“Change is Normal: Part 2” by Timothy Trainer

A simple question that is often asked is one of the most difficult and puzzling for me. What’s your hometown (a different version of this is: where did you grow up)? Hmm, that’s a good question. How should I answer that? I used to hesitate before answering. It took many, many years, meaning decades, before I settled on a pat answer that never explained very much. I would answer by saying that my father was in the military so we moved a lot.

For years I adopted my father’s hometown and home state as mine. There was good reason for this. After sailing from Japan to the United States in 1959, we drove cross country and spent the summer in Ohio, my father’s home state. Soon, we were off and living in South Carolina. Mid way through second grade, my father was headed to South Korea for a year being posted along the demilitarized zone. While he was away, I returned to Ohio.

After my father’s year in South Korea ended, he was posted to Ft. Knox, Kentucky. Rather than interrupt another school year, I finished the school year in Ohio in May 1963 before moving to Kentucky. Arriving on this massive army post, little did I know that this would be a time of “normalcy”. We lived on post. Ft. Knox had elementary schools, middle schools and a high school. It offered sports for the kids, pools and everything any other community has for families.

As a kid, it was an interesting place because this was the U.S. Army’s home of armor—tanks. Driving around parts of Ft. Knox meant seeing tanks rolling down the road. For people familiar with a shooting range, just imagine living near a tank range. Yes, tankers had to improve their aim just like someone shooting a pistol or rifle. The only problem was that living near a tank range is like living through earthquakes as those shells shook everything upon impact.

Ft. Knox felt like a hometown for a while. It’s late afternoon in August. It’s 1964. I’m splashing around with my two much younger brothers. We’re in one of those water filled vinyl or plastic swimming pools, but it isn’t really a pool. It’s something that holds water because it’s only 12 to 15 inches deep and maybe ten feet in diameter. The lining is secured around the metal frame. It’s on the back patio, providing a nice flat surface.

My ears catch something through the open back door.

I stopped. I get closer to the screen door and look through it. There’s a news bulletin of some kind on the television. I listen. The president is speaking. He mentions something about U.S. Navy ships. The ships were attacked halfway around the world, but it was important enough to interrupt the day’s television schedule to tell everyone about the incident. The effects would eventually be felt by my family and thousands of others.

Time passed. In our army neighborhood, we started to see more moving trucks loading up belongings. As the seasons changed and the school year started in September 1965, I would experience something for the first and only time. I started school in the same place for a third school year. It was nice to start a school year knowing lots of classmates rather than a bunch of new faces. But as the school year rolled on, more of my classmates would leave and fewer new kids arrived. In the spring of 1966, our turn arrived. We packed up and moved back to Ohio and to my father’s hometown in northeast Ohio.

The Vietnam War’s impact had finally made its presence felt to our household. What wasn’t known in the spring of 1966 was how much change was on the horizon. This was my third time living in my father’s hometown. Seventh grade was in Ohio.

After my father’s return from Vietnam, in August 1967 the family drove cross-country to our next army assignment: Ft. Ord, California. Ft. Ord was a beautiful place on Monterey Bay. From our classrooms, we could see the Pacific Ocean. There was something else very different being in class during that time: hearing the shooting off in the distance from the rifle range while sitting in class. An uninterrupted school year was spent on this army post. For those who might not remember or were not yet bornt, 1967-1970 were the worst years of the Vietnam War.

School started normally in the fall of 1968. Within weeks, it all changed. A month or six weeks into nineth grade everything was packed up and moved to the adjoining community. Another new school, more new faces and names. Vietnam came calling again as my father was on his way back to the war zone.

A strange thing happened in the fall of 1969. I started my sophomore year at a high school that straddled the boundary of Seaside, California, and Ft. Ord. Kids I had known in eighth grade at Ft. Ord and those I knew after moving off post in nineth grade were merged into one high school. Suddenly I knew people from both schools. But, as usual, spending another complete school year in one place was too good to be true.

In February of 1970, midway through another school year, we moved. After recuperating in a hospital in Japan, my father was back from Vietnam, and we returned to Ft. Knox, Kentucky. I finished my sophomore year at Ft. Knox High School. I spent the first half of my junior year there until my father retired from the army and eventually, we settled in my father’s hometown. There were two more high schools in my future between my father’s army retirement and graduation.

All told, there were 10 schools in 12 years. Looking back, the answer to the question of what’s my hometown? The answer is Ft. Knox and the army. Change is normal, but too much change can be disheartening. The reasons for all the changes can mentally impair if the reasons or causes are negative. Change can also strengthen a person. It can force one to take the perspective of needing to persevere despite the negatives. All these changes can make one an introvert, never really knowing anyone or having friends, or an extrovert who needs to reach out every time there’s a new school or new community.

Whether changes are planned or thrust upon you, try to embrace the change. There are challenges to all changes. It’s important to find the positives arising from life’s changes that’ll make you better and stronger for what may come next.