Two thousand year old Roman Minerva carnelian ring

When I arrived in Belgium I found that my reputation as a successful metal detectorist had proceeded me. One of the guys who worked for me in the the Munitions Loading section, Rich Evans, told me about an archaeological dig that had been going on in the field across from his house for the previous two summers. He lived in the community of Wijshagen which is near Meeuwen.  He told me that he had an old metal detector but that it wasn’t very good. He had talked with the archaeologists at the site and they told him they were finished and the city was going to plant pine trees on the site. The archaeologists had not used detectors so Rich asked them if it would be OK for him to scan the site with his detector when they were finished to see if he could find anything they might have missed. They told him it would be OK. The law in Belgium at that time (it has change since then!!!) was that you could use metal detectors on “public land” and you could keep whatever you found.

Rich “bugged” me for several weeks to bring my detector to the site. I was getting settled so I kept putting him off. Finally, I agreed to go out on a Saturday afternoon. Rich and several other young guys who worked in the Munitions Maintenance section were with me. The area was very flat and sandy. The archaeologists had cleared off all the underbrush and the top few inches of soil. We went to the center of the area they had excavated. I started sweeping my detector and almost immediately began to find things. I found three large Roman coins and four smaller ones in about an hour. The large coins, the size is called “sestertius,” were from the Emperors Vespsaian, July 1, 69 AD – June 24, 79 AD; Titus, June 24, 79 AD – September 13, 81 AD; and Trajan, January 28, 98 AD – August 7, 117 AD. I don’t remember who was depicted on the smaller coins. I was able to find so many coins so quickly because the Belgian archaeologists had only used wire screens to check the dirt. Also, they dug trenches and didn’t check all the dirt in the site.

At some time during this first expedition I got a signal and found a lump of rusted metal almost on the surface of the ground. It looked like a piece of old rusty iron pipe so I just put it into the “junk” pocket of my detecting apron. One of the young guys with me asked if he could look more closely at it so I pulled it out and handed it to him. After a few seconds he said that it looked as if there was some kind of red stone in the middle of the rusty blob. I took it back from him and looked at it myself. Indeed, I could see something buried under the rust. I took the hunting knife I was using to dig in the sand and scraped across the top of the circle of rusty iron. Immediately a chunk of rust fell off exposing a beautifully carved red stone (see photo). At once I knew that I had found an ancient Roman ring. I later turned the ring and the coins over to the National Museum of Belgium in Brussels. After they catalogued the ring and the coins they returned them to me. They told me the ring was a Roman ring from about the time of Christ, plus or minus 100 years. They said the stone was a carnelian (a semi-precious gemstone) and the figure on the ring was the Roman goddess Minerva (the romanized Greek goddess Athena). They said that the carving style was called “intaglio” which means that the image was cut down into the stone instead of being carved in relief (above the surface of the stone). They thought that it must have been carved in Rome by a master jeweler because of the fine detail. They couldn’t figure out why such a high quality stone would have been mounted in an iron ring instead of bronze, silver, or gold.

After the museum returned the ring to me (they had preserved the original iron ring, even though the bottom had broken off), I took the stone and the original ring to a master jeweler in The Netherlands. I asked him to make an 18 kt. gold ring as close to the original as he could. As you can see from the photo, he did a masterful job.

The archaeologists in Brussels believe this site was a rest stop along an old Roman road. They have not found any proof that there was a Roman village nearby and it probably wasn’t a military encampment as they have found no weapons at the site.  Also, they think there might have been a temple here for travelers to worship. If there was a temple it would have been a wooden structure because they have not found any stone buildings. They base their theory about this being a rest stop and temple site because of the large number of coins and either whole or broken pieces of jewelry found in the ground. Such items would have been given as offerings to the god or gods  worshiped at this place. On subsequent metal detecting visits I found many more Roman coins as well as some pieces of jewelry.  The coins found here date the Roman use of the site to the late first century and early second century A.D.

Retired! A civilian again.

I retired from the Air Force on the first of August, 1991. I had served my country a few months over twenty years. The obvious big question was, “What’s next?”

I knew I loved teaching so I thought it would be great if I could find a job or a career as a teacher of some sort. I had planned to be a preacher or missionary for many years. I first got out of the military in 1978 to finish my college education at Lubbock Christian College in the area of Biblical Studies. My goal was to become a preacher. I decided to go back into the military through the Officers Training School (OTS) soon after receiving my BA degree because of our growing family and lack of preaching job offers. Now I was faced with the decision again of what to do to support my family outside the military.

My grandfather Firestone passed away several months before I retired from the military. I received a little over $10,000 as my inheritance. At about the same time I heard of an organization called Leadership Management Institute (LMI) our of Waco, TX. They were founded by a man named Paul J. Meyer. Their business was to sell business and personal leadership training courses and materials. The company offered franchises to people wanting to start their own business using LMI materials and coaching. As my wife had indicated she really didn’t want to be a preacher’s wife I thought LMI might be a good opportunity. My last two and a half years in the Air Force had been teaching third-year AFROTC students at Texas Tech University. The third-year courses were all about leadership and management training for prospective Air Force officer students. It seemed to be a good match. I invested my entire inheritance as a down payment for a franchise in the Lubbock, TX, area. There were no other LMI franchises in the Texas Panhandle region at the time so I thought this would really work for us.

We rented an office in the newly developed Business Incubator in Lubbock. We received our materials and began to set up our business. As part of the franchise deal we received an inventory of LMI materials. These consisted of packets of cassette tapes and study books on many leadership topics, both for business and personal leadership development. It was good material but probably over-priced. I still have some of the materials stored in my garage.

If I was a good teacher and instructor, I wasn’t a good salesman! The purpose of the business was to market the training courses to businesses. We were to contact area businesses and sell them on the idea of our company providing training to their employees. As a part of the deal the business would buy the training materials and we would provide an instructor (that would be me) to conduct the training, either at their place of business or in the conference room at the Business Incubator where we had our office. Whether I was just a terrible salesman or the business climate of the early 1990s was poor, our business did not succeed. After several months of frustration and failure I worked a deal with LMI to cancel my franchise at the forfeiture of my entire down payment. I was allowed to keep all the training courses we had already received. So I had a garage full of training courses, no inheritance, and no job. Back to square one!

Things my dad taught me.

My father was Howard Benson Emery. He was born on August 15, 1924 and he died on July 4, 1996. His father was Allen Emery Sr. (May 3, 1898-November 20, 1947)  and his mother was Alta Mae Blake Emery (September 14, 1895-January 16, 1964). Dad was born on Parrot Street in Moundsville, West Virginia, right across the street from the Moundsville State Penitentiary. He served in the U.S. Army in the South Pacific during WW II. He was drafted on July 5, 1943 (he was 19 and a senior at Rochester, PA, High School at the time, having been held back in third grade when the family moved to PA) and was honorably discharged on December 9, 1945. He saw bloody action as his unit, the 182nd Infantry Americal Division, fought its way across the islands of the South Pacific toward Japan. He fought across Luzon in the Philippines and was on a troop ship, headed toward an invasion of mainland Japan when the atomic bombs were dropped. He received the Bronze Star for heroic actions in the line of duty on March 10 and 11, 1944, on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands. He is buried beside my mother, Dorothy Jean Firestone Emery, in the Garden of the Resurrection section of Sylvania Hills Cemetery on Sunflower Road near New Brighton and Rochester, PA.

Dad and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but I’m sure many sons could say that about the relationship with their fathers. Dad was a good man, a good husband, and a good father. I believe he suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from his wartime service. I only began to think about the possibility of him having life-long problems related to the war after he died. Looking back on the part of his life that I knew about I believe I see indicators that would point to some degree of PTSD. It’s nothing I could ever prove but I think it’s possible.

When I think back on my short time with my father (I left home to join the Air Force when I was about 18 1/2), I realize he taught me many useful things. Here are some of the things my dad taught me. I’ll add to the list as I remember more:

– All aspects of fishing

– How to hang wallpaper

– How to handle tools for cars as well as for building

– How to tie a necktie

– How to respect others

– How to laugh and to make others laugh

– How to cook

– All about camping

– How to build a building (we built a small barn for our pony together)

– How to drive

– How to operate a small outboard motorboat

– How to cut grass with a power mower

– How to find rare old coins in his insurance collection coin bag (he was an insurance agent for many years)

– How to build foundation pillars for a building and get their heights the same using a piece of clear plastic tubing and water

– Why I should never smoke

– How to plant and manage a garden

– How to whistle shrilly through my teeth

– How to plant fence posts and how to string electric wire on them

– How to tell stories about my life

– How to properly paint a room

– How to make hard Christmas candy

– How to be polite

– How to install wall paneling and dropped ceilings

– How to open and use a checking/savings account

– How to play horseshoes

– How to cry (even though we were both men!)

Lubbock, Texas, from my windshield, Part II

In the summer of 1989 we were finally heading back to the good ‘ol US of A after six years overseas. I reasoned that I’d never be promoted to Major as I became an officer after almost nine years of enlisted service. Besides, the Air Force was slowing down it’s promotion boards in order to force people like me, with a lot of enlisted time, into retirement. I had planned for years to one day be an Air Force Reserve Officer Training Course (AFROTC) instructor before I retired. To that end I got a Masters Degree in Education while stationed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany (1984-1986). I was pretty sure this would be my last military assignment.

I was accepted to be an AFROTC instructor and received an assignment to Texas Tech in Lubbock, TX. Before we left Belgium I was contacted by the Inspector General unit of the United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) and asked to become an inspector for the Munitions Maintenance Units. As the Maintenance Supervisor for the MUNSS at Kleine Brogel, I had helped to achieve the best inspection record for any MUNSS in Europe to date. However, I thought it was time to get my family back to the US so the older kids could be settled into one place for their last years of high school. I declined the invitation to go back to Ramstein and off we went to Lubbock, again.

We got to Texas in June and immediately began looking for a house. We decided we wanted to buy a place that was big enough to be comfortable for our family but we didn’t want to live right in the heart of town. We didn’t want to rush into buying a house so an old friend of ours from our first time of living in Lubbock, Steve Huddle, rented us a small house across the street from his house. We used borrowed furniture, a roll-away bed, and air mattresses for a couple of months until we could find a house to buy and have our furniture delivered. We found a house about twelve miles outside Lubbock, just north of Wolfforth,  and began the process to buy it. At the same time I had to go to Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama, for six weeks to attend Academic Instructor Course (AIC) in order to be ready to teach when classes started in August. It was a very hot summer (especially hot for us after living in cool and wet Belgium for the last three years) and the little house we were renting didn’t have central air. The family was pretty uncomfortable there for the six weeks I was away in Alabama.

Kleine Brogel, Belgium

I was assigned to the Munitions Support Squadron located on Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium in June 1986. Kleine Brogel is located near the town of Peer, Belgium, in Limburg Provence in the northeast of the country. This part of Belgium is mostly farm and dairy country with some light industry. And, it is flat!

Kleine Brogel Air Base is a Belgian military base. The American squadron was just one small part of the base. We had all our own support in one little corner of the base. There was no on-base housing at all so married and single military members all had to find their own housing in the towns and communities near the base. It usually took a little bit of time to find adequate housing. It took longer for my family because we had five kids. We stayed in a hotel in Achel, Belgium, for almost two months before we found a house that would be suitable. It was extremely hot that summer and there was no air conditioning in the hotel. We bought a couple of fans to try to keep us cool but it didn’t work very well. We finally found a big farm house in Wauberg. The house actually had six floors, counting the basement/garage and the attic rooms. We installed carpet in the living room and completely finished the two rooms in the attic upon moving in. Jeff had his bedroom in the top of the house and we built a TV/game room for the kids there. The top floor was like a refuge for Jeff when he wanted to have friends over or to just get away from his four sisters. He also climbed into the storage place above the attic rooms and used a little crawlway there as a secret hideaway. The house was very comfortable for us the whole time we lived in it. Our landlord’s daughter was even our housekeeper for a couple of years.

Our house in Wauberg, Belgium, from August 1986 to June 1989

From Greece to Germany

We moved from Hellenikon Air Base in Athens, Greece, in the summer of 1984. I was reassigned to Ramstein Air Base in Kaiserslautern, Germany. I was supposed to be in Athens for 30 months but the military moved me after just 14 months. Things had gone very well for my career in Athens so the move to Ramstein was a sort-of compliment from the Air Force. I was “invited” to move up to the United States Air Forces in Europe Headquarters to be a staff officer in the Munitions Support Squadron directorate. I was to help with the support for all the MUNSS units in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. The time in Germany was a continuation of my Greece assignment so I was only obliged to stay there for two years. That turned out to be a good thing because I really didn’t like my two years there. In fact, it was the worst assignment I had as an officer!

We had a large GMC Safari van in Greece and I decided to drive to Germany rather than ship it and fly. We took a ferry from the Port of Pireus, Greece, to Venice, Italy, and then drove over the Alps to Germany. The ferry left in the late afternoon and we went through the Corinthian Canal after dark. I took the three bigger kids up on deck to watch as we passed through the really deep canal. We had driven over the canal on a bridge with the kids several times so they knew where we were. It was a good experience for them. We then sailed through the Ionian Sea the rest of the night and arrived at the port in Venice the next morning. We got the van off the ferry and drove north to Aviano Air Base, where we got a couple of hotel rooms for several nights. The next morning we drove to a parking area outside Venice and took a bus in (remember, Venice is a city of canals so you can’t drive in the city).

Venice is a really beautiful, historic, and interesting city. The weather was beautiful the day we were there and the place was full of tourists. I remember one incident from that day very well. We wanted to take the guided tour through Saint Marks Cathedral. It was free but you had to wait for your turn to go with a guide. We were waiting in a big entry hall at the front of the church. I don’t remember how long we waited but it was probably about an hour or so. There were signs in several languages telling everyone to be respectfully quiet and that women couldn’t go into the cathedral with shorts or revealing tops. There was a large souvenir stand that ran almost halfway across the front of the entry hall. There was a big, burly, hairy Italian guy manning the stand. After awhile the noise got pretty loud in the entry hall. Suddenly, the big guy slammed his ham-sized palm onto the top of the wooden stand with a thunderous pounding sound and shouted in English, “Be quiet! This is a house of God!” I laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all. There he was, in the entryway of a cathedral hawking trinkets and he scolded us about being too loud in a house of God. I still chuckle to this day when I remember the incident.

Moving to Athens, Greece

After a couple of years in Florida I knew I was hot for an assignment. I didn’t want to go on a remote assignment (unaccompanied by my family) but I did want to move overseas. I wanted to go to a place where I could be close to Bible history.  We didn’t have any bases in Israel so I looked for the closest I could find. Hellenikon Air Base near Athens, Greece, was as close to real Bible history as we could get. I inquired about being sent to Greece as an Aircraft Maintenance Officer and was told there were no aircraft slots in all of Greece. There was, however, a Munitions Maintenance Officer slot coming open at Hellenikon. The assignment people offered to send me to Lowry Air Force Base, CO,  for six weeks for cross-training to the munitions maintenance field. I wasn’t that hot about going into munitions maintenance but I really wanted to go to Greece so I accepted the cross-training and the assignment.

My assignment was to Hellenikon Air Base, near Glyfada, which is about five miles from the center of Athens. I was to be the Munitions Support Squadron Liaison Officer. My job was to provide all the main base (Hellenikon) support for the Munitions Support Squadron at Araxos, Greece.

We were supposed to fly from JFK Airport in New York, directly to Athens on a Pan Am 747. I out-processed from Eglin AFB in May 1983 and took a month’s leave to visit family before flying to Athens. We were to leave JFK on July 2, 1983. The military gave me the airline tickets for the whole family before we left Eglin in May. We visited our families and then headed to New Jersey to drop off our GMC Safari Van at the shipping dock and then rented a car to go to New York. We visited with some friends we had met at Shaw AFB while we were in the NY and NJ areas. We also visited with my sisters. Joyce lived near Philadelphia, PA., and Kathy Sue lived in Rehoboth Beach, DE. We took a ferry out to see the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Along the way we took the kids to Gettysburg and Valley Forge. It was a good time for our young family to see some different historical things in America before moving to the very historical country of Greece.

On the day of our departure we dropped the rental car off and lugged our five kids and almost twenty pieces of luggage on a shuttle bus to the airport. We checked in all the check-in luggage and proceeded to our gate. We stopped to use the toilets along the way. We had about an hour or two before our scheduled time of departure. While I was taking Jeff to the toilet Deborah went on to the gate with the girls. When I met her she said it seemed strange that no one was there yet. Some cleaning ladies were cleaning the area. We checked the tickets again and it looked as if we were there in plenty of time. We found a Pan Am representative to ask about the flight and he told us it had left about twenty minutes before we arrived. It seems Pan Am changed to a summer flight schedule sometime in June or early July, which moved the overseas takeoff times up by two hours. He also told us that all the luggage we had checked-in at the curb had gone directly to the plane and was on its way to Athens without us. We asked him what we had to do to get onto another flight. He checked and told us there was one leaving the next day but all the seats in the coach section were full. He said (I don’t know if he was joking or not) there had been seven empty seats on today’s flight but that was unusual for this time of year. I showed him my military orders and told him I had to be in Athens as soon as possible. This was a bit of a bluff but it worked. He did some more typing on his computer and then he printed out seven tickets for us for the next day’s flight. The good part of this entire saga is that we got “bumped up” to Business Class on a 747 (the upper deck, right behind the cockpit). We went to a hotel for the night and arrived at the airport the next day in plenty of time to catch our flight. We arrived in Athens the day before the 4th of July in 1983.