October 21, 2015 was
the date Marty McFly went to in his journey to the future from 1985 in the
iconic “Back to the Future” film of 1989. As the world celebrates this “Back to
the Future Day,” and compares all the things that were and were not foretold, I’d
like to go back to 1985 and compare how my life was in October 1985.
In October 1985, we were living in Vicenza, Italy, with our
three children. Marlowe was at Utah State (in Logan, Utah), Athena and Marc
were teenagers attending the DODS (Department of Defense School) in Vicenza.
Diana was an eight-year-old. In the movie, Marty McFly goes back to the future
to save his son from being arrested, and it is ironic that that year I was
always worrying about Marc, my 14-year-old teenager, who it seemed was always
getting in trouble.
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| Marc, 1985 |
This was our second
year of our three-year tour in Italy; Marlowe had graduated from Vicenza High
School, received a four-year scholarship to Utah State University, so we only
had three children in Italy with us. Athena was a popular junior in the high
school, school officer and performing in gymnastics. Marc was a ninth grader, class president, and wrestled on the high school team. Diana was in
elementary school, and doing well.
I was in my second
year in University of Maryland, attending night classes on base. It was very
ironic that I, who had waited over 20 years to complete the college education I
had interrupted when I married Ed in 1963 so I could be home with my children,
now attended night classes, when the children were home and I wasn’t.
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| Athena, my prize-winning gymnast |
My classes started about 5:00 p.m., so I can remember the “hand-off”
when I arrived on base to attend school and met Athena and Marc, who would tend
Diana that evening for me. I felt like I was handing-off Diana for their care,
but of course, we were comparing plans as we traded places—me to school and
them to home (or activities). Ed usually took care of Diana while I was in school, except for when he was TDY (away on temporary
duty) and out of town.
I
wasn’t gone every night, but usually took classes Monday through Thursday; however I also took a Saturday Cultural History Class where we went to visit
the places we had studied about that week. It was a wonderful way to study
history and I took at least four of these classes, visiting all the areas in
Northern Italy. We studied Rome, but never visited there as a class. We would
study the history, art, music, culture of the city (for example, Ravenna); then
on Saturday, took a chartered bus to Ravenna to look at and discuss all the things we
had studied!!!
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| Angela Buvoli, Conversational Italian teacher |
I took Italian
language classes through the University, (two full years), as well as attended
a “conversational Italian” class on base to further enhance my use of the
language. The conversational Italian teacher, Signora Angela Buvoli, told us
about every-day life in Vicenza, its history, and how to understand things in a foreign country—how
to take a bus, where to find things we needed, but didn’t know where to obtain;
I recall I broke my sewing machine foot and she told me which marketplace I could most likely purchase
a new foot for my machine; she was right. She taught us “how to get along” Italian, not the rigid grammar I
learned from my university professor. I was always trying to practice my
Italian, though I spoke it with a German accent (because I had studied German
in college—or that was why they said I sounded more German than American).
I always spoke Italian with an accent, unlike my older
children, who picked up Italian and spoke it without any accent (especially
Marlowe). But Marlowe, who took Italian language classes in college in Utah and
who always sounded like a native Italian, did not know his grammar as well as I
did. Because of my English major, I studied English grammar and could compare
it to the complex Latin grammar of the Italian language. But what I learned
about Italian and practiced, although I was never very proficient), got me
around. In fact when Ed and I traveled to Spain for a creative writing class
taught on the “Costa Blanca,” I was able to speak enough Italian to help us
though France (and of course, they thought I was German because of my accent),
and never were quite as prejudiced as they would have been if I had spoken
English and been a terrible American.
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| Ed in Germany 1985 |
I
wasn’t as bad as my husband, Ed, who had studied Italian for six months in the
Army’s Monterrey, California language school, and couldn’t seem to understand
it. Once he stopped at a fruit market and asked for a “kilometer” of grapes. Of
course kilometer is a measurement like miles and he meant to ask for a “kilo”
or a thousand grams or approximately 2.2 pounds of grapes. He gave everyone in
the market a good laugh at the ignorant American who couldn’t compute
measurements.
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| Hitler's Eagle's Nest |
That
fall we went to Germany with Ed for meetings and were able to
visit Hitler’s “Eagle Nest” at Berchesgaden, in Bavaria. The 20-minute “adventurous”
bus ride along the steep rock walls and gorges to an altitude of 5,000 feet gave
us a breathtaking view of one of Hitler’s favorite places. I recall buying a
drink of “hot chocolate” there and I got a demitasse cup of thick, bitter, dark
chocolate syrup without milk or sugar and couldn’t drink it. America’s idea of “hot
chocolate” is definitely not the same as Germany or Italy’s.
The other thing I
remember about that trip was that we were trying to help Marc be more
responsible about his grades. Marc failed to turn in his assignments, or whatever,
so he could not miss school to go on the trip, so Ed, Athena and Diana drove to
Germany during the end of the week. Then Marc and I had to take the train after
school on Friday afternoon to Germany to meet them.
I recall being
confused in Milan when we had to change trains to go to Munich, Germany, and the
signs referred to Munich as “Monaco” (Monaco di Baviera); it took me a while to
determine that “Monaco” was the Italian name for München (German for Munich)
and where I wanted to go—and that I was not headed toward the Monaco principality
on the French Riviera. It was late that night when Ed met Marc and I at the
train station and drove us to the hotel.
Athena and Marc were
also very active in the base community theater program that fall, and I
remember Athena was rehearsing for a musical that would be performed in
December.
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| Diana |
When I look back at October 1985, I think of it as the calm
before the storm, because in December 1985 Ed was got a bone infection in his
left arm, was medevacked (medically evacuated) to German and would spend nine
months of the next year and a half in hospitals in Germany and Walter Reed
Hospital (Washington, D. C.) before he was finally well again. Ed spent that Christmas in the hospital at
Landstuhl Airforce Base. I had flown with him to Germany as he was so sick, and
arrived home on Christmas Eve. Diana had been staying with friends while I was
in Germany, and I picked her up and Athena, Diana and I had Christmas together.
Marc was skiing with friends in Austria that Christmas holiday and Marlowe stayed
in Utah with Grandma Chambers in Burley. It was a lonely Christmas.
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| Ed in the hospital at Landstuhl, Germany Christmas 1985 |
