In late August 1984, I arrived in Mountain Home, Idaho, my first permanent station with the Air Force. As a single airman, I was destined to live on-base in a dormitory. The Headquarters Squadron had two dorms – one of them housing the Dorm Manager’s office.
The Dorm Manager, a senior NCO named Vince (I’ve forgotten his last name, because we all just called him Vince), was either a Technical Sergeant (E-6 for our non-USAF readers) or a Master Sergeant (E-7 ). Swarthy-skinned, short and powerful, he was a former aircraft mechanic who’d been re-trained due to health issues.
Vince met me, talked to me, and assigned me to room with another airman who was close to my age. He thought we’d make a good match. I spent months convinced he was wrong, and then one day something clicked and my roommate and I became good friends.
Vince was smart like that. He was smart in other ways, too. There was nothing he couldn’t fix, from a broken faucet to a wounded heart. The guys would talk to him about “guy stuff,” whatever that is. But the girls could talk to him, too. He listened, and he cared.
Dorm Managers are part of the background in an Air Force dormitory. Like the building superintendent in an apartment building. Or like your parents after you’ve moved out on your own. You know they’re there, but unless there’s a problem, they’re not really in the fore-front of your consciousness. But they’re there, a steady force in the background, one more stable piece in an often unstable world, one more part of your life that won’t change.
Vince wasn’t going anywhere. This would be his job, and his base, until he retired. He had a business in town – I don’t remember if he ran an apartment building or if it was a trailer community, but there were rental units involved. I never dealt with that side of his life, and at that point in my life I was much too shy to just sit and visit with him, as if we were just regular folks. He was an NCO (or senior NCO – wish I could remember his rank), and I was an Airman. In my mind, there was a huge chasm between us, and it was enough that I was allowed to call him Vince, instead of Sgt Whoever.
As dormitory residents, we were not only responsible for keeping our rooms clean, we also shared the responsibility for keeping the dorms clean. Every so often your name would come up on the rotation list, and you would spend a week as “Bay Orderly,” or as we called it, “Bay Hoser.” For that week you belonged to Vince, doing whatever tasks he assigned. Cleaning the day rooms (TV lounges, basically), vacuuming the hallways, dusting, etc. I seem to recall that we even moved furniture, on occasion. Menial work, but necessary to the comfort and well-being of all those living in the dorms. And it was for Vince, and with Vince, so it was ok.
I was at Mountain Home for about 3 1/2 years, and Vince was part of my life for most of that time. Until one summer, and I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t even remember which summer it was, but I think it was late summer, 1986. I was spending a week in town, house-sitting for my first sergeant while he was on vacation, when the phone rang. Part of my job as house-sitter was to take all his messages, so I answered the call.
I could barely understand the voice on the other end, then I recognized our Assistant Dorm Manager. He was trying not to cry as he asked for the First Sergeant. It seems that on this unseasonably hot Idaho day, Vince had been mowing the yard at his rental community, and his heart gave out. That magnificent, caring heart, that made him such a good dorm manager for two buildings of young adults who were mostly on their own for the first time in their lives, wasn’t up to the strain of heavy yard work on a blisteringly hot summer day.
We had a Service on the base. Three or four dorm residents were asked to speak – I was Dorm Council President, so I was one of them. I don’t remember anything I said that day. I remember very little of what anyone else said that day, other than one of the other airmen saying Vince was a father-figure. I hadn’t thought of it until she said it, but she was right, for all the reasons I listed above. I blocked most of it out, willing myself to not hear, to hold it together until the end.
The service ended, the Honor Guard marched out, I shook the widow’s hand and murmured something appropriate, then ducked and ran for the nearest latrine, where I locked myself in a stall and released the tears I’d been fighting since the other airman compared him to a father.
The stability that Vince had represented disappeared with his death. We got a new Dorm Manager, and later that year, a new First Sergeant. I moved out of the dorms the next spring, and shared a small house with a co-worker until I moved on to my next duty station that December. The dorms weren’t the same without Vince.
Vince was an amazing man, who always had a smile and a kind word. I’d not thought of him in years, until I read Timmer’s post about his red-eyed airman grieving for her friend lost in Iraq. I’m glad I remembered him, even though the memory brings tears. He’s worth remembering.
