Yesterday on the way to do my bank deposit I saw Holly Sawyer, formerly Holly Roettinger (Phil's ex-wife mentioned throughout this thread) on the street. Holly lives in San Antonio, Texas these days. She is a cancer survivor and I must say she is still looking great -- and she has to be in her 70's now. She is here visiting old friends for another week.
Anyway, I stopped to talk to her for about half and hour and I told her all about this thread and this forum. She asked a lot of questions (I have sent her via email the entire thread so far) and at one point she actually started to sniffle when I told her how well received the stories of her husband and her husband's gun had been by the readers of this forum.
"You're not supposed to cry!" I told her.
"It's a happy cry," she responded. "I'm just so happy that people out there want to remember these guys and what they did."
Holly told me when her cancer was detected -- before Phil's death -- that she had gotten a direct offer from Cuba and the Fidel Government to come to Cuba for Cancer treatments. She told me that this had surprised her, but that she had no doubt that the offer was genuine and that it had stemmed from Phil's involvement in getting Fidel released from a Mexican Jail back in the times when Phil was "the man". Anyway, she said she did not go to Cuba but opted for some alternative treatments in the U.S. which appear to be working well because she is in good health.
Anyway, I asked her to read the forum thread and if she had something to add, to send it along for posting. We'll see if she does or not. I asked her if she had a copy of the original email I sent out when I got the gun (because I had sent it to her at the time) and she said she doubted it because she had switched computers about 3 years ago. This would make sense because that is about the last time I heard from her, so I suspect she "lost" a lot of stuff at that point from the way she talked about it.
If Holly elects to write either me or the forum directly about Phil, she could really fill in a lot of details of his C.I.A. service because she was his wife and was there for most of it. I am not trying to dangle carrots here, I am just stating that I ran into her and hopefully we might hear something from her. I certainly can't add much, but perhaps she has a gem to two she might decide to share.
Cal