Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

Donna’s moment arrived in the summer of 1964. When the baby came there were no exclamations of joy, no rush to take photos for grandparents, no happy tears. Instead, the child was immediately taken away.

Yeah. I had it tough at West Point.

Donna returned home to distrustful parents who watched her like wardens. She had no future but what her mom and dad would allow.

Meanwhile, I had become adept at shooting an M-14 with laserlike precision, getting across a ten-foot-deep pool in full combat gear, and enduring the shit being pounded out of me in boxing class. But none of it helped in my quest to attract a girl. I retained the romantic IQ of a snail. On second thought, snails have no problem being attractive to other snails. I was something else, maybe an evolutionary dead end. My genes would never go forward. I was alone and unwanted.

On January 3, 1965, destiny decided to reintroduce Mike Mullane and Donna Sei. We were partying with family and friends at Donna’s cousin’s home. My yearling (sophomore) Christmas leave was ending and I had a plane to catch back to West Point. There is nothing more depressing than returning to West Point from a leave, particularly a Christmas leave. It’s akin to going back to prison or perhaps dying and going to hell, except this hell is cold and gray and more depressing than anything Beelzebub could ever dream up. To top it off, my girlfriend had dumped me earlier that day. When I say “girlfriend,” I exaggerate. I met her in my senior year of high school and throughout plebe year had pined for her. It was a one-way infatuation. To be “dumped” implies there was something that ended. There was not. It was more like she threatened to get a restraining order.

In my despair, I resorted to that cure of the ages, alcohol. There was plenty at the party and I drank to forget…to forget being alone and to forget a flight back into the ninth circle of hell. As the moment of departure approached, I walked outside to get away from the fun. I wasn’t having any and it was depressing to be around people who were. Donna observed my exit and minutes later followed me. We walked for a while making small talk about our friends and our new lives. Romance was nowhere on my mind—it was Donna who took the lead. She leaned into me and kissed me…on the lips, no less. And it was all her doing! I didn’t have to beg or plot. It was as if the sun had risen, West Point had slid into the Hudson River, and I was on infinite leave! I was in love…well, lust maybe, but it would do. Never in my young life had a girl shown any romantic interest in me. Never. I found heaven in Donna. She was a life preserver in the sea of my muddled adolescence and I grabbed her and held on for dear life.

Donna drove me to the airport, as I was in no condition to do so myself. As we parted, she kissed me again. It was all I could do not to propose marriage. She asked me for something to write her address on. SHE ASKED ME! Again, I didn’t have to beg. She wanted me to write. It was truly a night of firsts. I fumbled in my wallet for a piece of paper and found my Army Code of Conduct card, a card that detailed how a soldier was to act if captured by the enemy: “If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape, etc., etc.” Why I was carrying this, I have no idea, but if there was ever a signature of what a nerd I was, this was it—giving an Army Code of Conduct card to a girl to write her address on. Donna should have known right then and there what a doofus she was hooking up with.

How quickly one’s heart can change. Now I couldn’t wait to get back to West Point. I couldn’t wait to send a letter. I flew to Colorado Springs, where I connected with an Air National Guard flight to a field near West Point. The plane was filled with returning cadets who were slumped in their seats in near suicidal depression. But not me. As the C-97 droned eastward, I wore a permanent smile, the dopey smile of young love. Other cadets stared at me, certain I had lost it, certain at any moment I would rush the door and leap to my death. No sane cadet smiled while returning to the granite asylum.

I penned my first letter within an hour of arriving in my room. As I sealed the envelope, I stared at the photo of my imaginary girlfriend. I thought of how long I had defined happiness as getting this girl to love me, how long I had prayed she would send me letters (none ever came). As Garth Brooks sings, some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. I tossed the photo in the garbage.

Donna’s and my relationship continued through the mail. I sent out more letters than Publishers Clearing House. I needed continual assurance she was still there, that she wasn’t as imaginary as my prior girlfriend. Her letters arrived by the truckload. We had “known” each other for a total of two hours, yet in our correspondence, we each professed our everlasting love.

Donna’s entry into my life probably saved me from expulsion from the academy. While my academic grades were satisfactory, my “military bearing” was seriously lacking. I had loathed the hazing of plebe year, never understanding how it could possibly contribute to the development of a leader. (I still don’t.) Upperclassmen sensed my contempt for the tradition and I was rewarded with a steady stream of demerits for various infractions, such as scuffed shoes, unpolished brass, and failure to satisfactorily render plebe knowledge. As a yearling I was rated near the bottom of my class in leadership skills by senior cadets. I was certain some of those cadets interpreted my lack of zeal at enforcing the plebe system on the latest class as further evidence of my disdain for it. Before Christmas leave, I was warned by my tactical officer that I could be terminated if my attitude didn’t improve. My parents received a letter from that same officer, saying that I was floundering, and my dad called in an attempt to rally me. But I remained indifferent to the warnings. I was rudderless, not sure I even wanted to stay at West Point. Then Donna stepped into my life. In her I found clarity and focus. I had to succeed—not for myself, but for her. Almost overnight my attitude and behavior changed. While I’m certain my superiors thought it was their great leadership that had turned me around, it was really Donna. I still had discipline relapses, such as when I was caught skipping a senior class’s graduation ceremony, a transgression that earned me another tactical officer rebuke and forty-four hours of “walking the area” with a shouldered rifle, plus a two-month confinement to my barracks. But I was on the road to graduation, guided unerringly by a star two thousand miles away—Donna.

In February 1965, I sent her an “A-pin” (A for Army ), which was West Point’s version of a fraternity pin. It was another blitzkrieg escalation of our relationship.

In March 1965, I flew home for a three-day spring leave. Donna and I were inseparable. We grew more emotionally—and physically—intimate. At age nineteen, at the Silver Dollar drive-in theater in the backseat of a 1954 Chevy Bel Air, I finally got to second base with a girl. It was also in this passion pit that Donna told me of her dark secret, that she had had a baby. I didn’t care. It didn’t change anything between us, I said. This might sound mature and noble except, at the time, I had my hand in her bra. She could have told me she was a whorehouse madam and it wouldn’t have mattered.

Then, as the dialogue of some forgotten film squealed and popped through the window-mounted speaker, I proposed marriage and Donna accepted. There was no ring, no romantic dinner, no months of wonderful anticipation. It was as spontaneous as a heartbeat. I was mad to legitimize my claim to this woman and mad was the correct word.