SPRING 1998
Hi Redtags! Got a late Christmas Card from Ted and Marcy DYKES. They had to repaint
their entire house to get rid of soot from an auxiliary oven that backed up in the house.
Ted quit his state job and returned home to work for an aerospace contractor and start an
Internet business with a partner. Marcy did some good things for the governor and the
state; the governor declared her birthday as a special day in Virginia. The kids are
continuing their travels and new job relocations.
Got a Season’s Greetings card from Bob Gibson. He says it gives him a little slack to mail the cards out since they don’t mention Christmas or New Year’s. It was good seeing that Marine at the 35th after all these years. I corresponded with Carl Bolster in January. He moved from Florida to Arcade">
SPRING 1998
Hi Redtags! Got a late Christmas Card from Ted and Marcy DYKES. They had to repaint
their entire house to get rid of soot from an auxiliary oven that backed up in the house.
Ted quit his state job and returned home to work for an aerospace contractor and start an
Internet business with a partner. Marcy did some good things for the governor and the
state; the governor declared her birthday as a special day in Virginia. The kids are
continuing their travels and new job relocations.
Got a Season’s Greetings card from Bob Gibson. He says it gives him a little slack to mail the cards out since they don’t mention Christmas or New Year’s. It was good seeing that Marine at the 35th after all these years. I corresponded with Carl Bolster in January. He moved from Florida to Arcade, NY. He was looking forward to trying out his ski mobile but El Nino warmed everything up; he has to wait for next year. Got an e-mail from Don Shepperd in February. "Tim and Nancy Gilmartin and Rose and me are sitting here at Montauk on Long Island looking out on a beautiful sunrise (well, the sun is a little bit higher than the horizon) drinking coffee, eating muffins, reading the New York Times and talking about old Redtags – this retired life ain’t all bad. Regards – Shep." Got an e-mail from George Thompson telling us that he was back in Pskov, Russia. He visited his youngest daughter in Poland, where she is teaching English in the small city of Opole (Southern Silesia, not far from the Czech border, NW of Krakow.) He had a 30 hour train ride to Pskov… And this from EC Newman: "Got the picture yesterday after getting back from three weeks of simulator work in Montreal. Lynn went with me. They were about recovered from the ice storm when we got there so it wasn’t too bad. But I do have trouble figuring out why people would voluntarily live there in January and February. It’s great to be back in Colorado and I bet Florida’s even better right now. Take care."
Troy Tomlin contacted me to let me know that he is working for the Globalstar Program Office at Loral in Palo Alto. Their first four satellites were sitting on a Delta rocket up the road from me, waiting for good weather to launch. The next set of satellites will be launched from the Cape in April. Then it’s off to Baikanur Cosmodrome in July for 12 more satellites to be launched. Troy may make it out here in April. Maybe we can see a Shuttle launch too. Rip Blaisdell gave me an update on his career. He left Korea and went back to Ft Worth to Lockheed Martin’s F-16 program. As soon as he got back he had a total knee replacement on the left knee. That adds up to surgery on both knees and both shoulders. He still has a wrist that needs to be straightened out eventually and a total right knee replacement. "Football is a great sport." They have one daughter who is a nurse and one who is a physical therapist in C Springs. The third daughter is a psychologist in Kansas who is trying to move to C Springs. Sounds like he planned their careers to take care of him in retirement. He plans to retire in a year or three. Then they will return to their house in Woodland Park, CO. Sounds great.
What a busy month we have had on the Redtag Net. Chuck Cheeseman asked me to write a 200-word article about how we became the Redtags. I wrote it and put it out on the Redtag Net and asked for redlines and comments. (The Redtag Net is the group of us who have access to e-mail.) The response was overwhelming. I received corrections and suggestions; then I sent it to Chuck who was going to coordinate with the Class of 1998 to arrange some kind of protocol to present it to the Class of 1998 on March 19th, their Dining In. One result of the article was that it started a lot of us thinking about "the good old days" and showered the net with some great stories like the kinds of stories we heard at the Open Mike sessions at the 35th Reunion. I have saved them all and will team up with a few classmates to put them into a compilation for us all.
Also, Owen Hawkins has registered our domain on the Web: http://www.redtags.org and Sam Dehne has a link from it to his Redtag site. Sam has added lots of information to his site. Tune in to them both when you have a chance. I’m going to cut the column short this time so I can have more room for 35th Reunion pictures. Thanks for all the e-mail and regular mail. Go Redtags!