Lee High School - Huntsville Alabama Alumni

Last Week's

Lee-Bay Items

Bring A Big Profit

by Tommy Towery

Class of '64

Formula For Financial Success.

As a child,invest 35 cents into crude looking special interest magazines.

Hide magazines for 46 years.

Wait for someone to invent personal computers (the hard part).

Wait for someone else to invent the internet and the world wide web.

Wait for someone to invent e-Bay and complete the architecture.

Put magazine up for auction on e-Bay

Sit back and watch bids start at $75 and climb.

Sell magazine and reap hugh profits..

It's not exactly what Dave Ramsey (Total Money Makeover) would suggest, but the above plan has sure proven to be a winner for me. I think it is ironic that not only I, but also Bobby Cochran kept all the textbooks from our senior year at Lee. I don't know that we thought they would ever be worth anything, but we kept them just the same. During one of my cleaning out of storage stuff from my mom's house when we sold it a few years ago, I got rid of all of mine except for the English book that had the start of the journal written inside its pages. It had not been a year after I did when Bobby Cochran showed up in Memphis and said he had a present for me. What did he bring me? It was his set of school books, saying that he wanted me to give them as a door prize at the next reunion. So, they went back in my shelves.

Basically, the school books are not worth much today, except for the Dick and Jane readers, which I did not keep. What I never expected to be worth anything were the baseball cards, the comic books, and the monster magazines that I bought. The baseball cards disappeared over the years, the comics got eaten up by bugs of some type, but the monster magazines somehow survived.

When I left Huntsville the day after graduation, they and my school books went with me. When I arrived in Memphis, they went into the attic at my mother’s house. They sat there for probably ten years. On a visit home a decade later, my step-father told (not asked) me to get up in the attic and do something with those boxes of books. I opened the dusty boxes and found a stack of Boy’s Life magazines, some college textbooks, my high school text books, and a few copies of Playboy from the mid-sixties with photos of naked women in an era when the air-brush was a vital necessity to be able to publish them. But I digress. Also, I found my Famous Monsters of Filmland and my Mad magazines.

I had the original Number One Famous Monsters of Filmland in that stack, and it was the only one to disappear in the next 30-plus years that I hauled them around from state to state and in and out of storage. I remember it had printed on it that it was a collector’s first edition or something like that, but I never really expected it to be worth anything.

Finally, during this storage cleanout, I decided to sell the monster magazines, like I said last week. They were bought in 1958 and 1959 from the Grand News Stand, as many of you guessed. They were purchased for 35 cents each.

Last week, I put them up for sale on e-Bay. The one that sold for the most money was issue number two which is the one that was last week’s Lee-Bay Mystery. None of you ventured a guess on the cost, but it sold for $255 when the final bid was in. All total, the nine monster magazines for which I had paid $3.15 cents total or 35 cents each, were auctioned off for a grand total of $767.51. Yes, over $750 profit! Two are still being bid on, but they are currently going for $36 for one and $15 for the other.

Now it's time to see what the Mad magazines will bring.

I thought it was very timely for Collins (CE) Wynn, Class of ’64, to have sent in an article last week for the Traveller on how much cars we owned when we were at Lee are worth now. It seems like some material things are like a few of us and fine wine, we all still just get better with time.

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Bobby Cochran, Class of '64 - I'd bet my false teeth that you bought that magazine at the old Grand News Stand, which was just across the alley west of the old Twickenham Hotel. Darrell Saunders used to run it in the late 1950's to the mid-1960's, if I remember correctly.

You probably paid a "premium" for it, perhaps 35 cents.

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Carolyn Burgess Featheringill, Class of '65 - Hi Tommy--'Sorry for the "boy toys" comment. I really wasn't making an accusation; 'just trying to explain why my participation in the trivia contests was lagging. Once again, I have to plead a certain level of ignorance as monsters have never been my thing; however, I feel it's quite likely that you purchased that magazine at the Grand News Stand which was owned by the parents of our contemporary Ron Sanders. I know you didn't pay more than 50 cents for it and more likely a quarter; but, I hope that, by now, it has sold for a fabulous multiple of your investment. 'Can't wait to see what else was in that storage unit!

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Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly, Class of '64 - Hey, Tommy! I did, in fact, read this magazine! I'll be willing to bet that you bought it at the Grand News Stand, where we did most of our shopping. I don't remember buying it, but would venture a guess that it was around 35 cents to 50 cents during that year. I haven't a clue as to what it would go for on e-Bay. Hope you make lots of money!!! Wish I'd kept all the things that you've kept through the years.

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Well, Carolyn, there were some more things in storage that have Lee connections…many to tell the truth. This week I offer up the photo above. No, it was not taken at Lee. We all know that we did not have ROTC then. This photo was taken in August of 1967, when I was at Little Rock Air Force Base during the summer ROTC training the summer before I graduated from Memphis State and earned my gold Second Lieutenant’s bars. The first day we arrived they asked if there were any photographers in the group. I worked for the Memphis State newspaper and was such a person, so I volunteered to take photos during the six-weeks training. They gave me free film and processed and enlarged it for me, and at the end of the camp I was allowed to keep copies of all the photos I had taken.

The above photo was of F-Flight, the flight to which I was assigned, during a “Pass-In-Review” drill. Although F-Flight was our real name, we nicknamed ourselves “F-Troop” and had a cadence song of “Oh, When F-Troop Comes Marching In," which was sung to the tune of "Oh When The Saints Go Marching In." The flight was made up of seniors from many different universities in the South and from many other states. During the storage cleanup I came across this special photo, and offer it up to see if anyone recognizes anyone in the photo. To make it a little easier, I enlarged one person that I think someone might be able to identify.

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Subject:Reunion

Winston Tedin

Class of '72

Tommy,

You know, Carol Allen, Class of '68, may not have a bad idea. Why not have a reunion of all Lee High graduates who are age 50+ (1964-1973). I'm sure we all can relate to several experiences of our past at Lee and living in Huntsville. It would seem many graduating classes have difficulty in getting it together for reunions. Maybe a group (i.e. as stated 50+) reunion may be in order. Just a thought.

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Subject: Another Reunion

Judy "Fedrowisch" Kincaid

Class of '66

Found out last night that the classes of '69, 70, & 71 are planning a reunion the week after ours. Liz "Gamble" Butler is handling the arrangements. Lynn told her that we would see if you would post it on the website. Classmates interested in attending that reunion can contact her at:

lizbutler52@knology.net.

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Subject: Commendation To You For Your Work On The Lee High School Website

Jim Betterton

Class of '64

jjb_rsvl@hotmail.com

jim.betterton@med.va.gov

I want to commend you for the great efforts you have taken to develop and maintain the Lee High School website!!!

I was looking at an email I sent in 2003 to the site. Thanks for sharing it to others. I appreciate the site because it allows us to review where we were and where we have come in the past 40 years.

I was also another young man who was deeply affected by the war in southeast Asia. I went into the Air Force and received training in San Angelo, Texas. I was in the USAF Security Service where I was a communications analyst.

I was TDY all of the time and covered the earth in those years. In southeast asia during 1968 and 1969 I worked out of Korat and Udorn and Ramasun Station in support of the war in Laos. I think it would be interesting to find out how many of our classmates went into the military in those years.

I want to let you know that I will be attending the reunion this year in August. I am really looking forward to it. I have been out of touch for a while. I had major surgery to have a tumor removed from between my inner ear and brain. It was benign but I lost my hearing in the right ear and have had to do therepy to regain most of my balance. But, I am really grateful to be where I am at this time.

I have 28 years with the government and I am presently working for our Vets at the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System in North Little Rock, Arkansas. I work in the education office. I have included my home and work email addresses.

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Subject:Amen to Carol's Suggestion

Cecilia Levan Watson

Class of '68

Amen Carol! I have wanted the class of '68 to get together also. My sister also graduated in '65 so it would be nice to go to a reunion together.

May the General's Banner wave above us and bring us ever close to Lee!

(Read the e-mail below - Carol, Cecilia, and others!)

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Subject: Other Classes Welcome at Our August Reunion

Judy "Fedrowisch" Kincaid

Class of '66

I just spoke with Alice Preston Gullion, Class of '64, and she said to let you know that the majority of the reunion commitee is in agreement that other Lee graduates (or even anyone that attended, but did not graduate with us) are welcome to join us at the reunion. If you will, please post the invitation on the website and have anyone interested in attending either e-mail me at njkincaid@hotmail.com or they can call me at 256-883-9255 and I will send them a reunion letter and keep track of them. If they respond in time, we will also enter their information in the handbook that will be distributed at the reunion.

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