The MacIntyres of Dhahran and San Francisco
- Community
- Annuitants & Former ExPats
Author: Martin MacIntyre
Released 17 January 2006
Martin and Rosemary in Milwaukee with grandchildren of
the Dhahran Arabic teacher, celebrating his daughter's
graduation from graduate school, 2003
Photograph Contributed by Martin MacIntyre
Awaiting honored guests at a reception in our home
Christmas time, 1989
Photograph Contributed by Martin MacIntyre
We arrived in Dhahran, September 1984 on the next to last charter flight from Houston via Amsterdam. I was to be the first Coordinator of the Preventive Dentistry for the Dental Services Department. It was a wonderful opportunity and I thoroughly enjoyed the next 12+ years until retirement in 1997. I had patients who were babies when I first saw them and teenagers when I left, without their ever having an injection or experiencing a dental drill.
Soon after we arrived, and before being employed, Rosemary took company Arabic lessons and this was the source of our social friends. She became the Coordinator for the Executive Health Program. Our youngest daughter, Sarah, went to ninth grade in Dhahran before going to boarding school at Kent, Connecticut. In 1997, we returned to our home in San Francisco.
Rosemary quickly found a position as manager of an architectural firm and I found retirement to my liking. One of my retirement activities started in January 1991 under the stairs in our home in Dhahran at 133 Hibiscus. The closet under the stairs had been converted into a bomb shelter (see picture). For the three months of the First Gulf War, Rosemary went home to be with her terminally ill mother and I slept in the bomb shelter watching Charles Jako reporting on CNN. He was tanned and always standing next to the swimming pool at the International Hotel with the blue top cabanas in the background. When the sirens went off, Charles was our “canary.” As long as he could talk and stand I wasn’t about to put on that gas mask. I began writing down the phrases that Jako seemed to repeat frequently and I never looked back as the number is approaching 108,000 … and counting. On National Cliché Day, November 3rd, I finally launched my web site, www.fraze.info. The intent is to have as many people as possible add and classify phrases. In return, users can search for phrases by putting in a keyword and seeing what comes out. I hope you give it a try. No charge and no ads.
Other retirement activities are completion of the second edition of my father’s book, History of Clan MacIntyre, and convening a 2008 world gathering of MacIntyres in Scotland. Retirement is wonderful when you’re healthy and can afford it.
~Dr. Marty
P.S. For those who are reading this in Dhahran, please check the backyard at 133 Hibiscus to see if the tree we planted is still there. It was forty feet high by the time we left in 1997. I’ve been told it survived the one year the house was being renovated and I hope the new family has enjoyed it as much as we did. We were pleased that our holly tree in San Francisco was waiting for us when we returned.
If you have information for Martin regarding the tree, please email info@aramcoexpats.com.
See more photographs in the Aramco ExPats Galleries.
Visit Martin's web site at www.fraze.info.
Rosemary and our daughters, Sarah and Laurie, at an
"Indian" dinner at the home of one of Rosemary's fellow Arabic Students, 1989
Photograph Contributed by Martin MacIntyre