Hidden Valley Road - Inside the Mind of an American Family - Robert Kolker Page 0,24

the Academy had even opened, Don had written to the commander in charge of the Academy’s organization and construction, General Hubert Harmon, to propose that the Air Force adopt the falcon as its mascot—the same way the Army had its mule and the Navy its goat. Don had not been the only one writing the Air Force to suggest a mascot—the Academy’s archives have a folder filled with letters from interested citizens, recommending everything from the Airedale (pun intended) to the peacock—but he was the first to suggest the falcon, something he and Mimi would always point to, once the Air Force took up the idea, as a lasting accomplishment, their contribution to American military history.

The Galvins had brought a few birds along with them on their postings in Canada and California, jamming them in cages in the back of their Dodge woody station wagon everywhere they went. Now that Don finally was part of the Academy, he took over the falconry program, throwing himself into the job like a religious calling. He wrote collectors around the world to build the Academy’s stock of birds—accepting two falcons as gifts from King Saud of Saudi Arabia, working to score a few falcons from Japan, and writing the state of Maryland to ask permission to trap falcons there. His cadets flew them in front of tens of thousands of people in stadiums around the country—from Miami University to the Los Angeles Coliseum (in the rain), with a national television appearance during the Cotton Bowl in Dallas in between. He and his birds made it into the pages of The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News more than once, and he practically had a standing feature in the Colorado Springs Gazette. The birds came home, too. The whole family played a part in training Frederica, a goshawk Don got as his end of a three-way swap with collectors in Germany and Saudi Arabia. When she wasn’t scratching the children, Frederica sat on a perch in the front yard, in full view of the neighborhood and well within the sightline of a neighboring Alaskan husky. Once, the bird, which was not tethered, pounced on the dog. The husky ran away with a talon embedded in its fur.

Everybody came to know the Galvins—such a large family, and with their father, the captain who knew everything about falcons. Young Donald became the bird dog for his dad—his “very able assistant,” Don wrote in Hawk Chalk, the newsletter of the North American Falconers Association, which Don had a hand in founding—running ahead and kicking up the rabbits before his father let the birds go. If some failed to return, Donald and a few more of the older boys—John, Jim, and Brian—would wake up at five o’clock to help find them, listening for the bells that had been fastened to their legs for moments like this. From their little house on the hill, the smaller boys sometimes could spot their older brothers and their father through binoculars, climbing up a mountain or rappelling down a cliff.

Don and Atholl

At home, Don basked in the paterfamilias role while Mimi handled the details. Falconry, again, was helpful to him in this way: Not only did it engage him intellectually, it also allowed him to excuse himself from activities he would just as soon not involve himself in. He had long since taken to referring to the boys as numbers. (“Number Six, come here!” he’d yell to Richard.) When Don started taking night classes at the University of Colorado for a PhD in political science, something had to give. Rather than step away from his duties as the Academy’s falconry supervisor, Don gave up the one activity that was centered around the children: coaching his sons’ sports teams. He had become, as Mimi described him, “an armchair father.”

As the boys grew, their parents’ lives only became busier. There was never enough money or time, but the right attitude counted for something, and both he and Mimi continued to believe they had a family others hoped to emulate. Each Galvin boy served as an altar boy. One was responsible for serving a mass each day of the week. Their old friend Father Freudenstein remained in their lives, although he had moved on from Colorado Springs and now served three different parishes out on