The Day He Learned About Brotherhood and How to Knot a Tie

Mail from the government is not, in itself, a bad thing. Big tax refunds are good. But the letter I received during the summer of 1969 opened with “Greetings from the President of the United States” and was signed (or rather, stamped) “Richard M. Nixon.” Mr. Nixon would run into trouble about three years later; I was in trouble right then.

At 19 years of age, with a war on, I was drafted. I considered my options for a few days and decided to enlist.

Lackland Air Force Base is on the north Texas plains near Wichita Falls. I arrived in early September as hot winds pushed thunderclouds across the sky.

It took six to seven weeks to complete basic training--unless you fouled up. As I remember, there were about 600 different ways you could do that.

Day One, our hair was buzzed off, we were given about a dozen injections, and a mountain of green and brown clothing was tossed at us. I began to fully appreciate the meaning of “uniform” and the difference between people and personnel.

But I also learned an unexpected lesson about brotherhood, about humanity.

*

The third or fourth week of basic, there was a parade. All the recruits were to march. As usual, it was the task of the training instructors, “TIs,” to swarm around looking for imperfections in our marching, uniforms or demeanor. These noncommissioned officers were fond of shouting in our ears from a distance of three inches in an effort to uncover “attitude” problems. It was sort of a hobby with them.

If a TI could see or even suspect that something was wrong with a guy’s “attitude,” the guy would regret it. In theory, the TIs were never to grab, push or strike a recruit. They mangled that rule, and there were rumors of other, more byzantine punishments. (One tale circulated about a couple of hapless trainees forced to spend hours on a corrugated tin roof in the blistering sun for some minor infraction.)

We spent lots of time in the days leading up to the parade doing everything possible to appear perfect. We polished shoes, pressed shirts, picked lint off dress blue uniforms, even shined the bills and straps of our service hats with shoe polish.

Growing up, I had never learned how to knot a necktie. As a 12- or 14-year-old it had never made sense to me to voluntarily strangle myself. Instead, I had used a wonderful invention--the clip-on tie. But clip-on ties for the Air Force dress uniform were not available in the Base Exchange store and, more significantly, were not regulation.

As parade day approached, I knew this was going to be a big problem. I struggled at odd moments (when not being yelled at) to perfect the loops of a four-in-hand knot but made little progress. The morning of the parade, my shoes, uniform and hat looked good but I knew it didn’t mean a thing unless the tie was in a flawless knot. In front of one of the mirrors in the barracks latrine, I tried and tried to get it right, but the ends were always too long or too short and the knots were messy.

I became more and more rattled as guys came into the latrine, used the next mirror, and hurried out 30 seconds later with their ties ready for inspection. Desperate, I turned to a freckle-faced Texan who had just finished with his tie. His bunk was next to mine. Maybe he would show some mercy.

“I can’t get this thing tied. Can you help me?”

He headed for the stairs without pausing: “I’m not gonna be late getting into formation.”

Another guy I knew was starting down the stairway. I asked him, too. “No way.”

As I stood with my tie dangling around my neck, a short and stocky Puerto Rican who bunked at the end of the row stopped in the doorway. He spoke little English but my loose tie and the near-terror in my eyes made the problem clear. He laid his hat next to mine on a shelf below the mirror and, with a few quick motions, knotted my tie--perfectly.

I pulled on my coat. We grabbed our hats and galloped outside, hitting the street as a TI hollered “fall in” from about 30 yards away. The sergeant glared at us but said nothing. We missed catching hell by three or four rapid heartbeats.

That evening, Juan B. Irizarry from the village of Salinas, Puerto Rico, taught Steven K. Tice of Pasadena, California, how to knot a tie. Since that day I have been extremely glad that the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is part of the U.S.A. I support statehood. I support pretty much whatever they want down there.

*

I grew up in an America that perpetuated a lie: The lighter your skin, hair and eye colors, the better. The lighter the colors, the more compassionate you were, the more intelligent, the more trustworthy.

Growing up, I knew little of Puerto Rico. I remember learning in school that, around the time I was born, two Puerto Rican nationalists had tried to assassinate President Truman. And everyone knew that “West Side Story” was “Romeo and Juliet” transposed to New York City, with Puerto Rican gang members singing as they stabbed each other with switchblades. Clearly, Puerto Ricans were scary tropical nuts.

During the ‘60s, many of my friends and I admired the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s eloquent speeches about brotherhood. But perhaps we liked his ideas only as abstractions. Juan B. Irizarry taught me more about brotherhood in two minutes than I had learned in school, in church or anywhere else. In risking his own butt to save mine, he exploded the big lie and opened my eyes.

Being late to formation could have resulted in one, two, even three extra weeks of basic training. There was nothing worse.

And ever since that day, I’ve wondered: If the situation had been reversed, would I have taken the same risk for a Puerto Rican?