My first memory is of my mother telling me to sit on our rocking chair, pictured above, so she could take my photograph while we were living at Fort Dix, New Jersey. I was about twenty-one months old, and I am still surprised that I can remember that far back.
Other than my mother telling me to sit for that photograph, I have no known memories of living at Fort Dix. My sense of when and where that memory happened comes from knowing where we were living during that time in our family’s life.
My mother and father later told me that when we made long trips from places such as Fort Dix back home to Opelousas, Louisiana, they would lower the back seat of their two-tone 1958 Chevrolet Bel Air and place a board across the back seat and trunk area. They covered it with blankets and pillows so my older brother, Glenn, and I could sleep while we were on the road.
Around the time my mother took this photograph, my father received Army orders reassigning him to Giessen, Germany, for one year. We could not go with him then, so my mother, Glenn, and I moved to Opelousas to live with my maternal grandparents, Emilian and Louise Benoit Bodin, while my father served that assignment.
As Glenn and I, and later our younger siblings, would come to learn, frequent moves became a way of life for us because our father was a career Army man.