News from Bob

Friends,

I have a brain tumor.

It appears to be a Glioblastoma, the most common but also the most aggressive kind.

I'm still able to talk, including talking on the phone, but the tumor is near the speech center and my ability to speak, to type, and to add and subtract is deteriorating rapidly. Check it out.

I'm in good spirits amidst these gorgeous autumn days with wonderful support from family, friends, and readers.

Well, okay, not every reader. One reader mailed me a package of Preparation H. That's genuinely thoughtful but maybe not the work of an adoring fan.

My first paid publication was in the November 1955 issue of Air Force magazine when I was in high school. I got to be in the Air Force in Korea and to spend 60 years writing about those who fly and fight. A current example is the cover story on the B-24 Liberator in the January 2016 Aviation History magazine.

Hey, I got to invade Panama, fly with the Air Force in Somalia and in Sarajevo, cover Desert Shield, make friends with senior leaders and everyday airmen, fly in a F-15E Strike Eagle (several times) and write. I went with the Air Force to far above the Arctic Circle and to the tropics. I also wrote for the men's adventure magazines, the women's confession magazines, the supermarket tabloids and the History Channel. It just doesn't get better.

If anyone wants to reach my wife Young Soon, she is at ysdorr@cox.net. I was almost finished with my second novel. You can find my first novel here.

I've had numerous lab tests, cat scans, MRIs, and even a tooth pulled, and I may have surgery in December. No one recovers from this. I don't know Elaine but I'm grateful for her sage advice, found here.

I'm in good spirits and having a great time. People are fussing over me. People who never picked up the tab in their lives are taking me to lunch. Thanks to my family, friends, and readers for a great time.

Bob Dorr

Thoughts about Fred

I'm thinking about Fred Thompson (August 19, 1942-November 1, 2015).

It annoyed me that he, like Henry Winkler, lowered himself by flogging reverse mortgages on television. But he led a rich life as an actor and public figure.

Except for the manager, I was alone in a small bookstore in the Tysons II shopping center in northern Virginia, doing a book signing, when Thompson walked in. All six feet five of him.

He spent twenty minutes to a half hour in the store, browsing from one end to the other, impervious to my table, sign, poster and books. He was interested in everything in the store except me and he departed without eye contact, a nod, or a word of hello or goodbye.

Thompson was the Capitol Hill questioner who elicited from presidential aide Alexander Butterfield the revelation that there was a tape-recording system in the Nixon White House.

My mid-1980s interview with Butterfield was much shorter than Bob Woodward's interviews for "The Last of The President's Men" (2015), but I did a better job of describing Butterfield's flying of the F-101 in my book "McDonnell F-101 Voodoo" (1991), which is out of print although used copies are available here.

The reverse mortgage thing disturbs me but I do think kindly of Fred Thompson and I shall miss him.