Finding Lucho

I was building a PhotoStory from some old pictures my Mom had, and was struggling to find some music to accompany the video. Mom was born in the Panama Canal Zone and lived there most of her young years. When we were kids, Mom loved to play records by a Panamanian organist named Lucho Azcarraga, and the sound of his music is deeply rooted in my psyche.

Sadly, Mom's old records are pretty much shot, and I don't have an operational turntable anymore besides. But you gotta love the web -- Lucho's granddaughter has a website where she sells CDs of his recordings, and I ordered one last night. Here is a sampling of his sound.

Can't wait for the CD to arrive.

Funerals and Connections

My Dad, Ted Lambert, passed away on August 20, 2006. He was 83 years old, living independently in his own home (Mom died in 1991), and in full control of his intellect. While he had suffered many years with chronic health problems, and was in the hospital for treatment of an acute episode, his death came suddenly and unexpectedly. You are invited to visit our family website to learn more about Dad and our family.

Certainly there are tragedies in our lives, such as when death comes at a young age. But death is inevitable, and I find that while I mourn the ending of an earthly relationship, I am also able to find joy in the 'gathering of the clan' which happens around a funeral.

Our family has always been a little far-flung. Terry and I have lived in Columbus our entire adult lives, and have raised our kids here, a four hour's drive from our parents. My brother Jeff and Terry's sister Elaine also came to Columbus many years ago. Other siblings are in Charleston WV, Huntington WV, Ripley WV, and Virginia Beach VA. Our collective children are now beginning to spread out: Colorado, North Carolina, Indiana, and Iraq. We have first cousins in Florida, New Jersey, Kentucky, and California.

As our individual families grow, it seems that the horizontal connections in the family tree get a lot less attention than the vertical ones. Our primary focus is on our children, and in time, on their children. We also retain that strong bond to our parents, but the frequency of contact diminishes, especially if they aren't close by. And as we have now experienced, there comes an end to their time on earth, and you never feel you spend enough time with them.

The bond to siblings never diminishes, but again, the frequency of contact goes down as we deal with all the demands on our own time. The contacts beyond that -- with aunts, uncles, and cousins -- become quite rare. Some families are better than others at getting everyone together. Our family, driven by Mom and sister Pat, had some great family gatherings in the 1980s. But after about three of those, we just never got one together again. I really think it's about the logistics. A family gathering is a big deal, and it's simply hard to find a time when everyone can attend, and not be excluded simply because of scheduling conflicts.

When a close family member dies, that trumps everything. The time from death to funeral is a matter of days, and you simply have to drop other commitments and get yourself there.

Terry's Dad died completely unexpectedly, at age 63, when he still had a lot of life to live. His death was tragic because he might well have survived had they lived closer to a emergency medical center. It was a sad time.

Our mothers both died of cancer, with a lot of time to come to grips with the fact that we were experiencing the end of their days. Terry's mom had a beautiful traditional service, and it was an opportunity for me to meet a number of members of Terry's family that I didn't know. For my Mom, we held a gravesite service in the morning, then a memorial service and visitation that evening. People got up and told funny stories about times with Mom, which we all knew she would have loved. The gathering time afterward was wonderful, getting to see many of our family and friends.

A few months ago, Jay White, the younger brother of a very good friend Jim White, passed away suddenly. When Jim and I both worked at CompuServe in the 1970s, we became very close and took part in many activities together. I got to know Jim's family well, including Jay. When Jim married Karen and moved back to his hometown of Pittsburgh to raise their family, our contact became limited to the annual exchange of Christmas newsletters. When Karen called to say Jay had died, there was no question that I would head to Pittsburgh to honor Jay and support Jim. We had the chance to spend the whole following day together, and found that we still shared common interests and enjoyed spending time together. It was a funeral that created the priority to connect once again.

Dad's death was not expected, but then it was. He was in the poorest health of our four parents, but ended up outliving them all. His funeral created that excuse for the gather of the clan, beginning with a wonderful dinner by Rita Shaffer, the granddaughter-in-law who had been taking care of Dad's housekeeping and being his weekly companion (along with her daughter Sarah). For the visitation and funeral, we saw many friends and family, including the last two members of my parents' generation: Dad's sister Betty and Mom's brother Don. Aunt Betty was accompanied by cousin Jane, while Uncle Don came with cousin Donna and her husband Mike. We got to see old neighbors such as Jim and Marg Hively, Chester Flick, and Sada Douglas. Denver Rucker, one of Dad's dearest friends came with his wife. Mrs Whitman, and two of her daughter, Alice and Rebecca were there. While together for dinner at a local restaurant, we ran into Rose Marie, a high school classmate of ours and childhood friend of Terry's. And friend Jim White came down from Pittsburgh to spend the day with us as well.

The following day was one for me and my sibs to get together and begin the tasks of getting Dad's stuff in order. I got to spend a fair amount of time with Sammie and Josh Lambert (Joe and Becky's kids, Ted Lee's grandchildren) and Kristen Casanave (Vikki's daughter, Pat's granddaughter), grand-nieces and nephews that I didn't know very well beforehand. New connections.

I hope that when the day comes, my funeral is a time when lots of people gather to reconnect and celebrate our interwined lives. I wish I could be there!

The Lamberts

WASP -- White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. If I had to pick any one catch-phrase to best describe my hometown, this one would do. Take a look at the high school yearbook, and the names you'll see will be Smith, Kelly, Whitman, Parker, Young, Fields, Coleman, Bradley, Hess, and Lambert. I don't remember anyone talking about "the old country," and I don't remember thinking of myself as anything but American. Okay, I knew that on my Mom's side, everyone was German and they all came in the great wave of immigrants in the late 1800s. But Mom was orphaned when she was 11 years old, so I never got to know her parents, nor hear stories of the prior generations. One point of interest is that Mom's father and others of his family headed to Panama to work on the Panama Canal when the US took over from the French. Mom and her siblings were all born in the Panama Canal Zone, as was one of my sisters and several cousins.

We have some decent documentation on the families of my two grandmothers. Grandmother Lambert was a Van Hoose, and we have a large book listing hundreds of members of that family, all the way back to the immigrant who came over from Holland in the 1600s. Grandmother Hirsh was a King, and we have a pretty good list which was put together by Judith King several years ago. But there are no such books on the Lambert or Hirsh families. My Dad has been working on Lambert geneology for years, so here's a little of the story:

My grandmother Lambert was a Van Hoose by birth. Her family lived in eastern Kentucky, where her father was a pastor. Granddad Lambert was a electrician for the C&O Railroad, the company that brought his father from the family homestead in southeastern Ohio to live in Huntington WV, a town that came into existence to serve the needs of the railroad. My grandparents met at some church function in Huntington WV or Russell KY, or some little town in that area. One of granddad's responsibilities was to replace all the oil fired lamps on steam locomotives with electric lamps. He installed the steam-powered dynamo on the engine, ran all the necessary wiring, and installed the lighting system. For a while he was posted at the engine shop in Thurman WV, well known today to the many people who enjoy whitewater rafting on the New River (also also the town in which the movie Matewan was filmed). Soon after my dad was born, in Huntington, granddad moved the family to Charleston WV to take a job with duPont, who had opened a major facility in the Kanawha Valley.

As much as Mom talked about the German roots of her side of the family, I never grew up with any sense of where my Lambert side came from. After Dad retired, he and his brother Bill became very interested in Lambert geneology. What they found is that the Lamberts and the Van Hooses came to the New World a long time ago, with the very early settlers.

The Van Hoose ancestors arrived in New Amderstam (New York City) in the mid 1600s. They soon moved further inland, buying farmland from the Mohawk indians. They were stonemasons and farmers by trade. As happens when families grow, the eldest sibling gets the farm and the rest have to strike out on their own. That why my Van Hoose ancenstors eventually headed west on the Ohio River and made a place for themselves in Kentucky. The complete history of the Van Hoose family is well documented in a thick book that my Dad keeps by his chair.

The Lambert history is less well documented than the Van Hoose family, in part because the courthouses that archived public records like birth/marriage/death certificates all burned down at one point or another. We don't know who the immigrant was, but we do know my direct ancestor (a great ... great grandfather) was named Josiah, and that he was born in 1744 in New Jersey. We don't know for sure where the Lamberts came from, but one researcher Dad contacted said that Josiah spoke 'German.' I don't think of Lambert as being a German name, and never ran into a Lambert in Germany. However, once when I was in Luxembourg, one of my hosts said my ancestors must be Luxembourgish because there are tons of Lamberts there. I think the truth may be that the Lamberts were from the region of Europe called the Alsace-Lorraine, where the French-speaking and German-speaking cultures are mishmashed together.

Josiah served as an ensign in the American Navy during the Revolutionary War, and was taken prisoner at one point by the British. As was the case with most Revolutionary War veterans, he was granted land 'out west' instead of being paid cash for his service. The land Josiah was given was in Pennsylvania, but he decided at some point to upgrade his land holdings by selling his land in PA and buying a larger tract of land in southeastern Ohio, in what is called Lawrence County today. Josiah is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, near Ironton OH.

During the Civil War, my great-great... grandfather Thorton Lambert served as an enlisted man in the 10th Ohio Cavalry. I'm not sure which battles he fought in, but he was injured at Petersburg when his horse fell on him. At point point he was accused of desertion (a huge problem in the Civil War), but actually he had merely gone back to his home to heal up and recover from a repiratory problem. Eventually he and the Army got things squared away. He is buried in the Lambert/Russell cemetery near Aid OH.

I don't really remember my Great-grandfather Lambert, and have only tiny memories of my great-grandmother. But I knew my Grandfather Lambert (Pappaw) and Grandmother (Mammaw) very well. From ages about 4 to 10, we lived in a home on my grandparents' property, about 100 yards away from their home. It was very cool living in this extended family setting, having breakfast before school with my granddad and father in Mammaw's huge country kitchen (2 stoves, three ovens, giant sink). They then took off together to their jobs at the duPont plant, and I caught the bus to school.

It really sucked when Pappaw retired and they moved to Florida in 1964. After that, we saw them about once per year, usually in the summer when Dad took two or three week's vacation and we drove down to Florida. Those were fun times as the grandparents had a big house on the water with a swimming pool and a boat dock. But it wasn't like having them next door.

Pappaw rose from being an electrician at duPont to being the Electrical Superintendent for the huge duPont complex in Charleston. Along the way, he was posted in other duPont operations, notably their ammonia production facility in Birmingham AL. It was there that he developed two of his patents, including the variable speed motor control. During WWII, duPont was tasked by the War Department to build and operate one of the most secret and important facilities that has even been built -- the plutonium production facility in Hanford WA -- a key component of the Manhattan Project.

Even though he had never been to college, Pappaw had taught himself everything there was to know about electrical engineering, and was assigned to the Manhattan Project as the manager in charge of all electrical power generation and distribution. I've read much about duPont's success at Hanford, and wish I Pappaw could be around still to teach me about. Interestingly, when he was still alive, he considered much of what he did to be classified, and would only talk in generalities.

My dad, who will celebrate his 83rd birthday this year, grew up in the shadow of the duPont plant in Charleston, and in fact graduated from duPont High School. He started college at Marshall University, but this was in the middle of WWII, and the call to duty eventually got to him. He joined the pilot cadet program, but with the ending of the war in Europe, the cadet program was cancelled and he was reassigned to radar technician's school. In 1945, he was assigned to the B-29 squadrons in Tinian. During the summer of 1945, he flew on several bombing missions over Japan. In July, the top-secret 509th Composite Bomb Group arrived on Tinian. They were kept segregated on another part of the island, and no one knew that on August 6th, the 509th would drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Dad's plane flew the post-drop photo assessment mission over Nagasaki. On the day of the surrender signing, Dad's plane was one of many that overflew Tokyo Harbor and the USS Missouri (see picture below).

After the war, Pappaw and Dad came back the duPont plant in Charleston, both retiring after 40 years service -- Pappaw in the 1960s and Dad in the 1980s.

Dad still lives on Pappaw's former property. He's been alone since Mom passed away, but is being checked on weekly by his step-granddaughter-in-law, Rita Shaffer. More of his story at another time.

Glad he was my Dad, and proud to be a Lambert

Big Chimney WV

While it was not the first place I ever lived, Big Chimney WV was the place where I grew up, and is what I consider to be my hometown. I was surprised that I haven't been able to find a blog entry about Big Chimney, so I've taken it as my duty to write a little something about our town.

First off, I didn't actually live IN the unicorporated town of Big Chimney. Our place was across the Elk River from the town in an area that I didn't even think of as having a name until one day some government agency decided to erect signs naming our crook in the highway as "Milliken." Don't know where that name came from, and I can't recall the name ever being useful when giving directions. "Across the river from Big Chimney" was the most efficient way to describe the location of our neighborhood.

Big Chimney is about eight miles upriver from the mouth of the Elk River (northeast, but West Virginians don't use compass points to describe directions) , at Cooper's Creek. The mouth of the Elk River is in downtown Charleston WV, where the Elk joins the Great Kanawha (can-NAW-uh) River. The Kanawha River flows into the Ohio River at Pt Pleasant WV. So our little Elk River is part of the mighty Mississippi watershed, which is a primary reason Charleston and the Kanawha Valley was settled in the first place.

Another reason was the abundance of natural resources: coal, oil, gas, water and timber for example. One valuable minieral resource found locally is potassium nitrate, commonly known as saltpeter. Saltpeter is an important component in the making of explosives, first gunpower, and later dynamite. In trying to extract calcium from limestone, a 19th century experimenter got carbide instead. Carbide is a rock-like substance that gives off acetylene gas when exposed to water. One of the uses of carbide was to fuel the little lanterns that coal miners wore on their hard hats. In the town of Clendenin, about 10 miles further up the Elk River, the first Union Carbide plant was built to make the stuff.

When I was a kid, Charleston was to the chemical industry what Pittsburgh was to the steel industry. All the major players were there. Union Carbide was the largest employer with several major plants and the corporate R&D center in the Valley. Next was duPont, where my Dad and Grandfather worked. FMC, Dow Chemical, Diamond Shamrock and Monsanto were also large employers.

Some of the business and landmarks in Big Chimney:

• O.V. Smith & Sons Grocery Store: This is the first place I worked where I got a real paycheck. O.V. was still alive when I was a kid, although his sons Jim and Bill were running the business when I worked there. In the 60s, the Smiths added a hardware store, a furniture store, had a little strip mall with a couple of other tenants like the barber shop, and eventually built a second grocery store up the river about five miles, in Elkview. The grocery stores are still in operation, and being managed by Bill's son, Bob -- who is a definite knockoff of his grandfather, O.V.
• Big Chimney Elementary School: When I started school there in the 1st grade (we didn't have kindergarten in our school system), the school was a big white building that had been constructed early in the 20th century. It had one classroom for each grade, one through six, a special education classroom, an office and a kitchen. There wasn't a lunch room. Each teacher lined her kids up in the hallway,SAID A PRAYER, then marched to the kitchen to be served on trays, cafeteria style. Then you walked back to your room with your tray and ate. When everyone was done, you marched as a class back to the kitchen and dropped off your trays to be washed.While I was in the first grade, a 'new' building was built adjacent to the old one. It had six classrooms, the new offices, and a multipurpose room that served as both gym and cafeteria. We could actually get everyone in there all at once for lunch. It was cool! The old building was left standing, so there were now 12 classrooms, allowing each grade to be divided into two sections, with the dividing being done according to standardized test scores and grades.There was an old school bus garage on the property that our parents talked the school system into letting us refurb as a Scout building. Our folks replaced the dirt floor with concrete, my Dad hung new lighting and wired the place up, the windows were replaced, and the big old garage doors were replaced with a block wall. It was very cool to have this place of our own. I doubt that the school systems could support Scouting like this today.
• Big Chimney Baptist Church: Although we weren't big churchgoers when I was a kid, we connected to this church and my Dad was even baptized there. It became the sponsoring organization for our Scout Troop, but eventually did what many Baptist churches do -- it split into two congregations. The original building is now a branch library.
• Advent Christian Church: I didn't understand these folks who went to church on Saturday, even though I attended Sunday School there a couple of times with one of my buddies. The building is still there, although now instead of being hidden on a back street, it's right at the end of the 'new' Big Chimney bridge. Not sure what it's used for.
• Big Chimney Bridge: (the old one): Nothing special other than being a landmark. It was a one lane bridge across the Elk River, meaning that if someone was coming your way, you needed to pull over before getting on the bridge, and wait until that person cleared. I don't ever remember anyone honking their horn or getting impatient. Maybe it was because the person coming your way, or in front of you in the waiting line, was likely to be a friend and neighbor. Funny how folks lose their manners in big cities where no one knows anyone else.
• Chicken Shack: One of the several drive-in diners that were all around before McDonald's and Wendy's. It burned down one day when they had a kitchen fire. The story is that the guys of the Pinch Volunteer Fire Department showed up to put out the fire, but forgot to set the parking brake on the pumper truck. So it rolled backwards across the road and over the hill. No more Chicken Shack and no more firetruck.
• Dairy Queen: The Dairy Queen was built when I was in junior high. I ever worked there one summer. During the summer of 1969, Derald Rollyson, Mike Hively and I wore out the phone booth in the parking lot. We were all dating girls who lived in Clendenin (Derald and Mike were dating sisters). Our neighborhood was in the Charleston exchange (34x), so it was a long-distance call to Clendenin. But if you crossed the river, that area was served by the 965 exchange, and calls to Clendenin were local - meaning they cost a dime. So every evening, the three of us (and usually Deb Rollyson, Mark Hively and Deb Hively) all piled in one of Rollyson's VWs and went to the Dairy Queen. While one guy was talking to his girlfriend in the phone booth, everyone else would grab a cone or a shake and hang out.
• Charlie Six's Gulf Station: Classic post-war gas station. A little block building with one garage bay with a pit instead of a lift, two pumps and a little store. Charlie was probably in his 60s when I was a kid. He and Mrs Six would sit on stools behind the counter. If someone drove up for gas, Charlie would go out, pump the gas, wash the windshield and check the oil. Mrs Six ran the register and sold the goodies in the store. They had this unusual soda pop vending machine -- I never saw another like it. The machine was like a chest freezer in that you opened up a big lid on the top. The pop was in bottles of course. Rows of metal strips were mounted crosswise far enough up from the bottom of the chest, and far enough apart so that the bottles would hang between them. The right end of the strips were attached to the wall of the chest, but the other end was open to a channel that ran front to back in the chest. The width of this channel was enough to move the bottle around, but not enough to pull the bottle out. To get the bottle out, you moved it to a position where there was a gate. When you put you dime in the slot, the gate would release, and you could get that one bottle out. But the gate blocked any more bottles from getting out, and relocked once you got your one bottle out.The trick was that Charlie carried more flavors of pop than there were rows on the machine. So it could be that the bottle of Grape Nehi you wanted was at the trapped end of a row, and you would have to move all the bottles on that row to other rows to get your bottle of Grape out. If the machine was too full, there might not be enough space to move all the bottles off your row. Charlie was good about never filling the machine that full, and for mixing the bottles up enough so that whatever flavor you wanted was close to the front. But sometimes when he went out to pump gas, and if Mrs Six wasn't in the store, we would try to rearrange the bottles so when the next kid came in, it would be a pain to get his favorite flavor out (there were only about ten of us at any given time who were old enough to cross the road to Charlie's, and not old enough to drive).
• Little League Baseball field: I think it was Jim Hively who got Little League going in our area. The Hively's moved to the neighborhood from the exotic town of Sandusky Ohio when I was 4 or 5 years old. The boys, Mike and Mark, had played Little League in Sandusky, but we had no such thing in the Elk Valley. So one summer, Jim and a bunch of Dads assembled a league. The teams were the Big Chimney Indians (since the Hively's were Cleveland fans), the Pinch Tigers, the Elkview Braves, Blue Creek Cubs .. and I'm thinking there were a couple more. There was a minor league squad, and the major leaguers. I played a couple of years in the minors (Dad coached one year), and played at least one year in the majors. The majors were cool because you got a whole uniform: hat, button-up shirt, real baseball pants (wool of course), and even stirrup socks.The Big Chimney field was in a flat spot at the creek level, well below the main road. The good news was that the field was very level and made of the natural clay that was everywhere. The bad news was that it would easily flood in a big rain storm. But I spent many a day on that diamond.
• The River and The Island: The Elk River was lots of things to us. It was a natural barrier that caused us to plan travel routes that included driving miles to cross a bridge to get to a place I could see from my front porch. It was something that flooded, sometimes with disasterous results. If was a good place to go fishing and catch whopper catfish (some of the big channel cats looked like monsters). On a hot day, it was a great place to go swimming.There was some shoals and a permanent sand island just downstream from the mouth of Cooper's Creek. While the margins of the sand island might move around a little, the core of the island was kept in place by large trees that had probably been there for decades. You could camp on the island, and even build fires using the rounded lumps of coal that washed up. It would disappear in a flood. I saw a chest freezer full of food stuck in a tree about ten feet up after one flood.The whole river ran over shoals on either side of the island, and these shoales were only a foot or so deep in some places. It was great fun to sit in these shoals and let the power of the river push you downstream. I once had a catfish get caught in my swim trucks doing this very thing. If you had real guts, you could go upstream of the shoals, lie face down with your head downstream, and run the rapids. Usually a bad idea because you never knew if a sharp rock had become exposed (most of the rocks were well rounded).Downstream of the island was a deep pool where the river widened and slowed. Some of the older kids had hung a tire swing with a steel cable way up in a tree so that you could get up on the upper bank, and swing WAY out over the river. The downside was that you had to swim back to the bank, and even though the river ran slower here, that would usually mean getting out 50 yards downstream and having to walk back. If you didn't swim reasonably hard, you could easily end up a mile downstream.

Big Chimney is still there, as are many of these landmarks. But my friends are all gone, as are most of the parents (moved away or passed on). The access road for Interstate 79 was run along Cooper's Creek to mate up with a new, much higher and wider bridge just downriver from Smith's store. It doesn't feel so small and intimate any more. Rather it feels small and exposed. I think there are just a lot fewer trees around than there used to be.

It's just different.

Memorable Teachers

One's life is shaped by teachers, good and bad. I had some excellent teachers and some pretty poor teachers. There were also times when I was a bad student. Here's some memories:

BIG CHIMNEY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

1st grade: Mrs Snyder. She seemed really old, but was probably only a little older than I am now. She was like having a grandmother for a teacher. Kind, gentle, and skilled. She taught me how to read and write (Run Tip Run).

2nd grade: Mrs Buckner. She was a stern lady, but an excellent teacher. She lived only a couple of houses away from me, so I had her known most of my young life.

3rd grade: Mrs Fields. I barely remember her, but those memories are good. Don't even remember what we did in the 3rd grade.

4th grade: Mrs Black. She was the youngest teacher I had at Big Chimney, and kind of a fireball. Tough and fair. Probably the first time I ever thought my teacher was hot.

5th grade: Mrs Holland. Fifth grade was a little tough for me because I had not yet memorized my multiplication and division tables, something I was supposed to have done before finishing 4th grade. Mrs. Holland was patient but insistent. My folks did the flash cards with me, even through it was very frustrating for everyone. Then one day, something clicked and arithmetic became easy. I started school when I was only 5 years old, so I was the youngest in the class. I think my brain just didn't wire itself for math until later in the year. By the way, I was in Mrs Holland's class when the principal (Mr Pauley) came into the classroom and said President Kennedy had been shot.

6th grade: Mr. Spradling. This guy scared the hell out of everyone. Back in those days, corporal punishment was very much still allowed, and Mr Spradling had a fierce temper. I saw him slam Steve Pennington into a corrugated steel wall so hard the wall warped. I know I got whacked by him a time or two, but you know, I never felt it was undeserved or excessive. I also remember him as an excellent teacher.

Music: Mr Hamer: Kids were allowed to take instrumental music starting in the 5th grade. I went to the orientation session at the school, where the local musical instrument merchant set up displays of all kinds of band instruments. I really wanted to play saxophone, but the guy who later came to our house said the clarinet was a better instrument to start with. So my parents bought me a clarinet, and I was hooked. Music was one of the key activitiies of my youth. Anyway, Mr. Hamer was a patient and effective teacher. He became a good friend (more later).

ELKVIEW JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
7th Grade English: Mrs Parsons. She was a tough old bird who actually taught grammar. I hated memorizing conjugations of irregular verbs. Everything else was cool. I even liked diagramming sentences. We had the occasional 'literature' periods. A little was okay, but memorizing poems sucked. The grammar sunk in (it helped that my parents and grandparents used proper grammer too), even though it doesn't always show. I still have my 7th grade grammar book, right next to the computer.

Science: Mr Wright: I really liked Mr. Wright, mostly because I really liked science. In the 9th grade, he invited me and about ten other kids to take a special microbiology class. We grew stuff in petri dishes, did the stains, and looked at the bacteria through a new microscope he acquired for the class. He team-taught this class with another science teacher, Mr Robbins.

Band: Mr Hamer. I was now old enough to realize that Mr Hamer was a professional jazz trumpet player who taught school only to earn a steady income. We never had much of a marching band, but we had a blast practicing. Mr Hamer started a Stage Band one year, and asked me if I wanted to learn tenor sax and play in it. ABSOLUTELY. He would let me experiment with any instrument I wanted. I played Euphonium (treble clef) and Sousaphone (Eb) regularly, and occasionally even sat in on drums. Bob Hamer was a good man, tremendous teacher, great musician, and a wonderful friend.

HERBERT HOOVER HIGH SCHOOL
Band: Bob Leighty: Have to start the high school list off with this guy. High school band was fun, demanding, rewarding and the center of my high school life (okay, second to a girl named Terry who I met in band). This was a high performance organization. We sounded good, looked good, and even won the top prize at the major band festival in our county when we were seniors. I was introduced to Ohio State by Mr Leighty through a trip we took to an OSU football game in 1970, and I knew I had to go to school there.

Biology: Mrs. Conner: Not much of a teacher, and I was a pain in her class. She gave me a D one 9 weeks because she said Terry was doing my work. It wasn't true. I rarely got anything but A's in science classes before or after.

Chemistry/Physics: "Doc" Chaffin: Doc was my homeroom teacher all three years of high school. I don't remember much of chemistry, but REALLY liked physics.I was well prepared for physics at Ohio State, and still use some of the stuff he taught me.

Geometry/Algebra II: Mrs Hammon: Hoover had a 'catch-up' math schedule for sophomores who wanted to take Calculus as seniors, but had not completed the advanced track in junior high. It meant taking double periods of math every day. She got the point across.

Trig: Coach Hamrick: Jim Hamrick was both the head football coach and the trig/calculus teacher. There was NO crap in his classroom, but it was out of respect rather than his insistence. We really wanted to have him for Calculus our senior year, but he got the job of principal at Clendenin Jr High.

P.E./Steve Kee: Just a good guy. PE was fun in high school (except when we had fitness tests).

English 10: Mrs Lepley: We were oil and water. I was a smartass, and she seemed to be after me. She gave me a D. Renee was a dear friend of Terry's mom, and we became friends after I grew up.

English 10/12: Mrs Koenig: A smart and very cute lady in a department filled with attractive ladies. Mrs Koenig came in the second half of the year after Mrs. Lepley started her maternity leave. I don't remember learning much, but remember having a lot of fun working on the school play when she was the director. Terry and I were even invited to her wedding (and we went!).

English 11: Miss Arthur: Because I had been such a bad boy in 10th grade English, and got a couple of D's, I was 'bumped down' a section, and was fortunate to have Mrs Arthur in the 11th grade. She was such a sweet lady that I got my act together and actually got good grades in English. I also got decent scores on the achievement tests, so my reward was that I was bumped back up to the top section and didn't get to have Miss Arthur for my senior year. But Mrs Koenig was a blast, and I got to have class with Terry again.

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
Physics: Charles Mate THIS is what college was all about. My first class ever in college was an 8am physics class. Dr Mate started his first lecture by pulling a bowling ball pendelum up to his nose while he stood in the corner, then letting it go. It was suspended two stories up, at the top of the main lecture hall in Smith Lab. The ball swung way out over the students, and came back within a millimeter of his nose. Then we started talking about the physics of motion, conservation of energy, etc. Every lecture was like that. Unfortunately, scheduling preventing me from having Dr Mate for the following quarter, and I ended up with a clown named Dr Karringa.

Naval Science/NROTC: LT Richard Smith. I attended OSU on a Naval ROTC scholarship, because it was the only way I could afford to get to Ohio State. But I loved the idea of being a naval officer as well. Mr Smith was an Annapolis grad, an A-4 pilot, and my freshman class instructor. Good teacher and a good mentor. Oddly enough, I met him again years later in Atlanta during a visit to a customer. He had resigned from the Navy soon after I resigned my scholarship, and decided to pursue a PhD. Honorable mention to Senior Chief Gunner's Mate (Guns) Thompson. He was the prototypical Chief Petty Officer, and a very effective leader. Told great sea stories. I remember him playing Spades every day with Andy, a one-armed deputy sheriff who had a neat trick of using a shoebox lid to hold his cards. Honorable mention to Major Williams, USMC. While I was never directly under his authority, he was a commanding positive presence in our NROTC unit. I've never lost my respect for Marine officers. Those guys have their shit together. His assistant was GySgt Bakta -- our very own DI. Special honorable mention to our CO, CAPT Mason. He was one of guys who interviewed me for my scholarship. We didn't have that much contact with him as midshipmen, but he seemed like a wise old grandpa to us. He was a destroyer squadron commander during WWII, and I think was one of those natural sailors and officers who deserved to be allowed to serve on a ship as long as he wanted. He was the real-life version of the character Rockwell Tory, played by John Wayne in 'In Harms Way.'

Linguistics: John Perkins: I met Dr Perkins during my second pass through Ohio State, when I was probably in my late 20s. Linguistics was facinating to me, and we ended up becoming friends, tossing down the occasional beer at Larry's after class (no, it is not a gay bar). I eventually hired John as a consultant to help us with a speech synthesis project at CompuServe.

CAPITAL UNIVERSITY
Religion: Carl Skrade: I only had one professor worth mentioning at Capital - Carl Skrade. Capital is a Lutheran school, and as such requires all students to complete two courses in Religion. By this time, I was in my late 30s, the girls had arrived, and I was deep into my CompuServe career, so taking night and weekend classes was the only way I was going to finish my degree. Dr Skrade taught the Saturday morning, once/week Basic Religion class. As it turns out, I was at a period of searching in my life as well. Dr Skrade made us read and write more than I ever did for any other class. He debated with us in class (which was made up of other middle aged people like me), and challenged us to think in a way I had never been exposed to before. He changed my life.