Photographs

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the lives of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... this is not a way of life in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
My Commander-in-Chief

Sandy age 7
War was raging in Europe and in the Pacific, but the homeland was secure ~ being protected by its couragous Cub Scouts.

Sandy as a Boy Scout

Kali as a Boy Scout, signals with semaphore flags. At an early age he was into communication. Sandy's buddy Barry Weidner stands by to receive. Now Sandy's flags have been replaced by a web page.

Sandy (Kali) behind and right of the Band Master, C.W.O. Henry Helsher - a good man! 26th Infantry Band. An Army Reserve unit in which Kali served before enlisting in the Army Security Agency.

Kali as a "powder monkey" with the Concord Independent Battery, an historical organization that periodically fires two antique brass canon. Each of the crew is required to grasp the gun in order to feel if it went off. When the guns fire in battery (together) its tough to know if they both went off ~ there's so much noise and smoke. Getting in front of a gun that is in "hang-fire" may have catastrophic consequences.

1st Day in the regular Army.

Kali is the soldier in the upper far right, striking his famous Napolean pose for the camera.

Kali at the end of his 8 week basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey. A well trained killer who never fired a shot in anger.

When I was a boy
I shot a bird with my gun
As she died, she looked at me
Since then I've never shot a bird
~ or anyone
Sandy

Very fast on the boards but not terribly well in control!

As a member of the ad hoc 6th Army ski team in a downhill race at Yosemite. The short pants precluded falling down in deep snow.

Kali at Fort Shafter in Honolulu, Hawaii.

As an Indonesian interpreter/intelligence analyst with the 14th Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Battalion ~ a pyschological warfare unit attached to the 14th Naval District (Pacific)

Sgt. Macone (white shoes) with a group of embassy workers in Manila, the Phillipines 1957. He was sent by the US Army as a USIS trainee to study aspects of propaganda in Southeast Asia.

Trouble in the Pacific
On Waikiki Beach, with Diamond Head volcano looming in the background, Hollywood comes to town to make a water safety movie staring Sandy as a drownding victim. His last breath is seen bubbling to the surface in the lower right as he is anchored to the bottom by the 2 life guards on either side of the camera. They overdid Sandy's stay below.

Click here to read Sandy's book

CJGRJB

Sandy Goes
To War

Helen's Memoirs

Alessandro's Photography