Chief of Detectives

Copyright © 2015 John L. Sullivan.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-5752-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5753-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5754-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015900183

iUniverse rev. date: 07/01/2015

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

In the Beginning

Teenage Years

Military Service

Chapter 2

Becoming a Cop

On the Street as a Rookie

On My Own

Chapter 3

My First Homicide Investigation

Deadly Force

Chapter 4

My New Partner

Moving Up

Children as Victims

Chapter 5

First Days in Las Vegas

Chapter 6

On the Job

My Senior Partners

Chapter 7

Off to the Academy

Back on the Street

Chapter 8

Designated as Senior Officer

All in a Night’s Work

Chapter 9

Assigned to the Academy

Making Sergeant … Again

Chapter 10

Consolidation

The Drunk in the Trunk

Chapter 11

SWAT Assignment

Robbery Hostage Incident

Chapter 12

The Field-Training Program

Women in Policing

Meeting the Challenge

Chapter 13

Another Transfer

Instructing Classes for POST

Higher Education

Chapter 14

Promoted to Lieutenant

Internal Affairs

When Cops Go Bad

Chapter 15

Promoted to Captain

Assigned as the County Jail Commander

Chapter 16

Emergency Bureau Assignment

Taking Over an Area Command

Chapter 17

Attending the FBI Academy

Chapter 18

Assigned to a Special Internal Investigation

General Assignment Detail

Chapter 19

The Beginning of the Ebb in Crime in Las Vegas

Getting Organized as the Division Chief, Chief of Detectives

Evaluating Present Operations

Chapter 20

Criminal Intelligence/Organized Crime/Special Investigations Bureau Transferred into Investigative Services Division

Taking on Organized Crime

Mafia in Las Vegas

The Clash of the Titans

Chapter 21

Combating the Prostitute Problem

The Scam Artist

Sting Operations

Covert Ops

Chapter 22

The Hazards of Police Work

Police Encounters with the Mentally Ill

Chapter 23

The Nature of Police Work

Chapter 24

When an Officer Uses Force

The Use-of-Force Administrative Review Board

Conducting Seminars in Use of Force

Chapter 25

The End of a Career

Life after Metro

On a Personal Note

In Summation

Roll Call of Las Vegas’s Fallen Law-Enforcement Officers

Preface

A policeman is a composite of what all men are, I guess. A mingling of saint and sinner, dust and deity. Culled statistics wave the fan over stinkers, underscore instances of dishonesty and brutality, because they are news. What that really means is that they are exceptional, they are unusual, they are not commonplace. Buried under the froth is the fact, and the fact is that less than one half of one percent misfit that uniform. And, that is a better average than you’d find among the clergymen.

Paul Harvey

I HAVE REPEATEDLY TOLD MY family and friends how thankful and fortunate I was to have chosen the law-enforcement profession and to have lived in the golden time of the United States of America.

During my career as a police officer I have seen numerous changes, not only in the way police work is done but also in the selection of personnel for the job, the training of officers, the technology, laws and social interactions and the responsibilities of the officers. I witnessed the evolution of technology that provided the great strides our country has achieved in just my lifetime. I have seen men walking on the moon, the nation’s population grow at an unprecedented rate, the eradication of diseases that had plagued people and societies since the beginning of time, and several major wars. I have seen laws and attitudes change that gave all citizens equal opportunities and civil rights so they are no longer judged by the color of their skin, religion, or national origin but what each individual has and can contribute to his country and fellow man.

I have also seen our country’s cultural values decline and our country’s esteem chipped away in the eyes of other nations.

My favorite game to play as a boy was king of the mountain. It was always a challenge to try my best to succeed. Sometimes I was successful and reached the top, and sometimes I fell short. It seems that I have been climbing one mountain after another all my life. There have been good times and bad; there have been successes and failures.

In retrospect, I am surprised and pleased with what I have been able to contribute and accomplish in my law-enforcement career.

These shared incidents are just a few snapshots of my thirty-four years as a police officer. My career as a cop was exciting, adventurous, challenging, and harrowing. It was a labor of love. This story is a factual account of my career and a study in my growth within the profession—beginning my career in a small suburban police department in the Midwest, rising through the ranks, and finishing my thirty-four-year law-enforcement career as deputy chief, chief of detectives for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in the most exciting city in the nation, Las Vegas, Nevada.

I have always felt my years as a law-enforcement officer were more of a calling than a job. Many officers I have worked with have reflected the same attitude.

In many respects, to some officers, being a cop is like any other career or job, but to others, it is a way of life that engrosses them.

The law-enforcement profession has its highs and its lows, without a doubt. However, in tallying up the score at the end of my career, I have had more than my share of high points. Therefore, as I look back over the years, if by chance I could do it all over again, I probably would not change much of anything.

Even the loved ones of the police officer must endure the profession. A police officer’s child is known as that cop’s kid. At social functions, it is not uncommon to hear a snide remark referencing the cops present.

The police officer works varied days, covers different shifts, and is called out at the most inconvenient times. When there is a potential danger in the community, the police officer is called out to address the threat and is not able to be at home to protect his family. There is also that ever-present knowledge among the family that there are certain elements of risk involved being a law-enforcement officer.

I have often thought that being a police officer is a selfish occupation. Many officers whom I have worked with live and breathe the job. Oftentimes their fascination with the job is at the expense of their families. It’s not that they purposely neglect their families, but they become engrossed in the challenge and the excitement of the job, which very few other professions can offer. The job can become a mistress that causes family resentment toward the work, which, in some cases, ends in broken marriages and rebellious behavior of family members.

I want to thank those men and women whom I have served with over the years for making the job what it was. I am honored to have been part of a profession that, for the most part, is made up of such fine, dedicated, and brave men and women—a profession that offers such a variety of interesting, challenging, and, at times, harrowing experiences.

The incidents chronicled in this memoir are incidents that I was personally involved in, witnessed, or heard from a credible source.

Chapter 1

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man—the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Mark Twain

AS I STAND OUTSIDE THE church on a warm, sunny fall day and watch the long procession of police motorcycles and patrol cars escorting the flag-draped coffin of a young Metro officer who was killed in the line of duty. Standing there, I personally feel a sense of loss.

The procession arrives at the church for the ceremonial farewell services for another fallen officer.

I experience a medley of feelings. I look around, and there are numerous officers representing the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, also known as Metro. Metro and other federal, state, and municipal law enforcement agencies are in attendance. They’ve come from every direction to honor and pay their respects to our officer.

I am saddened, for I personally knew the officer who we are honoring. I knew him from the time he went through the academy I taught and again from the time he served in one of my patrol squads when I was a uniformed lieutenant.

Although saddened and humbled, I can’t help but feel pride in my profession. I am proud to be part of the brotherhood that is interwoven as a common strand of thread among all who wear the badge of a law enforcement officer. I am proud of the attendance and the show of respect and support for the officer and the officer’s family.

I am pleased at the formality and the dignity shown by all in attendance. It is a ritual designed to honor the family of the fallen officer and the officer himself—the flag that is at half-staff, the honor guard, the bagpipe and drum corps that provide cadence to the ceremony, the long procession of police vehicles, the presence of various dignitaries, the shrouded badges, and the sheriff kneeling before the fallen officer’s family in order to present the wife with the flag that adorned her husband’s casket. It’s At that moment when the sheriff says to her, On behalf of a grateful community, as he presents her the folded flag.

At these events, everyone is solemn, and the officers in attendance stand taller at attention and salute as the casket is carried past them.

The community extends its condolences to the family and the department at the passing of one of its officers. The community demonstrates its support for those who serve them. People who don’t know the fallen officer, and who are not known by the officer, stand and watch the funeral procession pass by. Some of those watching place their hands over their hearts, some salute, and some just wave good-bye.

The family is not alone at a time like this.

I am saddened that we have lost yet another fine and brave officer in the line of duty. It seems that I have attended too many of these services in my many years in the profession, but that’s the hazard of the profession. You never get used to or become hardened to the loss of a brother or sister comrade in arms.

As if it were yesterday, I vividly remember the call I received during the day on Tuesday, October 11, 1988. I was on vacation when I answered the telephone and the Metro dispatcher said, Chief, we have an officer down, and you are to respond to the scene. She added, It’s Officer Kahre.

When I arrived at the scene, Metro’s Sheriff Moran was already there. In the middle of the residential street lay the fallen officer covered with a sheet. The officer’s motorcycle lay on its side next to the officer.

As I watch the solemn ritual unfold for that officer, I think back over the years of my career of being a police officer. I try to recall how it all started—what led me to be standing here, paying tribute to another fallen fellow officer.

In the Beginning

LOOKING BACK, I FEEL MY childhood was average. Our family consisted of Mom; Dad; my big brother, Curt; our dog, Blackie; and, of course, me. Our family wasn’t the Beaver Cleaver family but we were content and comfortable and for the most part, happy.

My father, the breadwinner of the family, was a traveling salesman. Dad wasn’t a big man physically, for he was only five nine and weighed 160 pounds. But what my Dad lacked in size, he made up in being a wiry, no-nonsense-type of individual. I remember Dad as always being very dapper. His hair was always neatly trimmed and his shoes were always shined. I don’t ever recall seeing my dad in blue jeans or a T-shirt. At times on the weekend, he would wear khakis pants and a starched dress shirt.

Dad only completed the sixth grade in school. His mother and father died when he was just an infant, and his maternal grandmother raised him and his sister in the small town of Woodson, Illinois. Dad never knew or could remember either one of his parents.

Dad didn’t show a lot of affection to my brother or me. A handshake was about all we would receive, and those were only on rare occasions. When my brother and I became teenagers, we were both a couple of inches taller than Dad and outweighed him by twenty pounds.

When he was sixteen, my big brother, Curtis, got in my dad’s face … once. That was the last time he ever tried doing such a foolish thing. Dad nailed him with a one-two punch and put my big brother on his butt. That’s when Dad told my brother and me, You’ll never get big enough to take on your old dad. I’ll get the best of you even if I have to catch you while you’re sleeping. We both truly believed what he said, for we knew him as a man of his word. He was from the old school.

My dad was raised in hard times. He started out as the breadwinner for his grandmother and sister when he was fourteen. I remember whenever I asked Dad for a quarter; he would sit me down and tell me the story of his life. Dad had more sad tales of how poor he was at my age and what hard times he lived through than anyone I ever met. Mom would end up giving me the quarter most of the time.

My father smoked cigarettes and I guess it was natural due to the fact he worked as a salesman for a major cigarette company. Dad died at the age of sixty-four from lung cancer.

My mother was a gentle woman. She was five foot five inches and 130 pounds. I always thought that Mom was the prettiest woman in the neighborhood. She was soft spoken and enjoyed being a homemaker and mother to Curt and me. Once in a while, Mom and Dad wouldn’t see eye to eye on a certain topic, which sometimes resulted in a heated discussion. Mom could stand up to Dad during these debates and seldom did either concede to the other. Mom was raised in Springfield Missouri and was a high school graduate. She was working as a secretary when she met Dad.

When Dad was on the road traveling and it was time for him to come home, normally on a Friday evening, Mom would fix herself up and look very nice when Dad walked in the door. My brother and I could figure on the folks giving us a quarter on Saturday to go to the local National theater to see a triple feature along with a cartoon review of about five cartoons, a serial, a news reel, plus coming attractions, which took the biggest part of the afternoon.

My big brother, Curtis, was five years older than me, and he saw me as the proverbial pain-in-the-neck little brother. It was a real treat to go somewhere with my big brother. The few times when this happened, it was no doubt at the insistence of Mom.

Curt was a tall, good-looking teenager with dark, wavy hair and an outgoing personality. He had many friends, and he dated Margie, the prettiest girl in high school.

John and Brother Curt, circa 1940

I recall a couple of fond memories with my brother. On one winter’s evening, Curt asked me if I wanted to ride with him while he took his girlfriend home. She lived on the other side of the city, and I felt honored to be asked to tag along.

Curt had an old 1934 Dodge two-door coupe. This car was a poor man’s hot rod and didn’t have any fenders. The car, however, did have a rumble seat where the trunk would normally be on other cars. Before we left the house, Curt told me to wear my heavy coat, so I grabbed my parka. I started to get in the car when Curt told me to ride in the rumble seat.

The night was dark, the weather was cold and drizzling rain, and the temperature was close to freezing. As we started out, all the spray off the tires was soaking me in the rumble seat, and my discomfort increased the wetter I became. I found an old piece of canvas on the floor of the rumble seat and tried to use it to deflect the rain and the road spray. It didn’t work. I was soaked.

When we arrived at his girlfriend’s home, they parked in the driveway. Curt and Margie sat in the car and smooched for another fifteen minutes while I remained in the rumble seat in the rain. Eventually, Margie went in the house, and Curt began to back out of the driveway. I started pounding on the back window, and he realized I was still in the rumble seat. He stopped the car and let me inside, admonishing me not to get his upholstery wet. A heater never felt so good.

Another red-letter day was my twelfth birthday. My big brother and his buddies took me to the Kansas City Blues Baseball stadium for a game. I was so proud and honored to be with my big brother and his friends sitting in the stands watching the game. My brother bought me a bottle of beer from the vendor in our section. That topped off the event. As I look back now, the stadium’s management didn’t seem to put much emphasis on underage drinking. There was no demand to see an ID and no questions asked. If you had the money, you had a beer. My big brother was responsible however, and restricted me to only one bottle of beer.

One thing about being a little brother, you seldom receive anything brand new that is fresh out of the box. I had to wear hand-me-down blue jeans, shirts, coats, and shoes. Even my bike was a hand-me-down from my big brother.

When my folks bought my big brother his bike, it was already an antique. Pedaling the old relic was not an easy task. The bike was so hard to pedal it was like pulling a city transit bus behind you. A couple of my buddies had new Schwinn bicycles with shock-absorber knee-action front forks, a gear selector, horn and mud flaps, a classy paint job, a headlight, and reflectors. In contrast, my bike had about five coats of paint and looked like someone had painted it with his finger. The seat was about as comfortable as sitting on a picket fence, and it had a round red reflector on the back fender. I was envious of those with their new shiny bikes, but I accepted the fact that I had to make do with what I had. My old bike got me to where I was going, and like my dad told me, You’ll get a good workout on that bike and build muscles. It’s good for you.

Because of Dad’s sales work, he would occasionally have to take a new job or be transferred around the Midwest. As a result, our family moved around to accommodate his work. We lived in Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas in modest rented homes with decent surroundings. The longest we stayed in one spot was in Kansas City, Missouri.

I was born in Oklahoma City, but I refer to Kansas City as my hometown because I spent most of the formative years of my youth there. We lived in the northeast part of Kansas City, the area known as Little Italy.

We lived in an old, established area with stone and brick two-story homes with large front porches and porch swings. A canopy of elm trees lined the streets. The streetlights consisted of a light pole on a street corner with a naked sixty-watt light bulb under a corrugated metal light shade. On the corner where we lived was an old-time neighborhood mom-and-pop store where we did most of our grocery shopping. We were within walking distance of school, movies, and a neighborhood park. Parkview and Katz drug stores and a Milgrams Supermarket were nearby. Of course, any distance less than three miles was considered within walking distance.

It was not uncommon to have several generations of family members living nearby. It seemed everybody knew everyone in the area and looked out for each other.

A half a block down the street from where we lived was the streetcar stop. For ten cents, you could ride the streetcar all day. When Dad was out of town, every so often, on a lazy, hot summer evening, Mom and I would hop on the streetcar, open the windows to feel the breeze, and just take a couple of hours and ride to the end of the line then back just for something to do.

In our neighborhood, there was the Lykins Community Center. This is where kids around the area would gather and play baseball, do some woodworking in the woodcraft shop, take boxing lessons, and play a game of pool.

I took some boxing lessons at the community center and fought in a couple of golden glove matches. I thought it was a good idea to learn some boxing basics so I could defend myself. Every so often, some kid would challenge me because of my name, John L. Sullivan. (The original John L. Sullivan was the world’s bare-knuckle boxing champion back in the late 1800s.) My mother told me that when I was born, my dad chose my name when he was half in the bag. She also told me that it didn’t dawn on her at the time who I was named after.

The Lykins Community Center would occasionally hold a teen dance up on the second floor of the facility. The community center was a great hangout for the youth of the area—no drive-by shootings or gang rumbles, no drugs or booze, just kids hanging out.

My neighborhood had a tendency to police itself. When kids in the area did something wrong, the kid’s parents would, in most cases, get a call from another parent in the neighborhood. Living in this neighborhood made it difficult to play hooky. If you did skip school and were seen during school hours, you ran the risk of a neighbor calling your parents and blowing the whistle on you. Heaven forbid if your folks got a call from school reporting a misdeed; if they did, you might as well just reach down and grab your ankles, for there was going to be an old-fashioned ass whipping. If they got a call from the Sheffield District Police Station to come and pick you up due to some mischief … well, that would be another sad tale of woe.

Residents of the area were not too concerned about crime. On a hot night in the summer, the family would bed down with the windows and doors open, hoping for a breeze to make the sleeping tolerable.

A small ten-cent hook-and-eye latch on the screen door was the common home security feature. That latch kept the screen door from banging at night from the breeze while you’re trying to sleep. It wouldn’t keep anyone out of the house.

As a kid, my friends and I would always have something to do or somewhere to go during the summer and on weekends during the school year. We would leave the house on our bikes after a breakfast of Wheaties and be gone until suppertime.

When Mom wanted my brother and me to come home, she had a unique way of letting us know. My mother could whistle louder than any parent or kid in the neighborhood. We could hear Mom’s whistle from two blocks away. If we didn’t hear Moms whistle, somebody in the neighborhood would hear it and yell at us, Your mother is whistling for you! When Mom whistled, even our dog, Blackie, would come running home.

As a kid, I earned the majority of my spending money working part-time odd jobs. At nine years old, I worked as a pin-boy setting pins for ten cents a line at a bowling alley. I also delivered the neighborhood Northeast News newspaper, sacked groceries at Milgrams Supermarket, mowed lawns, and washed windows.

When not working and in need of some pocket money, I would scour the neighborhood for empty soda pop bottles to cash in at the corner grocery store and receive a two-cent per bottle refund. I would earn enough to take Pauline, my little blonde, blue-eyed girlfriend who lived around the corner from me, to the neighborhood movie on the weekends. On a typical trip to the movies, usually at the neighborhood’s National Theater, one would find Pauline, her little sister, their four preteen girl cousins, and me. A little ten-cent sack of popcorn didn’t go very far when you felt obligated to share it with so many.

Pauline, and her sister, Doris, experienced some hard times at a young age. When Pauline was nine and Doris was eight, they lived around the corner from me with their aunt and uncle and their four little girl cousins. Pauline’s mother was confined in a tuberculosis hospital at the age of twenty-seven. Her father was working a couple of jobs to try to pay the medical bills for his wife’s care and to contribute to the support of his girls. Their mother died of tuberculosis when Pauline was ten.

One of my most memorable experience as a child was when I was about ten years old. My first awakening as to what life may have in store for me happened when the little blonde, blue-eyed tomboy who lived around the corner introduced me to the game of post office and spin the bottle. She definitely put a couple of new colors in my paint box. After a while, it dawned on me that when we played post office, I wouldn’t get to kiss any other girls. Mind you, I’m not complaining.

One thought kept running through my head as a result of the little innocent games we would play. What other fabulous happenings am I yet to experience?

I’ll have more about Pauline later. Those were innocent, uncomplicated days.

All was well until my dad took a job away from Kansas City.

Teenage Years

It is easier to give birth than to resurrect.

Unknown

WHEN I WAS TWELVE YEARS old, my father changed jobs, and the family moved from Kansas City, Missouri, to Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Scottsbluff is a small community of several thousand located in the panhandle of Nebraska. It is primarily a farming community rich in sugar beets fields, corn, and pastureland for cattle.

We moved into a complex that provided housing for the Co-Op Cannery plant managers. We were only a short distance to school and the business area even though we lived on the outskirts of town.

We were three blocks from the North Platte River, and there was a railroad track that ran in back of our home. The trains would come by our house early in the mornings and would rattle everything in the house and wake up the soundest of sleepers. We eventually became use to the early morning trains rumbling by, and after a while, we slept through the whistles and the trains rumbling, shaking, and rattling.

Hunting and fishing and high school sports were predominant pastimes for those who lived in the area. There was only the one high school that accommodated several hundred students. I enrolled in school, made new friends with kids in the area, and joined the junior varsity football team.

I was surprised how rough these guys played. We would scrimmage at times with the varsity team. I think the coaches used the underclass junior varsity team as tackle dummies instead of the stuffed ones. There were several big farm boys of Russian and German decent on the varsity team who took the game very seriously. Even in the practice sessions, no quarter was given toward the underclassmen.

When I went out for the team, I was on the tall, skinny side and played defensive right end. When we would practice, I didn’t look forward to the end sweeps by the running backs. These guys would hurt you. They wouldn’t try to avoid you; they would just run over you if you got in their way. Many of my tackles were really made by me falling down in front of the runner and him tripping over me. We did have a winning varsity football team; however, my contribution to the team’s victories wasn’t anything to brag about.

Good Hunting in Scottsbluff, Nebraska – 1949

There seemed to be plenty to do in the area, including hiking, fishing, duck hunting, pheasant hunting, and rabbit hunting, plus all the other school activities. In the fall when the ducks and geese would start their annual migration south, one of their flyways was right over our area. In the evening, a little before sunset, the ducks would land for the night behind our place in a little stream that emptied into the North Platte River. Before school and a few minutes before sunrise, I would grab my 410 shotgun and get in place alongside the stream. At the break of dawn when the ducks would take wing, I would get myself a duck and bring it home before I went to school.

It got to the point that my mom said, Please don’t bring home any more ducks for a while. I am tired of cleaning and cooking them.

Our dad drilled it into my brother and me that the only time you killed game was to eat. You don’t kill for the sake of just killing something. As I look back, I felt my folks had faith in me by allowing me, at twelve years old, to go hunting by myself.

Scottsbluff was a great small town to live in as a kid growing up.

I found a couple of part-time jobs washing store windows, mowing lawns, and shoveling snow in the winter. In Nebraska, there was an abundance of snow to shovel in the wintertime, so business was good.

A few months after we settled into our new home, my big brother, Curt, joined the US Coast Guard during the Korean War and went off to boot camp. I kept myself busy with my schoolwork, sports, part-time jobs, and exploration of the area with my friends and my dog, Blackie.

While at home one winter evening, my mother suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. I was twelve years old when Mother died. One night shortly after the first of the year, Mom, Dad, and I were sitting in the living room after dinner listening to the radio while I did my homework. Mom had made a comment earlier in the evening that she just didn’t feel good; however, she prepared dinner and cleaned up the kitchen after our meal.

As we were in the living room, Mom made mention that her left arm ached. She thought she must have strained it somehow. In a matter of minutes, she said her left arm was very painful, and she put a heating pad on it. The pain progressed, and Dad got on the phone to find a doctor who made house calls or who at least could advise us what the problem might be. Back in those days they didn’t have the EMT responses like we have today. I knelt by Mom as she was sitting in the rocking chair and started to rub her arm in an effort to try to give her some relief while Dad was on the phone trying to get help. All of a sudden, Mom gave a big sigh, looked at me, and said, I don’t want to die. She then fell into my arms unconscious. Dad and I carried Mom over to the couch and laid her down.

A young doctor arrived at the house several minutes after Mom lost consciousness. The doctor made a diligent effort trying to revive her, but she was gone. It was the doctor’s diagnosis that my mom had suffered a major heart attack.

After the mortuary took Mom away, Dad and I sat in the living room until the early morning hours, quiet, not saying a word and just staring blankly into space while trying to comprehend what had just happened. It was now just Dad and me.

Curt was still in the coast guard going through boot camp when Mom died. We got hold of the Red Cross, and they made the notification and arrangements for his emergency leave to come home. When Curt received his emergency leave, Dad and I had to drive to the Denver airport in a snowstorm to bring him home.

We had my mother’s funeral back in Kansas City on a cold and gloomy day. As I stood by Mom’s grave, I looked around at the surroundings. It was very quiet, the trees were bare, the sky was grey with clouds, and a light but sharp cold breeze was blowing. I thought the whole world looked like I felt.

For the first several weeks after my mother died, when I came home after school, I would catch myself starting to say as I entered the front door, Hey, Mom, I’m home. Then I realized no one was there.

Dad had to continue to travel for his job while I attended school. Dad was in a quandary; he had to keep his job and continue to travel, and I had to go to school. There weren’t that many other jobs available in Scottsbluff for Dad to consider. To accommodate his traveling and my going to school, each week, from Sunday night thru Friday, Dad would put me up in the city’s only hotel. I had my meals at the hotel, and the hotel staff, more or less, kept tabs on me during the week. Friday evenings was when Dad would come back in town for the weekend, and I would then stay with him. On the weekends, we would fish, hunt, go target practicing, play catch, or just go for a ride in the car. We kept this routine up until school was out in the spring.

After my school let out, Dad eventually located and took a job in Oklahoma City. In his new job as an assistant manager of a major downtown hotel, Dad was no longer required to travel and was home every evening.

After we moved to Oklahoma City, I enrolled in school and again went out for football and made the junior varsity team. After a somewhat successful football season, I got a job after school and on weekends in the laundry room sorting laundry at the downtown hotel where Dad was the assistant manager.

Oklahoma is a nice place to visit, but that’s about it. Neither Dad nor I were satisfied with Oklahoma City. There were no relatives or old friends in the area; so again, it was still just Dad and I. We bounced around the Midwest for a couple of more years trying to find a place that would accommodate the two of us.

Aunt Pauline, Mom’s sister, and her family took me in when Dad and I moved back to the Kansas City, Kansas, area. Dad got himself another sales position that required some traveling, and I stayed with Aunt Pauline and my cousin Don while I attended school. I attended the last half of my sophomore year over in Kansas City, Kansas. After I turned sixteen, Dad found another job that didn’t require traveling, and that’s when we returned to our old neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri.

We rented a little second-story studio apartment with a Murphy bed. It wasn’t much, but we were back in our old neighborhood around the corner from where we once lived. At the beginning of my junior year, I enrolled in my old high school and got a job after school in a sheet metal fabrication shop. I didn’t play sports in school due to the fact I had to find an after-school job if I was going to have any social life.

The first thing I did upon returning to the old neighborhood was look up the little blonde, blue-eyed tomboy who once lived around the corner. When I found her, I was amazed. She was now a beautiful, full-fledged young lady. During the years we were apart, she had gone through a metamorphosis, from the little tomboy in a stocking cap and blue jeans to a beautiful, elegant young lady. We started seeing each other again, and I was convinced that it didn’t get any better than this—finding my first love, being back in my old neighborhood, going to my old school, having a job and an old relic of a car.

Everything was going along just fine for several months until Dad told me he was going to remarry, and we were going to move across the river to Kansas City, Kansas. I convinced him that he should allow me to finish out my four months of the school year at my old high school. Dad agreed to let me finish my junior year with the understanding that at the start of the next school year I had to once again change schools.

By not changing schools when we moved to the Kansas side of the river, I would drive the twenty-five miles one way from our new home in Kansas to the school on the Missouri side of the river.

I was able to purchase a different car when we