PukhtunWomen

Your invitation for me to write something for your webpage is flattering. I am very interested in your involvement with the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center which funds some articles about your NWFP area. My wife's growing up girl friend has a daughter who is now a sophomore (second year of college) student at the University of Illinois campus in Champaign, Illinois.

Karachi during my 1963-1965 tour of active Air Force duty there had a very active embassy social circuit, which allowed me to know many same age and era Pakistani young ladies, most married, many of whom had gotten a college education in either or both the UK and the US. Unfortunately, the very religiously conservative Peshawar and NWFP area, where I also worked in once every month, was much more reserved, and most women, young or old, were in purdah, and there was zero social interaction possible there for me This as background.

First, let this letter be more of a get acquainted one. As my wife and I have three daughters (no sons), I will tell you a little about them. Our oldest daughter, newly 26, in 2004 graduated Magna Cum Laude from Auburn University School of Architecture with two concurrent (dual) degrees in both Architecture and Interior Architecture. She is now completing her second year as an Intern Architect with a very famous architect firm in Tennessee. You work as an Intern, salaried with benefits, for three years during which time you take approximately 700 hours of post graduate hours of architectural study on the Internet as your classroom. Then after your three years Internship you can sit for the first of many sections of the Architects National Licensing Examinations to be a "certified" architect.

Our other two daughters are 23 year old twins. One completed her MEd (Masters in Education) at Vanderbilt University, Peabody Graduate School in June, 2006. She also graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2005 from Vanderbilt University with double majors in English and Education. Today she is a new 10th grade, sophomore year of high school, English teacher in the Middle Tennessee area. Vocationally, educators in our public school systems get paid for each and every degree they hold, which is a good thing to me!

Our other 23 year old twin daughter graduated in 2005 Cum Laude from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina with double majors in Spanish and Sociology (statistics) and is a graduate student at my alma mater, the University of Alabama, Graduate School of Education, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. This twin is also a half time Graduate Research Assistant while taking a full graduate school load, working as a GRA mornings, and in class afternoons and on Saturdays. She will complete her Masters in English as a Second Language summer, 2007, which is fast approaching. Then she will decide where to teach and at what grade level. This nearly 50 year old English as a Second Language Program at the University of Alabama is one of the first anywhere in the USA such Masters programs and require more semester hours to complete than a routine MA or MS degree would. The pay back for the many semester hours of study is when awarded your Masters in ESL you are certified to teach from grades K (for Kindergarten, or pre school) to and through 12, or senior year of high school. Some such graduates can and do also teach at the junior college (freshman and sophomore year levels) of education, as well.

My wife graduated from Cornell University where she was a Cornell Scholarship Student (full scholarship) majoring in French and Political Science. She later did a little graduate work in the Washington, DC area while she was for ten years a career Education Documental Specialist with the Organization of American States (OAS), the Middle and South American organization representing all those many nation's governments collectively with the USA and other nations. Retiring initially to have and raise our three daughters, my wife returned to the working world during their college years (to both help with their expenses and to have something to do) as a Reference Department employee of our city public library, which second later in life career she enjoys. She is a "book worm" in my view, always both reading and listening to books on audio, I stumble over her revolving book collections she perpetually reads all over our home!

Concluding this background letter with myself, I am a retired US Civil Servant whose government career was with both the US Public Health Service and the US Department of Veterans Affairs. I became with the Veterans Affairs hospital system a Diplomate of the American College of Hospital Administrators (that organization name has changed somewhat, but will do for this letter).

I did my BA in History and Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. I studied under a LaVerne Noyes Scholarship at Alabama, awarded uniquely to bloodline US descendants of WW I military veterans at 40 US colleges and universities, funded after WW I* by a Mr. LaVerne Noyes of Chicago (born and raised in Iowa, where he went to and briefly taught college) who made a then fortune in the farm and rural windmill business. My MBA (Masters of Business Administration) studies went toward but not quite to the PhD level were at both New York University, Sterne Graduate School of Business (night division, while a banker in New York City) and later at the University of Tennessee.

*My late father was the youngest American veteran of WW I. The 7th of 8 children he ran away from home at age 14, and being large for his age, lied saying he was 18 and joined the Alabama Army National Guard in 1917, just before then President Wilson declared war on Germany. A Corporal over a squad of 8 older men, Dad was wounded in the Battle of the Muse Argon in France on his 15th birthday. He was then in the WW I US Army of Occupation of and inside Germany on his 16th birthday, by which time he was mustered out as part of the general US demobilization that ended WW I.

My late mother was a second grade, or elementary school teacher in South Alabama prior to marrying my father. She then resigned from teaching (we had archaic old laws which required all public school teachers to be unmarried).
Mother during my growing up years in Nashville, Tennessee became a noted teacher, interdenominationally, of the Bible in Middle Tennessee. After my father retired from his own US Civil Service career, my Mother continued for another 25 years, until her death at age 94, teaching Bible interdenominationally, in Troy, Alabama, where they had retired. Troy was my Mother's home town.

I am as a USAF Reserve retiree a graduate of the Air War College; the USAF Command and Staff College; the USAF Squadron Officers School; and numerous USAF and Joint Chiefs of Staff interservice and practical, vocational colleges and schools, to include the National War College's Armed Forces Staff College located on the grounds of the Norfolk, Virginia US Navy Base.

My working life began right out of the University of Alabama, briefly, as an office staff employee of a US Congressman from Alabama, followed by six years of active duty in the Air Force, which included a tour of duty from 1963-1965 with the old US Embassy in Karachi, then West Pakistan, where I served as the Liaison Officer for the US Air Base at Peshawar [where I went for meetings every month].

I had a range of jobs after my six years in the regular Air Force which included being the Special Assistant to the Vice Chairman of the Board of the old Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company in NYC, where I eventually became a loan officer in the Asia Section (which included the entire Indian subcontinent). MHTCo. is now a part of today's J. P. Morgan Chase Bank by way of an interim merger with the also no longer in existence Chemical Bank of New York City.

I married my wife in 1979, by which time I was an "ancient" age 39! By the time of our marriage I had left banking, run for and lost as the Republican nominee and candidate a race for State Treasurer of Tennessee (this office is elected by the members of the Tennessee state legislature, not as a popular vote election type office); been Vice President of the Memphis, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce; and was at the time of our marriage a career tenured US Civil Servant from which I am now retired with 25 years service. I am also now retired from 31 years active and reserve service as a USAF Reserve Colonel that last 8 years of which I served as a reserve augmentee to the Chief of Staff at the Headquarters of US Special Operations Command in Florida.

"Along the way" my wife and I were for some years small business people owing and leasing several rental homes in Tennessee, Northern Virginia, and the District of Columbia all of which houses I sold off during the protracted illnesses of my late parents to help support them. *All elderly Americans were not covered by our noted Social Security System, and my parents were two such among the 4,000,000 Americans of their era not covered by Social Security, hence not covered by our national health insurance plan know as Medicaid and Medicare.

But, the good thing about being an American in a free enterprise system is if you are willing to work hard you can do and pay for just about anything to keep your personal and family's "ship afloat." So, I was and am grateful to have had the resources and fourth career now in real estate sales to financially enable me both to have cared for my parents, a Great Aunt who lived to age 99, and an older brother who died of cancer, who as a veteran of the Korean War required lesser but some financial assistance before his death from lung cancer.

For the past twelve years I am a real estate broker licensed to sell in both Tennessee and Alabama. This is my fourth and final career. The other three, from which I am now pensioned off, summarized from above were the Air Force; as a New York City banker; US Civil Service; and now self employed in real estate as a selling broker.

We have one dog, Maggie, who is a female English Springer Spaniel, age 4, and a very ornery 13 year old tom cat, yellow in color, named Lightfoot, nicknamed Foot. Lightfoot is my given and family passed down middle name of my Great Grandfather, Judge George Thomas Lightfoot of Buela, Bolivar County, Mississippi, dating from before and after the US Civil War. Us "bet up, good for nothing old Southerners" like to brag about who is and was "kin to who." Judge Lightfoot was General Robert E. Lee's cousin. General Lee led the defeated entirely in 1865 Confederate Army during the US Civil War, which was necessary to rid ourselves of the evil economic institution of slavery. During the US Civil War Judge Lightfoot left the bench to enlist as a Confederate Private, and ended the Civil War as a Lt. Colonel of Mississippi Confederate calvary.

9/11 coupled with my very unusual career Air Force and Embassy assignment as a young officer and my few years as a New York City International banker inspired my overseas letter writing "campaign" where your awareness of me is from years now of FRONTIER POST letters. I've also since 9/11 been writing and published in the Karachi DAWN; THE TIMES OF INDIA; THE MOSCOW TIMES; and THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE, plus many US newspapers.

If you will tolerate it, another letter or two will follow over time. I still have business to conduct daily here in the USA and have to get to work even today, a Saturday, as I am happy to report that I have several pieces of real estate business pending, as we say over here.

Colonel (Ret.) George L. Singleton, USAF
USA
GSingle556@aol.com