Making a note of it: Don Clifford

As an Air Force officer, Don Clifford served in numerous places throughout the world.
He was in The Congo, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Australia, and New Zealand, among others.
Throughout this time, he took down notes and ideas that he thought might be useful in his writing, an activity he had done since elementary.
Those notes eventually went into a book called “Ben Solomon in Destiny Diverted,” an intriguing tale set about 950 BC that takes the reader from the Middle East to the coast of Central Mexico.
The 79-year-old Clifford, a former president of the Valley ByLiners, is now working on a sequel, as well as helping to prepare a new collection of stories by members of the writing organization.
Clifford was born in Valparaiso, Ind. His father worked for a railroad company, a job that moved the family to several different states – Florida, Virginia, Nebraska and Illinois – while Clifford was growing up. The family eventually settled in Nebraska, which Clifford now considers his home state.
He first came to the Valley in 1953 when he was a cadet at Harlingen Air Force Base. During his time at the base he met his first wife, Evelyn Zuniga of San Benito. After they married, he served in the U.S. Air Force in various capacities for 20 years.
After retiring as a major in 1972, he and his wife, with whom he’d adopted and raised a son and daughter, settled in Bayview. They divorced, and he later married another local woman, Elaine Beakley. The couple settled here in Harlingen in 1976, and they’ve been here ever since.
He enjoys the Valley for a number of reasons.
“A lot of good Mexican restaurants in Harlingen,” he said. “Also, its relative central location was a boon when I served on the Cameron County Historical Commission as its NEWSLETTER editor.”
NEWSLETTER, he said, won the Texas Historical Commission’s 1995 Cotton Award for the best newsletter in the state.
Clifford manages to stay busy and active even as he approaches 80. He’s written another book called “The Hitching of Bingo Joe and the Widow Wheatly and Other Stories,” and is a familiar face in various writing groups, including The Writer’s Forum in San Benito. However, writing isn’t his only pastime.
“I do a lot of vegetable gardening, whatever I can grow that’s seasonal,” he said. “Right now I’ve got a bunch of broccoli, cabbage and lettuce planted, and potatoes. Carrots, radishes. Whatever I can eat. I do give away some when I have a good surplus, otherwise I freeze by first blanching in boiling water, then slip into a freeze bag and into the freezer. If any frozen veggies are left over after six to eight months, I pop them into a pot and make a soup or a stew.”
He plans to continue writing for the foreseeable future, but doesn’t know where it will take him.
“Oh, who knows?” he said. “Take it, play it by ear.”