Pawka's Story

About the Book

This project began several years ago as a simple family history and legacy to leave to my sons and grandchildren. Every family and generation has their unique stories to share. It’s sad but true that many of these stories are lost as the participants die. We have all heard about the same old stories from the family’s older folks many times and got bored with the reruns of some. I hope to preserve these tales and histories. Perhaps a harsher example is the loss of the Holocaust survivors’ oral histories and the World War II veterans’ stories in history.

About the Author

I was born and raised in San Francisco during the 1950s and 1960s in a very unconventional family for that time period. Both of my parents were dead by my age nine and was raised by my grandparents who were in their 80s & 90s. I experienced all the fears of the cold war and nuclear mutual destruction. In later years, I experienced the whole “Hippie” counterculture coupled with the explosion of the West Coast Music of the 1960s and 1970s. (I knew Janis Joplin, as my cousin, Peter Albin was (is) the bass player for “Big Brother & The Holding Company. I experienced the free concerts in Golden Gate Park, the “be-in”, as well as the “Summer of Love”. My narrative further describes the daily life of the period as well as my military experiences in CONUS, Germany, and Vietnam. I was on the team that brought the Vietnam POWs home during “Operation Homecoming”, 1973. I also describe the history of the places that I have visited or were stationed at, along with the military equipment and daily life of the times.