"New Year Thoughts and Memories of Vali Moezzi"

 

"New Year Thoughts and Memories of Vali Moezzi" 

Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2005 21:34:12 -0800

by Wally Gordon

 

 

 

쓰나미도 못꺾은 인간의 의지

지난해 12월 26일 인도네시아 아체 주 해변에서 지진해일에 휩쓸린 뒤 9일간 인도양에서 표류하던 리잘 샤푸트라 씨가 3일 말레이시아 화물선을 향해 필사적으로 손을 흔들고 있다(위). 배로 끌어 올려진 샤푸트라 씨는 안도감 속에 탈진해 쓰러졌다. 사진은 화물선 선장이 찍었다.  인도양=AP연합

 

 

Since DO has taken a hiatus from his CPC podium, I'll give a shot at extending the boundaries of our childhood related year-end memorabilia. It's partly provoked by watching CBS' Sunday Morning show when they went through the names of those that had passed on in 2004. As a side note, CBS was gracious enough to mention E. Fay Jones. E. Fay Jones was one of the country's true great architects and one of the last living apprentices of Frank Lloyd Wright (http://www.architectureweek.com/2004/0915/index.html). By far, the biggest professional thrill I will ever experience was being part of a project that received a design award (1989) from a jury that was chaired by E. Fay Jones.

The most important reason I feel compelled to share the following is that the MHS Class of 75 has lost 2 this past year.  Christy Vivolo, who we knew since Hilltop Elementary, passed a few weeks back and Steve McGirt passed this last summer.  Both apparently experienced cardiac problems.  Maybe there were others, but, I certainly hope not.    I'm convinced we're still young but we are somehow forgetting to take care of our-non-teenage-selves!   Please eat healthy, live healthy,  get your checkups regularly and listen to Steve Rhee's fitness tips!

Given all the worldwide events, Vali Moezzi was unavoidably in my thoughts this past year.


Vali Moezzi was my friend and classmate at Walter Colton Jr. HS and Monterey HS, Class of 75.  Those of us with memories of our little league years may remember that Vali went to Monte Vista Elementary and played on the Post 45 little league team.  Vali was extremely intelligent, fiercely competitive and uncompromising in his pursuits.  Vali was aptly nicknamed 'Noisy', which perfectly described him since it both rhymed with his last name and it accurately described his disquieting personality.  I am forever convinced that Vali would never back down from any challenge that life posed, regardless of the odds.  Vali, no doubt,  had a serious bite to go with his famous bark.

I don't know a tremendous amount about Vali's family, but I do know that he had an older brother, Ali, and his parents immigrated from Persia (Iran).  I believe one or both of his parents may have taught at the DLI.   I remember envying Vali and others in the MGM (mentally gifted minor) program when they would leave Colton to take classes at MHS.  Vali would inevitably take advanced classes at MPC when we were at MHS.  When we were in the fall semester of our senior year at MHS, Vali and I went to a school sponsored luncheon at the old (new at the time) Holiday Inn at Del Monte Beach. The luncheon was intended to introduce students to potential mentors in our desired future occupations.  At this luncheon, now 30 years ago, I met the person that would become my future long-time mentor and I discovered that Vali wanted to become a dentist.  I know that many of my classmates would have said that becoming a dentist, and being nicknamed "Noisy", could not have more appropriately described Vali.  Vali seemed to take pride in working on the nerves of many of our classmates, especially the nerves of DO's favorite 'other quarterback'.

After graduating from MHS, Vali went on to San Diego State where he played varsity tennis and majored in microbiology.  I became re-acquainted with Vali when I left college and moved to San Diego in 1980.  I accidently ran into Shirley Chung at SDSU during my first summer in San Diego. Shirley, another MHS class of 75 member, put me in touch with Vali.  Roy Nail was also in San Diego, yet another MHS Class of 75 member.  Roy pitched for our Little League All-Star team and played for Rasmussen & Moody.  Roy and Vali were classmates since their days at Monte Vista and long time tennis buddies.  It was good to have friends around in a strange new place.

Vali was recruited into the Navy as a pilot, right out of SDSU.  Vali conceded that dentistry just didn't fulfill his testosterone-rich personality.  Ironically, Vali was recruited by a retiring Navy pilot that would eventually work with Roy Nail as a commercial real estate broker in San Diego.  I still remember seeing Vali for the first time since MHS.  He picked me up at our San Diego office wearing his starched white Navy uniform, spit polished shoes and his gold crested white officer's hat.  Vali always had a very athletic and striking presence.  But in military dress, Vali was an amazingly striking sight.

Vali went to the Pensacola NAS, in Florida, to train as a pilot.  He would later tell about having to deal with naval officers and others questioning his middle eastern heritage.  It was conversations like those that reminded me that we were extremely fortunate to grow up in Monterey and not in certain areas of the south.  In perspective, these were the days immediately after the Iran hostage crisis.  There were many conversations that I had with Vali about his erratic schedule of going on Wespac cruises (Western Pacific), patrolling the coast to monitor Soviet naval movements, etc.  This was the age of the Cold War and concerns about Soviet submarine movements in the Pacific.  Vali would sometimes call from North Island NAS in the evening saying that his squadron was going out into the Pacific for night landing maneuvers on a training vessel.  North Island is the north tip of the peninsula that frames the western edge of San Diego Bay, where the carriers dock.  Vali would describe the night time operations as landing a race car on a postage stamp while it is rocking and moving in the water.  The additional challenge of landing the aircraft with the landing lights out on the flight deck, along with gusting winds under heavy seas, made me realize that Vali needed to not only have incredible dexterity and acute vision, but incredible focus and guts.

Vali flew S-3 anti-submarine warfare aircraft on the USS Ranger (That is why I could easily identify Steve Rhee's incorrect identification of an S-3 when Dubya took his chariot ride onto the USS Lincoln.)  During this time, our office was doing work at North Island NAS and I had a chance to take a peak at the first four F-18 Hornets as they were under mechanical assimilation in a dockside hanger.  I told Vali about this and he was clear that his dream was to fly the F-18.  I felt his disappointment that he wasn't already flying the F-14.  Vali was never one to settle for anything less than the most extreme of challenges.

Every San Diegan envied and worshiped the Navy 'flyboys' when 'Top Gun' was released in 1986.  Vali and his cohorts were truly the gods of San Diego when the big screen brought the Navy town of San Diego an incredible amount of surreal energy and pride.  NAS Miramar, the now former home of the Top Gun school, is on the northeastern edge of San Diego and became an instant tourist attraction.  There was no greater excitement that one could ever witness than the NAS Miramar Air Show, including the Blue Angels.  It was like visiting Lake Placid after the US Hockey team defeated the Soviets.  Vali and his pilot buddies were a group unto themselves.  It was interesting to be around them, but you realized that this wasn't Hollywood.  These were real people facing real threats and in constant touch with their mortality.  There was no 'next movie', only a very serious job with very real people.  You could tell they were different by how the toasted each other and how their circle was not to be violated by others.  It was an amazing intensity of camaraderie.

The last time I saw Vali was at his house in Tierra Santa, just north of the SDSU campus.  It seemed like the one bit of civilian life that Vali maintained, even though Vali's roomates were also Navy pilots.  They were readying to head out on another WesPac cruise and the house was beyond its normal state of  disarray.  I remember walking in while Vali was intensely working on some serious bicep curls.  He was not one to ever compromise his natural physical 'rip'.   He even calculated the necessity of a Snickers bar after he finished his reps.  In hindsight, parts of our conversation were both poignant and prophetic.  Vali told me that he had left his long time girlfriend from SDSU as the Navy life wasn't allowing it to work.  I also distinctly remember him telling me that the average lifespan of a Navy pilot's mortality is approximately 20 years.  In essence, he was saying that for every 20 man-years that Navy pilots are flying, there is a fatality.  In hindsight, this probably included both peace time and war time statistics.  I remember thinking that Vali had been a Navy pilot a bit over 5 years, so he only" had a 25% chance of not coming back.  During that last visit, Vali and I went out in his small pickup truck to get lunch.  Appropriately, Vali provided one more memory of the Vali I grew up with.  We were driving along and some bozo cut Vali off with a now unforgettable and insignificant vehicular maneuver.  This obviously sent Vali into his legendary scowl and (thank God, contained) tirade.  I could only imagine this guy driving me around  in an open-bed F-18 with 4-wheels and a Nissan badge.  This was the same truck that Vali had once helped me move furniture.  Furniture that I still possess.

I lived in Point Loma at the time Vali was out on his Wespac cruise.  Point Loma is the peninsula that frames the northern edge of San Diego Bay and is under the flight (takeoff) path of Lindbergh Field, San Diego's airport.  I never had to set my alarm since the curfew of Lindbergh Field takeoffs expire at 6am, even though I typically woke up before the jets took off.  You could also hear the Navy jets firing at North Island when the fleet was active.  I had a regular wakeup routine of going into the bathroom and turning on the black and white Salton AM/FM radio that I kept above the shower.  B-100 was a great FM station at the time and it had 2 disc jockeys that were absolutely hilarious.  It's not often that the news report catches your ear when you turn on the radio within seconds of waking.  But, when you are not sure that you heard it right, you have to wait and listen because you want to believe you were not awake and you didn't hear what you thought you heard.  I thought I had heard that the USS Ranger had lost an aircraft in the South China Sea, that 2 crew members were recovered alive, 1 crew member was recovered dead and another was missing.  I thought  of the times I talked with Vali about the size of his squadron, the number of crew on a carrier and the 20 year lifespan of a Navy pilot.  I knew that there was a slim chance of Vali being involved.  After all, a carrier is essentially a small city with thousands of personnel.  Unfortunately, mathematics and statistics can only be manipulated on paper, and life has its own seemingly devious and manipulative plans.  It seemed like one of those slow motion days when I started hearing names, including Lt. Vali Moezzi as the aviator that was 'missing'.  My naivete was that Vali must be floating around like Maverick after he lost Goose.  Unfortunately, the ejection sequence of an S-3 held the logic of why Vali was missing.  Vali was the pilot.  Behind Vali was the co-pilot and behind them were 2 radar crew.  The ejection sequence is from back to front and Vali would have been the last to eject.  The 2 back-seat crew ejected in time to open their chutes safely, the co-pilot probably ejected too low to the water and Vali was now somewhere in the depths of the South China Sea with his aircraft.

Roy Nail received a letter from Vali the week after the fatal news.  Unlike today's letters, those letters were handwritten and inherently more personal than e-mail.  In his last letter to Roy, Vali told Roy that he was looking forward to leaving the Navy after this cruise and becoming a commercial pilot.  It all seemed so appropriate for Vali.  But. then again, I couldn't envision Vali flying a big bus in the sky.  He acquainted me with the term 'big bus in the sky' as something of a let-down from flying race cars onto postage stamps on the high seas.  I suppose he could have evolved in civilian life.  But, I only knew Vali as someone that could turn a Nissan pickup into an F-18.  I wasn't sure what he would do with a 747.

Last week I was speaking with Ali, one of the Principals our office.  Ali and I often engage in lengthy philosophical conversations outside of design matters, and last week was another nice year-end meandering conversation.  Ali grew up in Iran and is a wealth of perspective on current middle east events.  He reminded me of how lucky I am to be in touch with people from my childhood.  He envies that I can still play golf with someone that I've know since 2nd grade.  Ali can only get back to his roots in Iran every several years in contrast to my 2 hour drive.  Most importantly, Ali reminds me of how lucky we are to have roots with each other.  I truly wish we still had Vali Moezzi's perspective to share.

Lately, my thoughts of Vali seem to come back in a variety of ways.  You can call it the harmonies of life, karma or just extrapolating unfortunate situations.  But, with the current military matters in the middle east and the enormity of lost lives in the Western Pacific, it all seems to have a strange and analogous echo.  I hope that we can all remember that none of us is bigger than life.  We're all part of life, and fortunate to be part of each other's lives.

I feel very fortunate to live in the esoteric world of design, well, at least most days.  It  constantly reminds me of the importance of respecting and embracing each other and sharing perspectives.  I've appreciated growing older with you guys and I look forward to many, many more common experiences.

I wish everyone a happy and rewarding New Year!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yiruma - Spring Rain