Ostfriesland Ancestors is a site by a relative which is dedicated to the history of my father's ancestors who lived in the extreme northwestern part of Germany.  The ancient land of Friesia covered the entire North Sea coast of what is now The Netherlands and Germany.  Ostfriesland, or East Friesia, is that corner of Germany between the Ems River and the North Sea, and the Nanninga name is found in both northern Holland and northern Germany.  The early history of Ostfriesland goes back to before the Roman Empire.

My father was only two generations from the "old world", and we know that his family was living in the Pewsum and Pilsum area (northwest of Emden) during the early 18th century and before, to when surnames were not retained in the same way, at least in this region, yet his lineage can be traced to the 16th century.  His grandfather immigrated to the United States in 1873, probably through New Orleans, when the country was still rebuilding after the Civil War.  They settled first in Illinois then moved to Iowa, where my father was born.  His mother was Swedish and I remember suppers at her house as being rich in old-world manners and tradition.  My father served in the U.S. Navy during WWII then attended Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR, where he met my mother in a geology class.

gravestone in Pilsum, Germany, dated 1715, engraved with the
Nanninga Coat of Arms

My mother's family was already in Oregon by the time of the American Civil War, but had been in Philadelphia before and during the American Revolution.  Following the line of her father's name, her great(x4) grandfather was born in 1738 while still in the Philadelphia harbor, his parents in the process of immigrating from western Germany.  Research of the surname shows that many were well-known glass makers.

Her paternal grandmother had an ancestor born in Massachusetts in 1616, whose father, while obviously being among the first to emigrate from England to the new world, was descended from Edward III (b. 1312) and the Plantagenet kings of medieval England.  With the perennial battles between the Vikings and the Brits in the centuries prior, it is interesting to note that the Plantagenets were descended from both the early Normans, back to William the Conqueror (b. 1028) and his Viking ancestors, and the earliest Anglo-Saxons, including Alfred the Great (b. 849), who first united the feuding Brit states against the Vikings.

What is Asperger's Syndrome?   Most who have known me will say I have always been 'somewhat different'.  I have always struggled in social situations, often awkwardly without knowing why, but have at the same time often excelled in scientific and artistic interests.  Fortunately, most of the autistic-like symptoms are not readily apparent at this stage of my life, but are always there nevertheless.

Photo stories of Asperger's Syndrome   Told in their own words, five very unique stories in Portland, Oregon.

regional links:

Oregon State University, in Corvallis

The University of Oregon, in Eugene

Center for Sacred Sciences is a meditation and learning center in Eugene emphasizing the integration of spiritual and scientific knowledge.

Breitenbush Hot Springs is a retreat and conference center east of Salem, a beautiful place to which to get away.

Vietnam Memoirs is dedicated to those who served in the Air Defense Artillery (ADA) units in Vietnam and Korea. 

I served with the ADA unit of the First Field Force in the central highlands of Vietnam as the crew chief of a quad-50 gun truck.  Long since rendered obsolete in their air-defense role by surface-to-air missiles, these units were used primarily as perimeter security and convoy escort.

We much preferred being on the road with a small convoy, usually a day-run supporting stuff moving through our AO, or even just being parked somewhere while engineers did their thing on a bridge or the road itself (they sure liked seeing a big gun truck sitting nearby :).  Best of all, would be a fully-independent solo run to the PX at the basecamp in Phan Rang, about 3 hours away, or even simply down the road to the swimming hole.  It was just more exciting to be 'on the road' (a guy-thing, no doubt, but it was probably not all that much safer to be sitting in a hootch), and it certainly made the time go faster.  At night, however, with few exceptions, we would be in a perimeter security mode, the truck backed into a birm on the perimeter, guns pointing outward.  In either roll, our greatest power was as a deterant -- it was usually wise on the part of the VC to leave us alone.

Our unit worked in section-sized groups (two trucks, called sister trucks) with five guys per crew plus a section chief.  Our battery (company) had eleven sections with which to cover a very large area (all of MR2, most of Vietnam's central highlands), and each section was assigned to some other unit in a supporting role, scattering our battery all over the central highlands.  We seldom saw our actual commanding officer -- he was generally a couple hundred miles away.

Each truck had a name and a paint scheme designed by the crew.  The back panel of our truck sported a chess-piece knight and the words "Have Guns, Will Travel", modeled after the calling card of Paladin (the 60s TV-series about a soldier of fortune in the old west).  The quad mount itself also had a little artwork, as seen in the close-up at the right.

1st Field Force units included:

1971 Typhoon articles:

Trailboss (about our unit)

One Who Remembers (Montagnards)