The Beginning, actually.

This story has been embellished a few times over the last 49 years, for sure!

It's best to start at the beginning. My birth may be the cosmic forbearer of the life that follows it. It was pretty crazy, in a good way, and the rest of my life was sprinkled with these seemingly amazing events. Right place, right time was the modus operandi, writ large.

It was late 1973. My dad, John, had successfully transitioned from the Peace Corps to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He requested and fought hard for overseas assignments. Understandable, seeing as how he grew up in rural West Virginia and had little money to do anything except eat mayonnaise sandwiches, much less travel.

His first assignment for USAID was in Ghana (Africa) as an agricultural specialist since his Master's degree was in Agricultural Economics from the University of Tennessee. My older brother, also John, was about 18 months old and my mom, Iona, was very very pregnant with me. At the time, we were bivouacked in a seedy neighborhood in southeast Washington D.C. Now that neighborhood is pockmarked with Starbucks, yoga pants, and man buns but back then it was a rough spot. My dad had a report date in Ghana of the end of September and we had to leave D.C. posthaste in order to make it. My parents were in a bit of a pickle. Mom was unable to manage a toddler, give birth, and care for a newborn on her own. Postpartum support in the 70s was almost nonexistent with respect to today, you see. Dad couldn't delay his start date so the only answer was to get a flight waiver from a doctor so that mom could fly to Ghana with the rest of the fam.

We were off…after some cajoling with the government doctors in DC. In those days, direct flights were rare. We flew to Amsterdam and connected with a Pan Am flight to Accra, Ghana. As the plane approached Accra and started its decent about 30 minutes out from the airport, the sudden pressure change that makes you to squeeze your nose and blow out your ears was much more sudden and forceful on the venerable 707 that we were on. It caused mom's water to break!

Mom grabbed dad's arm and informed him of the news. He became pasty white, more so than he already was, and rang the stewardess (the official term back then). He told her what was going on and off she went! Bombing up toward the cockpit, she told the Captain between panting breaths that there was a pregnant lady about to give birth. The co-pilot came back to find out more while the Captain radioed the airport control tower at Ghana International Airport. My mother was in full blown labor. The co-pilot ran back to the cockpit and updated the captain who then informed the controller in the tower of the news. The controller leapt into action, called the US Embassy, and activated the airport garrison.

The US Embassy in that small corner of the World had a limited staff in those days. The doctor, Dr. Rockwood, was not a pediatrician and had never delivered a baby but he called someone he knew that could do it. Dr. Molek was the Soviet Embassy doctor. It was rumored later that the entire contingent of Soviet Embassy types in Africa were KGB. He was a KGB doctor, as far as I'm concerned. I’m sure the conversation with Dr. Rockwood ended with, "Da, Tavarish!" even though he was a Czech. He climbed aboard the U.S. Embassy convoy and headed toward the airport. Since the international airport shared the facility with a Ghanaian Army garrison, the US convoy was escorted all the way to the edge of the runway to wait for the plane to land.
Meanwhile, the Pan Am captain was given approval for an emergency landing. The way the descent has been described to me was a spiral. I can only assume that the captain was former military. Combat landings include a rapid downward spiral over the runway, followed by a short final approach, and a hard landing at the end. This, apparently, minimizes the time the aircraft is steady as observed by a ground based enemy and gets the plane on the ground rapidly.

The plane landed hard the wings flexed to the point of the outboard engines almost touching the ground. I’m sure dad exaggerated that part. The plane came to a stop at the end of the runway and the Ghanaian Army troops sprang into action. They clambered up the portable stairway and ran down the aisle with weapons drawn. Pregnant women are dangerous, apparently? They grabbed mom and carried her off to the waiting gurney and doctors. Dad picked up my brother and ran desperately to catch up. At one minute after 9:00am (about 15 minutes after we landed) in late September, out I came. The Ghanaian nurse who was standing in for a midwife, held me in one hand, uttered a phrase in Swahili complete with clicks and pops, and slapped me so hard on the rump that I now have a permanent "high ass".

That’s me! A little bundle of toots.

It turns out that Soviet doctor looked after me for the entire five years my family was stationed in Ghana. He was our neighbor after all. Can you believe the luck in that?! My Dad had to fill out a "contact report" every time I had a sniffle and the doctor came over to check me out. Contact reports in the seventies were done on a typewriter with triplicate forms, and a whole lot of elbow grease. That was the start of a very interesting life...so far.