Flying High into the Sky

I grew up the daughter of an Air Force officer. As a child, my life was filled with blue uniforms and the roar of jet engines. Some of my earliest memories are of drums and taps and nights at the officers club with men and their wives warbling, “Off we go into the wild blue yonder…” My mother was blessed with one of the world’s most godawful voices, but she loved to sing that song.

I heard that song again this weekend, when I watched through tear-swelled eyes as my older daughter graduated from COT (Commissioned Officer Training School) at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. My mother has been dead for three months now, my father for nearly nineteen years. But how I wished they could have been there, too, to share that moment. I know they’d have been as thrilled as I was.


Sam is currently in medical school and will go on active duty as a doctor when she graduates. I am very, very proud of her. Since Steve and I started writing thrillers, I’ve found it ironic how many people have acridly questioned our patriotism simply because our vision of what this country’s future should be doesn’t match theirs. My father was an Air Force colonel; my husband is a retired Army colonel; my sister was a Marine captain and her husband a Marine major. Now my daughter is an Air Force Second Lieutenant. We have always been a military family. And so it begins again.

Congratulations, Second Lieutenant Proctor.