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- BIOGRAPHY:
Clarence Haeg?s Years with the Department of Defense by Clarence Haeg in1982
Added by Tameral_Hallberg on 1 Oct 2008
I left St. Paul on December 3, 1941 to work for the Department of the Navy in Washington D.C. I retired from the Air Force on June 30, 1972, completing 31 years of service with the Department of Defense. I've often thought I'd like to do it all over again. I know I could have gotten so much more out of those 31 years, in the way of friendships with my associates, especially those at the Navy, who were flabbergasted at what I could with only a wood club. I played on several golf courses in nearby Virginia and Maryland. My big problem in those days was convincing the golf pros that my crutches did not make indentations on the greens and for my initial visit to these courses I had to actually show them. After that there was no more scepticism or anxiety about their greens. During those days, my roommate, Ed Pitman, was my playing partner. He was a tall gangly rebel from Little Rock, Arkansas. He was an engineer and worked for the Navy Department. He didn't have a car and that seemed to work out real fine, because wherever I went he was with me. We made several trips over the Sky Line drive in Virginia and up to New York and Pennsylvania, and down to North Carolina. He was very considerate and accommodating, not only with me, but with our landlady also, Mrs. John Clarke, a robust portly lady who always claimed she was a FFV (First family of Virginia), which title I learned later on was the "elite" or "cream of the crop" Virginian. These FFV's never ceased to brag about what "my pappy's pappy did for Virginia" - oh - they were an extremely proud group of people and still seemed to hold onto and cherish the "damn Yankee" attitude of Civil War days. However, despite the fact I was a damn Yankee from the state of Minnesota, they took me into their home and treated me as their own son, and inviting me to share meals with them. Of course they also invited Ed. To show my appreciation, I would take them to the stores where they did their shopping and also took them on long drives around the countryside which they enjoyed very much, especially in the spring when the sweet aroma of honeysuckle flowers permeated the entire surrounding terrain. During my tenure with FHA (Federal Housing Administration), I was sent to Dayton, Ohio with a Project Engineer (I was a Project Accountant). We stayed at the Biltmore Hotel for two days. I didn't like this set-up so I looked for "Rooms for Rent" in the newspapers. I selected one and it turned out to be Luella Stewart's house on Hadley Road. And do you know I wound up marrying this landlady on June 26, 1948? And have been married to her ever since - all 34 years of them. While still living on Hadley Road, I decided it was time for me to retire and so on June 30, 1972 that's exactly what I did, and so for the past 10 years we have done nothing, except pull up stakes in Dayton and move to Greenville, Texas.
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