Bill Holmes - Activities - Women - Who not to date

Don't date a cop.

I invited a Trader Joe's cashier to dinner at my apartment. She was a lieutenant in the San Diego Police Department working two jobs. I noticed white lines on her temples, and recalled similar scars on Bruce Peterson, the test pilot whose crash in the M2-F2 at Edwards was the lead to the Six-Million Dollar Man TV series. We shared an office at NASA, Edwards for two summers while I was working my way through college. Among other injuries, his face was sand-blasted away, so surgeons made new eyebrows from the hair at his temples.

I asked the lieutenant about her scars, and she replied that she had dated a captain in the San Diego Police Department who repeatedly beat her; the last time so badly that she had to have her face rebuilt. He was never punished. She still suspected she did something to motivate the beatings. She was a Mormon -- an indoctrinated doormat. I avoided her from then on.

Don't date men whose friends are cops.

One love decided to marry into a conservative family in which the father awoke everyone with a bugle call. Each day her husband made lists of things she was to do. After three children, she divorced him, but he continued to assault her. She or her children would call the police, but the police would commiserate with the husband in the driveway while the front door rocked on is one remaining hinge after he had broken in and assaulted her: "Yeah, she must be a bitch; she drove you to do it" was typical the police commentary she overheard.

She attempted to get a restraining order, but her file conveniently disappeared from the courthouse three times. Each time she had to spend many hours and photocopy dollars rebuilding the evidence.

Her eldest daughter loved her father, but tried to defend her mother, and was rewarded with a beating. The daughter is now an alcoholic, and leader of a gang of girls who go around assaulting other children.

The family was finally relieved of the assaults after he died from cirrhosis of the liver.