly with the Bishop family, touring the Army base, and attending the wedding in a chapel on the base. We found the Bishops to be interesting and well educated people but having as difficult a time dealing with entertaining a Caucasian family in their home as we felt being with them. We learned that James had been an exotic dancer and had a wild reputation and that after meeting us, were hopeful that Ayn would have had a positive effect on him.
James was a charmer and an easy person to like. But after Ayn was reassigned to a stint at a base in Germany, James, who was not in the military and had no occupation, soon got into deep trouble. Ayn called us from Germany one day. She was all distraught because James had been arrested and charged by German authorities with involvement in narcotics. We thought it was cocaine but we never knew. Doris spent hours calling our U. S. Congressman, Bob Traxler’s office, seeking help in getting James released from German custody. Somehow Traxler got involved in the case and James was sent back to the United States.
We remember Ayn, James and their first born child, James Jr., who was called “Chucky” came to visit us while we were living in the little house on Deckerville Road. They also brought a large German shepherd dog along. It was a tight and uncomfortable squeeze getting everybody in our little house. I think Jennifer was packed off into a bed at the main house. After that visit Ayn had her second child with James, another boy named Bradley. She was pregnant at a critical time, when the soldiers at Fort Stewart were packing up to go to Iraq for the first fighting there in 1991. Consequently Ayn was left behind, much to our relief.
I think the marriage was going sour even at the time she got pregnant with Bradley and it was not long after that when Ayn and James divorced. That was when we learned that James had been beating Ayn. It was just after the Iraq fighting that President George H. W. Bush ordered a reduction in military spending. After spending 12 years with the military and reaching the rank of sergeant, Ayn was encouraged to leave the service. She was told that women would never be given the opportunity to get any higher in rank than she already was. If she retired they would give her a cash bonus of something like $20,000. She took the money and went into civilian life, but chose to stay in Georgia.
She made one last trip to Michigan at about this time. I don’t remember the circumstances, but I think she just came home to be with her family and heal. I remember that she was broke and didn’t have a car. We mustered up what money we could and bought her a used car at a Caro dealership. It was an older Oldsmobile that appeared to be a good solid car. I remember seeing her off for the last time after she stopped at my office in Sandusky. We hugged on the sidewalk by that green car before she started her long drive back to Georgia. The car broke down on the way but eventually it got her there. I felt bad that we had picked a bad car.
Ayn used the money she received from the military to try to establish a business venture. I think she went into a partnership with another person in a vacuum cleaning sales business that quickly failed. She tried other jobs and eventually got a job selling cars. She told a story about how competitive the car sales business was, and how the older experienced salesmen were beating her to the customers and how she nearly starved trying to make this job work out. One day she decided to use her one advantage over the male salesmen on that lot. She was young, attractive, and aggressive. She came to work wearing as sexy an outfit as she could find in her wardrobe, and scored her first sale the same day. And that was her winning formula. Within a short time Ayn was competing with all of the other sales people on the lot and making good money. She discovered that she really liked selling cars. By now she was living and working in Savannah.
Ayn eventually met another man, a prison guard in the Savannah area. They did not marry but moved in together, jointly buying a nice ranch-styled house on the outskirts of Savannah. That was the situation Ayn was in the day during the summer of 1995 when I got the call from her that brought me on another strange trip to Savannah. She asked if I would be interested in buying a car. She said she was in competition that month with the other salesmen for a certain number of cars sold and she just needed to move one final car to win. She said she had a used Buick that had been part of an estate left by an old man who died and thought it would make a good car for Jennifer. She assured me that it was a good car and would be very cheap. We already had two cars in the yard and did not need a third vehicle, but buying the car would give me a chance to go to Georgia and see Ayn, so I agreed.
The question was, how would I get to Georgia to pick up that car. I checked the Greyhound fares and discovered that there was a bus that ran non-stop from Detroit to Savannah once daily and the bus line was offering trips anywhere that year for just under $100. I decided that was how I would travel. But Doris was going to have to drive me to the bus terminal, and I did not want her to have to deal with driving out of Detroit. I knew the bus terminal there was in downtown Detroit, a very hard place to get in and out of. She didn’t like this idea either. So we chose to go to the Greyhound station in Saginaw where I could hop a bus to Detroit, and get there about an hour before the bus left for Savannah. We drove to Saginaw, I bought my ticket and we waited for my bus. We discovered, to our horror, that the bus was running about an hour late that day. I did some calculating and realized that unless that bus picked up some time between Saginaw and Detroit, I would miss my connection at Detroit and be forced to spend 24 hours at the Detroit terminal, waiting for the next express bus to Georgia. I decided not to take the bus and asked for my money back. The ticket agent said I had to file a formal request with the company and that a check would be mailed. (I never got that refund).
About that time, my parents contacted me to say they were driving from Kentucky to Michigan to attend the Andrews Reunion. They wanted me to come to the reunion. I hit on a plan to go to the reunion and then drive Mom and Dad back to Kentucky. After a visit there the plan was to fly from Nashville, which was not far from where they lived, to Savannah. This worked out. It was a memorable time with Mom and Dad and the last time I ever saw my mother in relatively good health. I remember that we both woke up sometime in the middle of the night, found each other wandering around the house in Kentucky, and sat in the kitchen drinking tea and talking for a long time. The next day my plane was late and Mom and Dad waited with me for passengers to board. I recall as I was about to go into the boarding terminal, looking back and seeing Mom still standing there, a sad look on her face. It was as if she knew it would be our last time together.
I took a cheap flight with an almost unknown airline that flew into Atlanta. From there I had a two hour lay-over for another flight into Savannah. I remember that there were not many passengers on that late night flight. I shared a seat with another young man and we were located right at the front of the plane near the place where the stewardesses worked. We hit it right off and when the other fellow suggested that we have a drink on the flight, I agreed. We tipped a few drinks on that brief hop into Savannah. When we landed at about midnight, Ayn was there to meet me.
She had the next day off and spent the day taking me around Savannah to see some of the historic places. She also treated me to meals at some interesting seafood haunts. One we went to was on the water. She went out of her way to show me a good time. I think I stayed with Ayn and her boyfriend about two days. They had a big swimming pool in the back yard and we spent a lot of time in that pool. One night we went to town and bought liquor and some mix and drank mixed drinks with ice from a blender together at the pool. We laughed and laughed. After so many years under the yoke of the church, Ayn said she never thought she would ever be drinking with her father. I had a good time with the boys as well. I remember one morning at breakfast when we put cheerios on our eyes like monocles. We laughed a lot during that visit.
While I did not see much of Ayn’s boyfriend, I did notice that when he was around, he was somewhat of a disciplinarian with the boys. He made them follow some pretty strict rules around the house. But Ayn seemed happy and I was glad for that.
The day I got in the old Buick and started the trip back to Michigan was hot. The weather report called for extreme heat with temperatures hitting over 100 degrees from Florida north along the Eastern seaboard. No worry, the car had air conditioning. Or so I thought. But when I tried out the car, the air conditioner did not work. I took it to a local mechanic, thinking that the problem might be something simple like a blown fuse. But I learned that the condenser was shot, and the entire unit had to be replaced at a price more than what I paid for the car. I bought a fan that ran off the cigarette lighter and mounted it on the dashboard, then started the long hot drive for home.
It was a drive I will not forget. The heat was unbearable. I had all of the car windows open and the little fan blowing directly in my face. I stripped down to my t-shirt, and the sweat was pouring down my face. My clothes were soaked. The heat and humidity were almost more than I could bear. I decided that rather than stop for the night I would just keep driving after the sun went down. But somewhere in the Carolinas, in the Appalachians, I noticed that my headlights were getting dimmer and dimmer and I realized that the car’s alternator was giving out. I had to stop. I saw a motel sign and pulled off to check in for the night. In my frustration I erroneously left the keys in the ignition and locked myself out of the car.
I checked into the motel that night without pajamas, a change of clothes, a comb or toothbrush. And I had no way of leaving without getting someone to help me break into that car. I called the local police, remembering a time when they used to help people open mistakenly locked car doors. But I was told they didn’t offer such services. I had to hire a locksmith. I could not get a locksmith to the motel until the next morning.
I got the car started and was back on the freeway briefly, but then the car began stalling, the red battery light went on. Luckily, I was near a rest stop and was able to coast off the highway and get near a telephone. But I was in trouble again. My attempt to get to a garage on battery power had failed. I waited for what seemed like hours for a wrecker. The next stop was in a garage at some town I will never remember. A rebuilt alternator had to be ordered, so I waited in that place, still in extreme heat, for still more hours. It was late in the afternoon by the time my car was repaired, and I could get back on the road. I was happy that I was carrying a credit card because it covered all of my expenses.
I was very tired by the time I was back on the road and the heat wave was still ravaging the coast. I decided to push for home this time, without any more stops. Instead of taking the regular route north on I-94, I had chosen to take I-77 which took me through the mountains and then north toward Cleveland. From there I swung west, by-passed Detroit and drove north to home. I remember how great it was driving after the sun went down and the cooler air from the lakes began to filter through the car. I tend to go into a strange kind of mental state when I am alone and on a long drive like that. I remember that the cicadas were out in great numbers, their sheer song penetrating all other sounds in the car as I drove past wooded areas with the car windows open. It was as if they were all welcoming me home. I was a happy man that night.
When I got home I learned that Doris had purchased Dusty’s trailer for $200 and agreed to buy his truck for another $2,500. He was still using it, however. Dusty had convinced Doris that we were going to need the trailer and a truck like his to traverse the roads on the reservation. I had no idea how we were going to get this equipment to Arizona. Also there was the problem of buying license plates in Michigan for a truck and trailer that we would use in Arizona. It was obvious that we were going to have to trust Dusty to drive the rig to Arizona and then take possession of it there. I smelled a rat, but Doris was convinced that it was a sound deal. Of course, it wasn’t.