Joseph Runyon

Hamilton East-steinert High School

Class of 1967

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First Name	Joseph
Last Name	Runyon
Graduation Year	Class of 1967
Gender	Male
Current Location	Florida
Relationship Status	Married
About Me	This is our adulthood story - Lily and me - hope we don't bore you too much. Following graduation I enlisted in the Air Force (AF), they made me a weatherman and before long I volunteered for Vietnam. One day while visiting stores near the Saigon USO, I met a girl who took my breath away; her name was Hue which translates to Lily. Lily was an English major so we communicated well and for me it was love at first sight. We were married by the Catholic Chaplain during my second tour there and our daughter Mary was born and Baptized in Saigon. We first met in Saigon in 1969, thus our email name - saigon69. Later, I passed on a Trenton policeman job offer as, with a new spouse and a child, it seemed an AF career was a better move. So, I took a $6,000 tax free reenlistment bonus and made the AF a career. During the following years we moved around the USA and Asia. With Lily's support, I had a successful AF career in the Air Weather Service and was promoted to the top enlisted rank, Chief Master Sergeant, in record time. Over the years we had three more children. Michelle was born in south Florida, Timothy in Illinois and the last, Kevin, was born in northwest Florida. Lily had difficulties with the last pregnancy and Kevin was pre-mature. We lost him 20 minutes after birth and almost lost Lily at the same time. But, we are grateful to God for the three wonderful children he blessed us with and we moved on with our lives. I attended night school until I had enough credits for a bachelor degree and upon retirement from the AF after 20 years, we returned to our home in Niceville, Florida where I completed my Master of Business Administration degree at the University of West Florida. Lily worked and provided support as I transitioned to a new career. The new career was as a Contracting Specialist with the AF Armament Center (AAC) at Eglin AFB, Fl. The AAC develops non-nuclear munitions for the AF, including the "Smart Bombs" we all saw going down elevator shafts of buildings in Iraq. During these years I had worked on billions of dollars of contracts and was awarded the Department of Air Force Outstanding Pricing Award in 1993. Then, one day shortly after 9/11 while surfing the net, I came across the State Department career site for Foreign Service Officers and it said, "Be the face of America to the World." Happened that they were giving the written exam at the University of Florida (UF) where Tim was a student on the same day I had tickets for the Mississippi State game. So, I signed up for the fun of it. Didn't prepare or care when I took the five hour exam. A few months later, I got a surprise letter stating, You Passed! Interviews and situational testing followed during exercises they called "Orals." (I thought of it as the modern version of the Inquisition.) Of the twelve of us involved, only two passed and I was offered a commission in the Foreign Service as a Diplomatic Officer. After some debate, Lily and I said, "why not" and accepted. After being confirmed by the Senate and attested by the President, I went though language and other training and was sent to Bogota, Colombia as a Consular Officer. Two years later we were sent to the US Embassy in Valletta, Malta where I served as the principle contracting officer and acting Management Officer. In addition to running the day-to-day operations of the embassy; I facilitated the contract award for the building of a new embassy compound. While there, Lily got her Top Secret clearance and worked as a Security Escort for workers in sensitive areas to ensure they didn't "bug" the place. Then we went to the Caribbean to serve at our embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (DR), where I was the Director of the Narcotics Affairs Section, a key member of the embassy staff, and worked with US Federal Law Enforcement and Intelligence Agencies and Dominican counterparts providing assistance to DR to fight narcotics trafficking, money laundering, child-sex tourism and other international crimes - a very interesting and rewarding job. So, I sort of got to do some police work after all only on an international level. During our time in the Air Force and Foreign Service we had the opportunity to work in or visit forty different countries from Australia to Asia to South/Central/North America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa and we've been to most of the states. We were shelled together in Vietnam and had a firefight in the street in front of our apartment. A car bomb exploded near our apartment in Bogota and we rode to and from work each day in an armored van with a guy in front holding a machine gun. We learned Spanish and Lily studied some Italian. We've taken 37 cruises, visited the Vatican twice, walked across the St. Charles Bridge in Prague, went to the Mitad Del Mundo in Ecuador to straddle the Equator, saw clouds float by in front of us at the top of Machu Pichu, and climbed both Mt. Etna in Sicily and Diamond Head in Hawaii. I've scuba dove thousands of times from Asia to Europe and collected rare seashells, shot fish that took me for a ride and filled bags with lobsters. Rome, Paris, Lisbon, London, Barcelona, Athens, Amsterdam and more exciting cities have been crossed off the "Bucket List" and we're not done yet! We're now retired and back in Florida. Now and again the State Department calls me back to assist and I've been to Haiti and to every one of our Central American country embassies except Nicaragua for two to six week trips at a time. So, the excitement continues once in awhile. Our children completed college - two with MBAs and they have professional jobs in Texas and Massachusetts. We also have three grandsons from our oldest daughter and two more from our son. Overall, I believe we've had a good and fortunate life together and we feel very blessed by God. Let me close with my favorite quotation. It was given to me by our good friend, Senator Don Gaetz (State of Florida) while Lily and I were debating whether I should leave my job and go into the Foreign Service. "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." ...(read more)