Happy Birthday, Patrick

 The year was 1968. On the world scene, this was the year of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, a surprise attack in January by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong against military and civilian targets in South Vietnam, marking the beginning of anti-war protests in the States.

At home in the U.S. on April 4th, Civil Rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. He was only 39. The tragic death of this non-violent man set us all back on our heels and changed the course of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s.

On June 6th, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. The world was going crazy.

I was twenty-one years old, living on the economy in Hallstadt, Germany, with my husband of 2-1/2 years, Mike Hogan, receiving this news of frightening world events from the Army's Stars and Stripes Newspaper days after the fact, no TV, no radio. And while our friends back home were listening to new music hits like "Hey Jude" by the Beatles, "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding and "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon and Garfunkel" we had a small record player and only two records, "Ode to Billie Joe" by Bobbie Gentry and "Ike and Tina's Greatest Hits" which we played over and over and over.

About to give birth to my first child, I visited the obstetrician at the Army post in Bamberg on June 8 and was immediately sent, by way of ambulance, to the Army hospital in Nuremberg. Approximately 36 hours later Patrick John was born, healthy and handsome, a loved and wanted baby, and to be my one and only.

Army babies flying back to the States were supposed to be six weeks old but an exception was made for Patrick and he flew with me from Frankfort to New York when he was just a month old. His passport photo is a favorite of mine. Mike flew home on a military plane ten days later.

 

 

 

 

 

We lived in Illinois for two years before moving out west to Colorado in June of 1970. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And by spring of 1971 Patrick had a new Dad, Bob Russell, a 29-yr-old Navy Vietnam Veteran and native Coloradoan. Mike Hogan moved back to Illinois where he remarried and had four more children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For fifty-five years Patrick has been a Coloradoan with a desire to see the world. I am so proud of the man he is today, overcoming hurdles and challenges, one decision at a time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday, Patrick. Thank you for making me a mother in 1968...and a grandmother...and a mother-in-law...and a very happy old lady!