Est. March 31, 2000 37,205 Previous Hits March 24, 2003 Editor:Tommy Towery http://www.leealumni.com Class of 1964 Page Hits This Issue e-mail ttowery@memphis.edu Staff Writers : Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly , Joy Rubins Morris, Cherri Polly Massey, Paula Spencer Kephart, Rainer Klauss, Bobby Cochran Staff Photographers: Fred & Lynn Sanders Contributers: The Members of Lee High School Classes of 64-65-66 |
We Are FamiLEE! |
Est. March 31, 2000 37,205 Previous Hits March 24, 2003 Editor:Tommy Towery http://www.leealumni.com Class of 1964 Page Hits This Issue e-mail ttowery@memphis.edu Staff Writers : Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly , Joy Rubins Morris, Cherri Polly Massey, Paula Spencer Kephart, Rainer Klauss, Bobby Cochran Staff Photographers: Fred & Lynn Sanders Contributers: The Members of Lee High School Classes of 64-65-66 |
">
">
">
">
How I Ended Up In Huntington Beach, CA by David Lemaster Class of '66 |
">
">
">
">
Above we have a before and after look at last week's Mystery Place, no less than our beloved Parkway City Mall. It has now been given another facelift and is called Park Place Mall. Time changes many things. ____________________________________ |
We don't know from one week to the next what events or memories will pop up and become a interesting topic. This week we take to the air and look at some of our memories of early flight. Rainer started it last week, so a couple of us felt it was our duty to one-up him with our own tales of defying gravity. We also continue to look at some of the places we landed after Lee. (Great connection huh?) We follow another classmate on his journed to see where he ended up and why. It looks like May 18th has been selected for the date for the Atlanta Area Mini-Reunion. Just plan to be there for now and we'll give you more details soon. T. Tommy _______________________________________ |
Send Your Boxtops In And Get Your Wings For Free by Tommy Towery Class of '64 My first flight was in a World War II army surplus plane. I always thought it was a Cessna L-19, but it might have been a surplus Piper J-3 Cub. I remember that it had an observation window in the top of the cockpit and some cubs did have those, but it had automobile type doors and the Cub has doors that fold down from the top, so I'm confused. One of the men that we rented a room to when we lived on East Clinton took me up in it from a field somewhere near Athens. I must have been about 10, and I loved the experience of flight. I think I liked better the ability to brag to my school mates that I had been flying. That's about all I remember of the flight. My next flight was around 1961, with the Boy Scouts, when we went out to the Madison County Airport and washed planes in return for rides. The one I went up in on that day was a Piper Tri-Pacer. I am sure about that because I have a photo of it. When I got my driver's license the examiner thought that I might need glasses, and back then I never really had an eye examination and I believed him. I knew that pilots had to have perfect vision so I never planned to be one. Six years later, I found that my eyesight was good enough to become an Air Force pilot and I enrolled in Memphis State's AFROTC flight training program. There was a song we sang that went: Up in the air, junior birdmen, Up in the air, upside down Up in the air, junior birdmen Send your boxtops in And get your wings for free...free...free The plane I learned to fly was a plane similar to the Piper Tri-Pacer. It was a two-seater model of the same design, called the Piper Colt. I lived a few miles from the airport and so I would go there most mornings before classes started and take my lessons. Before long I passed my exam and earned my pilot's license. When I went on active duty I was sent to pilot trainig in Del Rio, Texas. It was on the Mexico border and wasn't the end of the world, but you could see it from there. Through various turns of events I was unable to complete my pilot training in the Air Force but not before learning to pilot a Cessna 172 (USAF T-41) and the highlight of that short career when I got to solo a twin-engine Cessna T-37 jet. The inability to continue in that program was a failure I still have to live with today but maybe still am alive because I did not complete it. At that time people who did complete pilot training were almost all sent to Vietnam where they ceased to be pilots and became targets instead. I still wanted to fly and became a navigator then an electronic warfare officer (EWO) and was assigned to a B-52 squadron in Ft. Worth, Texas. Almost as soon as I got there I was grounded for kidney stones and thought my flying days were over. They put me to work in an office that had two other EWO staff officers, which gave us one too many, so one of the ones that was there was put back on a crew and I took command of his desk. He was shot down over Hanoi later that year, became a POW, but was released at the end of the war. I saw no action at the desk of his which I manned. Again I think things have a way of working out if you just wait long enough to see. I still loved to fly and found that even thought I could not pilot a powered plane with my kidney stone medical problems, I could still get a "sailplane" (glider) license. I took a few flights in those, being lifted into the sky by an L-19 like the first one I flew in. All the while I attempted to persuade the Air Force medical examiners that I should be returned to flight status. I was finally successful and with the return of my flight pay and my promotion to Captain around the same time, I found that I had new wealth to continue my private flying. I started looking around for a place to fly and found that renting a plane for long trips was very expensive so I bought one. I bought myself a 1955, 150hp, Piper Tri-Pacer - the same model I had flow when I was a Boy Scout, and the big brother to the Colt that I had flown to earn my license. It had a Miami Dolphin color paint scheme and was fabric covered and not metal. The Tri-Pacer was advertised as the family station wagon for the new generation when it was put on the market. It had four seats and the controls were interlaced so that you could "drive" it by just turning the wheel, not having to use the rudder if you didn't want to. The thing could cruise easily at 5,000 feet at about 115mph and got almost 17 miles to the gallon. With it I could make the trip from Ft. Worth to Memphis in a little over six hours, or less than half the time it took to drive. Of course my wife's bladder was used to the stopping for gas that we did in the car, so it added some time to the flight to have to land for her to go to the ladies' room. One of my greatest delights was to fly it to the 10th Reunion of the Lee High School Class of 1964 that was held at the officer's club at Redstone in 1974. I remember how great it felt to walk around "bragging" that I flew my own plane to be there. La-tee-da! I especially remember talking to Rainer about that, and it was the first time that I really spent much time with him since we had traveled in different circles at Lee. Small world we find ourselves in today. I kept the plane at a small (1800') grass field north of Ft. Worth and would go out and be the classic airport bum on the weekends. We took it on trips when the weather allowed, and I did some "poker runs" at times. Most of the time I would just go out and fly it for the fun. My wife at the time did not care for that type of flying so I was usually solo. The great part about owning a plane, is that on the weekends when you go out to the airport, you get to go flying with other airport bums. You take them up in your plane one weekend, they take you up in their's the next. You're treated differently if you own one, and I got to fly in many different planes. One of my favorite flights was in a seaplane that we landed in one of the lakes near Ft. Worth. All the ski boaters came up to visit with us and kept trying to give us beers. Now I don't know about you, but to me there seems to be someone different in drinking a six-pack and driving a ski-boat and drinking a six-pack and trying to take off and land an airplane! I have many "war stories" about my flights which I will save for telling around the bar at the next reunion. Ask me sometime about the tornado over Vicksburg, the engine quitting during a dark Mississippi jaunt, the overweight takeoff abort, and landing at a small Texas field that had been closed without notice and finding the grass was two feet high. Why they put that barbed wire fence and the power line at the end of that field I'll never know. I kept the plane until 1976 and finally accepted that I was not flying it enough to warrant the hanger fees, the annual inspection, the insurance, and the aviation gas expenses it consumed. Also, my USAF duties were taking away from my free time, since I was on a B-52 crew and was "on alert" an average of 120 days a year when I could not even leave the base. I also knew that my daughter Tiffany was on the way, and that would also demand much of my time. I did not have the time or money to own a plane anymore. I sold it that year for $4,000 which meant that I got back most of the $4,800 that I had paid for it. The same plane would sell today for almost $25,000 if I had kept it. Flying is a fun, but very expensive hobby. I don't fly much myself these days, but I have a great friend in Denver who owns a V-tail Bonanza and two years ago we flew it from Denver to Rapid City, SD, and then on over to Yellowstone National Park. It was a great trip and a wonderful way to see Mt. Rushmore and Ole' Faithful. He had to replace the plane's engine last year, at a price tag of $55,000. Yes, flying is fun, but expensive. Over the years I have accumulated almost 350 pilot hours in small planes. That's not much compared to the 5,024 hours as a crewmember in big USAF planes. Divide that by 24 hours in a day and you'll see that I have spent the equilivant of 223 days of my life locked inside an airplane and drilling holes in the sky. That doesn't take into account the number of hours I spent as a passenger on commercial planes. Now let's talk about the Mile High Club...no, on second thought, we'll save that for later. _________________________________________ |
I transfered from Sparkman High to Lee in the 11th grade. After graduation, I went to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. From there, I spent three years (69'-72') in the Army. After the Army I went to Tennessee Tech in Cookeville,TN and graduated with a BSEE. I married a girl from Nashville and went to work in Ricmond,VA. After 25 years in Richmond and two marriages, I went to Denver and brought my sweetheart from Richmond. We finally got married after knowing each other for 36 years. We moved to Huntington Beach (Surf City USA) CA. last year.The move was primarily to permit my wife to help her Mom run a resturant, "Alices Breakfast in the Park". This is a beautiful place in Huntington Beach central Park. GREAT PLACE!!!! Goes to show that you never know what tomorrow brings. Best to All. The thing I miss most about Huntsville is driving around in circles around Shoney's Big Boy. _____________________________________ |
It's Not Just A Man Thing - Two More Flight Stories My Rather Vicarious Aviation Story by Annette McCraney Gallagher Class of '64 Rainer, I really enjoyed your flight with Woody story. Must have been a real great experience. I'd like to share my rather vicarious aviation story that will have a bit of interest to a lot of you who had Dads working at the Arsenal. When we first moved to Ala, we lived out in the country. On one occasion, my Dad, who owned McCraney Sign Co. snagged a ride for me and my brother Kirby in a Cessna. We flew out of Huntsville Airport and buzzed my Mom in the country. It was a great experience, but for Kirby it spurred a lifelong interest in flying. It manifested itself at first by the building of models of every airplane known to history. My Dad got a contract painting the Huntsville Aviation building owned by Russel Kyle. Herein lies my only contact. I told you it was vicarious. After introducing me to Mr. Kyle as "This is my little boy, Annette" I climbed up the ladders and started painting the sign on the roof of the building. Kirby, on the other hand, got a job working for Mr Kyle and got to take flying lessons. And here comes the main point of interest of this story. He got his cross-country and night flying hours by flying Werner VonBraun from Huntsville to Indianapolis every weekend for what I remember was a long period of time. Kirby became friends with the VonBrauns and I kept on painting signs with my Dad. Question...Does anybody remember when Mr. Kyle had a problem with his landing gear and had to make a belly landing? I guess the news had gotten out on the radio and TV, because we found out about it and drove out to the airport along with half of Huntsville to check out the spectacle. He had to fly circles around the airport to use up as much fuel as possible and the Huntsville Airport firetrucks coated the runway with foam. Mr Kyle made his belly landing with panache (and probably with God, Jesus, Mary, the Buddha, St Michael, St Christopher, and any other deity he could come up with) ((sorry Rainer, that was too good to pass up)) with a minimum of sparks and a maximum of guts. I don't think a breath was breathed from the time he began his descent until he came to a full stop, and then after a second to get some air in our lungs we erupted in applause and screams of delight and relief. That was the most exciting thing that had happened in Huntsville as far as I was concerned, and knowing the pilot made it much more poignant. ___________________________________________ My One Way Flight by Joy Morris Class of '64 Rainer's story about his first time reminded me of the time I flew out of Pryor Field (Decatur) airport for a two-day business trip with my boss. I had never flown before (scared to fly--possibly because I am scared of heights?). Anyway my boss had a four seater one propeller small plane. Can't remember the name of the plane although Piper Cub rings a bell. He had the bright idea of us flying down to the meeting and back. Since I had never flown I was to say the least scared to death. However, he was a good pilot and promised me he would not do anything to scare me. Since I had heard him tell horror stories of previous passengers and how they had lost everything they had eaten when they flew with him, I decided it would not happen to me. There was no way he was going to tell anyone I had done the same. The night before the trip, I did not eat anything for dinner. I also did not eat anything for breakfast not even a snack. I figured it I didn't have it--I couldn't lose it. The next morning I took my precious daughter to my mother-in-law's house, kissed my child goodbye (hoping I would see her again) and headed for work. I did not tell my husband I was flying (he would have kidded me unmercifully) although I did tell my mother-in-law. As we entered the airplane hanger, I saw several nice planes and thought it might not be so bad. However, we walked passed all of them and came to this small plane ( a VW with wings) and I almost had heart failure. Not one to admit failure, I gave my bag to my boss and we climbed onto the wing and into the cockpit. At this time I was doing a lot of deep breathing and looking for all the world like I was about to be executed. Once he had gone through the checklist and had radioed the tower for clearance, we taxied down the runway with me hoping we could stay on the runway all the way to our destination. As we gathered speed and lifted off I thought okay so far so good. I did ask my boss that if I changed I mind would he return to the airport. He said he would and that gave me a little more courage since I felt I had some control over my immediate life. As we gained altitude, we hit air currents and the little plane would dip and then stabilize. Every time the plane dipped, I would deep breath. Later my bossed said I was a white as a sheet but I never said a word. As we soared over farming areas I finally got the courage to look over my shoulder to see what lay below. Up until that point, I had not look out the windows--only the control panel and every nook and cranny of the interior of the cockpit. I also watched that one propeller and both wings hoping the chipmunk and the superglue would hold until we got there. Conjuring up all sorts of problems including my boss having a heard attack and leaving me up there not knowing what to do, I ask him to show me in fast and simple lessons how I would be able to get the plane down all in one piece. He graciously showed me the very basics on what I needed to do. I can't begin to tell you how relieved I was when we approached our airport destination. I almost got down and kissed the ground when we landed. To make a long story short, I didn't eat much that night and was not going to eat breakfast the next morning in anticipation of the return flight home. However, the weather conditions worsened and we made the return trip riding with another couple in their car. Strange that we had an uneventful flight but almost got hit by another car on the way home. A few days later, my boss and his son drove back up and my boss flew his plane home. Only after I returned safely back home did I tell my husband about the one-way flight. Good choice--he admitted he would have given me a rough time. I have not flown since-- utilizing the four wheel variety of transportation gets me where I want to go. Would I do it again--possibly in a larger plane, with intravenously fed margaritas, and a parachute strapped to my back. _________________________________________________ |
Collin's Classic Collection of Crazy Classmate Capers By Collins (CE) Wynn Class of '64 DISCLAIMER I enjoy telling lighthearted stories (and I hope somewhat humorous even if in a crude sort of way) because they are the ones I prefer to recall. But as with everyone everywhere not all my childhood and high school memories were pleasant. There were times I disappointed myself and times I was disappointed in others. In all fairness and with due candor, the neighborhoods where my childhood friends and I grew up (mostly Dallas and Lincoln) were definitely 'working class' and could be very rough at times as evidenced some of Woody's comments about Lincoln Elementary. My parents each worked two jobs to support my brothers and I and money was always in short supply; some of my friends survived and even flourished under much more difficult circumstances than I. One of our houses was so shabby (but not dirty) that I told people I lived in the house next door. I am proud of the fact that both my brothers and every one of my boyhood friends grew up to be fine men and great Americans. We could have just as easily gone in the other direction - Hub Myhand, Glen Nunnally, Bill Godsey, and Bobby West were directly responsible for setting this group on the right path - as, I am sure, with so many others. There were many poignant moments experienced by each of us during our grade school years - the tragic death of a classmate memorialized in our yearbook for example. On the opposite side was winning a football game 40-0....twice. Another example for me was sitting in the dressing room of the gym just after my last football game and weeping because I knew then that competitive athletics were over for me - future competition would be with myself. Not to mention the emotional agony that can accompany having a girl friend or boy friend. On occasion some really nice things happened to each of us for no apparent reason - somehow I was chosen to represent my homeroom class in a photograph on one of the lead-in sheets in our '64 yearbook. It was an honor that I have never forgotten although I have no idea why I was chosen except to say I am sure it was not for academic excellence. But a compilation of all these things is what we are and all that we ever will be. It is no small compliment to be called a Graduate of Lee High School. Soooooooo, let me continue. The Jumper THE SETTING - Across the street from Mullins was a narrow walkway between two buildings where someone had been building a concrete block wall and left it unfinished in a stairstep arrangement - you know, one block high, then two blocks high, then three, etc. until you reach eight or 10. THE STORY - Somebody (probably Mike Smith because this fit right in with the thing he was best at - agitating) got the bright idea to see who would jump from the highest position. We started at one and worked our way up. I remember standing eight or nine blocks high with butterflies in my stomach listening to Mike holler "come on, chicken, jump". I don't remember if I jumped or not but am reasonably certain that Mike did not. Speaking of Mike, my brother Don says that Mike told him once that he didn't play football because of a back problem - a yellow stripe about four inches wide that ran from his butt to his head. Water Sports THE SETTING - Again across from Mullins but this time up on the roof behind the false front of the 'paper' house. THE STORY - Picture a slowly passing Huntsville City Bus in the early evening of a sweltering summer day - windows open, right? Now add in a few bored 13 year old boys and about 20 water balloons followed by a foot race with a Huntsville Police Officer. Not a pretty picture now but, boy oh boy, was it funny at the time. Pass Out THE SETTING - Has anyone (other than a select two or three) ever heard of a game called 'Pass Out' which is completely unrelated to the consumption of alcohol? Probably the dumbest stunt of all - it's a wonder we didn't kill someone. THE STORY - Another in an endless series of summer nights in a field between Optimist Park and Highway 72. The Birmingham Black Barons and the Kansas City Blues (Negro League Baseball Teams) are playing ball under the lights with the stands packed and the speakers blaring out "I'm Going To Kansas City, Kansas City Here I Come" over and over. Mix in the same bored 13 year olds shagging foul balls. What you get is a game where one young man stands straight up with his arms extended over his head and takes 10 long deep breaths at the conclusion of which another stalwart young man grabs the first from behind and places his arms around the chest and squeezes as hard as he can (it was a high honor to be the 'Crusher'). The result can be best be described as dropping dead - the "crushee" slowly loses consciousness and falls limply into the mud and dirt - only to revive himself in eight or 10 seconds and re-enter the world of the living....great fun, huh? Oddly enough I can remember boys jumping up and down hollering "me next, me next!". Is it possible to describe cardiac arrest as a recreational activity? ____________________________________ |
From Our Mailbox Kevin Rice krice3@csc.com Class of '71 Setting here at my desk on a rainy Monday morning with big ole goose bumps, stimulated by the names and memories of the past. I'm a little younger than y'all but know the names and places through my older sister,Trena,and cousin,Don Marks,and a few others. It's been a quick 32 years for me and as has been said, "Seems like yesterday." Tommy, great job on the site. You have NO idea to the pleasures it brings old classmates! Happy Trials, Kevin ______________________________________ Subject: Add me to the mailing list Mike Garrison Class of "65" gngi@bellsouth.net _____________________________ That IS Kenneth Cooley!!! I'll be darn! I remember him now. Also, we went to East Clinton with Stan Steadman, but I don't know his sibling. Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly Class of '64 __________________________________ The answer to the question " What were the names of Clark Steadman's Children?".....Kay and Stan. Believe me I know. I was married to Kay for 27 years. His wife's name was Martha . He died in 1973 and was one of the hardest working and one of the most respected people in the community. I still miss him alot.. Your classmate Butch Cryder Class of '64 ___________________________________ Subject: Spring break in Colorado! Martin Phillips philcons@ix.netcom.com It is Spring Break for the high school kids here in Colorado.We have had about 4 to 5 feet of snow. Marty Phillips Class of '66 |
We're not in Alabama anymore! Springtime in the Rockies photo by Marty Phillips. |
