they broke down some of those barriers. I recall that there was a was a public park with rides, roller coasters, and the whole enchilada near where I lived. It also had a swimming pool that blacks were not allowed to go into, but community got it to the point where we could go in that pool. But still the peo- ple who owned Kennywood Park didn't want to abide by the law. Eventually a compromise was made, and the swimming pool was replaced with a water system that had boat rides. On one of my recent trips back home most of these facilities no longer in exist. After the steel mill shut down in the late 1980’ sthe town almost dried up. But my original hometown was a better setting than North Carolina, which I got an opportunity to find out about in 1949. SGIG Matthews : All right, so let's move on to your time with the Air Force, and how you enlisted. And then more importantly, how you made your connection to Masonry. SGIG Blue: I enlisted on June 14th, 1955, and basically, wound up in a career field, that was MOS or AFS seed. It was a dual situation. And it started off with acres if you have ever heard of the air traffic control crew. There are squadrons up air traffic control. They used to call it “ acres of chicken shit. ” That's what they used to call AACS was the name on the outfit. Well as you can probably figure out, I was an AACS, which is a teletype operator and my first assignment was Inazuki Air Force Base in Japan, after I went to school and Cheyenne, Wyoming. I was in Japan from December ‘55 to December ‘57. I then moved on to Homestead Air Force Base, PA, another AACS outfit. Comms started to change around this time and AACS was no longer main- stream of communicating. We worked with air weather observers and forecasters. We were a communi- cations backup and we coordinated with similar units throughout the country or state where we were assigned. My next assignment after Pennsylvania was Incirlik, Turkey and I was assigned to the headquarters of- fice as a clerk. I was there for 18 months alone while my family remained in Middletown, PA. When I left Turkey, my next assignment was the Lockheed Installation in Sunnyvale, CA. This is when my ca- reer field changed again where I used R291 for communications, and that skillset put me in cryptog- raphy. Soon after, I went to my next assignment which was Wiesbaden, Germany in 1967. I was assigned to APO whatever and nobody knew where I was going to be assigned until finally, they kept digging and they found out I was going to be assigned to the Base Head Quarters there in Vietnam. And I said, “ Well, how in the world I get an assignment, the Vietnam I asked for Panama and Puerto Rico? ” I went to the personnel office, and they dug into the regulations, and it said that I could request an as- signment to Panama or Puerto Rico because I wasn't entitled to go on consecutive overseas tours. I asked them why I was allowed to submit the request if it wasn ’ t allowed? ” They had no answers for that. I was going to appeal the Vietnam assignment but then I got to thinking and said that I might as well get it over with because I would likely deploy their eventually. So, I went to Vietnam from Janu- ary 1968 to January 19’69. However, when the Tet offense happened, I wished that I had appealed the assignment! We got through it, but it was something! My next assignment was Omaha, NE in the Strategic Air Command HQ. At the time, we were prom- ised that after leaving Vietnam we would get our assignment of choice. That worked for most folks, but since I had an occupational specialty, I didn't get my assignment of choice. I was in Omaha for nine months and was constantly on the phone with the Security Service Command asking them to get me another assignment since their unit was the biggest operation that could use my job skills. They eventu- ally offered me Alaska or Berlin, Germany. I consulted with my wife, and we chose Berlin. I stayed in Berlin until 1973 and my final assignment in the Air Force was McClellan Air Force Base, CA. On that assignment I did not work in my AFSC directly, it was more of an administrative role in security, be- cause I was a senior person at that point of my career. I was the 2049th Communication Squadron
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