Lee High School - Huntsville Alabama Alumni

Subject:Thank You

Ginger Dickerson Canfield

Huntsville High Class of '72

I just wanted to thank you for touching hearts you may not even realize that you have touched.I am Ginger Dickerson Canfield, Huntsville High Class of '72.My half brother is Jack (John Ellis Jr.) Dickerson Lee High Class of '64.My half sisters are Patti Birchfield Hester (Patricia Ann) and Jill Dickerson Moon(Joyce Lea)Lee High class of '66.After my parents seperation in' 64, and again with their divorce in ' 67,I missed a lot of what was going on in Jack and Jill's lives. Plus in ' 66,Patti's fiance had drowned in Madison County Lake.So reading your pages helps me to tie together loose ends of times that are fragmented in my mind.The pieces I do remember, and those which you help me polish, make me smile!

Also,I grew up on Stringfield Road,moved to McCullough Ave (Mulins parking lot is now where my house was) after the divorce, and later to Lakeview Drive in ' 73,so I can identify with much of what is mentioned as far as area..I remember many of the names of the classmates as being mentioned by my brother and sisters, so I feel as if I know them.Several had little brothers that I went to school with, even.

All this to say that when I am depressed, I can go "easedrop" on my older siblings friends(some things never change) by way of your website and be instantly cheered up. I think that God uses people here on Earth to help others in need and those people are Earth Angels.This makes you an Earth Angel Tommy!!!

May God Bless you richly,

Ginger

(Editor's Note: This in not just meant for the editor...I only publish the things that you send me, so this is meant for all of you that participate in our weekly discussions and memories. Thanks to all of you!)

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Subject:Loving Huntsville

Andrea Gray Roberson

Class of '66

Thanks for all the good things you said about Huntsville. I have been to several places but as you said, Huntsville sure is a pretty place to live in all of the seasons. Also, thanks for all of your hard work on getting out this web page. I think by reading it, Lee High School as we knew it will live forever and I do not think that is a bad thing. It was a GREAT time to grow up in Huntsville and I will love it forever. I know 1969 was a few years after '64-'66 but there was a great write-up in the Huntsville Times Sunday about the 1969 baseball team. We had some great fun when we played the other city schools in any sport. I am sorry that the world and times are different now and the easy and fun times we had during our school years can never be again. But we sure can keep in touch with each other and make this web page a fun place to visit and a place to remember all of the good times at Lee.

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Suject:Orange Bowl

Dianne Ralston Lashbrook

Class of '65

The article about our Orange Bowl trip by Rainier Klauss opened memories long forgotten. I remember Mr. Robert Becks and the other band parents giving so much of their time to make this trip happen for all of us. I remember the pride I felt to represent our State at the Orange Bowl and I also remember how homesick I was since this was the furthest I had ever been from home. To me the trip was a blur of activities and boring long bus rides although a few things stand out in my mind. Coral Gables was so beautiful with the pastel colored buildings, waving palms and glorious sunshine. Remember we had left cold and ice behind in Huntsville. Also there was such energy and excitement surrounding the Orange Bowl and the city streets were alive with people partying and dancing. What a feast for the eyes and ears of a kid like myself. This trip opened the world up a little for me and I have spent the last 35 years seeing the rest of this glorious country of ours. But after all is said and done it's just like the song says, " God Loves Alabama ", and I am here to stay.

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Subject:Huntsville

Karen Tucker Oliver

Class of '65

Hi Tommy - I loved your article "I am a Huntsvillian"! It made me swell with pride and brought back great memories. We have not lived in Huntsville for over 30 years but my family is still there so we make it back frequently. Huntsville will always be home! and I cherish the time spent there. I hate to admit it but rah-rah shoes came back in style while my daughter was in high school. The kids got a kick out of me calling them "rah-rah's" for they called them "white girl shoes". I am certain that in another 30 years they will be back along with hoola-hoops and clackers. Thanks for the wonderful job you do.

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What Did You Do

Forty-Six Years Ago?

by Tommy Towery

and Bobby Cochran

Class of '64

Most of us still remember where we were and what we were doing when Kennedy was shot. We're coming up on an anniversary of another event that might have been important enough for you to remember where you were and what you were doing. Remember the evening of January 31, 1958. Do you remember what happened then?

Bobby Cochran wrote:

I have a copy of the "Satellite EXTRA" that the Huntsville Times published that morning. Was wondering if you'd like to use it for that week's issue of Lee's Traveller?

There's a great photo at the bottom of the front page, "Thousands Throng the Square." No doubt you and I are in that crowd, somewhere!

I was thinking maybe if you announced it in advance, maybe our classmates might write about their thoughts and feelings on that night, and what they experienced. My dad was so excited that he went out in the back yard with a rifle and fired off several "blanks." Then he took me down to the square on his motorcycle, and we "partied" for a couple of hours!

The event of which we speak the launching of the first US satellite.

Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States when it was sent into space on January 31, 1958. Following the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency was directed to launch a satellite using its Jupiter C rocket developed under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory received the assignment to design, build and operate the artificial satellite that would serve as the rocket's payload. JPL completed this job in less than three months.

The primary science instrument on Explorer 1 was a cosmic ray detector designed to measure the radiation environment in Earth orbit. Once in space this experiment, provided by Dr. James Van Allen of the State University of Iowa, revealed a much lower cosmic ray count than expected. Van Allen theorized that the instrument may have been saturated by very strong radiation from a belt of charged particles trapped in space by Earth's magnetic field. The existence of these radiation belts was confirmed by another U.S. satellite launched two months later, and they became known as the Van Allen Belts in honor of their discoverer.

Explorer 1 revolved around Earth in a looping orbit that took it as close as 354 kilometers (220 miles) to Earth and as far as 2,515 kilometers (1,563 miles). It made one orbit every 114.8 minutes, or a total of 12.54 orbits per day. The satellite itself was 203 centimeters (80 inches) long and 15.9 centimeters (6.25 inches) in diameter. Explorer 1 made its final transmission on May 23, 1958. It entered Earth's atmosphere and burned up on March 31, 1970, after more than 58,000 orbits. The satellite weighed 14 kilograms (30.8 pounds).

It's hard to believe that we were so excited about a satellite that was 80 inches long and 6 1/2 inches in diameter and only weighed 30 pounds. Compare that the the stuff we are sending up into space these days. But we did it. So, we're collecting any memories that you might have and will publish them all together for that event's anniversary. Send them in now.

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If you are looking to buy one of these, go to www.ebay.com and search for "rocket crystal radio".

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Jimmy Preston

The item missing on the radio appears to be the wire clip.

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Woody Beck, Class of '65

Tommy,

I would say its a radio but isn't it one of the things advertised by spammers, along with ads for leather thongs, cases of Viagra, and penis extenders?

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Harold Shepard

I must have had at least three or four of those little radio rockets as a kid in the 50s. What's missing is the grounding clip. You used to have to hook the cilp to the

catch on the phone dial, a fence wire, or anything that would work as an antenna. As a kid I used to attatch

the clip to the screen wire on the window near my bed and could pick up baseball games while I drifted off to sleep under the covers. Super neat little item !!

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Jim Bannister, Class of '66

It is obvious to the most casual observer that that the LEE-Bay item is a crystal radio. I can see the antenna & ear phone and must assume that the crystal & coil is inside the "rocket" so I don't really know what part is missing. I built many crystal radios in my youth , none as compact and nice looking as the one pictured. Mine usually were built on a piece of board with nails as terminal posts. I had a set of headphones from a KB-50 airplane that my Step-Dad had gotten for me when he worked at Hayes Aircraft in B'Ham before coming to Huntsville to help set up Hayes Aero-Space at the HIC Building. The antenna was any kind of wire that I could find , the more the better, strung out all over the back yard.

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Mike Griffith, Class of ''66

Where did you find my radio?!? The "mystery item" for this week is the first transistor radio that I ever owned. Shaped like a rocket, it seemed like it was made especially for Huntsville; I believe that I bought it at G.C. Murphy's ... but mine was red. Obviously the

technology in those days was such that there were no speakers that were small enough and/or would work with that small of a power source, so the single ear-piece was the only way to listen to the music. The "nose cone/ball" was attached to a small metal rod that would slide up/down in a small cardboard tube that was wrapped in wire, with an attached capacitor. By using this "tuner" it was possible to tune in certain AM radio stations; I can only remember being able to pick up WAAY and WEUP.The antenna was only a wire (as shown wound-up in your picture), but mine had an alligator-clip attached that made it very convenient for

clipping to radiators, metal window seals or anything else that could be used to provide a better signal receptor. Because it was the first portable radio that I ever owned, I truly enjoyed that little device. I still love portable electronics ... I carry a Blackberry pager (so

addictive that it also known a "Crackberry"), so I'm always "connected" to e-mail, etc.

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Jennifer White Bannecke, Class of '66

The Mystery Item is a Rocket Radio. The missing part, I think, is a clip so you could ground it. No I don't have a story to tell because I did good to just remember what the thing is, Ha!

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Phil Rutledge, Class of '67

I had one of these radios. I believe the missing piece is an alligator clip that attached to metal to make the radio work. It did not use batteries. I had metal bunk beds and remember listening to WBHP one morning and hearing an uncle singing the only song I am aware of him ever recording. Oh the memories.

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Gary Grimme, Lee High School, 1965-66

This sure looks like a crystal radio, like the one I had as a kid. You tuned the AM stations by moving the "mast" in & out. It didn't require an electrical outlet or any batteries, as the part that is missing, is the alligator clip, that you clipped onto a lead pipe under the sink or onto the metal dialer of the old style telephones. It was based on the technology that Allied POW's used during WWII, to build "illegal" radios while incarcerated in the POW camps.

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Don Blaise, Class of '64

The mystery object is a crystal radio. I had one back when I was a kid in elementary school and I still have a working model to this day. I remember the only station I could get was WAAY radio, but even that was great. I'm sure many of remember those guide wires coming down from a bunch of rooftops in our neighborhood that kept our TV antennas from falling over. If you didn't half decapitate yourself running into them at night they were a great source to plug those radios into for good reception. Memories, Memories.

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