Wondering if Monique flew gliders

I don’t know if Monique Christine Petersen was a D-day girl, but something in my fading memory connects her teens to French Resistance. I’m thinking about these things because of an early morning group text chat with two college classmates.

I explain as much in one of my Topgold Audio Clips.

Listen to “Remembering Monique the glider pilot E731” on Spreaker.

I made this audio clip after Richie, a guy I haven’t seen in more than 50 years, opened a SMS Group Chat about one of our friends who is dealing with the death of his mom from Stage 4 cancer.

Pat’s mom is Monique Christiane Petersen. She will live in my memory, honored by what she gave me for my memory about sacrifice.

I’m not sure that Monique was a glider pilot. Yet something tells me she was. Because in my fragmented memory, I remember her standing less than five feet tall, sharing stories about gliders in World War II. Monique was French. She married an American, Pat’s dad.

So in my distant memory, I think in Alaska, where I met her, we shared stories about reading thermals and atmospheric dynamics. I was a glider pilot as well. But from what I remember, Monique flew high-stakes glider missions during World War II. I believe she flew a glider into France around D-Day, landed and then was told to make her way back to England. But I don’t know for sure.

Until I entered the SMS group chat, I wasn't sure I was going to renew my American passport in time to go to America for a reunion. I graduated with 932 other people from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1976. This will be the 50th anniversary and a chance to meet with Pat and guys from Cadet Squadron 30.

I've never gone back to a reunion, although I visited the campus once in 1979 another time in 2005 (below).

I will have to dig deep to fly back to Colorado for my college reunion because I will be joining a group of patriots who voted three times for Trump. I have avoided listening to cousins and brothers who rationalise why they've done that. They simply do not understand how they have made the world a more dangerous place.

However, because I want to personally express to Pat Petersen why his mother made a positive impression on me, I might zip my mouth about the dangers wrought by Trump so I can truly express my condolences firsthand for the death of a lovely mother.

And I want to get the back story on Pat in this clip from Kenya.

I visited Kenya as well while flying pallets of USAID parcels into Nairobi in the 1980s. Those adventures deserve a set of blog posts on their own.