Clemson Vs. Auburn

6:30 Central Time today. I have many friends who went to Auburn and I've been touting Clemson by 6! I'm not much of a football fan, but I do try to watch the Clemson games and I couldn't resist crowing a bit to my brother and his family, all Carolina fans, when Clemson snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the closing seconds back in November!

[update] Clemson once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. I have already sent congrats to all of my Auburn friends and now I'm in seclusion!

Thanks

Buster, Fred, Thanks for the invitation to the blog. Can't begin to tell you how much I've enjoyed both reading the entries and viewing the photos. Wish I could have been there for Michael's memorial.

Writings From Buster ::

Over on the right sidebar I added a listing for "Digital Ink". What is there right now are some things submitted by Buster, but if any of you have any thoughts you would like published just e-mail them to me and we'll put them up. The same goes for photographs. In the next couple of days I'm going to put up a link to random photographs submitted by class members. If you have something you would like published send it to me at:
fred.deaton@gmail.com (and be sure and enter something in the subject line so that my spam filters don't discard your submission).

Everyone please have a very Happy New Year (and a very safe one)!

English With Jerry Toms ::

As I get older I find my memories to be hazier about details, but relatively clear in other respects. I don't remember if we were juniors or seniors, but I remember having English with Mr. Toms right after lunch and, at least a couple of times a week, someone would decide that English after lunch was boring. I don't remember who did this, but the thought of one of the Burns boys leaps to mind, and a pencil point would be broken off in the door lock necessitating a visit from the janitor. In the meantime the class would be sent to the library and that pretty much killed the entire period.

We all remember that Mr. Toms eyesight was pretty bad and, once again, I don't remember who was the culprit, but often there were noises involving a straw, BB pellets, and the blinds.

There are some teachers I remember and others I don't. I fondly remember Geometry with Mr. Hipp. Well, let me amend that, I fondly remember Mr. Hipp!

Please, share your thoughts and experiences with me and I will post them here. There are several teachers I can see in my mind's eye, but my memory needs a severe jolt!

fred.deaton@gmail.com

We are wishing everyone a safe and Happy New Year!

Digital Ink From Buster ::

Buster has fed me some of what he has written in the past and I am deciding how to present this to our readers. My first thought is that I will do it as a link on the right side-bar. This will probably take me a couple of days as I am working through some issues with roof damage due to high winds this past weekend as well as either a heat pump or thermostat issue. The thermostat would be convenient and inexpensive, but I'm not convinced that will solve the problem.

Merry Christmas To All!

Several times a week I drive over this mountain going back and forth to work. The road has only been open about 3 years and a couple of years ago I noticed that a few people had begun to decorate some of the trees around Christmas time. Well, the decoration ritual has grown and now it is difficult to find a tree which has not been decorated. Some of the trees even have solar powered lights!

Anyway, here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year!

Teachers We Knew And Loved Or Hated ::

Somewhere in all of the e-mails flying around to everyone when the memorial dedication was being put together was a reference to Mrs. Zimmerman and that got me started thinking about some of the teachers who shaped our young lives and I decided to post some remembrances. I am starting with J. Coke Goodwin who taught me Chemistry and Physics when I was a junior and a senior and who, as I understand it, is still involved with the school system in Camden. There have been a few instructors in high school and college whom I considered to be influential in later years and Mr. Goodwin is one of them. He greatly influenced my choice of what to pursue at Clemson in my freshman year, but, unfortunately, my math background was not adequate.

I do remember writing a paper about the development of polymers for his class which I think I got an A on. This was thanks to the friendship of one of the chemists working at Dupont who helped me tremendously!

My life took a different path, but I currently work daily with some of the premier scientific and engineering minds at NASA and I have to give J. Coke Goodwin a lot of credit for what I feel is a talent for analytical thinking which began with his classes! I have been especially lucky to work on projects involving NASA's great telescopes: Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, and we're looking forward to the launch of the James Webb Telescope which will open up new views of the universe in which we live.

Here is an image of the Cats-Eye Nebula which I have always liked as seen by Hubble:



Let's share some thoughts and experiences about our high school years. We'll make this a group blog yet!

Maiden Voyage

Hello friends. This is a new experience for me. I was recently reunited with a good number of fellow 65 classmates while honoring the memory of Michael Christmas. I've been to other reunions with more people and more fanfare I guess, but this one meant more to me than the others because of the fact that an old friend who died too young was remembered as the special guy that he was. I've always felt that we had an especially good group of folks in our class and the great positive response to the call to honor Michael proved that to be true. As I get older, I'm becoming very aware of how quickly time gets by and how good it feels to share a little time with the ones who have shared a nostalgic bit of that life with you.

Entering Camden

This is what I always see and look for when I come off I-20:

A Bit Of Nostalgia! ::

Although I was nothing more than a spectator!

New Photographs

All of the photographs I have received have now been posted along with some identifications. If anyone else has photographs I would be happy to post them also.

The Words Of Jim Ring ::

Spoken at the memorial dedication!

Since 1984 I’ve lived in the Richmond, VA suburb of Mechanicsville. For me to drive from my house to the heart of Washington, DC takes less than two hours. Over the last twenty-three years I’ve made that trip several times. I’ve gone for the express purpose of visiting the Vietnam War Memorial. I was there just three weeks ago.

For those here today who have never had the opportunity to go to this hallowed place let me describe it to you and share with you the experience through my eyes.

The memorial consists of three separate elements: The Three Soldiers Statue, the Womens’ Memorial and the original, signature section, the Memorial Wall, which is made of reflective black granite and lists the names of each of the 58,000 American service men and women who lost their lives in Vietnam in the late 1950s, the 1960’s and early 1970’s.

“The Wall” is almost two football fields long. It is completely exposed to the open air, yet is entirely below ground level with the first panel on either end of the memorial only eight inches high. The sidewalk next to the wall gradually descends until it reaches the center which has a height of just over ten feet.

This is a place where grown men openly weep for their brothers, childhood friends and comrades-in-arms. It is a healing place for wounds of the soul that have long needed repair. And it is a place of reverence. For we, and the generations that follow us, owe so very much to these men and women who forfeited their lives for us.

As I slowly walk toward the center I become acutely aware of the memorial’s impact on me. I am overwhelmed with the enormity, the emotion and the reality of this very special place. The farther I descend down the walkway the more I feel I am being cradled in the arms of all whose names are engraved into the wall. I feel a sense of security…That those who are honored there will make sure no harm will come to me.

Each time I visit the memorial I stop when I reach panel 25W. I count down from the top of the wall to line 10. And there I see his name: Michael L. Christmas. In my mind I can clearly see him. I see him as I remember him when we were seniors at Camden High School. I see that flat top haircut. I can’t imagine him wearing his hair any other way. I can hear his voice with its’ distinctive timbre. And I can see his smile! To me it was more of a grin than a smile. It was contagious, too. When Michael Christmas smiled at you, you had to smile at him in return.

His was not a high profile personality. But just about everyone in the Class of ’65 knew him and fondly remembers him to this day, more than four decades since we graduated.

The quality of our lives is largely influenced by the people we meet, by those we associate with and the friendships we forge along the way. Michael enriched the lives of all with whom he came in contact. He was truly one of the good guys of this world.

At panel 25W I generally spend several minutes reflecting upon my high school classmate. Then I look to my left and then to my right. The names of others whose destinies crossed paths with mine are there somewhere on the wall, I just don’t know where. I never met them but I was present at their funerals. You see, I was attached to their military honor guards. I was the soldier who played “Taps” for them, their families and their friends. I’ve always hoped I might have brought at least a temporary sense of calm to the chaos present in the lives of their loved ones at the time. I hope that’s what Michael’s bugler did for those near and dear to him.

As I stroll back up the walkway toward the Lincoln Memorial I turn around and look at the wall in its’ entirety. I had the honor of knowing only one person whose name is recognized among the more than 58,000 there. But I’m grateful to all of them. I’m also grateful to the many hundreds of thousands of Americans who served in South Vietnam and survived. But for the Grace of God their names could be on the wall. To me they were all heroes.

There are those in our society who have long insisted the United States should never have been involved in South Vietnam, that we were there for all the wrong reasons and, as a result, lost the war.
Michael, if you are watching us here today my guess is that your view of 20th century world history is very much to the contrary.
And that’s because of the self-evident historical truths that have quietly surfaced with the passage of time, validating our presence in Vietnam.

It is true that from an overall military perspective the United States did not accomplish victory in Vietnam. It is also true it did not suffer defeat.

I remember, as students at Camden High School during the early days of the Vietnam Conflict, our government told us and all Americans that our presence in Vietnam was necessary and that our mission was to stop the “domino effect” of one Southeast Asian country after another falling to the cancer of Soviet-style Communism.

Conventional wisdom in the 1960s was that for the United States to accomplish this goal an unconditional surrender by our enemies would have to be attained. That piece of “conventional wisdom” could not have been more wrong. Our military presence in Vietnam was the first step toward halting the spread of Moscow’s influence around the world and became the springboard that led to the eventual collapse of the USSR. In the end the United States scored a resounding Cold War victory because, like a forest fire about to be extinguished, Soviet-style communism was contained, cut off from the nourishment necessary to survive and expand. It ultimately burned out, falling upon what Ronald Reagan called the “ash heap of history”.

Our mission was, indeed, accomplished.

Michael, the freedoms that Americans and countless others throughout the world continue to enjoy are, in part, possible because of you and the other 58,000 whose names neighbor yours on The Wall in Washington.

You willingly answered your country’s call to duty. When your country asked you to place yourself in harm’s way in Southeast Asia you did so. For all of us you made the Supreme Sacrifice in the name of freedom. We will be in your debt forever.

Those of us who had the good fortune to know you will never forget you.

Michael, we thank you.

I have not been to the Memorial Wall in Washington, but I have visited the replica when it was in Atlanta several years ago for the express purpose of finding Michael's name and I can attest to the powerful emotions felt even today when thinking of that moment. I can see it in my mind's eye as if it were yesterday even though it was probably 30+ years ago!

Jim, well said!

New Photographs

I just posted some new photographs of the preparation work which were taken by Townley Redfearn and fed to me by Jackie Lyles. These are approximately 1/3 of the images and I will be posting more in the next few days. If you have some photographs you'd like to put up let me know.

Looks like much fun was had!

Michael Christmas Memorial

A Remembrance of Michael Christmas

From Garrett Miller:

Almost 40 years ago I received a letter from my Mother telling me that Mike Christmas was stationed in B Company, 4th Battalion, 3rd Brigade, Fort Polk, LA. The reason for the letter was because my mailing address at the time was C Company, 4th Battalion, 3rd Brigade, Fort Polk, LA. I had completed my AIT training for an 11B MOS and was on orders for Vietnam but then I got sick, spent 3 weeks in the hospital and had a rather long running medical profile. The army, in its infinite wisdom, decided that I knew how to write (I did nothing to discourage this) so they made me a Congressional Correspondent. I was billeted in C Company because it was where they wanted me to sleep. Having said all this you now know how Mike and I came to see each other in the Army. Maybe all this happened for a reason.

After receiving the letter I simply walked next door and found Mike. He was going through the same AIT training that I had completed some months earlier so I had a very vivid knowledge of what he was currently involved in. I was permanent party at Fort Polk and had the rank of Spec. 4 at the time. Mike and I would sit on the back steps of his barracks and have some very long and strained discussions concerning his inevitable orders for the infantry in Vietnam and what avenues he could possibly take to prevent his going. We decided there were no honorable avenues, Mike was a man and so he did the right thing and went without any other hesitation. I had been informed that my orders for Vietnam would be given as soon as my medical profile expired. Mike was scared! Hell, we were all scared at the time. He told me he had a premination about going overseas and the feeling was that if he did go he would not come home. I don’t recall all that we talked about but I didn’t have that feeling about myself and I tried to comfort and calm Mike. I have always hoped and prayed that I was of some help. He was a long time, childhood friend.

My Mother was close friends with the Christmas’ and Mike and I grew up together in the First Baptist Church where both families were active. Mother and I attended Mike’s funeral and on the way back to the car following the grave side service Mom completely broke down and had to be helped to the car. You see, I was leaving for Vietnam on the following Monday. For Mom that was like staring down a loaded gun, I was her only son. Thank God that Mom was spared any further real grief. I came home a little scarred but OK.

What I found about Mike’s friendship was that it had no boundaries. It crossed all lines and extended to people regardless of position. Mike still brings joy to my life when I think about our youth and the times we spent together. Mike’s death makes me feel sorry for all of us and the times we could have shared with him through life. I miss having that opportunity. Mike was a real friend.

The First Real Post!

I regret having to miss the events honoring the memory of Michael Christmas this past weekend, but this entire thing got me started thinking about how we have lost touch, or at least I have, and I started thinking of how we could put together a web site accessible to any classmate who might be interested so I threw together this blogger page which I would like to see become a group blog where we can share memories, experiences, or whatever anyone would wish to comment about.

Here's how it works:

The blogger account is a subset to one of my other blogs (http://hwy431.blogspot.com), but the Camden High account can be opened up for posting access by anyone who wishes to be a guest author. If anyone is interested they can e-mail me (fred.deaton@gmail.com) and I can access the blogger control panel and add that person as an author. Blogger then will send an e-mail to that person asking if they would like to be added as an author.

This really is easy and I think it would be a good way for everyone to keep in touch! What do you think?

If you're interested let me know at fred.deaton@gmail.com

Best to everyone,

Fred

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This is a test of the first post for this blog!