Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly, Joy Rubins Morris, Rainer Klauss, Bobby Cochran, Collins (CE) Wynn, Eddie Sykes, Don Wynn, Paula Spencer Kephart, Cherri Polly Massey
Contributors: The Members of Lee High School Classes of 64-65-66 and Others
This week we'll dig up some old memories from our past I hope. If you want to try to guess the Mystery Photo, do it before you read my article about the good old days, since it is mentioned in the article.
Hope you all are having a great summer
Please include your class year with your e-mails.
T. Tommy
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Last Week's
Mystery Photo
Current Open Topics
Do you have any memories of a special something that you were given, but may not still have? Send in any graduation present memories you would like to share with your classmates.
Do you have a story about the first big thing you bought with money earned from your first real job, either during or after Lee?
What did you do or do you have planned for your 60th Birthday?
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This Week's
Mystery Photo
This is not really a mystery if you read my article first, but it is a part of our past. So, I am not looking for identification as much as I am association. Do you remember having one of these, or if not, what did you have to keep cool before you had air conditioning?
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60th Birthday Bash
Scheduled for October 8th
Plans are still underway for a combined 60th Birthday Party for the members of the Class of '64 (and other Classes and spouses) who are turning 60 this year. More plans will be released later, but we are currently planning to have a Pot-Luck picnic with cake and ice cream at the pavillion up on Monte Sano on Sunday October 8th. More events may be planned as the time gets closer.
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Friendship 7
The Good Old Days?
by Tommy Towery
Class of '64
Two things happened this week that influenced my writing of the main topic for this issue of Lee’s Traveller. One thing was space, one was heat, and they both bring back nostalgic memories of life in the Sixties in Huntsville and at Lee.
On my way to work one morning this week, I listened to the recovery of the Discovery Space Shuttle on radio. Yes, it was “live” on the radio. It’s been a long time since anything space related seemed important enough to stop normal programming and broadcast live on the radio. It wasn’t a disaster news story, but what we have come to expect to be a “routine” shuttle landing. But since things have been so variable with the shuttle in the last few years, the world must have thought it was worth covering live.
The sounds took me back to the days at Lee when we were allowed to listen to space launches and recoveries over the school Public Address system. We would stop whatever classes we were in at the time and listen to the scratches and pops of the live audio from the recovery of things like Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962. I also remember listening to the Gemini shots. After a while all of that became commonplace and we didn’t get live coverage anymore, only highlights on the evening news. The moon landing was the exception to that of course.
But this week we once again were allowed to listen to commentary of the landing, and not only was I happy that it went so smoothly, I was a little nostalgic as I listened. It was a little different coverage than in the old. The commentator sitting in some TV studio was watching TV of the landing, and the on the spot reporter only had her ears and eyes to tell her what was happening. The booth announcer would say that the shuttle was now on final and the ground live reporter would say its cloud covered and I don’t see a thing.
I always wanted to be a part of the space race like many of you had the privilege to be. My military career during those periods of time took me in a different direction. I am proud to tell my friends today that many of my classmates worked as “NASA rocket scientists” and many others of my classmates were part of the German rocket team that came to the US with Von Braun.
The other thing that took me back to the teen years was the lost of air conditioning at my house on Friday afternoon. Complete failure! A call to get it fixed gave us a prognosis of “maybe Monday.” I know for sure that many of you cannot deal with today’s heat without A/C. You told us that when you refused to come to a reunion in August! Well, coming to a reunion is one thing, but living in the South when A/C fails is another – there’s not much choice.
So I thought back to the days of my youth, when we had no air conditioners. We also did not have ceiling fans. I remember my house on Webster Drive when the only source of cooling was a window fan. I’m not talking a box fan, but one that went into the window and “sucked” hot air out of the house. We would open a window in the opposite end of the house and let the air come in there and go out through the exhaust fan in the dining room. I went on e-Bay and found a photo of one that looked similar. I’m sitting here now, on a Saturday afternoon and the inside temperature has just reached 82 degrees in my living room. Yesterday afternoon, it got up to 88 degrees. I went to a store and bought a similar window fan to put in the bedroom, and at night it got cool enough to sleep. It was not comfortable, but it does make us appreciate how far we’ve come from those teenage years.
It may seem odd, but one thing that I remember fondly about the window fan. It was how it would make such odd sounds when you whistled or talked through it. Was I the only one that whistled into a fan? I think not, but may be.
It only now occured to me that it is really odd to look back nostagically at the Space Race. Remember how new and modern and even futuristic all that suff was. And now it is almost ancient history. The end of World War II was 20 years in the past for the graduates of the Class of '65. For the graduates of the Class of 2006, John Glenn's Friendship 7 flight is 44 years in their past.
So, the radio and the fan, remind me that what goes round comes round. I still thank God that I live in America and most of the time I have color TV and air conditioning. And I also thank God that I come from a background that allows me to appreciate them, and not to take them for granted like so many people do today.
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Meri Susan Simms, Class of ’65 - I never owned a train set myself, but it I do believe it’s a switch for an Lionel electric train . . . probably HO scale?? Early in my married life, I bought my husband an “N” scale . . . he could set up a small portion on his brief case!! Onward and upward,
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Aaron Potts, one of the first to attend Lee - It's strange that you should come up with this photo. Of course it is a transformer for train set. I still have the one I got when I was 6 years old. The red handle controlled the speed and the black handle would operate the whistle. Of course you know I graduated from U.T. with a bachelors degree in electrical engineering. The model railroad was my first electrical design. The red caboose had no light in it and I took some old wire and a flashlight bulb and put inside the caboose and it worked. So I have played with electricity all my life. Just last week I was cleaning up my shop and I still have the Lionel train and the transformer and it looks identical to the one shown. I must admit that the years with my association with Lee was without a doubt the best days of my life.
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Dink Hollingsworth, Class of ’65 - This week's mystery item is a transformer for an electric train. This one looks to be for a larger train set, maybe running several trains at a time. Side note - When a lot of thought went into using it, it could make a sting gun look like a water pistol. It was effective on younger brothers or one of those moments when someone would say "Hey hold my beer and watch this".
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Bob Walker, Class of ’64 - An electric train transformer with forward/reverse lever and a speed control lever (if memory serves me correctly).
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Jimmy Troupe, Class of '66 - That is a Lionel transformer used to run either .027 gauge or "0" gauge model trains. Still have mine, even the Lionel steam locomotive that I received for my first birthday back in 1949 (how's that for a collectors item).
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From Our
Mailbox
Subject:The Florida Gulf Coast
John Turrentine
Class of '65
Tommy, after reading your recent description of your first Gulf sighting I hate to tell you Jane and I took our boat out today.....in the Gulf. It's as beautiful as you remember.
