with. I never lacked for Dad's full support, no matter what the endeavor. He was proud to have me in the service of our country and he let me know it in many ways, especially in his frequent letters. I kept abreast of most of the things that occurred in his life, but not having actually been a part of it after 1943 am unaware of many of the details. I know that sometime around 1945 he was called to Washington D.C. and, having done an outstanding job for his government, became an Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. I was not, but all the other members of our family, including Mom, Jim and Frank were reunited when they moved to Alexandria, Virginia. Dad worked under the Secretary of Agriculture for about three years.

In 1946 I was mustered out of the Air Force and Dad recommended that I enroll in classes at George Washington University and live at home with the family in Alexandria. My resumption of College study started off like that in May, but when Gloria Colon and her Aunt Caridad Rodriguez visited Washington D.C. in June things changed. Gloria and I had met at the University of Puerto Rico and had become sweethearts there; so our reunion it seemed was providential and when our romance blossomed again, I asked Gloria to marry me. After just one Quarter at George Washington I transferred to the University of New Mexico, went to Albuquerque, Gloria joined me there and we were married there in October. I graduated from UNM in September of the following year. During those years, and up until 1950, Dad was Assistant Secretary of Agriculture and his work concerned land and water programs in the Department.

In 1950 Dad was appointed Director of Technical Cooperation at the U.S. embassy in Karachi, Pakistan. During the next couple of years while he, Mom and Jim lived there he traveled extensively in Asia, Africa and Europe. In the usual manner he was well liked by the people he met and with whom he worked. His reputation continued to earn him the respect and high regard of his associates in State and Agriculture, Departments with which he interacted. In 1953-54 he was mission director of U.S. Operations Mission to the Dominican Republic at our embassy in Ciudad Trujillo (Santo Domingo).

In 1955-56 Dad was director of the U.S. Mission in Panama City, Panama. He suffered a heart attack there at the age of 58 and was forced to resign from active duty with the State Department in 1956. Gloria, our two girls and I picked Dad up in Washington and the five of us drove up to Pennsylvania to Jim Will's graduation from High School. All Dad could talk about on the trip was how he had been "kicked out" of active duty in the State Department and that he would be coming back to the Washington D.C. area just to be near at hand in case he might get some kind of job as an aide or consultant to his old friends in Agriculture or State.

Mom and Dad lived in Arlington, Virginia from 1956 through 1959, during which time he was a consultant in land and water development to various departments of our government and to the United Nations organizations then being formed to help emerging countries throughout the World. For a stretch of over six months he was in Rome, Italy writing technical manuals for the use of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In 1959 and '60 he was a member of the U.S. Government Water Pollution Control Advisory Board for the lower Rio Grande Basin. He went to Tegucigalpa, Honduras and Guatemala City, Guatemala in the early '60s to research and report on our government's assistance to those countries.

Finally in 1963, at the age of 65, Dad retired from all formal governmental service; but he was still extremely active in other aspects of life: he took a part time job as security officer in Riggs Bank in Washington and he went back to College. One of the courses he took in college was "Short Story Writing", that was something he told me that he had always wanted to do ... write short stories, but just never had seemed to find the time for.