mean a lot of things—none of them good! He said that he expected him to be on time the next day.
O’Hara was terrified and decided that the only way he could be sure of being on time the next day was to sleep in the barracks on the post where the unmarried guys lived. However, he wasn’t sure that even this would save him because, if he overslept at all, he would not have time to put on his uniform and still make the formation. So, he decided to sleep with his uniform on except for his shoes.
Early Army days. The warrior and his lady!
The Mechem ladies reviewing the “troops.”
Baby Melissa in 1958. Can’t believe I was ever this thin.
Our family in 1978. Me, Marilyn, Allison, Melissa, and Dan. Still together after all these years!
The next morning he managed to make it on time, though it was clear that he had only been up a few minutes. The company commander came up to Tom and said, “Well, well, how nice to see you here on time. But, you look terrible. Your uniform is a disgrace! You look like you slept in it.” O’Hara sheepishly responded, “I did, Sir.” In what I am sure was a severe breach of military discipline, we all broke down and laughed uproariously. Happily, so did the company commander!
I WAS A brand-new first lieutenant, and Marilyn and I were ready to leave for Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Judge Advocate General’s School.
CHAPTER VIII
Judge Advocate General’s School
THE JUDGE ADVOCATE General’s School shared not only some physical facilities with the University of Virginia Law School but also some academic and teaching resources. There was an amusing contradiction in my status as we moved to Charlottesville. On the one hand, as a part of the faculty at the JAG School, I was accorded many of the privileges of any other faculty member at the University of Virginia, including access to the fine university hospital where our first child was born. (I’ll have more to say on this later.) On the other hand, under the mysterious Army regulations, the JAG School was considered a “hardship post” because it had no Army facilities like a post exchange or a commissary. Some hardship post! A fine university located in one of the most beautiful spots in all of America. What made this all the more ironic is that, because it was a “hardship post,” I received an extra $180 a month to help me deal with all of these hardships! Marilyn and I have often laughed that we probably had more free cash in those days than at any other time before or since.
My first assignment at the JAG School was unusual. Although I would be attending the school itself, inasmuch as I had already been in the service for well over a year and had been through basic training and Counter Intelligence training, it was decided that I would “double” as a student and a faculty member. My main responsibility as a “faculty member” was to help “militarize” the other fellows coming into the Army at the school. That is to say, virtually all of the students coming into the school were coming directly from civilian life and had absolutely no military training. My job was to help close the gap. Sometimes this was amusing and sometimes a little scary. For example, it was funny to see a brand-new, young officer knot his tie in a Windsor knot that looked about a foot wide instead of the narrow, clean, and neat four-in-hand knot that was necessary in the Army. An example of the “scary” part was when we would do exercises in the field involving weapons. Some of the new officers had never held a gun and sometimes waved their carbines around in a manner that caused the rest of us to hit the ground fast!
Once again, I was in an environment where I met a lot of very interesting people and made some good friends. One fellow that I remember very well was Derek Bok. Derek went on to teach law at Harvard, became the Dean of the Harvard Law School, and then the President of Harvard University for twenty years. While it was obvious even then that he was a brilliant young man destined for great things, what I remember best is that he was a dynamite softball pitcher who made the JAG Law School team a major force on the local softball scene.
After finishing the JAG School I was kept in Charlottesville because I only had a little more than a year left in my Army commitment, and it obviously made no sense for me to be sent into the field. While I would have enjoyed actually practicing military law, it was hard to argue with the wonderful opportunity to live in Charlottesville for an extended period.
My work at the JAG School was fairly routine and lackluster, but one of the most important things in my life—and quite obviously Marilyn’s—was the birth of our first child, Melissa, at the University of Virginia Hospital on November 21, 1957. This was a blessed event in every way, but there was one especially amusing aspect. As I mentioned, we had full access to and the privileges of the University of Virginia Hospital where Marilyn and Melissa were wonderfully cared for. The funny part is that we had the benefits of this great hospital at an Army “rate” of twenty-five dollars. When we left the hospital I kept the receipt and, at Melissa’s wedding rehearsal dinner many years later, I gave the receipt to her husband-to-be and said he should use it if she ever began to brag about how valuable she was!
Thus began our newest adventure—being parents!
CHAPTER IX
The Kids
EVEN THOUGH IT means jumping ahead a little bit, I think this is a good time to talk about all three of our children.
As I just noted, Melissa was born in 1957. Dan joined us May 24, 1960, and Allison came along ten years later in 1970, which has led me frequently to refer to her as our “caboose.” Allison has insisted over the years (jokingly I think!) that she must have been a “mistake,” but I think we have finally convinced her that nothing could be further from the truth. These are three wonderful kids who are truly different one from the other, which seems often to be the case with families. But they have several important things in common. They are bright, witty, and loving. We love being together and we have great fun when we are.
Melissa, a pediatrician, is involved in medical consulting in fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. She and her husband, Ted, live in Mill Valley, California, where Ted is involved in the executive search business with Jackowitz & Co. Their son, Sam, is at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, and the family’s only redhead, May, attends The Urban School in San Francisco and is a rabid San Francisco Giants fan.
Dan and his lovely Bolivian wife, Eliana, now live in La Quinta, California, with Eliana’s daughter and Dan’s stepdaughter, Almita. Happily, this is just five minutes away from where Marilyn and I live in the wintertime, and we are delighted to have them close by. Dan and Eliana both work with Mechem Media, a company that Dan and I founded a few years ago to develop entertainment product in the spirit of Hanna Barbera, once a part of Taft Broadcasting Company.
Allison and her husband, Ted, live in Niwot, Colorado, a suburb of Boulder. They have two children: ten-year-old Will and seven-year-old Ellie. Allison is a fourth-grade teacher at Boulder Country Day School, and Ted is a senior executive at Micro Motion, a division of Emerson. Everyone in the family is a skier, and they are blessed to be near the great Colorado ski resorts.
I
