Trina and Lynn, the young lovers, had moved to Graham in 1981, after he finished his master's in international law to go with a degree in military law he had from Georgetown. She had picked up two masters, one in journalism and one in government.
He had earned an associate degree while a grunt in Vietnam. It was either extension courses or catch the clap from one of the camp hookers. Enlisted men could only, rarely afford the real, talented, and gorgeous pros who were tested on a weekly, if not daily basis for STDs.
Although, he did available himself of one on occasion. She did as she was asked - teach him how to really please a woman. She eventually charged him only half her going rate - he was a really good student - if she charged him at all! He was a really good student.
Working for Ford, while Veepep, he finished off his undergraduate degree in political science. The law degrees were specialties - military and maritime.
Trina had a degree in journalism having graduated from high school two years early in 1969 before attending Northwestern University on a partial fencing scholarship - a real oddity for Texas girl - graduating in December 1972.
She was the oldest of five children, three girls and two boys, born to a lawyer and his prototypical housewife from a county 60 miles to the northeast of Graham.
Because of a fencing contact's recommendation, she stunned her college classmates landing an entry-level political reporter's job with the Washington Post just a year (1974) after working for the Christian Science Monitor, one of the country's most stable, and most respected newspapers in the country, even if it was stuck, literally, in the middle of a corn field.
Bar hopping with a couple of the older, single secretaries at the Post just three months into her job, Trina overheard a couple of middle-aged, closely cropped men pissing and moaning in their drinks about 'their idiot bosses' who had wasted the lives of three Seals on some secret 'fact finding mission' for 'the agency.'
Since she had nursed her first drink and only just had her second placed in front of her, and since her table was quiet because her two girlfriends had been asked to dance - more like vertically groping to a beat with two junior gophers from some Congressman's office in time with the slow songs - she was able to hear more than one typically could in such an establishment.
From there she dug, and researched, and yes, flashed a little flesh, just hints, to piece together what the two men - men she later learned were classmates at the Naval Academy, one a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps the other a commander in the Navy, and both Navy Seals - said was correct.
A half-baked CIA plan had cost three special operators their lives in some backwater, tribal warfare infested nation in Africa, and left four others wounded. Two of the wounded had to be medically retired thus the spooks' idiocy cost Special Forces five of its highly trained operators.
'The agency,' which even rookie Trina recognized was the Central Intelligence (another of DC's special oxymorons she also quickly learned) Agency was looking for some dirt on Russia, or Cuba or Communist Chinese involvement in the nation.
'Fucking fools grasping at straws,' one of the drunk special operators said one night in the dingy bar far from the typical military hangouts as he wallowed in remorse that he failed to die with his friends as he opened up to the attractive lady from Texas.
Trina spent several sleepless nights trying to understand the man's attitude that survival was a failure. After discussing it with three others, she finally understood - the loss of his fellow operators was a failure of the family.
The series of stories - and oh her bosses grilled her and grilled her, and quadruple checked her facts - made her a name.
As she pulled on the threads of disgruntled special operators' remorse, and their wives and college-age daughters - Trina could dress and act 16, or dress and act 32 - the story kept growing.
The Agency had been using, through half-baked truths and mutual back-scratching arrangements with a handful of wanna-be power brokers in the Pentagon, who were jealous of the Special Operators because they didn't have 'the right stuff' to be one themselves, to conduct a series of high-risk, low reward clandestine operations.
Trina had no problem learning, and reporting, that many times, at harrowing risk, the special operators had gained useful information. At times critical information. And those story lines needed to be told so the country did not lose faith in a valuable program that needed better leadership. She never offered that opinion, instead she quoted others - frequently highly respected, retired officers, and politicians to make those points.
She had learned to admire their commitment to country, family and the team. Deeply admired them. Her stories pointed out through the comments of experts where there had been failures of leadership, and where there had been successes.
And she had a skill at tying loose ends together stringing complex facts into a clear presentation of times, dates, places and players so the readers would be enthralled and curious. Best of all the readers became enraged at the waste of these fine young men - these 'heroes of the nation' as Trina described them in a sidebar author's impressions piece her editors recommended, she craft - as she fought to tell the story of the immense grief their wives, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers who were bereft with worry without a full explanation of when, where and how their loved ones had died. That information was conveniently buried by The Agency under the cloak of 'national security.'
By the time her seven-week series of 19 stories, and 47 follow-ups was over, it had gotten her a pass, a junior pass albeit, but a pass nevertheless to work nights and weekends in the White House Press Corps. That would turn into a major pass when the series won a Pulitzer Prize for her, and a wide team of co-writers and editors.
But her name was listed first in the announcement!
Her face-to-face questioning in press conferences was clear and concise. The answers she elicited, regardless of what they were, would later appear relevant in the stories she wrote.
Her brethren first thought the questions were unconnected to anything significant only to be reamed out by their editors for not realizing a press conference statement provided an 'official coverup of clandestine operations.'
Late one evening while working in the Executive Office Building in the early spring of 1976, as she headed towards the pressroom to pick up the evening briefing paper, she caught the glimpse of a semi-familiar face. It was one from her teenage years. It was 'that guy!' "The Quiet One," as she thought of him when she visited the Ducks in Denton.
Before she was born, her parents were living in veteran's housing at UT where they become friends with three other ex-military couples. One of them was the Ducks. The husband would become a highly successful pharmacist with three sons who were each a year younger than Trina and her two sisters.
While visiting them one day, Archie, the oldest son was heading out to a senior Boy Scouting meeting and this guy - this hunk - came to the house to pick him up.
He was polite. He smiled. His eyes danced as he checked Trina and her sisters out from of the corner of his eye, never staring overtly, and he would only say that he was giving Archie a ride to a meeting to plan a 14-day hiking trip in the mountains to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico.
Trina's family had bummed around the four corners area and knew of the 214-square mile scout camp on the east slope of the Sangre de Christo and Waite Philips' summer mansion Villa de Phimonte. They had actually toured the Villa.
They also knew that Archie and his brothers while all big, strapping young men, they were geek types who didn't fit in with the jocks. And they really did not fit in with the outdoorsy types either. But here Archie was about to undertake what she later learned was a 'rite of passage' for young men into adulthood.
The surprising thing was The Quiet One was a jock.
Kenny, Archie's youngest brother, gushed after the two had left about how he was a two-time All-State linebacker and tight end, two time All-State-Tournament point guard and had won five gold medals at the state track meet each of the last two years. He was the jock's jock who was also an Eagle Scout.
Over the years Trina would bump into him 5, 6 times a year as they visited the Ducks at least once a week on her way to and from fencing lessons at Texas Woman's University.
Always he was polite. His eyes would dance when he saw her, but he never even asked her out on a Coke date, even though she had practiced some her best flirting moves on him that had previously never failed her. And she had a half dozen boys at home in Decatur following her scent like infatuated puppies. She even once had all five of them show up at the same time - just to see if she could keep things from getting physical while enjoying the entertainment.
Late in his senior year, what should have been her sophomore but was also her senior year, she learned that his mother had been killed in a car wreck involving a multi-millionaire's underage, intoxicated daughter. It left him an orphan; Mr. Duck told her parents one evening while visiting in her family's home.
She also learned that one of the scuttlebutt rumors at Denton High School was he and beauty queen Phyllis George had been an item two years earlier. Although some said it was just for company to social events. Others said it was more serious and physical. Supposedly, they had even done the nasty!
Trina found that concept intriguing.
Trina had to admit, the woman seemed like the girl next door, but suspected while she might be a lady outside the house, in the bedroom she just might be the same hot stuff, as the boys dreamed about.
Then, six years later she saw him heading behind one of the controlled access doors at the White House. It was a door that members of the press never got to go behind unless highly vetted and highly escorted.
A week later, as she was leaving at 2:30 a.m. at the end of her shift, having gleaned a dozen 'nothing' stories, two of which might make the paper, she headed for one of the few bar/diners in the district open that late - or that early depending on your point of reference - which actually served palatable food.
Trina walked in wearing slacks and a matching jacket over a white blouse - she wasn't going to be on camera working the graveyard, but she couldn't bring herself to dress slummy. Although some of the career late nighters, male and female, did.
Especially the men who could always get away with dressing like slobs.
