Alex Pelensky grew up in New York City’s East Village, in the same building his uncle bought in 1962 for $26,000, the one his family still lives in today. He was an Eagle Scout and a soccer player for the New York Ukrainians, and he liked to party. After flunking out of Hunter College and landing on academic probation at Ohio State, he got a 1-A classification from the Selective Service. Rather than wait to be drafted, he joined the Air Force in January 1968. After basic training in Texas, he chose electronics, spent eight or nine months in intensive tech school at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois, and learned to troubleshoot aircraft autopilot systems on F-100s and F-4s at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. There he married a woman he’d met before enlisting, and their daughter was three months old when his orders for Vietnam came.
Alex flew over alone, landed at Cam Ranh Bay and caught a hop to Tuy Hoa Air Base on the South China Sea, home to the F-100 Super Sabres flying close air support for troops on the ground. Twelve-hour shifts in an avionics shop meant a lot of waiting, since autopilot systems rarely break. Alex compared himself to the Maytag repairman. Resentful at being sent away from his family, he started drinking every day. On a temporary assignment to Da Nang, he tried what he was told was cocaine. It was heroin. He hated Vietnam when he arrived, but by the end of his year he wanted to extend. He felt closer to the men around him than to his own family, and only his wife’s letters brought him home. He finished his enlistment at Myrtle Beach Air Force Base in South Carolina, came home against the war after seeing Vietnamese children begging behind the base wire, and brought his habits with him.
On the GI Bill, Alex finished his degree at Hunter College and took his Air Force training to Wall Street, troubleshooting mainframes for Burroughs and then for banks across Connecticut. He bought a house and sent his kids to private school, and paid for a drug habit the whole time. After 17 years, his marriage ended. Out of spite, he walked away from his career, and from about 1986 to 1993 he lived on the streets of New York, in shelters and abandoned buildings, down to 120 pounds. In May 1993 his mother died. The guilt and shame of not being the son she’d hoped for brought back a line he’d heard in detox meetings: you don’t have to live like this anymore. He walked into Alcoholics Anonymous, spent more than a year coming off methadone with other members cheering him on, and claims November 22, 1994 as his clean date.
This November, Alex celebrates 32 years clean and sober. He took custody of his three-year-old son and raised him on his own; that son got married this year. He earned master’s degrees from NYU and Mercy College, and taught technology in New York City public schools for 20 years, fulfilling the answer he gave an archbishop as a first-grader: he wanted to be a teacher. He’s repaired his relationships with his children and still does service in AA. Looking back on Vietnam and everything after, Alex doesn’t regret any of it. It all made him who he is today, and he likes who he is.