Links to ol' pals

For military brats, this Web site hits home

By Michael Lollar

The Commercial Appeal (2/11/99) Memphis, TN

In the 1978 photograph, Dennis Berwyn, arm in a sling from a bicycle accident, clowns with a
friend after a 100-mph tire blowout on the Autobahn in Germany. With the tire jack out of
camera range, the friend mugs for the camera as if lifting the big station wagon with a single
finger.

As a photograph, it's not momentous art, but it brings back a flood of memories for Berwyn, a
Germantown political consultant, part-time bartender and Internet Web page designer. It's on
the Internet that Berwyn last summer began seeking out long lost friends who, like himself,
tasted the gypsy-like life of a military brat.

It's a life in which the children of enlisted military personnel usually spend two to three years at
a post, then move to the next assignment, the next school, the next group of friends. Unless
they quickly bond and keep up with each other through the years, chances are they might
never see or hear from each other again.

Then there are people like Berwyn, who estimates he's found up to 400 former students, most
of them classmates, from Germany's Frankfurt American High School (FAHS).

His Germantown Web site is one of dozens springing up around the country to reunite not
only military brats but also former enlistees and other family members who, in nostalgic
moments, wonder whatever happened to a former neighbor or, as Berwyn says, whether a
former teacher "really did wear a toupee . . ."

"We've had people crawling out of the woodwork since June 1, 1998," says Berwyn. That's
when he became Web master, or designer and editor of a Web page he began primarily for
former FAHS students, who share stories and photographs, donate operating expenses and
get together on Friday nights in an online chat room. It's part of a global quest to share an
experience that bonds millions of nomadic military brats.

The FAHS Web site (http://www.fahs.org) includes anything from then-and-now
"yearbook" pictures, to familiar sites in Frankfurt to tales of teenage angst in the Cold War
era.

"It was the '70s. Everything in Germany is always 10 years behind the United States, so, for
us, it was like the '60s," Berwyn says of references to drinking, drugs and rabble-rousing
sometimes linked to memories of good old FAHS. Even Berwyn is surprised that, in less than
a year, he has had roughly 10,000 "hits" or visits to the Web site.

"The bonds are truly amazing. Even if you didn't know someone in school, you immediately
have this rapport, this connection. There's this understanding that transcends normal
day-to-day conversations," Berwyn says of the now-you-see-them, now-you-don't
acquaintances who once lived as brat packers.

As the number of visitors to his site has increased, Berwyn has welcomed military brats who
never attended FAHS but want to share the camaraderie of other nomads, or seek links to
other brat Web sites. Berywn says some hope to find anyone from casual acquaintances to
old drinking buddies to former lovers.

For Tambra Andre, a bookkeeper for a Memphis packaging company, the Internet quest for
former classmates had a dual purpose. She registered at a voluminous Web site for military
brats of any branch of the service. Andre, who had attended a school in Ulm, Ga., 20 years
ago, had a serious car wreck in 1986 and experienced memory loss for some names and
events of her youth.

Like Berwyn, she says a camaraderie quickly develops among brats that is hard to feel among
others. "When you grow up like that you feel like you don't fit in anywhere. When I got in with
this group of people (on the Internet), they understand." Others she has met online seem to
share a need "to move the furniture around at least once a month," says Andre. "It's like a
wanderlust thing, because that's what your childhood was."

In addition, Andre says she hoped to locate friends from her former schools in hopes they
might help her recall parts of her past. Her quest paid off about a year ago when she found
two former students at her old school through an America Online site called Military City
Online. The site has links to a chat room, message boards and other areas where former
military personnel can list their names in a searchable database.

Andre says the students who contacted her through the Web site were in different grades in
school, and they didn't know each other well. But rekindling memories of the school, the
teachers and the area has been like finding a lost treasure.

As with Berwyn's site, Web sites and databases touch a far greater segment of the military
population than just military brats.

Memphian Jim Ingram, 72, served in the Navy 1944-46, on three ships known as LSTs or
Landing Ship-Tanks. Ingram started his own Web site, in which he jokes that LSTs could
also stand for "large slow targets" in wartime.

When Ingram first began trying to reach former crew members, he relied on the Navy's old
locater service, which operates like a personnel bureau through its headquarters at Navy
Personnel Command in Millington. The personnel command, used primarily for active-duty
Navy personnel, is heavily used by enlistees, but it is not online and available 24 hours a day,
as Internet sites are, says Navy public affairs specialist Mike McLellan.

Ingram says his site (http://home.jinko.com/ww2LST) has attracted more than 1,000 visitors
since he started it last year. Unlike children or teenagers, who sometimes neglected to keep in
touch, adults who made close friendships in the military tended to keep up with good friends
through the years. But some, says Ingram, don't share the enthusiasm of reunions, bonding
and camaraderie.

"We found one guy on the Internet and sent him a postcard. He responded that, yes, `I'm the
guy you're looking for, but I hated the two years I spent on that ship, and I don't want to hear
anymore about it.' "

Memphian Jack Mann Williams, in his 60s, served in the Army and was stationed at Fort
Benning, Ga., and in Hawaii, where he last saw a buddy he considered his closest friend. "We
went to jump school at Fort Benning and were stationed in Hawaii together for two years. He
had said, `If you're ever on the East Coast in the Boston area, give me a call.' "

Williams says his daughter later attended Harvard and that he searched for the former buddy
on the Internet thinking he might visit with him during a visit to his daughter.

"He now lives in Vermont. I called him, and he said he did not remember me and asked,
`What is the point of this call?' I told him I just wanted to say hello, and he said, `Hello and
goodbye,' and hung up. Maybe he was just having a bad day, but I felt like a motherless
child."

For most, the search experience has been more satisfying. Searching one global Web site
(http://www.military-brats.com) for the names of Memphians who have registered turned
up 14 names, including Dale DeBrito, who lives in an unincorporated area of Shelby County.
A former military brat, he joined the Air Force and continued the tradition. "My mother says
home is where the heart is. I say home is where I hang my hat."

DeBrito, 52, says he has lived "all over the world. I had 19 assignments in 20 years, so our
children grew up in a half-dozen states. It's the only thing I ever knew."

Two weeks after registering his name on a military brats Web site, DeBrito has been
contacted by two people who went to a high school he attended, although they were 10 years
younger than DeBrito. "I think it (such Web sites) is an excellent idea."

Earle Davidson, 49, a technical writer for Federal Express Corp., registered at the brats site
in hopes of sharing memories of the early '60s at his pilot father's Marine assignment in Cherry
Point, N.C. Just signing his name and a few details in the site's registry brought back
memories. The twist was the hot dance of the time. Astronaut John Glenn had been stationed
at the same base.

It might not mean much to those who didn't share the experience, but movies at the base
theater "cost 13 cents a whack." Popsicles sold on the base included airplane trading cards,
which girls sometimes saved and used as enticements to get nervous boys to dance with them
at school dances on Friday nights.

"One gal I remember told me one day, `If you'll meet me at the dance Friday night, you can
have the card.' I didn't know anything about dancing, but I wanted the card so bad I agreed,"
said Davidson.

Berwyn's Web site has stirred hundreds of memories, especially for Berwyn himself. When he
lived in Frankfurt, Germany, he didn't understand the exact nature of his father's job. Unlike
most "military brats," Berwyn spent 18 years in Frankfurt, watching friends leave just as they
became good friends.

Berwyn says he was told that his father worked for the U.S. State Department as Frankfurt
station chief. Later, he would learn that his father ran the CIA's operations there and, as a
defector from Slovakia, was primarily in charge of debriefing other defectors from Eastern
bloc nations.

He and classmates were warned to steer clear of Baader Manhoff terrorists, and he was given
code names and passwords to use in case he was taken hostage.

He remembers driving and riding on the Autobahn and pushing his parents' cars to 100 mph:
Having a blowout meant a narrow escape for him and a car full of other brats.

"The best memories are the memories of childhood: first loves, unrequieted loves, the fun
times we had together, scary times we had together. If you live in Frankfurt, some of the best
skiing in the world is about five hours away in the Austrian Alps. Growing up in a foreign land
with foreign currency. That's one thing that really bonds us.

"A lot of people who lived overseas come back and people back in the states don't
understand them . . . Some of our friendships were deeper than most because we knew that in
three years they wouldn't be around. So it's like you could bare your soul without
consequences."
 

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