Incredible, I finally quit smoking.

Okay, this doesn’t sound too earth shattering, unless you’ve tried to quit smoking yourself. I smoked cigarettes for more or less for twenty years. When you do the math, noting I was born in 1958 and quit in 1986, you can see I started quite young. I was the child of two smokers and both my older brother and I were smoking while still in grade school. He got smart, and quit before I figured it out. My mother quit after a debilitating stroke, my father never really figured it out. Both my parents died at the age of 68, six-weeks apart. I’m hoping to do better on that part.

Smoking is vile. Nicotine tops most lists of addictive substances in the world. It ranks with or above:

• Alcohol
• Heroin
• Barbiturates (Speed)
• Cocaine

That is quite a list. I think it is also pretty clear that I inherited some addictive tendency since both my parents smoked and my father was an alcoholic. I did manage to dodge the bullet with alcohol. I’ve been drunk, and I am a light drinker, but witnessing my father’s alcoholism and that of others seemed to steer me clear of that addiction. Cigarettes, that was an entirely different story.

In the 1960’s, when I started smoking, cigarettes were still a cool thing. Yes, there was some talk about cancer and smoking being addictive, but there was also advertising everywhere. Cigarette makers sponsored everything. Golf, Racing, tennis, just about every sport. Television, radio, billboards, the advertising was everywhere. And for me, the best part was cigarette vending machines. No ID, no clerk to ask questions. Even then, most the time you could say you were getting cigarettes for your mother and no one would raise an eyebrow. So, access to cigarettes was easy. When I was twelve, I took over the local paper route from my brother. Now I had both a source of income, and three hours away from home every day, logistics was also solved. It is no wonder I was smoking a pack a day by the time I was fifteen.


It was about the same time that I started smoking in front of my parents, the last taboo was broken and the one thing that had somewhat moderated my smoking was I’d done it out of the house. So now I was smoking without many restrictions and of course I started smoking more. When I turned sixteen, I started driving and had a car, so ever the trip to and from school I was smoking. I didn’t smoke while dating because my girlfriend didn’t like it, but I smoked before and after our dates. I smoked all through the engagement and of course I had one just before entering the church to say; “I do.”

I’d been married for seven years and during that entire time my lovely wife been urging me to quit smoking. It was inconvenient, expensive, and we really didn’t have the money to spare. Like so many others addicted to these foul devices, I braved the weather outside and forfeited other items so I could have my smokes. While we lived in Alaska, I didn’t smoke in the house or in our truck. This meant that I had some really cold smoking sessions.

The most remarkable thing about the day that I quit smoking, was the fact that I had no intent to quit smoking until I did. Quitting was a very spontaneous decision and quite frankly I surprised myself when I finally quit. Every smoker has recalled tale after tale of trying to quit and returning to the habit. I was no saint, I’d quit smoking with miserable results at least a dozen times.

The day I quit was Wednesday, May 28, 1986. It was a normal workday in Alaska which entailed my getting up at 04:30 or so, getting dressed and arriving at PT formation at 06:00. After the formation, I had a a quick breakfast in the dining facility (We couldn’t call it a mess hall anymore), and the I was off to work in the motor pool. I was reviewing DA Form 2405 trailer maintenance records in preparation for an upcoming inspection by 07:00. I was alone in the office and at my desk when I lit my eighth cigarette of the day. Do some quick math and you’ll figure out I was going through about two and a half packs a day.

The time was 07:45. I’d just opened a pack of Marlboro Menthol less than an hour before and this was the third cigarette from that pack. These were kind of a treat as I’d been buying generic cigarettes at the commissary for $3.25 a carton and these were more expensive, but tasted better. The only problem is this cigarette didn’t taste good. It just tasted bitter (If you ever accidentally got your tongue on the filter of a cigarette you know the taste) and with every puff it seemed to taste even worse. Finally, about halfway through the cigarette, I put it out in the ashtray and pushed the ashtray to the far edge of the desk and went back to work on the maintenance records.

Shortly before 08:00 I paused and thought for a moment. Then I reached into my pocket and pulled out that pack of cigarettes. About the same moment, the Motor Sergeant (my boss) walked into the office from my left. I looked at that pack for a moment, then crushed it in my right hand and made a three-point toss into the garbage can, in front of the Motor Sergeant, as he was walking to his desk. He stopped and gave me an astonished look asking “Why did you do that?” I casually replied that I’d just quit smoking. He said that was bullshit and that was the end of that conversation.

The amazing thing was, I had really quit smoking. I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t have urges throughout the next few days to smoke, but it seems that the memory of just how bad that cigarette, and several other previous cigarettes had tasted, bothered me more than the urge to smoke another one. I also noticed that after about three days, my craving for tobacco had greatly subsided as the minimum time required to get nicotine out of my system had passed. It took a few more days, but soon my wife noticed that I didn’t smell as strongly of smoke (I worked in an office where three others smoked.) and that I wasn’t going outside for five minutes at a time anymore. A carton of the generic menthols with 7 packs in it sat on top of the refrigerator. This carton was exactly at my eye level. I just left it there and after a couple more weeks, my wife asked me if I wanted to throw them away. I told her I was going to leave them where they were at. If I couldn’t walk by that carton every day, on my way out of the house, and leave them alone, then I hadn’t really quit smoking. It was sort of a badge of honor to be able to sneer at them as I left for work.

Those cigarettes occupied that place of honor for seven months until one afternoon when our next-door neighbor, Yvonne, was out of cigarettes and didn’t have access to her car to go get some more. I showed her some mercy and asked my wife to go get the carton off the refrigerator. I warned Yvonne that they were probably stale, but stale cigarettes were better than nothing.

I think the process of quitting was just one of the steps in my personal development, during that tour. Shortly after I quit smoking, several events occurred in my life that individually were only minor achievements, but as a gestalt, they were evidence of a change in my personality. A change that I think helped me to be more successful than I had ever thought I would be. These events included:

·              I was promoted to Sergeant (E-5)

·              I passed the Flight Aptitude Suitability Test (FAST)

·              I completed my Associates Degree

·              I was selected for the Rotary Wing Aviator’s Course on my first application

Not long after I quit smoking was another small personal event that had major consequences the rest of my life. I had always struggled with self-confidence. I’m not sure of the root of why I felt this way, but it had always been a struggle for as long as I could remember. I was bullied some when I was younger, but I really don’t think it was a lot more than most other kids endured. I could be wrong, I only have my personal frame of reference on the subject. Regardless, there I was at 26 or so, married with two kids in Alaska. I can remember sitting at the kitchen table. For no apparent reason that I can recall, I was thinking about how I felt insecure about life in general. I suppose I started taking stock of how successful I had been recently and I realized somewhere in that jumble of thoughts, I was making myself miserable for no justifiable reason.

I was exceeding all the standards that I was being evaluated on at work. I had a fairly meteoric rise in the Army (E-1 to E5 in less than two years) and I’d just completed my application packet for flight school. The epiphany that occurred to me was that if I did everything in my life to my own personal standards, then I would be successful. My personal standards were higher than the standards I was being held to. I realized that It really didn’t matter what other people thought (This was my most overwhelming concern doubting myself.) It was this realization, more than anything else that I can define, that changed my life. I’m not going to say this was an overnight change in my personality or my outlook on life. It was more a catalyst of personal change that slowly occurred as I continued down the path of my life.

I have to credit my wife Anna, and here unflagging support. Anna is the mainstay of my life. Like most Army wives, she has made countless personal sacrifices allowing me take advantage of career opportunities. She managed to scrape together enough money from a ridiculously tight household budget for me to start college while I was still a private. She gave me the encouragement to slog through the classes to get first my Associate’s Degree and later, my Bachelor of Science.

When I read in the post newsletter that flight school had finally opened up and they were accepting application packets again, I absently commented that it was too bad that I couldn’t apply. (We’d agreed years earlier that she would never have to live with the fear of being married to a pilot, she is scared of flying.) She replied calmly, in an almost offhand manner, and told me to go ahead and apply. She just made it clear that if I was going to go kill myself learning to fly I should get more life insurance. This way, if I died, she could still feed the kids. This started a discussion where she wisely explained to me her rational for this change of heart. When the Army wasn’t accepting flight school applications, it wasn’t an issue. But now that the opportunity was available to me, if she stood in the way, her preventing me from following my dream would always be a wedge between us. She said she’d rather lose me to my passion than to make me miserable keeping me from it. Two and a half years later, she was the one who pinned the wings, on her newly minted, Warrant Officer, husband.

Some of the most inconsequential moments can have some of the most profound effects upon your life. Don’t discount them. They may well shape your future.