1st Lt. Walton Dabney, USAF

I'm not sure how the military decides these things, but Walton certainly defines "an officer and a gentleman" for me.  He and his wife Elaine (who met him in college when they were both studying fencing) arrived at my house on New Year's Eve, stopped for this brief photo op, and swept me off to an evening of Beethoven and champagne at Seattle's Benaroya Hall.   We discovered an unexpected intersection of my Italian history and Walton's military interests, and in March  we went off to Discovery Park to see the grave of an Italian POW who died there during WWII.   In April, serendipity will took us to Tacoma's Museum of Glass, where I fell in love with a new craft!.   In August 2008, in Indianapolis. Walton had textbooks and a school, but he and Elaine were still living in a hotel and looking for housing, so we settled for drinks at the bar. Our most recent meeting was right after New Year's, I think, when he and Elaine were in town for a brief stop.