I spent thirteen years ignoring the fact that Ken flew supersonic, single seat fighters.  Ignorance is bliss.  I never saw him fly.  That's the truth.  I didn't want to know for sure.  He had wings on his uniform, but you could buy those at the PX.   He went to work in the morning and came home at night.  Everyone said he flew.  He said he flew.  Maybe he did. You can't prove it by me.

When we were at El Toro for the last time, in '68, Ken would call and tell me when he was taking off, and I would take Scott to the end of the runway to watch.  I never watched--so I never knew if Ken was in the airplane or not.  Scott would tell me that his daddy waved at him.  So maybe it was true that Ken was a fighter pilot--but any of the pilots would have waved at Scott.  So who knows for sure.

I went to my share of flag draped funerals.  Flying military back then wasn't very safe.  "Buying the farm," as the pilots called it, was a fairly regular occurrence.  We were never in a squadron that someone didn't get killed.   It was always personal.  They were family.

Once, when Ken was qualifying everyone in the squadron to land the F4D on the carrier, (which had never been done before), out of 25-27 pilots, they destroyed four planes, killed one, and broke another one's back.  Pilot error on two.  Aircraft carrier personal on the other two.   Hooking wire on the carrier was as dangerous as it could get.  They would say that doing it at night, in a storm, on a pitching deck, was the scariest thing they ever did.  Ken would say, "Getting fired off the carrier deck at night, (a catapult shot) is optional; landing, however, is mandatory."  No other way to get back on.

When everyone was qualified, they left for a year doing intercepts of Russian planes on the Japanese, Korean coast.  Russia had heard that the plane the Marines were flying could take off from the ground and reach them in record time, and Russia tested the squadron, to see how fast the F4D really was.  Ken said the first time he lit the afterburner he thought he was in a rocket.  It was the fastest thing the USA had going (from ground to altitude at the time) however, it used so much JP fuel they couldn't stay up very long.  But they flew it that entire year without another accident.

We had two babies when he left.  Both in diapers.  I just stuck my head in the sand about what he was doing.  No use thinking about it.  Not knowing was how I coped.  It worked for me.