Claude Proctor

A Karamürsel Survivor

 

 

 

then
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

now


 

 A SHORT BIO

     I enlisted in the Air Force on September 11, 1958 and graduated from basic training at Lackland AFB on December 5, 1958 (3726th Basic Military Training Squadron with the "notorious" TI's Sgts Court and
Trout) after performing the requisite number of KP tours at the old OCS and WAF dining halls.  One of the worst butt chewings I ever received was from an old WAF master sergeant (no senior non-com grades in those days) who caught me talking to "one of her girls" while I was dishing out the SOS on the chow line.
     As the weeks progressed, my fate was decided by a grizzled old master sergeant at the Green Monster who happened to notice that I had studied Latin, Spanish and French.  He matter-of-factly stated that I would be a "linguist" and offered me a choice -- Russian or Chinese.  A one-day session of introductory Chinese by a Professor Victor Wen from Yale University convinced me that a tonal language was not my forte -- during the first hour, Wen wrote the letters "ma" on the board and proudly announced that the four tones in Chinese rendered this word as "mother," "horse," "hemp," and some verb that I have since forgotten (I think it was "to despise" or some such negative connotation).
     Given the growing hysteria surrounding the USSR's launch of the first satellite in October 1957, Russian language training didn't seem like a bad alternative to a boy from a tobacco farm in Hertford County, North Carolina. I was then scheduled for a basic Russian language course at Syracuse University in December 1958, but a tragic fire at the Air Force quarters at Skytop on the Syracuse campus (Chris Donaldson, a Bulgarian linguist on Able Flight with me was burned in this fire) SMOP'ed my orders and sent me to the old Army Language School (now the Defense Language Institute) in Monterey, California.
     Ater finishing Russian language training I completed the ALK 20331 course at Goodfellow AFB and arrived in Karamursel in March 1960 following the usual Charleston departure in a C-121, hedgehopping to Bermuda, the Azores, Tripoli, and Athens before arriving at Yesilkoy Airport on Turk Hava Yolari.  Upon completion of my tour at Karamursel in August, 1961 I was assigned as a cryptolinguist at HQ USAFSS in San Antonio where I reenlisted and was assigned to Syracuse University for intermediate Russian language training.
     Upon completion in October, 1963 I was assigned to the 6980th Security Squadron on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska to coexist with three tribes of Eskimoes.  I was promoted to Staff Sergeant and returned as a cryptolinguist to HQUSAFSS in San Antonio, where I was selected for a Bootstrap program to complete my bachelors degree Geography/Russian Studies at the University of Nebraska/Omaha, followed by commissioning in October, 1966.  Aftercompletion of the officers course at Goodfellow AFB, I was assigned as a flight commander and operations staff officer at the 6915th Security Group in Hof, Germany for three years.  Upon return to the ZI in early 1971 I was chief of linguist training at Goodfellow, where my career had begun some 12 years before.
     The Air Force then assigned me to the University of Notre Dame for my MA in Russian Studies with subsequent assignment to the Defense Language Institute (again my old alma mater!) for four years as a staff officer for liaison with the NSA/USAFSS training systems .  From there I was selected for an assignment to the Air Force Academy where I was chairman of strategic languages and professor of Russian, retiring as a major in 1980.
     My wife and two young sons (then 11 years and 5 years old) moved to Georgetown, Texas (25 miles north of Austin) where my wife and I continue to live.  I returned to the University of Texas for my PhD in Russian linguistics and taught Russian for another ten years at the university level before "retiring."  I am now semi-retired, but continue to provide Russian language support/consulting to NASA's International Space Station.

Check out my Web page at:
 http://pages.suddenlink.net/russianlinguist