It was all a great mystery, and it began as we incubated in our mother’s womb, Bob continually using his bulk and sharp elbows to shunt me aside so he’d have more room to grow. Grow he did, about 6-1 with broad shoulders and long legs — a lanky, mirror-image frame akin to our father’s.
Me? Not so much. We grew from different (DNA proved it) eggs, you see — his from an ostrich and me from a parakeet — and as the old joke goes, the yoke was on me, a slender, wispy-weight pipsqueak topping out at 5-7. More like our mom.
What a difference being born six minutes apart meant, and what different fraternal-twin men we turned out to be. As young teens, he was into crystal sets and electronics and flying model airplanes while boasting a mathematical mind. Literally on the other hand — I was a lefty, he was a righty — I was enthralled with sports, spending countless hours watching tiny football players vibrating on an electric field, playing All-Star Baseball using player discs and a spinner to simulate games, creating racetracks on paper and rolling dice in horseracing and Indy 500 auto action.
Funny how that worked out. Bob with his bigger brain became an engineer (not the choo-choo kind) and became famous in the world of electronic warfare, while I was a journalist and award-winning sportswriter. We loved every minute of our careers, and loved each other every minute, despite the years and sometimes countries apart.
We had a unique athletic history. He was a state champion swimmer with size 13-flippers and I was a slow, B-relay backstroker, but among our fondest memories involved racket combat — tennis and table tennis — where size didn’t matter. There was much pinging and ponging at the ranch and I would eventually edge him at his workplace despite him being the Antekna champion.
We battled many a time on the Mesa High tennis team — always very close matches — and later in life we enjoyed golfing adventures at his course in Hemet and mine at Trilogy in Rio Vista. It was our pleasure as well when Linda and I introduced Bob and Arlyne to the amazing world of birdwatching, where they both excelled in identifying new species while building their life lists.
We cherished the times we visited over the decades — far too few they were — as our children and grandchildren blossomed, and despite the distances between us, there was always an eternal kinship, brotherly love. Sadly, there can be only memories now, flickering in my mind like an old newsreel.
Hard to believe, Bob, that you’ve been gone for a year now, taken by cancer, robbing you of more wonderful years with wife Arlyne and the rest of the family, not giving you a chance to visit with brother Bill and me again in Arizona, like the last time in 2017.
As I often say, I always looked up to you — hey, you were six inches taller — but also out of respect for the man you were. I love you and miss you, and feel blessed that you were a part of our lives. Thanks, too, for not treating me like a “little” brother.
For the past few weeks, I have been thinking of getting my butt in gear and start taking care of my husband Bob’s blog. I am lucky, as his twin brother Rich, a longtime sportswriter, has offered to help.
As you probably know, we married on Nov. 22, 1967 in Puntarenas, Costa Rica, my hometown right on the Pacific Ocean. Everyone had to see “the tall gringo.” My father was translating during the Catholic ceremony, but after a while he turned to Bob and said: “I will tell you all this later.” End of translation.
Bob was a field engineer with a company in Northern California and was assigned to Eglin AFB in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. We lived on the “island” for 1-1/2 years and our son David was born there. Then we moved to Las Vegas to another assignment at Nellis AFB. During this stint, we had so many visitors that it made it fun and family oriented. Everyone wanted to come to Vegas, see a show and enjoy the new addition to the family, our daughter Alexandra Teresa Draper. We did not win a lot of money, but we were careful gamblers — we had a budget and were good at knowing when it was time to quit. Bob liked dice and I liked the machines.
We moved to the San Francisco Bay area — where we lived for years — and purchased a house right against heavily-trafficked Lawrence Expressway. We got fed up with the noise and decided to take matters into our own hands. With Bob’s help, we collected signatures from our neighbors, researched traffic noise and its impact on “humans.” We wrote letters to the city and our representatives, never expecting a positive reply, but at least we tried.
Some months later, we received a letter stating construction of a sound wall along this expressway was approved. Could not believe it, but it happened. If you go to Santa Clara and drive along this part of the expressway you will notice the brick wall. Our dream — or best said, my dream — was to move closer to my parents, who had moved from Costa Rica to San Diego. We finally made the move in 1990 when Bob was hired by Cubic Corp, where he worked for 26 years. He loved his job and got to travel the world as the “expert, senior and best engineer” (my words) for the marketing department. I should have kept a “memory book” but I did not. Our first home was in Scripps Ranch.
Bob was very close to his father Lou who lived in Mesa, Ariz. He also loved the state and its heat. We used to go see Lou frequently and every time we crossed the border into Arizona Bob had a ritual. Stop the car, get out and put his arms up in the air and say: “I love the Arizona heat. Welcome home, Bob.” I am Latin, my interest in family is prime, but due to distances and work, we did not get to visit as much as we should have. I made sure that my kids had a close relationship with their grandparents though, and we visited Lou and Arizona as much as Bob’s work permitted it.
Today, July 20, 2019, is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 space shuttle to the moon. Everyone says that as you get older, you remember the past better than the present. I can attest to this. The past is so clear to me nowadays, and when something triggers a long-ago event I can remember it like it was yesterday. Like today, celebrating Neil Armstrong’s feat. We lived in Sunnyvale then, and our son David was almost 2-1/2, dressed with a light blue jump suit and a very cute undershirt. We headed to the house of our Redwood City friends Ronald and Tere to watch the launch and have dinner. When the shuffle lifted Bob also lifted David and said: “Don’t you ever forget this day, David. Your dad worked on this shuttle program. The guy next to my desk was your mom’s boyfriend, he introduced me to her. It was meant to be.”
I will continue my life with Bob later on, but now I want to move forward. Nine months ago, after 52 years of marriage, Bob passed away. It took a while for his medical team to find out what type of cancerous tumor he had. We were in Texas, and even though our first choice was to go to City of Hope, we realized that Bob was too weak to make the trip from Texas to California. We settled on MD Anderson in Houston, one of the world’s best cancer treatment centers. Bob was diagnosed with spindle cell sarcoma of the pelvis, but it was impossible remove it surgically and radiation was not an option.
We were there for three months, but chemo didn’t work and his oncologist suggested we go home and we did. Our daughter and her husband came to drive our motorhome back to Lakeway which is only 25 minutes away from downtown Austin. This was Sept. 2, 2018. Our son David arrived later as did Rich. Our daughter had made arrangements for us to stay with her during Bob’s hospice care, and he died Oct. 11, 2018.
We had a celebration of life Jan. 11, 2019, at my brother Rod and his wife Carmen’s house in San Diego. More than 120 people came, some from as far away as New Mexico, as well as former coworkers from Cubic and Antekna along with friends and relatives from Northern California and Oregon. Bunco friends from Hemet and farther way, came also. It was a marvelous afternoon for all. I am sure Bob would have been very happy to see people that shared our lives over a span of 52 years and much more. I now spend time with family and friends in San Diego. I am very fortunate to have my family close by and wonderful and caring friends, like Richard and Karen who lent me their trailer to live while in this beautiful city. BUT …
It has been extremely difficult to live by myself without my husband. Everyone says “time is a great healer.” It has not been for me, but I am trying to learn how to live with his memory and at the same time without him.
We became committed bird watchers after Bob was sent to New Zealand for work. If you haven’t been there, put it on your bucket list. We did everything together since his retirement in 2005 and throughout our marriage. In 2005 we bought an 30-foot RV. In 2010, we decided to become RV full timers, and enjoyed being volunteers at nature centers, concentrating mainly in Texas, New Mexico, Washington state and San Diego. Pretty soon, we cut it down to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department venues, mainly in NM and TX. We also traveled to Colombia to visit friends and, of course, bird watch. A trip to Peru and Bob’s lifelong dream of visiting Machu Pichu was made possible by our niece Arlyne (named after me, what an honor.)
Since his parting, I had an impulse to continue birding and keep his blog alive. For the trip, I needed someone to accompany me. I shared my idea with many, and I got a hit. My cousin Vicky. She had never been to Texas and was not into bird watching. My idea was to go to South Padre Island for the spring migration, featuring birds flying across the Gulf of Mexico all the way to their summer nesting sites in the U.S. and further. I was thrilled. We planned our trip, rented a car, and I picked her up at the Austin airport on April 17 then drove for six hours to our destination. Going across the bridge connecting the “mainland” to the island is a marvelous experience and the views are phenomenal. If you like shrimp and seafood, this is the place to go. www.sopadre.com
This trip was a remembrance of our bird watching days with Bob through travels and our volunteering days in the U.S. It was also a trip to visit our dear friends at Santa Ana NWR, where we volunteered over the years. I also wanted my cousin Vicky to enjoy the Texas state parks. After coming to Austin on April 29, she flew back to her home in the East Coast and I headed to Lakeway, where I live for part time with our daughter Alex and her family. If you plan a birding trip to south Texas, first order the birding trail guide form the Texas State Parks webpage. http://www.tpwd.texas.gov
I have been in San Diego since May 15 visiting family and friends. My sister and brother live nearby, and I see them almost every day. I spend some weekends with our son and his family. My longtime friends keep in touch and we go out to lunch or just hang around. My cousin Lorena and her husband live in orange County and visit often. My sister Vilma lives in El Salvador and she spends time with me also. I look forward to sharing my adventures with Bob and by myself. My best to all of you and hope we meet and connect soon.
Here’s some of my favorite bird photos from South Texas:
The summer of 1963 has special memories for me. My dad had major back surgery done in San Francisco, and my mom went up there to help with his recovery. I stayed with the Stauffers, my dad’s business partner, to finish my school year, and then headed over to Las Cruces with Bill Draper in his Porsche.
Bob and my oldest brother Army were sharing an old farmhouse in Mesilla Park, and that became my home for the summer. I remember that Bob and I were the only ones that liked rock and roll music, my brother being more of a jazz fan, and we used to CRANK IT UP!!! We spent the summer building and flying model airplanes, including radio controlled ones, and just having a blast. Bob had built a scale replica of the German Fokker D-1 triplane. I was amazed at his craftsmanship and attention to detail.
There was one sour note while I was there. It seemed that one of the fellows that he and my brother worked with at White Sands Missile Range was either retiring or being transferred. They decided to have a keg party at the house to see him off. Now big brother put me in his bedroom and told me to stay out of the party and NO BEER. Now my brother by another mother, Bob, didn’t quite see it that way. He and another friend would bring me all the beer that I wanted, and WAY more than I should have drank. Safe to say, the hangover the next day almost killed me. I thought that I had to get better or die.
(Note: The Curtis and Draper families were neighbors on Pomeroy Street in Mesa for several years in the Fifties)
Don Curtis
Bob sent me this photo from the Mesa Tribune from around 1955 or so, showing our moms and the work they did for the Desert Club, a women’s organization in Mesa. It’s one of my prized possessions. I can truthfully say that I loved Bob like a brother.
In 50’s newspaper style, wives rarely got their first names in captions. How quaint.
My condolences to the Bob Draper family. It is an honor to be asked to provide some comments on the life of a good friend and highly respected life-long colleague in the defense business.
You know him from his loving support of his family and his world of retirement and bird watching – and blogs. I hope this short story helps you understand the valuable contribution that Bob made in helping our military be the best trained in the world.
Arlyne asked me to provide some comments on Bob’s work at Antekna, a defense contractor in Silicon Valley in the early 1970s. He was one of the earliest founding members of the Antekna team and was selected because of his stellar reputation as a creative and dedicated engineering expert.
Bob was a very modest man and never bragged about his contributions to our defense efforts. However, he was instrumental in developing a pioneering concept to provide modular, off-the-shelf Electronic Warfare simulators that could recreate the Soviet Electronic Order of Battle at one-tenth the cost of previous products. This let our Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines and Allies have complex trainers and testers to make our Electronic Warfare officers the best in the world. This helped make a generation of the US and our allies be the best trained war-fighters in all of our battles in the past 50 years. The concepts he helped pioneer are still in use today – that is how visionary he and his team were.
Bob was one of those unique engineers – he could write as well as design. As you know from his popular blogs, he was a great story-teller. This made him invaluable in writing proposals to win new contracts. Bob not only was instrumental in the conception and actual design of these products, he helped integrate them into the military training and test stations. He could be relied upon to teach the instructors and test engineers how to operate these complex systems and was always praised by the local commanders on how effectively and professionally he worked with the customers.
Bob was also very well-liked and respected by his fellow Antekna teammates. You won’t be surprised to learn that he was instrumental in the installation of the basketball court in the company parking lot – and was out there leading his team at lunch. He was also a leader of employee recreation activities, always including the families of fellow teammates.
I especially respected Bob for his devotion to his family. There was no question as to what came first – it was always Arlyne and the children. We were very sorry to see him leave Antekna to go to San Diego to support Arlyne when she faced her first bout of breast cancer – but that was typical Bob, and obviously the only decision for him. We were happy to see his success at Cubic in their different world of defense simulation and training. We miss him and are grateful for his help in making the US a stronger nation.
With condolences to all of you.
Bibbens was Bob’s boss/owner at Antekna and became lifelong friends with him and Arlyne. He also helped Arlyne after she founded breast cancer support groups, assisting her advocacy in a Clinton-era national organization.
I was an engineer in the defense industry my entire career. I met and worked with a lot of engineers and military people of course, many of them brilliant. An entire career is a long time. I worked endless hours with government and military people. I worked on many truly intriguing projects and accumulated a lot of “war stories” from guys (and gals) that I found fascinating.
I worked with WWII, Vietnam and Gulf War vets, even a few from foreign countries. Although I never actually served in the Armed Forces, I was a good listener and rubbed shoulders with brave, patriotic and tough hombres. I’ve forgotten many of their names but a lot of them shared their stories with me. The following represent some of these stories. This may be old news to some of you warriors but a lot of these guys are still alive and I’m sure they remember their “war” stories.
The soldier who survived D-Day the Hard Way. Following my graduation from college, my first job put me next to some of these hombres where I listened to riveting tales. Sitting at a desk near mine, one engineer told me of his experiences on D-Day and D+1, 22 years earlier. He was a young soldier who waded, crawled and ran across Omaha Beach and managed to reach the cliffs. He hunkered down under what cover he could find and survived the first day and night. The next morning, he and his mates cautiously crept inland for about a mile. As they walked through bushes, a German soldier suddenly leaped out and fired point-blank at him, hitting him right in the middle of his chest. He showed me the little wrinkly spot right next to his heart. The German was killed immediately by another Allied soldier. My friend somehow held out for a day or so and was evacuated to England by boat and eventually to the U.S. It was a short war for him. He recovered but received 100% disability for life. A likeable and interesting man, I had dinner with him a few times and he taught me to drink only Pinot Noir, which I do to this day.
The F-105 Pilot Over Hanoi. Whether or not you supported the Vietnam war, I recall several courageous men that served in that conflict. My colleagues and I were discussing the performance of electronic warfare equipment at my company with a group of F-105 fight-bomber pilots who had flown missions over North Vietnam. One pilot I had lunch with told me he was at about 30,000 feet over Hanoi when he was forced to
perform a violent maneuver to avoid a SAM (SA-4 surface-to-air missile).
NOTE: During that conflict, it was not generally known by civilians like us that avoiding a missile rising toward your aircraft entailed pushing the stick down hard and diving right at the ascending missile. In attempting to intercept an aircraft, the missiles were unable to make the sharp turn that was necessary to hit the aircraft. The missile missed his plane by a little bit but his life-saving maneuver caused a flame-out of his single engine. He did what he needed to do to restart the engine but was down to about 8,000 feet before it reignited. He told me his stress level was way, way up there. I don’t recall if he managed to drop his bombs before he high-tailed it out of there. He probably did.
When Your Mission is Cancelled In-Flight. I do remember a super guy named Walt Lifsey. He was a steely-eyed F-105 pilot who I couldn’t help but admire. He first proceeded to tell me that a mission to North Vietnam is carefully planned and briefed to a squadron of bomber pilots. This involved the study of detailed maps, target photographs, radio protocol, entry/egress routes, likely enemy search radar, anti-aircraft (AAA) sites, and SAM locations and types. Early on the day of the mission, pilots and crew checked operation of flight controls, communications equipment and armament loads. Quite often, the pilot or the electronic warfare officer (EWO) would vomit on the flight line during this walkaround due to nerves. It usually took at least a couple of hours or more to fly to the target area. Sometimes the pentagon would relay a message to aircraft commanders during this period that a specific mission was cancelled. This was usually due to politicians who would have second thoughts or better intelligence or various other reasons to interrupt a bombing mission, even if it was in progress.
During the flight, aircraft crews would review mission data and build up their strength and courage. Calling off a mission created anger and frustration. It also meant that the crews needed to “discard” their armament as they couldn’t land at their home base still loaded with fuel and bombs. What to do? Pilots needed to burn off their energy as well. Walt told me that they would bomb or shoot at wild camels, North Vietnam “soldiers’ pushing bicycles, anything shiny on the ground, even people, of course, who were usually shooting at them with small arms. They had to come back empty. I was not then aware of this but I understood it.
I learned this while playing golf with Walt at Eglin AFB a couple of times.
Medal of Honor. I met several airmen during my career. In 1967, Capt. Merle Dethlefsen, who I met and talked to at an Air Force base in the Midwest, refused to fly his badly damaged F-105 Thunderchief back to Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand.
Dethlefsen, flying the number three aircraft, and three other F-105s, flew ahead of a strike force of 72 fighter-bombers (F-105 Thunderchiefs from Korat and Takhli, and F-4 Phantoms from Ubon) heading to the Thai Nguyen iron and steel works.
Their job was to attack surface-to-air missile sites, antiaircraft guns and a ring of other automatic weapons guarding the target. On the first pass, his flight leader Maj. David Everson and Capt. Jose Luna, both of whom became POWs) were shot down by 85mm AAA fire and his wing man was forced to withdraw with severe damage.
Capt. Dethlefsen then took command of the flight while fending off MiG attacks and responding to his own battle-damaged aircraft. As he maneuvered, he evaded an intercepting Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 by flying into heavy enemy antiaircraft fire. His F-105 was severely damaged, but he determined the aircraft could still fly.
Dethlefsen made repeated strikes with his new wingman, Maj. Kenneth Bell, against the enemy’s defensive positions. Evading a second MiG, Dethlefsen dove through the obscuring haze to locate the missile complex when he was again hit by flak. Making a final dive bombing attack and a strafing run with 20 mm cannon fire, Dethlefsen effectively destroyed two missile sites before finally leaving for Takhli, 500 miles away. The mission was considered a success although two F-4s of the strike force were shot down.
Dethlefsen receives the Medal of Honor
Dethlefsen could have pulled out of the mission with honor many times: when attacked by MiGs, when he and his wingman were hit by flak, or when the smoke of battle made it difficult to locate the enemy.
But he made a conscious choice to make repeated passes, each one more dangerous than the one before. For his heroic actions, Dethlefsen was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Lyndon B. Johnson on February 1, 1968. He became the third of 12 airmen so honored during the Vietnam War.
Female transport pilot during Gulf War. I won’t name any names here but it’s a harrowing story. This transport pilot flew cargo aircraft (probably including wounded troops) from somewhere in the mid-east to Germany during Gulf War I. Her missions were fairly uneventful until she and a colleague stopped in Italy for a brief layover. She and a male friend were doing some recreational swimming out in the ocean. After a relaxing (I presume) swim, they both realized they were too far off the beach. Due to strong currents, they were unable to make it back to shore. They both drifted further out to sea and lost sight of land. Sometime later, she lost contact with her friend. She used survival techniques to preserve energy. Night fell and she thought constantly about her husband and children and what was going to happen. On the second day, she found herself on a coral reef in rough water. She scraped back and forth on the coral, barely able to maintain a position and suffering nasty injuries. After another night, she was spotted by an aircraft which was looking for her. I don’t know the details about her being picked up but she was rescued and eventually recovered, at least physically. She determined quickly that the Navy life wasn’t for her, with a young family. She left the Navy soon thereafter. Her friend was never found. It’s unusual that her husband was a commercial pilot and still is today.
Flying saucers at WSMR. I worked part-time at White Sands Missile Range while attending college. I met and worked with several engineers and military people during the four years I was there. In conversation, one engineer, who had been working at WSMR several years, told me about a “flying saucer” that he and others had seen over C-Station (Control Station) during the day. The radar operator at C-Station began tracking this object. It was stationary for several minutes before it “flew” off. The radar operator, presumably experienced, said it exceeded the velocity of anything he had ever tracked. My engineer friend said it was oblong and had circular windows. When it quickly took off, he said that it disappeared so fast he only saw it briefly. Now, I was only in my early twenties and he could have been passing along a “war story” that he told to every young engineer who came through our lab. He seemed credible, however, and I certainly remember his story. I wonder. This sighting happened in the mid- to late fifties and there are still unexplained UFO stories from that time. I don’t have any pictures of this object.
The Landing Craft Operator WWII. I had a close friend during my college period. He was a WWII veteran of the war in the Pacific. Roy and I both worked at White Sands Missile Range and we both loved building and flying model airplanes. Among other things Roy did during the war, he “drove” a landing craft for transporting and off-loading soldiers on island beaches. I don’t, unfortunately, recall which island(s) he “landed” on but probably more than one. The story I remember is an incident he told me about as he approached a beach. As the operator of a landing craft (of which there were many types), he was not able to see ahead of the boat until he dropped the forward door to let soldiers exit. One day, as Roy skidded to a stop on the beach and dropped the door, he saw a single armed Japanese soldier run out of the jungle onto the beach, shooting at soldiers. He said that so many Allied soldiers shot him, he literally came apart. No way to understand why he did this but he certainly knew what was going to happen. I don’t mean to offend anyone with this description but this was war.
POW Story. A carrier pilot I worked with after he had left the Navy told me harrowing stories about being in a few camps as a prisoner, including the Hanoi Hilton, a major POW camp in North Vietnam. Harry Jenkins flew A-6 bombers off a carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin. He was a cantankerous guy and early on after being shot down and captured
I believe this is an SA-2 missile
they used to torture him by simply laying a heavy iron pipe across his shins as he was strapped to a slab of wood. He said it wasn’t too bad at first but after 30 minutes he couldn’t stand it. After an hour, he would be screaming. He and several South Vietnamese POWs would tend fields of rice and vegetables every day. He said prisoners would floss with electrical wire to save their teeth.
One day, after a few years, he noticed that a door in his building was open. He had never seen it open before. It led to another section of the “hotel”. He went through the door, looked to his left and saw an American pilot in a cell like his. Where most of us would have perhaps been overcome with emotion, he simply looked in the cell and calmly said “Nice little place you got here.” He was a POW for 5-1/2 years and was involved in developing and using the tapping code that prisoners used to communicate. I believe he knew John McCain, a future presidential candidate. I really liked him but I didn’t press him for a lot of details.
F-105 Wild Weasel flies a world-class mission. Because of what these guys did, I believe I correctly recall their names: Major Pete Tsouprake and Major William Robinson. Robinson was the pilot of a specially equipped F-105 fighter bomber and Pete was the EWO (electronic warfare officer). I knew a lot of EWOs having worked in electronic warfare for 10 years. EWOs were also known as GIBs (guy in back). It was 1966 and this is how I remember the mission as told to me.
First of all: The “specially equipped” two-seater F-105 was outfitted with electronic equipment to detect and sometimes jam enemy radars. This aircraft and its 2-man crew were called Wild Weasels. These guys would lead a strike force of several (as many as
Pete Tsouprake
70) single-seat F-105s on missions to bomb designated targets. The Wild Weasel, using its electronics, would go in first to locate search radars, AAA radars and SA-2 Guideline missile control radar systems. These aircraft would “suppress” these facilities using bombs and rockets and, occasionally, their guns. The entire strike force depended on the skill and heroism of the Wild Weasel crew. The Weasels go in ahead of the strike force and then linger in the area until the other aircraft had completed their missions and left. The motto of the Wild Weasels was “first in, last out”.
Two seater F-105 Wild Weasel
These two Weasels did something unprecedented on that July day in 1966. They detected and located four SA-2 SAM (surface-to-air missile) sites. Using bombs, rockets and their Gatling gun (when they ran out of other ordnance) and evading AAA (flak) they destroyed three SAM sites and heavily damaged the fourth. Four SAM sites destroyed in one day had never been done before. This performance earned both Robinson and Tsouprake the Air Force Cross, an award which is not casually offered, even in wartime. During the conflict, both men were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross as well, for similar acts. A painting was commissioned to commemorate their mission.
Note that in the F-105 photo above a small bulge can be seen just below and behind the nose cone. There is a similar one at the top rear of the vertical stabilizer (tail). These “blisters” housed antennas used to detect enemy radar emissions. I worked on several of these aircraft, checking the antennas but primarily working on electronic equipment in the turtleback compartment just behind the cockpit on the back of the airplane
Two other things: I played golf with Maj Tsouprake at Eglin AFB a couple of times. A great guy that I couldn’t help but admire.
The F-105 aircraft was originally designed to carry a nuclear weapon into Europe and although it never did this, it still carried 3000 pounds of gear related to transporting and releasing the weapon. It was never intended to do the kind of maneuvering it did in Vietnam. It eventually was replaced by the F-4 Phantom.
I have two brothers, Bill and Rich. Over the years (many years), we and others have managed to create, discover, collect, and store a great deal of information about our ancestors. Particularly, we are fortunate in having a wealth of photographs of the people who came before us. We particularly have our brother Rich to thank for his diligent and tireless work in interviewing people and researching data bases and historical websites to gather far more ancestral data than we ever thought possible. My brother Bill is also a valuable resource for his penchant to maintain and store many of the original photographs and documents detailing the interesting people who now populate our family tree.
Recently, the three of us have begun a project to organize, digitize and categorize these tiny treasures so they are preserved for years to come. The characters hanging in the branches of our family tree can thus be looked at, admired and even analyzed. Through Rich’s genealogy efforts and the fortunes of history, our lineage goes back centuries. We know nothing about the four-legged creatures and cave people who started all of us of course, but looking at the recent past, we find people we can relate to and eventually people we knew. Many of our ancestors were born, lived and died within a few hundred square miles of where they began. They were farmers for the most part but we have learned of hounds-men, sheep “ranchers”, soldiers, ministers, homemakers, restaurant owners, historical figures, American Indians and, probably, a few nobodies.
As civilization and technology advanced and people traveled more, our early roots spread from England and Europe to the American colonies. This travel was not always by choice as some of our ancestors were driven to leave their homelands by politics and economic conditions.
My purpose for putting my thoughts here is not to impress anyone. Every family has anecdotes and interesting characters that are remembered either orally or on paper, both of which are equally strong. My own thoughts are developing as I browse and study the family photographs and documents before me with a new ability and vision provided to me by age.
Our mother and her mother
In a few very rare photos, I see my mother’s grandparents as she saw them. I see my mother’s young parents quite dressed up for some forgotten event. I see my mother as a child of two and watch her grow through girlhood, high school,
Virginia Draper in grade school – early 1920s
first jobs, dating, marriage, motherhood, pastimes and aging. I can see pieces of her entire life through pictures. Delighted, happy, stressed, determined, and proud. Looking at all these pictures, I can encapsulate her life. I found it heartbreaking in a way. A person’s entire life documented in a few dozen photographs. I can view my mother’s whole life in five minutes.
High School friends about 1925
She was worth far more than that. We know she had a sibling, acquaintances, dear friends, pets, neighbors, colleagues, artistic talent, a good-looking husband and a young, growing family. We can at least fold our memories of her into the thread of her life and fill in details for some of those years. She was a bit out of mainstream life as an adult. We know her as one of the first beatniks. (look that up) Hippies came later.
A SPECIAL PHOTOGRAPH. We have one photograph that is especially endearing to us. Standing together by a train about
L to R: Our grandmother, our mother, our great-grandmother
1920-ish, we see our grandmother, our mother and our great grandmother. Over 100 years ago.
Further, on a business trip to Great Britain, I managed to visit the grave of my grandmother’s great grandfather, William Sebright. We don’t have a photograph of Sebright, a master of the hounds at a castle, but we have a painting of him. He was born in 1791, over 226 years ago and we can see him. He was our great-great-great grandfather.
WE CAN SEE MORE. A careful look through our family photographs reveals a short
Our father (the kid) on an early dump truck
history of transportation technology, including horse-drawn wagons, early dump trucks, the first taxi cab, a variety of automobiles, airplanes and eventually, in my case, rockets. It’s all there in the pages of our family history.
AND MORE. We can’t overlook of course, the fashions in clothes for adults and children. It’s incredible how
Our grandmother on the far left
garment styles have changed over the last 120 years. Through our photos, we can see the progression of styles in dresses, shirts, blouses, trousers, belts, shoes and hats. Men had huge
Little George Draper Watts – later in the military, died in crash of an early dirigible
starched collars and bow ties. Women and girls looked like they had placed large doilies over their heads. They way children were dressed it’s nearly impossible to tell girls from boys until they’re 5 or 6. I notice that belts and all kinds of buttons were a BIG deal in the first half of the 20th century. I don’t recall seeing covered buttons in my lifetime worn as an everyday thing. Go back even a short way into the past and it seems men virtually always had their shirts buttoned right up to their necks. Even workers on construction sites wore long sleeve shirts and sometimes pleated trousers.
AND EVEN MORE. Evidence of the proud professions and trades of our ancestors can be seen in these photographs. We see (or read about) farm machinery
Our grandfather William (R) working on an unknown construction project
and equipment, blacksmithing, product deliveries, restaurant ownership, soldiering, movie studios, early animation and cartoons, cowboys, homemaking,
Our beloved grandmother Sybil
architecture, stone-masonry and teaching. We can sometimes see our ancestors as children, getting familiar with the work of their parents.
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE FUTURE. With the accelerating pace of life, changing attitudes, decreased mores and increased self-absorption, I wonder what thoughts my own descendants will have of me and my two brothers. Certainly, our lives have been more frequently photographed and our experiences better documented than the previous 100 years. There are videos and sound recordings of us. By the time we’re gone, however, the enormous distraction of other photographs, videos, sounds and documentation within a more complicated world may overwhelm any future interest or analysis of the stories of the Draper brothers. That’s life.
We waited a long time to visit Arenal Volcano and see the special wildlife there. In the distant past we stayed near Arenal when the volcano was erupting every hour and a half and digital cameras hadn’t been invented. Now quiet, the geologists say Arenal can be safely approached and hiked for about the next 400 years. That should work. The Arenal Observatory Lodge is 1.7 miles from the volcano. Presumably wildlife chased away 10 years ago by the lava have returned.
Arenal cast its spell before we even got to the hotel. Our first view of the volcano was shrouded in hazy rain and looked like King Kong lived there and we were the first to discover it. Approaching the hotel on pebbled roads, we saw gray-headed chachalacas and a melodious blackbird, new birds for us. Welcome to Arenal!
But after all, we were in Costa Rica and it rained very hard as we checked in. As we learned, however, rain seems to be an afternoon-evening thing. Mornings are typically sunny and wonderful. An ordinary person can’t explain this but everybody knows it. The rainy season arrives abut the end of May and this rain was a warm-up.
Drapers at Arenal
As promised, the morning came with a world class view of “our” volcano. The Lodge is fabulous and we met interesting people from Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Los Angeles and Canada. We came for these experiences and hoped to see wonderful birds and other creatures. A pair of great curassows awaited us at a nice feeder we could see from an observation deck. These are large birds, unmistakable and unique. North America has nothing close.
I’m not going to describe all the details of how we saw the birds…….I’ll mostly show them to you. The Arenal experience is a living wonder for birders and nature lovers. As a bonus, other delightful animals included the iconic Costa Rican red-eyed leaf frog.
Iconic red-eyed leaf frog…on a leaf
We went down to a frog pond at 9 pm and found several frogs (called ranas here) and got some beautiful photos. The star of the frog show defies belief. The red-eyed leaf frog is a symbol of Costa Rica. The rain earlier in the evening brought them out, along with a little poisonous snake.
I went the first night and Arlyne came with me the second night.
As another bonus, the next day we saw a poisonous toad that looked as menacing as anything I’ve ever seen.
We chased the white-necked Jacobin (large hummingbird) around some flowers until finally capturing a photo. Brilliant.
Crested guans saw us but didn’t seem perturbed.
a favorite of mine – lime green
Red-legged honeycreepers started showing up mid-morning. Picturesque little guys for sure. As a surprise, a yellow-crowned euphonia showed up briefly followed by one of my favorites, a female green honeycreeper. This lime-colored bird was the jewel of the morning. In the early afternoon, we saw two golden-hooded tanagers. Sometimes lucky photographic “accidents” can happen and the two tanagers created one! Great Stuff! I never saw this coming. I don’t know if these two birds were fighting, playing, showing off or what. I caught them as I was photographing another bird. What luck! Don’t try this, I’m a semi-professional.
a very acrobatic bird this guy
Thanks for following us around Costa Rica…………wait until next time!!
I want to take a step back and talk about Costa Rica. We’ve seen quite a bit this trip and have plans for more. We haven’t been here for eight years and our view is a bit different. We’ve been fortunate to stay at Arlyne’s brother’s house in Puntarenas and with friends (Ronald and Tere) in Alajuela. We’ve hired an Uber driver for much of our travels in CR, we’ve been driven about by friends and family and we’ve transitioned to driving her brother’s car sometimes. Haven’t rented a car yet and probably won’t. The Beeche family isn’t exactly the Mafia but you get the idea.
Costa Rica is a green world, with gardens, pastures, mountains, jungles, farms, fruit and volcanic slopes, all in varying shades of green. With the possible exception of San Jose, the capital, Costa Rica attracts and catches the eye everywhere. As I tell everyone here, it’s all normal and routine to you but special and exotic to us no matter what it is, a tree, a restaurant, a highway a river. I not only married a Costa Rican woman, I married a family, a country, and a culture……a kingdom of riches. Rich coast indeed. Sitting as it is, straddling the volcanic “ring of fire”, Costa Rica must have had a turbulent prehistory. The early volcanic fires still show themselves in the wonderfully colorful green, red and yellow bird life. Even many iguanas come in various hues of green and yellow-green. It has been said (Henry Miller) that a destination is not a place, it’s a new way of seeing things. Henry, in Costa Rica, I have both.
A wonderful welcome to Costa Rica
Our first tour was to Volcan Irazu. Irazu is more or less dormant now and even has a little store at the top. Visitors can walk along the edge of one of the two or three craters that formed from early eruptions. People from all over the world come here to feel the magic.
As you saw in the last blog (and again here), Volcan Turrialba is active and can be seen from the 11,000 foot summit of Irazu. It takes my breath away. Actually, Volcan Poas could now take my breath away permanently with its poisonous gases.
Aileen and Arlyne on the edge of Irazu
Volcan Turrialba
After decending Irazu, we visited two very old churches and a coffee farm. Everything we saw was suitable for framing so we took lots of pictures. This seems the time to talk about……..
Costa Rican Food. The national breakfast is coffee, two eggs, mixed rice and beans (gallo pinto, aka “spotted chicken”), and fruit (papaya, mango, bananas, plantains, pineapple, and/or watermelon). There are other fruit varieties here that are not regular fare for norteamericanos. We really like guanabana.
For lunch, customers ask what “natural” drinks are available. Most of the fruit listed above is made into drinks and smoothies. Shrimp is very popular everywhere. Yuca (especially fried, for me) is wonderful. Fabulous soups seem to be available only at cafes above the really low end, which can be found all over the country. For those who like meat, there is beef, chicken, pork and tongue in various dishes. Costa Rica, with a few exceptions, does not really “relish” hot sauce.
For dinner, virtually every restaurant in the western part of CR is an outdoor covered patio affair. If it’s raining, even torrentially, no one has a problem. It rains virtually every afternoon starting between 2 and 3 pm. In the dry season, maybe not every day. It stops at around 6 or 7. Everytime.
Roads, Highways and “Other”. Most roads, even small ones, are filled with traffic of large trucks, large buses, small buses, vans, cars, motorcycles, scooters, motorized bikes, bicycles, animals, and pedestrians. One yellow caution sign we saw near the Tarcoles river warned of crocodiles crossing the road. I did run over a small iguana last evening in the rain.
We’ve been on freeways, major highways, small community roads, true “back” roads and numerous dirt roads. We’ve been on farm roads through private pineapple and sugar cane fields that stretched into the distance. Ask our friend Aileen…..we forded several rivers in our friend Rafa’s 4-wheel drive. After all, he’s a rancher. I have home movies to prove it.
New roads in Costa Rica have helped with workday traffic but not much. CR has a traffic problem and doesn’t have a solution. There is talk of a contract with a Chinese company to build a new road but it’s a long way off, if at all. We even saw and drove over a couple on Bailey bridges, portable, prefab bridges developed for WW II military use. I think these were put in place in Costa Rica in the 50’s or 60’s as part of foreign aid.
Rafa’s Farm. Arlyne’s family, particularly her younger brother in San Diego, has a long-time friend here. Rafael (Rafa) Oreamuno is a landowner, rancher (mostly cattle and cattle feed), a commercial pilot, grower of limes and general entrepreneur. Rafa has several employees who are constantly working. He has taken a 125 year old ranch house and a large tract of land and made a very successful business, several in fact. His son, Rafa Jr., operates a lime juice factory and bottling operation at the ranch. Rafa has a runway and three or four hangers on the ranch, where he keeps his airplanes and rents space out to an aircraft
two-seat gyro something….
mechanic. He has a unique small rotary wing 2-seat aircraft that only an engineer can figure out. I hope to take a flight next time I go to his ranch. Rafa’s ranch has sleeping facilities for at least eight people, being a current and former working ranch house.
A major attraction of Rafa’s farm is bird life. Incredibly, we’ve seen 30 species of birds there, including a lot of parrots. We added six brand new ones to our list right on his property. We’ve discussed having commercial birding trips make a stop at his ranch. It could happen. Rose-throated becards nest near his patio.
red-fronted parottlet
Yellow-naped parrots roost in his yard. Red-fronted parrotlets hang out there too. We saw a dozen yellow-headed caracaras in one of his pastures. A wonderful little pond on his “back 40” has lapwings, jacanas, kingfishers and flycatchers. Iguanas like his whole farm, especially his mangos.
NEXT: Much more birding and traveling in Costa Rica, including La Paz Waterfall Gardens and The Observatory Lodge at Arenal.
Introduction to My Thoughts. When I was a kid, I read Edgar Rice Burroughs books about Tarzan of the Apes. I read the comic books too. I dreamed of life in the jungle. Growing up in Arizona didn’t quite match up to the African jungle.
Here in Costa Rica, land of volcanos, exotic animals and primary jungle that hasn’t been disturbed by man for centuries, my little dream has been realized.
The birds here are colorful and have wonderful songs. The other animals are truly exotic to us as well…….iguanas, iconic frogs, snakes, monkeys, coatis, tapirs and many more. Arlyne and I have found remnants of historic (and prehistoric) Costa Rica in the places we’ve been and where we’re going. Volcanos are smoking, rivers and lakes have crocodiles and alligators, the birds are lit up like holiday lights. I’ll never see a jaguar, an ocelot or a margay in the wild, but I’ve seen them here in near natural surroundings. They are some of the planet’s most beautiful creatures.
Irazu Volcano. We began our adventure with a trip to Irazu volcano, where delightful birds live their lives at 3432 meters (over 11,000 feet). We loved Irazu, the now sleeping volcano, but were delighted to encounter three high-altitude birds, the volcano junco, the sooty thrush and the sooty-capped chlorospingus. Some birds have straightforward descriptive names but others seem overcooked by long dead ornithologists.
We love to photograph birds in lush, photogenic, natural surroundings. My historic first look at the iconic volcano junco at Irazu was on the rim of a picnic area trash can. I didn’t have any problem with that and of course saw the little guy in better spots soon enough.
a cute bird at the rim of the volcano
iconic volcano junco at 11000 feet on Irazu
A highlight was seeing the Turrialba volcano in the distance, sending smoke and hot gases into the sky. This active volcano is of course being monitored.
an active volcano we couldn’t visit
Nest-building. I will likely never be able to show you all the birds we photographed but on our way back from Irazu, we had lunch at a coffee plantation/restaurant and spotted a pair of Passarini’s tanagers. Only in Costa Rica would birds nest in a small bush next to the parking lot and a busy walkway. The beautiful black and red male seemed totally
the female was very cool about the whole nesting process
this male was stressed out with nest building
stressed as he darted in and out of the bush, presumably making sure everything was ready, while the sweet female waited patiently across the path for him to tell her it was OK. He eventually did, and then nervously perched on guard duty after she flew deep into the bush. It was a memorable encounter.
La Paz Waterfall Gardens and Wildlife Refuge. A couple of days later we drove up to the barrier that prevented us from going to the Poas volcano, which has been closed since we arrived due to poisonous gases from the crater. Poas has been inactive since 1955 but has just awakened. We took a fork in the road and stopped at La Paz Waterfall Gardens and Wildlife Refuge. This facility could be termed a tourist trap by jaded visitors but wild birds and other animals are in beautifully designed natural enclosures because they have been rescued from illegal hunters, confiscated by the government or donated by their owners.
We birders know, of course, that wild birds love the surroundings and come here to live and nest. We found several in the trees and gardens. Dozens of hummingbirds darted and swirled through a large natural area that had only a few feeders. We saw green
this bird is a fast mover – lucky for us it has a white band
thorntails, green-crowned brilliants and black-bellied hummingbirds. Although officially wild birds, they have become reasonably accustomed to humans.
It was here in La Paz Gardens that we were introduced to my first and probably only ocelot. A jaguar also prowled a large enclosure. Arlyne and I also met Tomas, a lovely margay. He has been here for many years and responds to his name.
You are just beautiful……..
The La Paz Waterfall Gardens and Wildlife Refuge, as its name implies, has five quite spectacular waterfalls, embedded deep in the jungle. I was robust enough to take the steep, wet stone steps down to two of them. It was here that my vision of Tarzan emerged. I felt energized, even as I clambered back to the top level where I had started, sweating profusely from the world class humidity.
As Arlyne calls them, we saw several “free world” birds that love this neighborhood and raise their families here. Even leaving a place like this (which I didn’t want to do) it’s
Tarzan’s abode…..
easy to search for a few more wild birds that hang out here. We saw a swallow-tail kite, a Montezuma oropendula, and a Sulphur-bellied flycatcher (which has been seen frequently in Arizona). Very cool!
More wildlife adventures awaited us as you will see in my next post.
As advertised, Arlyne and I are in Costa Rica. We’ve been here before, but this is The Great Adventure. We thought about it for a few years and decided to make it a life event. When you’re retired, do you ever really go on vacation? I think we’ve really done it this time.
We landed in San Jose the evening of June 12th and, courtesy of Arlyne’s brother, were driven straight to Puntarenas, on the Pacific coast, where Arlyne grew up. We’re going to be in Costa Rica for two months. We’re truly fortunate that Arlyne, well really both of us, have family and friends here. As I write this, we stayed at her brother’s (Arturo) house for five days before coming back to San Jose to help with his wife Ana who was having surgery. She’s doing fine now, glad we could help.
During this first week, we did some planning. There are so many cool places to go in Costa Rica. The first thing that happened, however, is that two of the country’s numerous volcanos decided to misbehave. Turrialba had a moderate eruption and threw rocks, smoke, ash and gas into the air. It isn’t actually closed right now but it’s being watched. Another volcano, close to the capital of San Jose, is Irazu. Although it’s putting out some smoke and smoldering a bit, we have a tour to this iconic site in two days. Of course, on the slopes of Irazu, there is a small bird called the volcano junco. We’ll be looking out for this bird while we check the sky for flying rocks. That’s one of our plans..
When we were initially in Puntarenas, we took a trip to the citrus farm of a family friend. The birds love this place, especially the parrots. How nice! Rafa Oreamuno, the owner, took us around his sizable property on a golf cart. We saw birds we knew, like caracaras, cattle egrets, tropical kingbirds, and clay-colored thrushes (the national bird of Costa Rica) all over the place. Then, we approached a small pond and spotted a group of birds we didn’t recognize. I jumped out of the golf cart and started taking pictures. Then I realized we had something special as I saw crests on these fairly sizable birds. I didn’t know what I had but managed to find out later. My nearly 30 year old Costa Rican bird book didn’t include these birds. I wrestled with the photos until it struck me. They were lapwings. On the trusty internet, I found that southern lapwings had, over the years, moved up from South and lower Central America and were now in Costa Rica. Beautiful birds with huge red eyes, distinctive coloring and a wonderful feather running back from the top of the head. Check them out. Besides this, I snapped a photo of a flying northern jacana and got a special, perfect shot.
northern jacana
yellow-throated euphonia
A couple of days later we moved ourselves to a friend’s house in Alajuela, near San Jose. I’ve known Ronald and Teri for 50 years and Arlyne grew up with them. There are birds around their neighborhood but it wasn’t until we drove to a mountainous area near the Poas volcano that we struck our first birding gold. Stopping to preview a beautiful hotel in the mountains, we thought we would plan a day tour of their nature area, which is incredible. Walking in from parking area, we heard loud squawking from a tree and saw a terrific new bird, the Montezuma oropendula! We were beginning to tap into the bird life of this beautiful country.
The very next day, we went to a nearby animal rescue/rehab facility, which is quite large actually, covered with native trees, vines and vegetation. One can walk through this beautiful place and see truly unique birds and other animals. We were struck with the numerous iguanas that roam freely throughout. Green, gray, blue…all different sizes. Of course, we can’t add injured and caged birds to our list. But guess what? Birds from the “free” world, as Arlyne puts it, are welcome to the enormous grounds and we began to see them. We added a cute yellow-throated euphonia carrying nesting materials, a Hoffman’s woodpecker and a yellow-olive flycatcher which was also building a nest.
turquoise-browed mot mot
Tentatively, we added a black-mandibled toucan to our growing list because there were two of them flying around the facility, apparently free as, well, birds. We’ll keep this toucan in reserve because we expect to see more of them later, when we go to the Arenal Observatory Lodge, near the now sleeping Arenal volcano.
I’m hoping to update you with more of the Draper’s Costa Rican Adventure in subsequent blogs. For you non-birders, I’ll throw in some interesting stuff about Costa Rica and how we’re enjoying our time here. I think worldwide news outlets are probably keeping everybody informed about the volcanos.
We have a dear friend who is coming down to CR to join us for several days on Sunday. I hope she doesn’t mind iguanas, high temperatures and humidity and our more or less outdoor life. We don’t like to sit by the pool or lay on the beach. It’s OK but not too much of it.
we ever thought possible. My brother Bill is also a valuable resource for his penchant to maintain and store many of the original photographs and documents detailing the interesting people who now populate our family tree.
That should work. The Arenal Observatory Lodge is 1.7 miles from the volcano. Presumably wildlife chased away 10 years ago by the lava have returned.
Approaching the hotel on pebbled roads, we saw gray-headed chachalacas 
and a melodious blackbird, new birds for us. Welcome to Arenal!
Everything we saw was suitable for framing so we took lots of pictures. This seems the time to talk about……..
pineapple, and/or watermelon). There are other fruit varieties here that are not regular fare for norteamericanos. We really like guanabana.
numerous dirt roads. We’ve been on farm roads through private pineapple and sugar cane fields that stretched into the distance. Ask our friend Aileen…..we forded several rivers in our friend Rafa’s 4-wheel drive. After all, he’s a rancher. I have home movies to prove it.
make a stop at his ranch. It could happen. Rose-throated becards nest near his patio.
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