LESSON 1: The First Signs of Illness in the Two Children.

After Don took the job of an Air Force officer in Colorado, their entire family moved into a split-level modern house on Hidden Valley Road in the Woodmen Valley area, just outside Colorado Springs, in 1963. In those years, there was a traditional script for a family like the Galvins: aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, and domestic harmony. They worked hard to play their respective parts. Their house was the first of its kind to be built on a four-mile stretch of a dirt road in the neighborhood. This area was specifically reserved for the families of the members of the Air Force Academy.

After they moved into a new house on Hidden Valley Road, two of the children of the family started showing the first signs of illness. Their house was big enough to comfortably accommodate Don, Mimi, and their twelve kids. They were able to fit a fourteen-seat table in the dining room. The living room was also big enough for the boys of the family to play their wrestling games. These wrestling matches would often turn into real fights, particularly between the oldest boys, Donald and Jim. By the time they moved into the new house on Hidden Valley Road, they were practically enemies.

However, the family was somewhat relieved that Donald would be leaving for university the same year that they moved into the house. Donald and Jim were opposites. Donald was a star athlete who always wanted to make his father proud. Jim had always been a rebellious child. Even when Jim was expelled from his school for sneaking into an Air Force Jet, his parents brushed it off as his rebellious phase.

When Donald was 17 years old, he broke ten dishes impulsively and his parents brushed it off as teenage behavior. However, when Donald began his sophomore year at college, things began to get serious. In one year from 1964 to 1965 alone, he visited the health center on his campus four times. He went the first time to treat a suspicious cat bite. The second time he was concerned that he might catch syphilis from his roommate. The third time he had sprained his back and was advised to rest at the infirmary. The fourth time was the most serious of it all. He showed up at the health center with terrifying burns on his body. His clothes also looked like they had been on fire. It was eventually found out that Donald had thrown himself into a bonfire.