Alumni Sandstorm ~ 04/27/15 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 4 Bombers sent stuff: David DOUGLAS ('62), Dennis HAMMER ('64) Maren SMYTH ('63 & '64), David RIVERS ('65) *************************************************************** *************************************************************** BOMBER BIRTHDAY Today: Bill CHAPMAN ('53) BOMBER BIRTHDAY Today: Jim TADLOCK ('58) BOMBER BIRTHDAY Today: Steve UPSON ('65) BOMBER CALENDAR: Richland Bombers Calendar Click the event you want to know more about. *************************************************************** *************************************************************** >>From: David DOUGLAS ('62) Thank you to those who connected with my past. I wasn't sure anyone would. I've sometimes wondered how my parents taught me not to be prejudiced. My mother told me a story about her childhood. Her father at the time was a southern plantation manager, and the family had a black maid and a black cook. One day mother was late getting home from school. The rest of the family had already eaten dinner. The cook fixed my mother a plate, and the two of them sat down at the kitchen table to eat their dinners. My grandmother came in, saw them, and knocked the cook's plate onto the floor. "You don't eat until the family has finished eating." That story made a big impression on me. Another event just came to mind. Our next door neighbors on Birch were selling their house. A black family made an offer. The sellers contacted all the surrounding neighbors to see if anyone objected. Only one neighbor did, the ones who lived behind the house on Basswood. My mother was disgusted with that neighbor. The neighbors sold their house to a white family. Mom told me about this, although I can't remember how old I was at the time – probably before eighth grade. My dad also told me about his time in the Marines during WWII. He was a gunnery sergeant at the Battle of Iwo Jima. He had an R&R trip to Parker Ranch on the Big Island of Hawaii. There was a Japanese interpreter in the group with my dad. The other Marines were mean to him, but my dad defended him. When the war was over the man settled in Hawaii. My dad kept in touch with him over the years, and when my family came to visit my wife and me in Hawaii one summer, I took him to see his friend. They had a warm reunion. That's probably how I inherited my attitude toward other races. I had good parents. I never went through a rebellious period. Except one time. I was corresponding with my future wife, although we hadn't come to that decision yet. She sent me a Christmas card to my house, which arrived after I'd gone back to Whitman College. My mom forwarded the card to me, and then called me. "I hope you're not getting too serious with this girl." I knew my mom wasn't prejudiced against Japanese. She taught a women's Sunday School class which included several Japanese women, wives of soldiers who had been stationed in Japan during the occupation. Mom was more concerned about other people's prejudice against children of mixed races. Anyway, I told my mom, "That's my decision to make," and hung up on her. My parents didn't come to my wedding, perhaps due to that phone call. Or perhaps it was too expensive. I prefer to put the best spin possible on situations. On one of our Mainland vacations with our children through the southwest we stopped at a gift shop on one of the Native American reservations in Arizona. The clerk asked me (although my wife was standing beside me), "What tribe is your wife from?" "She's Japanese," I replied. "Oh, I thought she might be from a tribe in New Mexico." My wife thinks people sometimes stare at us because they think she's Native American or Hispanic. I don't notice people staring at us. I only remember someone staring at us once. After we married we lived in California for two years while I earned my Master of Education degree. My wife taught kindergarten in a mostly black school in Richmond. In her morning class she had one white child, in the afternoon one Japanese child – all the others were black. The Japanese child's father brought him to school the first day. My wife's class met in a portable building away from the main buildings, so the principal took him to "Mrs. Douglas's" room. The father was so surprised, and delighted, to discover Mrs. Douglas was Japanese. The father, who spoke broken English, told his son to say good afternoon to his teacher, and the boy did. Those were the last words he ever said in class. He played happily with the other children, and they liked him, but he never spoke. We went to visit him at his home, hoping that would help him feel more comfortable with her, but he still didn't speak in class, although his father said he'd come home every day and tell them, in Japanese, what happened at school that day. We got permission from his father and the mother of one of the black children to take them in to San Francisco to see the zoo and aquarium one Saturday. As we sat on a bench eating lunch a couple of women walked by and stared at us. I stared back at them and said, "Isn't science wonderful?" Her children were standing in line one day getting ready to go out to recess when one of the children complained, "Teacher, he called me black," pointing to another black child. "Yes, William. You are black. So is he." -David DOUGLAS ('62) ~ Mesa, AZ *************************************************************** *************************************************************** >>From: Dennis HAMMER ('64) To: Frank WHITESIDE ('63) Re: Forgotten Kids When I read the name Princess JACKSON ('63-RIP) I had to stop reading the Sandstorm and immediately look up in the 1963 Yearbook and her memorial page. Yes, that's her. I had not thought of her since High School. I don't even remember how I knew her. If I was in a class with her or what. It was not that long ago she passed, I don't know how I missed that. I guess it is understandable, years ago I looked through my yearbooks and read all of the people who signed then. I had absolutely no idea who half of those people are. Told you couple days ago I had a photographic memory, just no film for it. To: Bill SCOTT ('64) Re: We've come a long way baby! I very much enjoyed your post yesterday [4/26] and it brought up something I have been thinking about for over twenty years. I had thought for a couple years now of making this post and wanted to research it more and take my time writing, but after Bill's post I will just wing-it. My father was born 39 days before the RMS Titanic began her maiden voyage and he lived to 85. About 15 years ago my mother started writing about her life but think she only wrote down a couple of pages. I haven't yet found it among her stuff, but I do remember her writing of my Grandfather going into town to get the doctor because everyone in the family except him had the flu. He was the only one who didn't get sick. One of the children had died just six days before his 7th birthday and three were not yet born so there would have been six kids at the time. She did not realize until I told her how deadly the influenza epidemic of 1918 was. They all survived, the doctor's treatment was castor oil and I remember thinking, "I hope they had at least a two-holer!" (Two person outhouse for those unfamiliar with the term.) She would have been 4 years old so I don't know if she remembered that or she was told about it. She lived to age 96. My wife's grandmother was born in Athena, OR in 1878 and lived to see them land on the moon, dieing shortly after. She was saying she probably would not get to see it, but it sounds like she willed herself to hold on long enough. Her obituary and the story of the Lunar landing it in the same edition of the Columbia Basin News, which was a morning paper at that time. Over 20 years ago in talking about her my wife's twin said, "If we live that long, we will not see that much change." About the same time someone I worked with said his grandmother moved West in a covered wagon and then flew back in a jet. He said the same thing but also added, the only thing we have seen is space. February 6th was my mother-in-law's 100th birthday. I was in one room talking to someone my age and my daughter brought in our digital Nikon SLR camera to show us a movie of something happening in another room. I said to him, "You know, they are saying if we live that long, we will not see as much change as they have, but I don't know that is true. Who would have thought when we were kids you could take a movie, then watch it two minutes later. Who would have thought you could send a letter to someone across the country and then maybe get a reply within the hour." I was born in Kansas, only because the closest hospital was across the state line from my parents' Missouri farm. There was no electricity and if you are living on a farm that also means no indoor plumbing. They had a wringer washing machine which had to be used outdoors because it was powered by a gasoline motor. Story is that my dad and two uncles made a trip out West near the end of WWII. My dad liked what he saw, came home and said to my mother, "I'm moving out West, You coming?" So we moved West in a 1937 Chevy coupe when I was about eight months old. The first place I remember living was Athena, OR and turns out to be across the street and couple houses down from a house my wife's great grandparents had owned. This I learned in 1995 when we went there for a funeral. In 1958 we moved to an orchard 3 miles out of Milton-Freewater, right next to a one room schoolhouse. I was starting Jr. High that year, but had we moved one year earlier I would have had the experience of attending a one room schoolhouse. I am not sure our parents and grandparents saw more change than we will. Yes, automobiles, airplanes, electricity and indoor plumbing are highly visible. When you think about it we have seen a lot of change in our lifetimes. I will just use myself for examples as some readers are older and me and others younger. When I was a kid who would have thought one could own your own computer and one you can carry around with you. Why would you want one anyway? Who would have thought they could be watching video of the earthquake in Nepal almost as it is happening instead of weeks later. Television was out there, but so expensive virtually no one had one so we would have watched it in a movie theater before the movie started. When we got TVs we had to actually get up and walk over to the set to change the channel. Remember the cash registers they had when you checked out of stores instead of scanning a bar code. In medical we have MRI and CAT scans now, heart by-pass and organ transplants. In high school everyone went around with the latest thing, holding little transistor radios up to their ears. We went from the new 33 1/3 LP records to CDs, to now everyone seems to download their music. Who would have thought we would be walking around with our telephones, and telephones that can take pictures, surf the net, be a GPS unit be your credit card and who knows what else. My car turns my lights on and off, tells me if a tire is low, or I have left the signal light on. I carry a little thingie in my pocket that locks and unlocks it and opens the trunk. (Still I would rather be driving my old 1963 Oldsmobile I bought in 1970 for $600.) Now they have developed cars that don't even need a driver. So much of the new technology has come and gone. Yesterday I went to Ace Hardware to buy something and Goodwill is almost next door so I thought I would go in and look around. They had VHS camcorder there with case and everything. Don't know how much they wanted for it but I can't imagine anyone buying it unless they have an antique collection. This thing was huge, you had to put it on your shoulder to use it and was a lot bigger than the cameras I see the local TV stations news crew using. I bet if we put our minds to it we could write volumes about how life has changed in our lifetime. I think it is just that we see it progressing so that we don't take that much notice of it, but if we were to get us a DeLorean time machine car and travel back to 1954 like Marty McFly did, the change would be sudden, and we would notice it. My career path has not been that good. You are supposed to start out with the low paying jobs and move up. I did just the opposite. I started off as a mechanical and piping designer at Hanford. Not getting rich but made a decent living. Then when nuclear went down and design switched to CAD I could not get work. I took a temporary janitor job which lasted 20 years. Really disheartening when your paycheck is less than they used to take out in taxes. I tried for at least ten years to get back into design work before I got it into my thick scull that no one would hire me for the reason that no one would hire me. Working nights I usually was awake in the night on my days off so a lot of times I listened to Art Bell. You write, "Dad once told me, when he was very old, that he didn't understand the modern world, and felt he had lived too long." I remember years ago Art Bell saying he thought one of the reasons people die is that they don't like the way the world is changing and it is like they are saying, "That's it! I's outa here." For some reason that made sense to me and I remembered it. Just a little less than a month ago I made a trip to Portland and while there spent a few hours with someone I was in the Navy with. We had kept in touch but I had not seen him 25-30 years. I told him of what Art Bell said, and I said I think am starting to understand what he meant. -Dennis HAMMER ('64) *************************************************************** *************************************************************** >>From: Maren SMYTH ('63 & '64) Re: Don CRAWFORD ('64-RIP) Don died 1/1/2012 and there was almost NO information for his Bomber Memorial. Got an email from his son, "R. Don Crawford, and he had seen the lack of information on his dad's Bomber Memorial and offered to fill in the blanks. If anyone is interested, check out Don's Bomber Memorial: http://alumnisandstorm.com/Obits/pics12/RIP64CrawfordDon12.htm -Maren SMYTH ('63 & '64) ~ Gretna, LA *************************************************************** *************************************************************** >>From: David RIVERS ('65) Re: way old memories Reading all of the posts regarding the few blacks in our town growing up really made me recall some things... WHITESIDE ('63) and HARRAH ('65) really hit home runs... which segues into little league nicely... I believe (could be very wrong) the first black kid I met was at Spalding, Jimmy ARD ('66), who would go on to play for the Celtics... He was on my team. Unfortunately, the coach was the father of a rather troubled kid from the Class of '63 (RIP) and a racist to the core... Jimmy's dad got pretty upset about the way Jimmy was treated, but that is about all I recall... I would then meet Jerome SKINNER ('65-RIP), who was always just one of the guys... Brian JOHNSON ('65) sent me a bunch of pictures of Jerome in later years... he passed away about three years ago and he and Beej were still close... my most fond memory of Jerome was a day we were all driving around in East Pasco and for some reason (that makes no sense in my memory) two of us needed to jump out... without thinking anything of it, Jerome and I jumped out and stood on the street corner... after a few minutes of awkward looks it dawned on me why we were getting the looks... bet we looked like the odd couple standing there... I then met John SHIPPY ('64) at Chief Jo... now the day I met him, he didn't say he was John Shippy... he said he was Joooohn Shippy... he introduced my bunch and me to the term "Damn Straight" only he pronounced it as he did his name... Daaaaaaaaaaaamn Straight... I immediately adopted it into my vocabulary to my Mother's chagrin... I took a trip down memory lane in my Chief Jo annuals a minute ago and saw that John (and Ray STEIN ('64)) both signed their pictures... Ricky WARFORD ('65) also adopted the phrase but for some reason always said it "darn straights" with an "s"... to this day it is one of my favorite phrases... In checking out the year book, there were some wonderful DAs in those pictures not the least of which were Richard TWEDT's ('64) and John SHIPPY's... During my short football career, I would meet another Carmichael black kid, Fred MILTON ('66-RIP). I had the distasteful honor of blocking Fred in football. Now early on, WARFORD, mangled his knee in practice... I hated sports in the first place and played only well enough to stay on first string, because all my pals were... Thankfully, at the beginning of my Col-Hi experience, my mom said I couldn't play any more till my grades improved... Thank you, Mom! As if my grades would ever improve until I started reading books and went to college... I lived in West Pasco during my Senior year in a boarding house and became much more accustomed to seeing black faces... shortly after grageashun, all the guys were getting work in Pasco and Fred and I spent Monday through Wednesday looking for work... when I took him home Wednesday, he told me he couldn't go out with me any more... I was hurt and then he told me as long as we went together I would never get a job... My worst memory is during my Junior year, a civil rights march was being held in Kennewick. Now we were all aware of the infamous sign in that town. What shocked me is that a number of my older friends said they were going to the march and I should join them... that was when they started piling shot guns and baseball bats into the cars... I opted out... Sheltered is hardly the word for our growing up years... I can only imagine Frank WHITESIDE's ('63) shock when he moved to the south. The Marine Corps was an eye opener for me and not a very pleasant one in many respects. The relations between blacks and "non-blacks" were strained to say the least... I remember in Staging Battalion, getting trained for Vietnam, the blacks ran the heads at night and one was required to carry a weapon if he expected to use the head at night and go in a gang... One fun memory is that I had to march next to a really cool and giant black guy... we were always way at the back of formation where we were well hidden... he would diddy-bob along singing "my girl" and other wonderful songs... "Off hours" in Vietnam were about as segregated as a place could get... it was like a Chief Jo sock hop with the boys on one side of the gym and the girls on the other... the blacks stayed with blacks and so on... so there are my memories... on a lighter note, I tried to post the Wailer's "Rosalie" on face book for my sweet Rosalie's ('63) b-day only to find it is no longer available... "Louie Louie" and "Tall cool One" are still available, but anything from the Wailers at the Castle album is off limits... so I called her (I mean I would have anyway) and then emailed it to her. I can only imagine that Jim "Pitts" ARMSTRONG ('63) failed to renew his Fabulous Wailers Fan Club subscription and we are all suffering for that omission! -David RIVERS ('65) *************************************************************** *************************************************************** That's it for today. Please send more. ***************************************************************