Q: I think so. The reason I know him is because Mike Cook, who is Steve Schiff’s press secretary, and he have been friends ever since they were in kindergarten together. It turns out that Iris Todd, I guess his stepmother, is the niece of Loretta Proctor. So talk about small world.
You got these calls from the mortuary officer who was asking you all these questions. We don’t have to go back through all of this. Then at some point you decided to go out to the base. What took you to the base?
A: At some point I didn’t decide, that’s not correct. Somebody wrote that, but I don’t think it’s right. The way I ended up out at the base later, we had the ambulance service. The way I got it, the ambulance service, I got a call, was an airman that was hurt. I took him to the base. The best I remember, he wasn’t on a stretcher or anything because we walked up the ramp and he sat up in the front seat with me. So he weren’t real bad and weren’t dying. Anyway... This guy walked in, I walked him in. Where I usually park the ambulance, there was a field ambulance there. I had to go back up to the front. The airman and I walked up the ramps. That’s why I went to the base.
Q: The hospital in those days was apparently a complex of buildings, right?
A: Yeah. Kind of like Bob [Shirkey] said, like the officer’s club. They’re all wooden barrack types.
Q: So the building that’s out there now, the rehab center is a completely new building and had nothing to do with that.
A2 [Bob Shirkey]: No. Think of a long walkway, like a tunnel, attached to the front of a series of...
Q: I know just what you’re talking about.
A: ...with a little of breezeway between each building, the best I remember it. Isn’t that right. Bob?
A2 [Bob Shirkey]: Yeah. Here was the building and you came out the front door and you went down this walkway, which I just said, like a tunnel. You could see from one end to the other, but all these separate buildings which were different wings of the hospital.