by Jeff Noonan
“He isn’t right, Jeff. He just isn’t right. I don’t know how to say it any stronger. He just isn’t right. Life is a journey that starts somewhere and ends somewhere. But the starting point doesn’t dictate where it ends. The ending depends on what you put into it along the way.”
Then, with the wisdom of mothers everywhere, her next words were, “Let’s give it up for the night. We have a big day tomorrow.”
We got up and headed for the elevators.
As she was getting off the elevator, Mom put her hand over the door’s edge, holding the door open. As Ida walked down the hall, Mom turned to me and said, “Jeff, I remember telling you to escape and give the kids an example to follow. Do you remember?”
I said, “Yeah, I do. We were all in a bunker when you said that. I never forgot it.”
She went on, “Well, you have done that job better than anyone could ever expect, Jeff. You’ve been an example to all of us.” She smiled at me and then said, “But I might have been wrong about one thing. Maybe none of us can ever really escape. Maybe it’s too deep in here.” She tapped her finger on her temple as she went on, “But maybe it doesn’t matter. After all, it’s the hand that we were dealt.”
She was still holding the elevator door. She reached over and pulled me into a bear hug with her free hand. Then she pulled back and looked me in the eyes, saying something that, while simple, was so profound that it guided me through all of the years that followed.
“Jeff, life always goes on. With you or without you, life does go on!”
It did.
EPILOGUE
Danielle and I were married on schedule the next day. We had two beautiful daughters together before the long separations and strain of a military career caused us to drift apart. A few years later, I remarried and, with my new wife, raised a son and another daughter. All four of the children are doing well, and they have given me, at last count, six wonderful grandchildren.
I retired from the Navy as a commissioned warrant officer. After retiring, I worked in engineering firms, managing the design and installation of military electronic systems. Eventually I started my own engineering firm.
Shortly after my sixtieth birthday, I sold my part of the company and retired to St. Regis, where I served for four years as the chairman of the Town Council. I’m now completely retired and still living in western Montana. I still have nightmares, but that’s the hand that I was dealt.
Dad never did improve significantly. But as he became more and more incapacitated, the family learned to work around him. He died of a stroke in the spring of 1974. He was sixty-five. I cried when we buried him, remembering the man that I so admired twenty-five years earlier.
Mom got her American citizenship and ran for political office. She was first elected as a county treasurer and later as a county commissioner. She never remarried and she didn’t retire until she was almost eighty years old. She died of natural causes in 2008 at the age of ninety-six.
Kathy had one daughter, then was divorced and worked her way through college. She is now a retired schoolteacher who dotes on her two grandchildren.
Tim got out of the Navy after four years and went to college to study electrical engineering. He later married and had a son. When I started my first company, he joined me and we worked together for several years. He was semi-crippled in an automobile accident and subsequently battled demon rum for a few years before dying in 1990 at the age of forty-four.
Lyle was drafted into the Army and served in Vietnam. Later he married and had two children, a girl and a boy, before divorcing and living alone. He never got over his war experiences and he fought his demons to the end. He died in 2005 at the age of fifty-seven.
Eleanor graduated from college with a degree in Law Enforcement, married, and had three children. She and her husband have had successful careers in the state of Alaska. They now have three grandchildren.
Jim is married and has five children and six grandchildren. He went to college with Tim for a couple of years and is now a computer specialist working in western Montana.
Dan, the youngest of us, is the successful owner of a home-construction business in western Montana. He is married, with three children and two grandchildren.
At the time of this writing, Mom and Dad have thirty-seven living descendents, all doing well and making the most out of the hands that they were dealt. Life does go on.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Noonan is a Montana native who retired in 2001 as the president of a nationwide corporation. He is married with four children and six grandchildren.
As a young man, Jeff worked as a laborer for farms, ranches, lumber mills, and a railroad. He then served in both the Army and the Navy, retiring from the Navy as a commissioned warrant officer. While in the Navy, he commissioned five ships at Bath Iron Works, worked in guided missile research at White Sands Missile Range, and served two and a half years in Viet Nam operations. When he retired, he was a combat systems officer in Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.
After leaving the military, Jeff worked his way up from an entry-level technical position to become the executive-vice president of a 900-person corporation with offices worldwide. During this era, he moved two companies into the impoverished city of Camden, New Jersey, in order to provide jobs where none existed. Then he took over a troubled seven-person North Carolina company and turned it into a solvent corporation with over 250 employees. In recognition of these efforts, a U.S. Congressional Committee officially awarded him their 1999 North Carolina Businessman of the Year plaque during a Washington, DC, ceremony.
Jeff sold his business interests in 2001 and retired to his hometown where he was soon elected president of the St. Regis Community Council, a position he held for four years. He was also the president of the Mineral County Chamber of Commerce for two years. He still lives in western Montana.