Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly, Joy Rubins Morris, Rainer Klauss, Bobby Cochran, Collins (CE) Wynn, Eddie Sykes, Don Wynn
Advisory Members: Paula Spencer Kephart, Cherri Polly Massey
Staff Photographers: Fred & Lynn Sanders
Contributers: The Members of Lee High School Classes of 64-65-66 and Others
This week’s Traveller is small. It is small because we did not have anyone write to us this week. There were no comments on the Lee-Bay item and no e-mails about anything that was printed in the Traveller. It is not small to punish you, it is small because sometimes one small group can’t do it all and we need other people to help with the communication – which is, when last I looked, a two way street.
I really meant to make last week’s issue a tribute to the veterans as we usually do. It did not turn out that way for a couple of reasons. The main reason was that I was in Nashville and had already put the paper together when I realized that it would be the last issue before Veteran’s Day, and with me being out of town, it was hard to without all my resources with me. Believe or not, I do have other resources besides just the world wide web.
Perhaps next week we can have more, but for this week I want to tell all my classmate and other readers who are veterans, “Good work. I’m proud of you. Thank you.”
T. Tommy
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From Our
Mailbox
This Week's
Lee-Bay
Veteran Day Memories
(Make Love- Not War)
by Collins (CE) Wynn
Class of '64
I hope everyone had some fun with the photograph I sent in. Of course, I’m the cute one in the middle with our classmate, Big John Fulda, on the right and a mutual colleague and friend of ours, Mad Mike Cress, on the left. At the time we were all Army Majors in Naples working on a military exercise with our NATO allies called Dense Crop. I had come down from Stuttgart, Germany where I was stationed at the time and John had come over from the states. We worked this annual warfighting exercise off and on for about 7 years and, professionally speaking, they were all valuable experiences. I think this photo is from February of 1984. I know John made many trips to Europe but not precisely how many; however, I do know that I crossed the Atlantic 92 times from Oct ’83 until Dec ’90.
As you can see, we did manage to slip in a few light hearted moments now and then. If memory serves me correctly this photo was taken the day we arrived for the first exercise and is in the small lobby bar of the Hotel Sulfatara in Pozzouli, Italia a suburb of old Napoli. Sulfatara refers to the sulfur clouds constantly steaming up from fumaroles in the ground – the hotel actually sat on the side of an active volcano and the odor of sulfur was everywhere - the ground trembled every day and the hotel would shake on a regular basis. You could see Mount Vesuvius about 20 miles distant so the local Italians were acclimated to tremors but not us – it was an unusual experience.
I was reading a book the other day on the life and times of the gangster Lucky Luciano and saw a quote where he described the Isle of Capri as the greatest tourist attraction in all of Italy, next to himself. I took the opportunity once upon a time to go for a hydrofoil ride and visit that romantic spot about 20 miles off the coast of Naples – it was all I could do to keep down the amorous advances of my traveling companion who was, unfortunately, Big John Fulda – he could be almost uncontrollable at times!!
Actually, John and I spent many years together serving in the military and enjoyed most of it. We were constantly on the move all over Europe. The day we went out to the Isle of Capri was most pleasant and memorable. I specifically remember us sitting in a roadside bar somewhere on Capri drinking a glass of wine wondering what were the odds two hayseed Alabama high school classmates would end up on the other side of the world together in Julius Caesar’s old neighborhood (kind of like what Rison-Dallas is to some of us).
By the way, we referred to all this as “cultural training”.
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Subject: Picture
John Scales
Class of '66
More than two of us know all three: left to right are Mike Cress, Collins Wynn, and John Fulda, the latter two Lee graduates. The picture was probably taken in a small bar in the hotel where the guys were staying while participating in a NATO headquarters exercise being run out of a bunker north of Naples. As for the circumstances--would you believe alcohol might be involved?
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Yo Brain
submitted by Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly
Class of '64
While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.
Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction and there's nothing you can do about it.
This WILL drive you crazy.
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There were no printable comments from e-mail this week, only a few requests for e-mail address changes. I need to remind you, if you want your e-mail address changed, I need to know what the old one was as well as the new one. Everyone does not have an e-mail user name that is easily recognized, so please use the format of change my e-mail address FROM (old address) to NEW (new address). Thanks.
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How I Spent My Veteran’s Day 2004
by Tommy Towery
Class of ‘64
This year the weather was terrible for a parade. At the time I needed to leave the house to get downtown, it was pouring rain, and I was sure that it would be cancelled and that someone had, in fact, rained on my parade. I usually march with a group of WWII veterans and a few Vietnam ones. The old timers don’t need to get out in the rain in November, no matter how much they want to show their support.
Instead, I went to work and had a war with a new computer worm that hit most of my campus. I had to remove it from over 60 computers which pretty much ruined my day.
I noticed in the campus paper that at 3:15pm that day, there was going to be a guest speaker at the University Center. He was a former POW and a person with whom I shared the parade ground when I was an ROTC cadet at Memphis State University. I did not remember him, but I graduated in 1968 and he graduated in 1970, so I know that we wore the blue uniforms together and we marched in the mandatory Veteran’s Day parade during those years. All 2,000 of the Air Force ROTC cadets from MSU marched. We had the largest detachment in the nation at the time.
My former cadet classmate was a RSO in an F-4 Phantom flying out of Thailand and was shot down in October 1972. He was released with the rest of the POWs in March of 1973. He talked to the current Air Force cadets about how he got to be a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton, what led to it, how he felt, how they treated him, what he did there. He spoke to about 30 cadets, a couple of active duty service members from the other ROTC detachments at Memphis, and to me. I was the only civilian there at the beginning. Two students showed up halfway through his speech. I won’t go into how I felt about the lack of support, and I attribute it to the rain, even though the speech was indoors.
The highlight of my day was when I went up and introduced myself to him when it was over, and to thank him for his service and sacrifice to our country and freedom. I talked to him about part of his speech when he had spoken about how it felt to be in the Hanoi Hilton when the B-52s started bombing Hanoi. I was wearing my B-52 Association jacket and I apologized to him for the scare we must have put in him when all those 500 pound bombs dropped near him. I told him I was grounded from flying at the time because of kidney stones, but I was working in bomber operations during that Christmas bombing campaign. I was the one who drew the targets on the maps and helped plan the routes the bombers took to bomb Hanoi
Here he was, a former POW, and I went to thank him. The shock came when he said, “No, I want to thank you for helping get me out of there. We knew when we heard the B-52s bombing Hanoi that the end was near. Once those forces were committed to a campaign like that, we knew we’d be going home soon.”
I was humbled. It was a great Veteran’ Day for me, even without the parade.
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That's right folks, even those glasses that you hated back in school are now for sale on e-Bay. We're not interested in the price, but would like to have some stories about "your glasses." The editor was lucky enough not to have to wear them until later in life, but I konw a lot of you had glasses, and I know you must have some stories about them.
Personally, when the editor first saw this pair of glasses for sale on e-Bay, the first classmate that came to mind was Carol Jean Williams. What or who did the rest of you think of when you first saw them?
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Does Anyone Remember This?
submitted by Collins (CE) Wynn
Class of '64
In, I believe, either 1999 or 2000 I happened to see an article in the Birmingham News that was a feature, full length story on the life and career of the then soon to be retiring President/CEO of State Farm Insurance of Alabama headquartered there in Birmingham.
The thing that originally caught my eye was a photograph that was somewhat familiar. It turned out the article was about a former Assistant Football Coach at Lee High School 1962-1964 – Coach Robert (Bobby) West. Somehow I recall that both Coach West and Head Coach Bill Godsey left coaching after the 1964 school year (I think) and joined State Farm Insurance but I lost touch with them after that. I was impressed that Coach West had been so successful and even called him one day with my congratulations on his retirement. He said he remembered me but perhaps he was just being kind – either way, it was a pleasure to speak with him.
