Intending to travel from northern Illinois to northern Tennessee, I booked a stay at Kickapoo State Park.  We ultimately arrived by way of eastern Indiana.  Kickapoo is located near Rantoul where we lived while in electronics training in 1967 for the Air Force.  We had an urge to revisit and explore what might still be remnants of our past.

We located the block where we had rented in a trailer park near downtown Rantoul.  The trailer was 35ft by 8ft.  That has been displaced with several apartment buildings.  We were assisted in finding online aerial maps from 1972 by a city hall employee.  That allowed us to confirm the location accurately.  We tossed a few recollections from living there back and forth.

We located the Chanute Air Museum situated on what used to be Chanute Air Force Base.  The base had been decommissioned in 1993 and mostly turned over to the city of Rantoul.  The withdrawal of the workforce left a declining community ever since.  Even the Museum is unsustainable and will close at year’s end.

Though some planes and displays had already been released to other interested parties, the remaining exhibits and historical displays told the story of the impact the base had on the community and the military.  I appreciated what they had done to preserve what I had experienced while learning my trade in the military.  Many feelings ran through me as things surfaced from deep down, prompted by the reminders of what it was like for me there.

No military presence existed and no hospital where our oldest daughter, Crissa, was born.  No entrance gate to pass through.  Not a lot of evidence to show where we began a family, learned a career trade, made some long time friends, and began to grow up.  I’m not clear about all my sense of sadness, loss, and disillusionment.

The remaining evidence of this place in history is the 1.5 million men and women trained, of which I was one. They served the military and went on to use that training for the good of their country, family, and others.