Kenneth Bryan Kay James Taylor Askew Vance Thomas Venable

In Loving Memory Of the Three Musketeers

Deborah Venable

01/21/12

In 1966, three young Navy Seamen met for the first time in Colorado where they were to be classmates at the Electronics Calibration School. They were all electronics technicians who had recently passed Electronics A School. Little did they know that their meeting and subsequent devoted friendship to each other would last the rest of their lifetimes.

A few months later, my brother, the oldest of the three, would bring his two new friends home for a weekend visit. From that time on, I had a front row seat to the drama and comedy of these Three Musketeers. I married one of them a couple years later and my best friend married the other. Our mutual friend married my brother – all the same year – 1968!

Oh the times we had – especially in the early years when we were all young! Everyone should build such memories in their youth just to keep them warm in their old age. The Three Musketeers could keep an audience in stitches for hours as they replayed their lively adventures.

After they all mustered out of the Navy by the mid 70’s, we all ended up for a time in Phoenix, Arizona – making more memories and living within an easy walk of each other. Our families were growing, and our fortunes (not all financial of course) were unlimited. Oh – the poker games and the hunting trips – the campfires and always the stories! It was a great life!

The Three Musketeers eventually went their separate ways to pursue individual interests. None of us stayed in Phoenix, but we always stayed in touch. Our children grew up and produced grandchildren. Our homes were separated by a thousand plus miles at times, but we always had addresses and phone numbers – and we used them!

For the last six years, only one of the Three Musketeers has survived, for in 2005 both my brother and my husband succumbed to debilitating cancers that they suffered with for a long time. The survivor had managed to beat his back and go into remission – until this past summer. He, perhaps, had suffered the most because he lost his friends within months of each other in 2005, and then faced his own cancerous demon without them.

He died Friday, January 6, 2012. I think the other two Musketeers had been saving him a place at the poker table.

Readers of this website know him as The Man Of Few Words, Jim Askew. His published words will remain archived on this site as long as it remains on the net. To me, he is the last of the Three Musketeers.

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