Est. March 31, 2000 42,124 Previous Hits July14, 2003 Editor:Tommy Towery http://www.leealumni.com Class of 1964 Page Hits This Issue e-mail ttowery@memphis.edu Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly , Joy Rubins Morris, Cherri Polly Massey, Paula Spencer Kephart, Rainer Klauss, Bobby Cochran, Collins (CE) Wynn, Eddie Sykes Staff Photographers: Fred & Lynn Sanders Contributers: The Members of Lee High School Classes of 64-65-66 |
YOU KNOW YOU'RE GETTING "MARVELOUSLY MATURE" WHEN.... submitted by David Mullins Class of '64 1. You and your teeth don't sleep together. 2. Your try to straighten out the wrinkles in your socks and discover you aren't wearing any. 3. At the breakfast table you hear snap, crackle, pop and you're not eating cereal. 4. Your back goes out but you stay home. 5. When you wake up looking like your driver's license picture. 6. It takes two tries to get up from the couch. 7. When your idea of a night out is sitting on the patio. 8. When happy hour is a nap. 9. When you're on vacation and your energy runs out before your money does. 10. When you say something to your kids that your mother said to you and you always hated it. 11. When all you want for your birthday is to not be reminded of your age. 12. When you step off a curb and look down one more time to make sure the street is still there. 13. Your idea of weight lifting is standing up. 14. It takes longer to rest than it did to get tired. 15. Your memory is shorter and your complaining lasts longer. 16. Your address book has mostly names that start with Dr. 17. You sit in a rocking chair and can't get it going. 18. The pharmacist has become your new best friend. 19. Getting "lucky" means you found your car in the parking lot. 20. The twinkle in your eye is merely a reflection from the sun on your bifocals. 21. It takes twice as long - to look half as good. 22. Everything hurts, and what doesn't hurt - doesn't work. 23. You look for your glasses for half an hour and they were on your head the whole time. 24. You sink your teeth into a steak - and they stay there. 25. You give up all your bad habits and still don't feel good. 26. You have more patience, but it is actually that you just don't care anymore. 27. You finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart. 28. You wonder how you could be over the hill when you don't even remember being on top of it. ___________________________________ |
From Our Mailbox Subject: Small World Bob Alverson Class of '65 Jim Bannister talked about the "small world." In 1967 I had finished "A" School and was at my first duty station, Naval Communications Station Philippines. There was a MARS shack on base where we could call home and only have to pay the long distance charge from the point or receipt in the U.S. I went over to call my future wife and sitting behind the desk was John Schmidt class of '64, sorry John if I spelled your name wrong. John and I had a study hall together but did not know each other. John left there about six months later going to Sub school. When I got off active duty in '71 I decided to go into active reserves. The first person I see at the Reserve Center is John. It is nice to see a familiar face when you are so far from home. ________________________________________________ Subject: Lee Mascot Carla Class of '91 Hi Tom, I would like to say that the students of Lee that year had nothing to do with the mascot changing. There was a fire right before our senior year 1991 and everything changed. Something was in the news about racism and anything resembling Southern and the school changed it. We were all upset over it I mean it was our senior year and they created controversy and tension among the students. Thank you. ______________________________________ Subject: Sanity Check Barbara Seely Cooper Class of '64 Hi Tommy, Just read the latest Traveller, and as always enjoyed it...Always enjoy the articles, and am struggling to identify even a few of the slang terms in the latest issue. Was I on Mars while all the rest of my '64 classmates were on Venus? I lived in Huntsville from 1952 until 1970, went to Pulaski Pike in 6th grade, and yet I do not recognize some of the landmarks nor recall many of the events my classmates do. Makes me wonder how damned boring I must have been. Yech. ____________________________________________ Subject: Boy, I Must be Getting Old! Barb Biggs Knott Class of '66 Your slang phrases are good, however, I must really have drifted through the early Sixties, because I only recognize three of them. Number 4, Duck tail had to do with a guy's haircut. I think with the ducktail, the hair in the middle of the neck was a bit longer than the rest. Number 6, Church Key was a bottle opener, and number 10, the Suicide was the only one I really could relate to. Gosh, we used to get those at Carter's Skateland when we went roller skating. It was really neat the way they mixed all the different sodas up into one drink...I loved them. I've told my kids about those drinks. On another note, could the mystery building be the old WAAY radio station building? ___________________________________________ Subject: Sharon McCallum, Class of '66 Beverly Taylor Swaim Class of '66 Tommy - I am trying to locate anyone that knows anything about Sharon McCallum, Class of '66. We were best friends and even after she moved to Florida, we kelp in touch until about a couple of years ago and then her letters and cards stopped. She has a brother here in Huntsville but I can not located him. His name was Robert. If anyone knows anything about Sharon they can email me at 'ronnys@knology.net'. Thanks for your help. ________________________________________ Subject: Thought for the day Linda irecroot@bellsouth.net "Memory is the paradise from which we cannot be expelled" - Gotthold Lessing 1729-1781 . Thanks for your hard work preserving our memories. Linda ______________________________________ Subject: Surprise Mike Thompson East Clinton Classmate Hi Tommy I was sure surprised to see my picture in the June issue of the Lee Traveller. Spence Thompson ( Class of 1966 ) that works at the Fire Dept. put me on your web site. Now I am a regular reader. I do not know a lot of the people you talk about but I do recognized some of them. I know you really spend a lot of time on the Traveller. I enjoy it. I love the old pictures of down town Huntsville. How are things with you ? I am still working with the Fire Dept. as a Captain at station One and plan to retire in June of 05. We live in Harvest Al now and will be for 10 years this Dec. I married Fay Sullivan ( Butler class of 67). We have two sons Matthew and Mark. Matt is married and living in Mandeville LA. near New Orleans. He is a Neuropsycholoist on the staff at the Children's Hospital in New Orleans. He has three daughters ages 6, 3 and 4 mo. and Mark is single and living in Hsv. working in sales. I go by your old house on East Clinton all the time think of you and your family. How is your brother Don doing and where is he living now? I read where your Mother passed away. I am sorry about your mother. I remember your mother very well because she was always so nice to me. My Mother passed away in 88 and my Dad in 2000. Are you serious about moving to Hsv when you retire ? I am not sure what I will do when I retire. Some days I look forward to retiring. But I do know I do not need to be fighting fires at 60 yrs. old. We had a lot of fun together. I remember you had a TV before we did and I came to your house on Sat. mornings to watch it. I look forward to hearing from you. ________________________________________ |
Last Week's Mystery Building - WBHP Many of you misidentified last week's building at WAAY, which of course we all listened to on 1550 AM. Actually the building above is the WBHP station building. Terry Davis was the first to send in the correct identification. Larry Seaver also identified the building correctly.. _______________________. |
I was born and raised in Huntsville, attending Rison and Lee. After graduation I went to Athens College and then Calhoun but was not really interested in school. Because of grades I knew my number was coming up with the draft so I enlisted in the Navy. After 18 months in the Philippines I came home and married my high school sweetheart, Mary (Hicklin) class of '67. We were fortunate enought to pull the hard duty of Hawaii and spent the next two years there. When my enlistment was up we were ready to come home. After seeing everyone we were ready to go back but I had no job and we have a three month old son so I had to find work. I found a job with Huntsville Building Material but was not happy. Before going into the Navy had had worked at WHNT-TV for about six months and that was what I really wanted to do. One Sunday evening we were riding around and passed Grady Reeves' house. He and Jean were sitting on the porch so we stopped to let them see our son. Grady told me of an opening at the station. I went the next day and applied for the job and was hired. That was June, 1971. Today I am Director of Station Operations and Facilities of WHNT-TV and the longest tenured employee at the station. In November WHNT I will celebrate 40 years on the air and I can proudly say I have been there for most of them. ____________________________________ |
We Are Fami-LEE! |
Est. March 31, 2000 42,124 Previous Hits July14, 2003 Editor:Tommy Towery http://www.leealumni.com Class of 1964 Page Hits This Issue e-mail ttowery@memphis.edu Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly , Joy Rubins Morris, Cherri Polly Massey, Paula Spencer Kephart, Rainer Klauss, Bobby Cochran, Collins (CE) Wynn, Eddie Sykes Staff Photographers: Fred & Lynn Sanders Contributers: The Members of Lee High School Classes of 64-65-66 |
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I hope all of you are doing well this week. I know that a few of you are going through some trials but we want you to know that we are thinking of you. This week has been a hot one in Memphis, as I am sure it has been in other places as well. I am having withdrawal pains since the golf course that is within two minutes of my house has been closed since the first of June to redo the greens. I don't play good, as Jerry Brewer and George Lehman Williams can testify, but I do enjoy the game. We are working on some big projects for the future, so be sure to check back each week. We want all of you readers to know that even if you are not from the Classes of '64-'65-'66, and even if you are not from Lee High School, you are welcome to read, e-mail, and participate in all the fun and memories. T. Tommy _____________________________________ |
I Made My Money From Drugs by Barbara Seely Cooper Class of '64 I was an assistant/cashier at Taylor's Pharmacy. Cecil Taylor's store (the first one) was in the shopping plaza at the corner of Memorial Parkway and Hwy 72. It was one of the "old fashioned yet modern" drugstores: pre-Wal-Mart, Eckerd, etc. Cecil hired me as a clerk/ cashier. I was 17 and it was my first job. Over time, I was asked to help Cecil in the pharmacy. I learned to read prescriptions and for the very common drugs, I could pull them from the shelves, count out the correct number of pills, type the label, and leave it for Cecil and his two assistant pharmacists for approval. It was interesting work most of the time, and even now I recall the most ordered items: Pharegoric (sp?), Valium, birth control pills, and various prescription laxatives. One night just before closing time, a young couple came in. He was in a suit with a boutionnere, she was in a pretty suit with a corsage...and yes, they had just gotten married, and yes, again, they needed her birth control pills refilled. Cecil was always a gentleman and handled the situation beautifully. One other consistent issue was on a much more personal front. My job for Cecil as his assistant in the pharmacy was to greet each customer and ask them what they needed. Well, the guys who came in looking for (how to say it) birth control methods for themselves, were rather reluctant to tell me, so Cecil and I worked out a sort of code to let him know he needed to come out himself. Some years later, Cecil moved to another store at the corner of Memorial Parkway and Oakwood. I followed, and his business did very well for a while. Then a discount drugstore (Rite Aid?) opened up across the street, and it did not take very long for Cecil to go out of business. I was no longer working for him by then, but when I heard, it was very sad. Anyway, I learned so very much from working at Taylor's Pharmacy, and those experiences helped me be a a lot smarter in all the jobs I had from then on. To this day, I miss the personal attention and knowledge Cecil brought to each of his customers, and how particular he was about speaking to each person about their medications (talk, not a printed sheet like we get today...), and how good he was to parents who came in with children. If anyone reading this knows how to contact Cecil Taylor's family, I would like to know. Thanks to the job experience I got there, and Cecil's recommendation, I went to work at Pizits (I can't spell that anymore either) and then on to Redstone Arsenal. One last observation: I was a newlywed when I went to work at the Arsenal, and John Ridgeway (husband) and I did some advanced family financial planning that year (1966): if we (together) could manage to earn $15,000 per year, we would be on easy street. What can I say?? ____________________________________________ |
Off We Go... by Tommy Towery Class of '64 In the opening scene of "Runaway Bride" Richard Gere's character, Ike Graham, is a newspaper reporter running around at the last minute trying to come up with a story idea for his next article that happens to be due in a little over an hour and 27 minutes. He calls himself the "Last Minute Man" which one of the ladies he offends changes to "One Minute Man", an offensive term for any male's ego. But that was the way that I have been running around while trying to come up with a story worthy of the lead column in this week's Lee's Traveller. I find it funny how I often associate my life with movies. It is kind of like last week's article title - "What we have here is a failure to communicate." That thought process led me to the idea for this week's story. I asked myself the question, "Which movie had the biggest influence on me as a child?" There are lots of movies that had many influences on many of us. I know that my first wife never liked to take showers because of "Psycho". I know that a lot of people have a fear of going into the ocean because of "Jaws." How many boys broke limbs jumping off of things trying to be "Superman"? How many girls waited for their White Knight to come with a glass slipper to take them away to live happily ever after? How many deer were spared because of "Bambi"? When I think back on all the many movies I saw before the day that I walked across the stage and Mr. Hamilton handed me my diploma from Lee High School, I had a lot of movies to consider. I was scared to death when Alice started falling down the hole in "Alice In Wonderland" but that did not have the biggest effect. I know that the underlying theme of "A Summer Place" and its treatment of teenage pregnancy slowed me down on several occasions when I saw paradise by the dashboard lights, but that was not the one either. I even remember that one afternoon at the Lyric while Mack Yates and I sat eating doughnuts I caught the hiccups when a giant crab jumped onto the screen, but that was not a lasting effect and a few gulps from the water fountain quickly extinguished them. I also remember going with Bob Walker to see the first James Bond film "Dr. No". How many of us wanted to be spies after that adventure? Well, in a way I was a spy for 10 years in the Air Force, but I was an electronic intelligence (elint) spy and not a human intelligence (humint) spy such as Bond - James Bond. There were no girls in bikinis or fast cars or martinis - either shaken or stirred, in that job. In reality, the one movie that I saw as a child (over and over and over I must admit) that made a deep everlasting impression on me and affected me for the rest of my life was "Flying Tigers". John Wayne's portrayal of the leader of a squadron of the carefree band of mercenary pilots was about the biggest hero of all times to me. That movie made me want to be a pilot and fly fighters and dive from the sun into the midst of enemy fighter planes. Remember that our days were the days before Blockbuster and HBO. If you wanted to see an old movie, you had to wait until it showed up somewhere to see, or wait until it was old enough to be on the late-late show. I have to admit that I saw "Flying Tigers" 17 times in the theaters that I paid to get into. I gave up count of how many times I have seen it once it started showing on TV, and even today, when it comes on AMC, I still sit and watch it. So how did it affect my life? It made me want to fly fighters, which made me join the Air Force ROTC unit at Memphis State. I enrolled into the Flight Training Program (FTP) and earned my private pilot's license before I was 21. I went into the Air Force and went to pilot training and was able to solo a twin-engine jet before I washed out. Yes, I washed out; went down in flames; bought the farm; all those sayings. I started out in a class of 82 at a time when a normal class size was 40 or less. They only kept the best of the best, and due to circumstances which I argued as "failure to maintain a consistent training schedule" I joined the other 42 (over 50%) of my class that failed to earn our pilot's wings. Still I loved the thrill of being in the Air Force, ranked very high in my Navigator School class, and even better in my Electronic Warfare School class. I went on to fly 10 years in B-52s and 10 years in reconnaissance aircraft, racking up over 5,000 flying hours before I retired with 20 years active duty. I continued to fly as a private pilot and even bought my own plane. I look back and attribute all of that and all the things that happened to me during those 20 years to the influence a movie made on me when I was young and sat in the Lyric and later the Center theaters and watched John Wayne flying with the Flying Tigers. As a side note, several years after I was flying B-52s I went to a party at a fellow crewmember's house one night. There on the wall was a photo of a fighter pilot sporting the same style "blood chit" leather flying jacket that John Wayne wore in the movie. It was a photo of his wife's father, who turned out to have earned the rank of General in Claire Chennault's famous American Volunteer Group. That was the closest I ever came to a real Flying Tiger. So that is how a movie affected my life. I would love to hear from any of you on what movie most influenced you as a child and the way it affected you. Please send your stories in. __________________________________________ |
How I Ended Up In Huntsville by Bob Alverson Class of '65 |
Even If You Can't Eat 50 Boiled Eggs - This Was Communication! (The Answers To Our Slang Questions) Last week we offered you 10 slang terms to give us the meanings to. We had some very good answers from Annette McCraney Class of '64; Sarajane Steigerwald Tarter, Class of '65; Lynn VanPelt, Class of '66; Joy Rubins Morris, Class of '64; Barb Biggs Knott, Class of '66; Fred Sanders, Class of '66; and Dwight Jones, Class of '64. Some were so good that I had to combine them for a more complete defination or list several versions. The Editor's prize for best overall entry goes to Annette McCraney for her creative descriptions. Also, thanks to Dwight Jones, we now have a new group of words to offer you in the a future issue. Before we get to the accepted answers, there is one of the words that deserves special attention. That word is "SLUG". I never thought about how many different meanings that small word has. The one I was actually searching for was the fake coin. It was the one that can be held in your hand. But we also received other variations on the word. Here are the various things a slug might be: A slippery, slimy snail thingy The business end of a bullet A fake coin To strike someone To take a deep swallow of a liquid A lazy person (i.e. slug-a-bed) There may be more, but that is was a lot for our foreign friends to try to remember. Yes, and a Fruit Loop also describes a weird person. Here are the answers you sent in. 1. Coffin Nail - a cigarette 2. Glass Packs -Fiberglass inserts in mufflers or pipes to make a car sound HOT even though the engine wasn't 3. A Slug - fake coin, used usually in a failed attempt and getting a free coke or coffin nail from a machine. 4. Duck Tail -Groovy haircut, heavily greased and combed,Kookie style, curlicue or spit curl on forehead,long sideburns, sides swept back and combed to a point, flipped up at the center back of hairline/nape. 5. Fruit Loop (not the cereal) - That loop in the back yoke of oxford shirts, pulled off in some sort of secret ritualistic glee. 6. Church Key - beer can opener before pop tops. 7. Wet Willie - One ceremoniously stuck one's forefinger into one's own mouth, wetting it copiously, and thrust it into the target's ear. (Tongue in the ear, when not a part of foreplay) 8. Charlie Horse - a cramp in the leg (My sister and I played basketball all through high-school and we often would have a charlie horse in the middle of the night. Our dad would come in and massage the cramp out) 9. Indian Burn - Where you took both your hands and twisted them in opposite directions around another person's lower arm, leaving a screaming target with blood red creases on his/her wrist. 10. A Suicide - the Suicide was the only one I really could relate to. Gosh, we used to get those at Carter's Skateland when we went roller skating. It was really neat the way they mixed all the different sodas up into one drink...I loved them. I've told my kids about those drinks. A drink made from mixing grape, orange, cherry...exc.(non alcoholic) As far as the movie photo and line: BONUS: The movie is Cool Hand Luke and the phrase was said first by Captain, Road Prison 36 and then later in the movie Paul Newman said it in a mocking way, according to Sarajane. Fred Sanders adds that Strother Martin was the evil warden. Thanks to all of you for helping us remember these things. ________________________________ |
W B H P |
This Week's Mystery Building We'll give you a hint this week. This store in this photo was located at the corner of Jefferson Street and Washington Street in the Fifties and Sixties. ______________________________________ |
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