Living in the Philippines - Part 3 The New "Normal"

Faculty

The Department of Defense Dependent School System (DODDS) went to great pains to make the overseas school as much like the stateside counterparts as they possibly could. Unlike most schools where the teachers generally come from colleges in the area, DODDS teachers are from all over the country. I had teachers from California, North Dakota, Washington, Michigan, Arizona, and the South. They were all certified stateside and were pretty good.  I was able to pretty much sleep through my first college chemistry class because of the stuff Mr Tucker taught me my junior year at Wagner.

We had band, chorus, tennis, soccer, basketball, cheerleaders, volleyball, baseball, wrestling, softball, cross country, and track. We had homecoming, and prom, national honor society, powderpuff football, and dances. I think we were well ahead of the power curve on diversity. We were all colors, ethnic groups and even though there were race riots in the US, generally we seemed to get along fine with each other.

But you cannot just pick up a school or community from the States and move it overseas and expect it to be the same. Significantly, very few people stay for more than 2-3 years. That means that about 1/3 of the friends you make will be gone within a year of you meeting them. We all knew that and most of use made friends pretty quickly. We were all in the same boat. You got there a complete stranger (among other complete strangers), made friends, cried a little bit when it came time for them or you to leave, and you moved on. Many teachers were also there for a couple of years only.

Some of our fathers spent a lot of time "in country" ie. in Vietnam, and there was a chance that they might not come home, and we knew it. It was rare but I have friends whose father's name is now on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC.

You can try to pretend you are in America, but you are not! You are surrounded with a foreign culture that speaks another language (although most Filipinos around the base spoke some English.) Just like anywhere else, large military bases in the PI attracted some of the seediest characters around to take advantage of the GIs, and Angeles City had this type of people in spades. But if you could get away from the base, you learned that the Filipinos were some of the warmest, friendliest, most generous people you would ever meet. ("Hey, Joe!!" they would call out to you - a reference to GI Joes of World War II) 

Student Government

Time was always on the 24 hour military clock. We had to learn a new language of sorts. Being military brats, we were all familiar with common military terms like TDY (temporary duty), BX (base exchange - PX Post Exchange if you were army), commissary (on base grocery store) PCS (Permanent Change of Station) and so forth. To this was added DEROS (Date Estimated Return from Overseas) - this was when you would be going back to the "world" (the United States, also known as the "Land of the Big BX"). Getting "short" meant that you were in a couple of months or days of your DEROS. The "freedom bird" was the airplane (usually a chartered commercial airliner) that would take you back to the states.

We were ordinary teen agers placed in extraordinary circumstances. Some coped by getting involved. Some coped by rebelling. Others just kind of muddled through. We knew it was different for us. But it was just our everyday life, our "normal."

(Pictures from 1971 and 1972 Fledgling Yearbooks)