Alumni Sandstorm ~ 04/26/15 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 5 Bombers sent stuff and 1 Bomber Memorial today: Frank WHITESIDE ('63), Bill SCOTT ('64) David RIVERS ('65), Tony HARRAH ('65) Tedd CADD ('66) *************************************************************** *************************************************************** BOMBER BIRTHDAY Today: Lou Ann BINNS ('52) BOMBER BIRTHDAY Today: Rosalie LANSING ('63) BOMBER BIRTHDAY Today: Melanie DUKES ('67) BOMBER CALENDAR: Richland Bombers Calendar Click the event you want to know more about. *************************************************************** *************************************************************** >>From: Frank WHITESIDE ('63) Re: Other kids I had forgotten Pitts ('63) just sent me an e-mail and reminded me about a black kid in 5th grade at Jefferson by the name of Billy Green. We all played together at recess. His dad was in the Army. He moved away and we were rather sad about it. Then I remembered Jon Shipley, who was about a year behind our grade. He lived in the "stilts" apartments across the street from my house on Jadwin. I think I recall him at the Chief Jo gym on Saturdays when they opened to let kids play basketball. He was taller than most of us and was a good player. I believe his dad was also in the Army and was transferred. One year, I actually won 2nd place in the "Hoop Shoot." My old buddy, Darrell RENZ ('63), edged me out and went on to place in the state Hoop Shoot. So much for my athletic career! Maren reminded me of some other kids I had forgotten. Princess JACKSON ('63-RIP) was in our class. Maurice "Mo" WALLACE ('62) was Thea's brother. As I recall, he was shorter than Thea and I'm pretty sure he played basketball, but didn't usually start. I remember Jerome SKINNER ('65wb-RIP) but didn't really know him very well. And then there was Fred MILTON ('66-RIP) who arrived at the school after I had left. I had read a number of stories about him and his talent in sports, although I never had the pleasure of watching him on the field. Some of the rest of you who knew him might have some stories about him. Anyway, we had a unique situation and I think we all benefitted from it. 52 years after graduation, I'm lucky if I can remember my own name and what day it is! But I can always still put a face to a lot of names after 10 years on the south side and 10 years on the north side of town. In June, I will hit my 50th year away from Richland…amazing how time flies as I get older! -Frank WHITESIDE ('63) ~ This time in wet and stormy Bayou Gauche, LA *************************************************************** *************************************************************** >>From: Bill SCOTT ('64) Re: My father's birthday Today, April 26th, would be my father's 115th birthday. On this day something compels me to reflect on the life of a man who came into the world in 1900 - an era so very different from ours. From the horse and buggy to the space shuttle, perhaps no other span of years in human history has encompassed so much change. Dad once told me, when he was very old, that he didn't understand the modern world, and felt he had lived too long. Maybe it is this glimpse into an era lost to us, and his remarkable childhood, that made me want to write this look back. Dad was the only surviving child of a well-to-do Chicago family. My grandmother and grandfather had met in eastern Kansas, where, starting around 1889, she was teaching in a one- room multi-grade country school in Lenexa. She had graduated from Ladies' Seminary in Minneapolis around 1888 at age 18 and gone on to teaching, one of the few professions available for women in that era. After marrying in 1894 they moved to Chicago, where Grandfather was a grain broker, and where Dad was born in 1900. They moved to Minneapolis when Dad was two. He was to be their only child that survived to adulthood. His two brothers had tragically died one week apart a little over a year earlier. The oldest, Loring Barton Scott, died Christmas Day, 1898, at age 3. The youngest, William Purcell Scott, died one week later on New Year's Day, 1899 - his father's birthday - at age 2 months. It is difficult to imagine the depth of such pain. Child mortality was still high in those days. We don't know the cause, but it may have been childhood influenza. Were it not for Grandmother's courage in trying again and giving birth to Dad a little over a year later, I would not be here today. My grandparents had money, and more than a little of it. As a grain broker, Grandfather held a seat on the Chicago Board of Trade, which I gather was a big deal. They had a large two- story house on Humboldt Street in Minneapolis, not far from today's international airport. There were servants upstairs and down, including one young Swedish girl who appears with the family on census rosters as Louisia Olsenson. Grandfather was apparently rather cold and distant (he looks so in the photos I have), and Dad referred to him as "the Colonel". Grandmother was reportedly very strict, but she showered attention on her only child. They went on lavish vacations, including a tour of the Mediterraean, probably some time before WWI broke out. This was before air travel, and undoubtedly they sailed on a steamer, while Granddad stayed home. Grandmother kept a meticulous tally on a small piece of paper of how many photographs were taken at the Mediterranean cities they visited. I still have the list, which is browned and fragile now. Ports-of-call in Spain were Burgos, Granada, Escorial, Madrid, Cordoba, Seville, and Cadiz. Then it was on to Malta, Tangiers, Algiers, Constantinople, Tunis, Naples, Florence, Venice, and Vienna. Such a trip would have taken a great deal of money. There was also reportedly a trip to India. Dad was a well-traveled young man. They also made yearly or bi-yearly trips to the Mission Inn in San Bernardino, CA. We took Dad there for lunch when he was in his 80s, and he was so overcome with emotion that he twice had to get up and leave the table. For reasons we will never know, none of the family wealth was passed on to Dad. When Grandmother died in 1945, the big Scott house in Minneapolis quickly passed to new owners, who were so anxious to move in that Dad's family furniture was literally thrown out the windows. He managed to salvage some of it, and that was the furniture we grew up with. As a boy, I never thought it strange that we had old furniture stuffed with horsehair and held together by long hand-made nails. Didn't everyone? As a young man, Dad lived a privileged life, but one thing he was not taught was how to get things for himself. He struggled most of his life with work, stability, and providing. His life was a history of large gaps, of unknown whereabouts, and starting over (the last of these I was to repeat too often). Almost nothing is known about the period from about age twenty to age 45. Where was he? What was he doing? Even Mom never knew. His life before he married her in 1945 was a blank to us all, a period never talked about. We were to learn later that he had been married twice before, and that we had four half- siblings out there somewhere. I consider myself fortunate that Dad had stability the last 25 years of his working life at Hanford with DuPont and GE. He became very prominent in Kiwanis Club of Richland, and in various civic affairs. Practically everyone in Richland in the '50s and '60s knew Dad. Perhaps because he never saw it as a child, he never learned how to openly express love. He would give us money instead, though he couldn't afford to. He once told me, in a statement so reflective of his privileged upbringing, "I believe money is to spend." He waged a life-long battle with untreated depression (men didn't go to counseling in his era) which I inherited. Fortunately it's okay for men to get counseling now. He had an endless list of ailments throughout his life, most of which I now think were psychosomatic. As a young man, he was pushed relentlessly by his mother to become a concert pianist, but his body and mind rebelled, and that dream was never realized. But even with the many illnesses he suffered, to his dying day Dad never used a walker or even a cane. As he grew older and was in constant pain, he began to think about leaving this world. He had one goal left: to live to age 90. When he achieved that goal, he found nothing else to live for. So he simply stopped eating. Dad wasted away by his own hand in a hospice in Kennewick. When he finally died in 1990 we felt more relief than sadness. So sickly had he been, so often, we had expected him to die at any time for decades. It was a relief to see his pain finally over. To us he had lived a tragic life full of confusion, poor choices, pain, and starting over too often, with out ever understanding why. But he once told me, "I've had a wonderful life". I'm so glad he thought so, for it was his view that, in the end, counted the most. One of the last things Dad said to me, when I had come to bathe him in his last days, was, "I love you so much." It was the only time I ever heard him say it. I was 42. But even so, a hearty Happy Birthday to you, Dad. Like most parents, you did the best you knew how to do. And even though I've spent my life trying to not repeat yours, I still I want to thank you for being my dad, and for all the things you did to try to express what you could say only once. -Bill SCOTT ('64) *************************************************************** *************************************************************** >>From: David RIVERS ('65) Re: hava happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh yes another one of my favorite Bomber-babe birthdays... too cool... as I promised on the 22nd I will refrain from playing the Wailer's tribute to the B-day Bomber-babe but I'll prolly break down and post it to her Facebook page maybe mine too... hey may as well be daring... it is freezing cold with wind and rain as I write this... Hope this came from California... Vegas is weird about its rain... it is blowing and raining horizontally in my back yard and just raining a little in the front... My mom always said it never rained on her street but would rain a block over... that's the desert for ya... because it is raining, my cats are bored outa their minds... since I spent most of the day inside, they followed me everywhere to make sure I was doing whatever correctly... once they assured themselves I was not doing anything not up to their high standards, they decided they would climb on anything and everything... now my house is kinda like my office was... a little museum... I remember the Head of the Gaming Commission used to give tours of my office to visiting dignitaries from other states and countries studying Nevada's Gaming... ahhhhhh what an honor... but as with the office almost everything can be broken but not replaced... so I've had my hands full today with these two... speaking of the Head of the Commission... I remember when the Berlin wall came down... he was there with President Reagan... upon his return he came walking into my office with a large paper grocery bag... and a little trail of sand behind him... I asked what it was and he said "the Berlin Wall"... I jumped up and grabbed the bag from his hands and yelled "You're trailing history all over the building!" I have looked everywhere for that bag and have no idea where I put it for safe keeping... arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh... but this ain't about me or Berlin... this is about a Bomber-babe I have doted on for longer than I can remember... we been buds and I am so glad we have been... I love her whole bunches... A cheerleader's cheerleader, I recall at R2K she was in a wheel chair... well she recovered and she can still do the ol "We are the Bombers, mighty, mighty Bombers" (not to forget Chief Jo) with the kids today, I'm sure... I am still swooning over the outfit she wore at either '63's 40 year or 45 year reunion... she's had her ups and downs but she has a whole bunch a kids who check up on her almost daily and if we haven't received a phone call inna day or two we make sure all is well (which is not to suggest we are too lazy to pick up the phone ourselves)... by-the-way, speaking of Chief Jo, if you happen to be around my face book page, you will find a photo of a Chief Jo Majorette wearing her majorette outfit with Terry DAVIS ('65) and me looking on... she has promised me she will wear it to our 50 year (that is a big fat lie)... well now HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Rosalie LANSING ('63) on your special day, April 26, 2015!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -David RIVERS ('65) *************************************************************** *************************************************************** >>From: Tony HARRAH ('65) Re: race in Tri-Cities I read with interest Frank WHITESIDE's ('63) post on his experiences with race in Richland and Mississippi as a boy and young man; the former is a subject which has interested me for a long time. During the forties, fifties and into the mid-sixties, in fact, the Tri-Cities was almost as racially segregated as any Mississippi town. Black people, for instance, were not only not allowed to live in Kennewick during much of this time, but until the late fifties were not even allowed in town after dark. This policy was enforced by the Kennewick police, and came to light in a big way for the first time (as I remember) when Richland basketball star C.W. BROWN ('58) tried to go to a dance in the Kennewick Highlands in '57 or '58 and was refused admittance. It was no accident that our high school was virtually all white - no realtor would sell a black person a house in Richland until 1967 (I believe the Mitchell family was the first), and in fact most black people were confined to substandard housing in East Pasco. Looking at old photos of these places reminds me of nothing so much as Mississippi sharecropper shacks. Many, if not most, of the white working class folks who came to the Tri-Cities during the boom years of WWII came from the deep south, Appalachia and the Midwest (like my folks) [mine came from Salt Lake City, UT. -Maren] and they brought their attitudes about race with them. "Mexicans" too, were shunted to one side. The federal government, absorbed in its main mission of building reactors and producing plutonium, went along to keep the peace. This policy included excluded black people from most of the best jobs; the trades – in the Tri-Cities and the country as a whole – were mostly segregated as well. The relative isolation of the area meant change – or even the recognition that change was needed – came slowly. One of my classmates who dated [black] Fred MILTON ('66-RIP) told me of receiving death threats on the phone, and this was in 1965. I, like most of my peers, lived in complete ignorance of the way things were – they just weren't talked about, and it was hard to even think of race in a town as homogeneously white as Richland was then. Robert Bauman, who teaches history at WSU Tri-Cities, wrote an award-winning article in 2005 called "Jim Crow in the Tri-Cities, 1943-1950", which opened my eyes to a lot of these facts, and he's written more on the subject since. Another, more general history of Richland which I enjoyed is called "Atomic Frontier Days – Hanford and the American West", by John M. Findlay and Bruce Hevly. Some of that material touches on the Tri-Cities and race as well. It's interesting to dig deeper into many aspects of what my home town (Kadlec, 1946!) was and is, and, for me, the facts of the state of racial relations when we were growing up are not only fascinating, but important ones to acknowledge. -Tony HARRAH ('65) *************************************************************** *************************************************************** >>From: Tedd CADD ('66) Re: Security clearance stuff When I started considering my history of security clearances, I was a little surprised… At one time or another in my career(s), I've carried a USAF Top Secret clearance (while in USAF photo intelligence), a Department of the Treasury Secret clearance / Department of Transportation Secret clearance / Department of Homeland Security Secret clearance (while in the US Coast Guard as it moved from one department to another), a CIA Secret clearance, a USDA Secret clearance, an R, a Department of Energy Q clearance and I have been a COMSEC Custodian (doing Crypto stuff). And I've handled material at all those levels. I bet — if they checked — a sporting goods store wouldn't sell me a pebble. I think I learned too much at USAF Tactical Air Command HQ and in Vietnam and Thailand with the USAF. We had some rather amazing capabilities (even by today's standards). This was the era where the SR-71 was just being known. We had drones that would fly a pre-set course and return to be recovered in-flight over the ocean. Infrared passive, active and false color films. Most of this stuff was 5" and 9" wide rolls of film, 500 or 1,000 feet long. We had one kind of camera that came back with a single image up to 5,000 feet long. My iconic moment in Vietnam was being part of a crew that had to search a huge pile of garbage for classified information. It was during the Tet holiday and the garbage had built up quite a bit at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon. Somebody found a paper sack clearly marked "CONFIDENTIAL Trash" in the pile somewhere. So we had to dig through the whole mess to make sure nothing else had been thrown out (the sack was empty). I was literally standing up to my knees in refuse from the dining hall and various other trash locations when evening colors sounded. As is required, we came to attention, faced the music/flag and saluted. It seems to me an appropriate visual for the US efforts in that war. We all probably have a clear memory of what we were doing on 9-11-2001. I was in Albuquerque, NM at the National Lab. We were in a classified briefing on terrorist threats to the United States. We were called out of that briefing to see the images of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center in New York City, the impact on the Pentagon and the fourth aircraft crash. We had just been reading names that included al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. -Tedd CADD ('66) *************************************************************** *************************************************************** Bomber Memorial >>Mary MORGAN Lutz ~ Class of 1952 ~ 1935 - 2015 Bomber Memorials *************************************************************** *************************************************************** That's it for today. Please send more. ***************************************************************