Wichita
was a mid size city and is centrally located in the continental USA. The
climate is represented by four seasons and through the year it was always
windy. The winters were cold and the summers were hot. There was nothing about
Wichita to be excited about and the topography of the land is dull. I worked in
the T-37 Propulsion Department. The airplane was already in production and any
engineering work at the time I was hired was directed at sustaining the
program. Cessna sponsored the change in my immigration status from student visa
to permanent US resident and when it was approved by the US Immigration, I went
to Kansas City to be sworn in. At the Wallace where the T-37 jet trainers were
being built, I didn’t notice anyone with the color of their skin the same as
mine, nor did I saw any Asian around to talk to. I heard from someone that
there are Filipino resident doctors at the St. Francis Hospital. I made an
effort to go to the hospital to meet with them. There were four Filipino
resident doctors and one of them, in particular, was Dr. Tony Manansala who was
easy going and very friendly, and we became friends right away. I spent my free
time and most weekends in their resident quarters at the hospital. Tony
introduced me to some student nurses and arranged dates for me. The doctors, on
a few occasions, came to my apartment to cook Filipino food since they didn’t
have cooking facilities at their residential quarters. So, life in dull Wichita
was made bearable with the company of the Filipino doctors and the dating game
with the student nurses. It was on one of these dates, that I met Mary Hasler,
a student nurse, who I dated as a substitute because her date was suddenly
called to the emergency room and couldn’t take Mary out. For our date in that
eventful night, we went to see a movie ,Island on the Sun, starring Harry
Belafonte. After this first date, Mary
and I began dating steadily and fell in love with each other, and that was my
Waterloo.
My
job at Cessna was not exciting and challenging, in fact it was getting to be a
boredom as we were not busy. There were other aircraft manufacturing companies
located in Wichita but they were making propeller-driven pleasure airplanes,
not jet powered. Boeing-Wichita was involved with jet powered military
airplanes but I could not apply there
because working on military jet powered airplanes required employees to be US
citizens and I was still an alien with a green card. I have heard that Boeing
in Seattle was hiring non US citizen to work on their commercial airplane
program and I applied for a job in the propulsion engineering department. The
prototype Boeing 707 airplane that first flew in 1954 was under development and
since this was the first jet powered passenger carrying transport, a lot of
engineering development work had yet to be done to make this a viable,
certifiable project. In February 1958,the job offer came by mail and I gladly
accepted it. The offer was for $122 per week based on a 40 hour-week work schedule ($6344 per year) and that I was
to report to the 707 Engine Performance Staff Organization of the Boeing
Commercial Airplane Division in Renton. I was happy to get the job offer and I
was anxious to get away from Wichita’s dreary climate, hot and humid in the
summer, cold and windy in the winter, and the city was culturally dead.
Mary and I decided that we should get married first before I leave Wichita for Seattle. Since Mary was still a nursing student at St. Francis Hospital and the School of Nursing did not allow married students. If the school discovered one of its student nurse to be married, she would be booted from the nursing program. Mary decided not to informed her parents, the nursing school, and our Filipino doctor friends of our plan. We decided that it would be best for everyone if we kept it a secret so Mary could continue to finish her schooling while I would be in Seattle. She had one more year to go before becoming a full pledge nurse. In one weekend, when Mary was not on duty, we eloped, drove to Enid Oklahoma, which is just of the Kansas border and was married by a Justice of the Peace. By eloping, we saved the Hasler family the big expense of a formal wedding. In Oklahoma, there was no waiting time after one files for a marriage application and can get married on the same day, and there was no blood test requirement. At that time, Mary was short of a few days before turning 19 years old and I was 27 years old and wiser. I took the risky chance to marry an American against the admonition of my mother not to marry an American because of the high rate of divorce. I think the risk was worth taking because marriage was always a gamble regardless of who one would marry but I thought Mary’s family background and foundation was stable.
Mary and I decided that we should get married first before I leave Wichita for Seattle. Since Mary was still a nursing student at St. Francis Hospital and the School of Nursing did not allow married students. If the school discovered one of its student nurse to be married, she would be booted from the nursing program. Mary decided not to informed her parents, the nursing school, and our Filipino doctor friends of our plan. We decided that it would be best for everyone if we kept it a secret so Mary could continue to finish her schooling while I would be in Seattle. She had one more year to go before becoming a full pledge nurse. In one weekend, when Mary was not on duty, we eloped, drove to Enid Oklahoma, which is just of the Kansas border and was married by a Justice of the Peace. By eloping, we saved the Hasler family the big expense of a formal wedding. In Oklahoma, there was no waiting time after one files for a marriage application and can get married on the same day, and there was no blood test requirement. At that time, Mary was short of a few days before turning 19 years old and I was 27 years old and wiser. I took the risky chance to marry an American against the admonition of my mother not to marry an American because of the high rate of divorce. I think the risk was worth taking because marriage was always a gamble regardless of who one would marry but I thought Mary’s family background and foundation was stable.
In a few days after we got married, I left Wichita, drove in my 1956 hardtop Pontiac to Seattle, using the southern route to avoid encountering snow conditions along the way and finally reached Seattle mid-day. I checked in at the downtown YMCA on 4th Ave. ( I got used to staying at YMCAs during my summer jobs in Chicago) until I got orientated with Seattle to know where to find a place to rent.