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Today's Featured Biography
James Abbott
I've tried to type this in a few times with no luck. Probably bad Karma. Tim Davis with class report.com says I have a 30 minute time limit, so to get all this b.s. in I'll have to write it in segments. Here goes. After graduation I went to Colorado Springs-United States Air Force Academy leaving Sandy Kelso my lifeguard job at the Trent Pines Club and my heart. I graduated with a degree in civil engineering. The experience altered my young and inpressionable life-I'm not the boy you all knew in high school anymore. After graduation I went to Europe for three months. I ran with the bulls in Pamplona, saw Paris, London, Berlin (I visited Patricia Morris in Germany), Madrid, and a lot in between on planes, boats, trains, and motor vehicles. I attended pilot training in Lubbock, Texas, Tornado Alley, where I learned to fly high performance jet aircraft (T-38) capable of speeds of over 750 mph. I was first in my class in aerobatics-loops, rolls, immelmans. split S's, etc. I was also first in formation flying-two ship, four ship, as wingman or lead. Dogfights were my specialty. I lost my best friend and roomate in a plane crash that year. After that I attended Combat Crew Training School in Merced, Cal-learned to fly a Boeing 707 for air refueling. During this time I married Mary-Jo Collier, 19, the granddaughter of an Italian immigrant, Anthony Alonzi of Alonzi Furniture, Chicago. It was a big wedding-Papa spared no expense. Many Italians from River Forest were there-so were Bobby Prescott and Billy Swain. We honeymooned in San Francisco, my mother's hometown. After graduating CCTS, I was assigned to the 306th Air Refueling Squadron, McCoy Air Force Base, Orlando Florida. Our primary mission was world-wide support of the super spy plane. the SR-71. Mary-Jo and I bought a 4-bedroom, 2 car garage house with all the furniture, a 15' Thunderbird boat, a 500 cc Honda motorcycle, and a '68 GTO convertible capable of speeds that I con't divulge to this day. We had our first child, Jimmy Jr.. 9/4/71. I was 24, she was 20. I played Florida League Rugby, warer skied, toured Florida from Destin to Key West, and the world including Viet Nam, SE Asia, Japan, Alaska, Europe, Middle East, Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands for 3 years, first as a co-pilot, then as an aircraft commander of a KC-135 Q, then transferred to Columbus, Ohio where our second child, Joanna, was born 1/13/74. I resigned from the AF 6/4/74 at age 26, took off my shoes, let my hair grow, listened to John Prine, Dylan, Marley, Croce, Chapin, Lundgren, Emilou Harris, Baez, Joplin, moved back to New Bern and started a seafood business with Bobby Prescott. The partnership lasted to '76, I moved to the Isle of Palms, SC and continued in the seafood business until '80. Abbott Seafood managed the purchasing, processing, packaging, sales, and distributing of most varieties of seafood to a local, national, and international market, 1 million in sales in '80. Here's where the story gets involved. Bennie Bunn has volunteered to help me with writing the following chapter. Richard Broughton should be brought in for consultation as we are both veterans from the War On Drugs and I love him today, but there was a time where his former organization and my band of outlaws were advisaries. In 1980 I was introduced to a new product that made considerably more money importing and distributing that product from the island of Jamaica by air. I lived on Big Pine Key, Fla. on a canal leading to Newfound Harbor, then the Gulf Stream. I fished every day possible in the Stream, I frolicked in every bar between Key Largo and Key West, and I flew and I flew. I spent many days in Jamaica not as the average tourist. I have known High Adventure. In 1983 they caught me, tried me, convicted me, and imprisoned me, first in Atlanta Penitentiary, then Petersburg Federal Correctional Institute, then the Salvation Army in Raleigh. I lost my 13-acre horse farm on the river in Saxapahaw and everything else. My first night of freedom I called an old friend, Elizabeth, to help cheer me up. Another night in Dillon she became my second wife. She was 24, I was 39. Her father had been mayor of McClellanville, SC-we moved there in '87 where I became chief engineer, foreman, and project manager for a heavy marine construction company, R.L Morrison and Sons. In '89 Hurricane Hugo wiped out the entire town of McClellanville, my '68 GTO, the company I worked for, and our house with everything in it while we were attending my 20th reunion from the AFA in Colorado Springs. I started Abbott Construction in the ruins and that is me today. I am a licensed general contractor and marine contractor in NC and SC. Elizabeth and I went our seperate way after 6 years, but we are friends. (She was with me at our 25th reunion in '92). She will always be the love of my life. I married again, the fourth daughter of Dr. Albert Cannon, pathologist, who taught every doctor in SC at the Medical University of South Carolina for 40 years. We met at our annual Convicted Felons Ball in Charleston in '94. Josephine, a rural mail carrier, a blueblood from Charleston, South of Broad. She was 43, I was 48. We built two houses together in McClellanville, we travelled, we partied and dined with her friends Jane and Jimmy Buffett and their crowd. We remained together for 9 glorious years and now I'm a free man. I moved from McClellanville to Oriental 9/03. I worked with Bobby Prescott on several projects while keeping busy in SC. 11/04 my condo in Oriental burned to the ground. What I didn't lose in the divorce from Josephine I lost in the fire. Joplin sings, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Elizabeth and I moved to River bend. (We got back together for awhile-figured it was easier to recycle an ex than try to explain all this to a stranger.) I bought a piece of property near Trenton on the Trent influenced by the publication LIVING WATERS by Ben Casey. I've got a foundation in place for a house on a high bank overlooking a cypress swamp. I'm planning to build a small Festus cabin along the river when I get old, down there with trees and animals. I'm still active in the construction business in SC and NC and plan to stay that way for awhile-I enjoy it. I still fly-I love to fly. I boat. Bear Inlet between Hammock's beach and Camp Lejeune is nice. I fish. I camp. I travel. I go to church. I go to the Boogie. Charleston SC is my favorite big city. I eat a grapefruit every morning with a handful of vitamins and supplements after push-ups and sit-ups. I eat steak and fish, salad with balsamic vinegarette (Paul Newman), I drink green tea, Sam's diet cola, Budweiser beer, and Appleton rum. I've had the same cel phone # for 9 years. I got a computer 10/04 from MSNBC with 12 Video Professor discs. I'm gettin' into it as I write this. I go to the VA once a year for a physical. So far so good, but eventually it'll all fall apart. I wear 1.25 reading glasses, read Neale Walsh, Stephen Hawkings (slowly), Tom Robbins, Richard Bach, Bill Bryson, and historical non-fiction. I've been involved with 12-step programs and still read literature daily. I've worked with Americorp on Federal, State, and local projects and believe America's youth has as much going for it as we did. My mother still loves me-she was at the 40th reunion. I love all my ex-wives and everyone else I've ever known for that matter, even my former arch rival with the DEA, Harold Stein, who reputedly shook his fist in the air one December night on a plantation in Yemassee, SC and swore, "I'll get you yet, Abbott!". We are all one. I sleep well. My only regret is I have to sleep every now and then. Life is good. I was married to the mother of my children for 13 years. We met at Soldier Field, Chicago, after Air Force beat Navy in Football, '68. My son Jimmy graduated from the Medical University of South Carolina, is a physical therapist married to a physical therapist. They live in Lancaster, SC and have two daughters, Catherine 11/11/96 and Ashley 6/8/00. My daughter Joanna lives in Ormond Beach near Mary-Jo with her husband Robert and their two sons, Riley 3/21/02 and Elijah 9/3/04. Joanna is a massage therapist. Life has been a trip and I'm not dead yet, but the finish is in sight!
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