Jim Ring tells me that Johnny Jaynes deserves credit for the photograph of the monument.
There are several NASA photographs up on the web which will eternally be credited to me and, to this day, I don't know how I got the credit and there will never be a way for me to correct the error so I am very sensitive to giving credit where credit is due. In this case the photo credit is due to Johnny!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
New Granddaughter!
Rylee Quinn Porter born this afternoon-6lb 10oz!
We will be heading to Nashville tomorrow morning anticipating some burping and drooling!
We will be heading to Nashville tomorrow morning anticipating some burping and drooling!
Monday, May 12, 2008
A Correction!
I just got the letter from Buster containing copies of the articles about the Michael Christmas memorial and I truly appreciate them and will keep them with my most treasured items, but I have to correct the credit to the photograph. All I did was supply the digital file to LaDonna Beeker. I was not able to attend the memorial service although I have subsequently visited over Easter weekend. This photograph should have been credited either to Townley Redfearn or, I believe, Richard Reed. I'm not sure which should be credited but it surely should not have been me and, for that, I apologize!
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
More Sad News ::
I have been in the habit of reading the obits in The State on-line edition each morning for several years and I found this item about the death of Katherine and Jerry Owen's daughter:
I remember Katherine, Jerry, and Katherine's sister, Glenda, well and I have expressed my condolences on-line. I have a step-daughter about the same age whom I love dearly and I would be devastated if I lost her!
A couple of interesting things:
I probably would have missed this except for the mention of the grandmother, Ruth Graham.
My grandparents are buried in Dekalb Cemetery and here is a photograph I took there a couple of years ago:
I just happened to realize that there may be some family connection here that I never knew about. My grandparents were also Truesdales and I spent a good deal of the early years of my life in the DeKalb area.
Born: Tuesday, October 27, 1970
Died: Sunday, May 04, 2008
CASSATT - Funeral service for Rebecca Elizabeth Owens, 37, will be held Wednesday at 4:00 p.m. at DeKalb Baptist Church with burial to follow in the church cemetery. Rev. Keith Coates and Rev. Denny Haston will officiate. The family will receive friends Tuesday 6-8 p.m. at Powers Funeral Home, Lugoff.
Mrs. Owens died Sunday, May 4, 2008. Born in Camden, she was a daughter of Jerry Sidney and Katherine Graham Owens. She enjoyed cooking and shopping, and was a avid animal lover.
Surviving are her husband, Michael Eugene Truesdale; father and mother of Cassatt; brother, Jimmy (Robin) Owens of Camden; sister, Amy (John) Truesdale of Cassatt; grandmother, Ruth Graham of Camden; nieces, Taylor Young, Kylee Owens, Sierra Anderson, Savanna Anderson and Madyson Anderson; and nephew, Lane Young. She was predeceased by a brother, Jay Owens.
I remember Katherine, Jerry, and Katherine's sister, Glenda, well and I have expressed my condolences on-line. I have a step-daughter about the same age whom I love dearly and I would be devastated if I lost her!
A couple of interesting things:
I probably would have missed this except for the mention of the grandmother, Ruth Graham.
My grandparents are buried in Dekalb Cemetery and here is a photograph I took there a couple of years ago:
I just happened to realize that there may be some family connection here that I never knew about. My grandparents were also Truesdales and I spent a good deal of the early years of my life in the DeKalb area.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Dealing With Adversity
This past week has brought enough bad news to last for quite some time and I have no quick and easy answers on how to best deal with facing serious medical problems. Other than being both mildly diabetic and mildly hypertensive I am in excellent health and I take a few pills a day to control what ails me. One of the benefits of my job is that I get a yearly physical from a NASA medical center in addition to my regular doctor visits so any potential problems are generally caught pretty early as was the case with the type II diabetes, but all too often the challenges we face come upon us without warning.
My wife was heading home from work on January 23, 1998 and was about 1/2 mile from home when her little Toyota pickup was hit by an 18 wheeler. She was ejected through the passenger door window, which was rolled up, and she landed about 40 feet away. Luckily one of the witnesses was a nurse who helped greatly until the ambulance got to the scene.
The force of the blow and ejection tore the subclavian artery which goes from the heart to the left arm in half. When I got to the hospital the trauma surgeons as well as the heart surgeon met with me and described what needed to be done. I sincerely hope that no reader has had to sit down with doctors to discuss such a serious situation because they're not going to give you much positive hope. The heart surgeon told me that, in his experience, less than 5% of patients with an injury such as my what my wife faced lived. That is a sobering thing to hear.
The surgeons worked through the night and J. came out of surgery at around 4am. She was given a goretex arterial graft and immediately taken to the neurological intensive care unit. Amazingly there was little other damage. The cheek bones in the right cheek were broken and her jaw was broken. During one surgical session the plastic surgeon took the broken cheek bones out and put in a titanium plate and the maxillofacial surgeon wired the jaw.
J. was in a coma for exactly 5 weeks and spent a total of 8 weeks in the neurological intensive care unit. The head injury is very much like having had a stroke and she spent another 8 weeks in the local rehabilitation hospital. She basically had to relearn how to walk and her cognitive reasoning ability was severely damaged and continues to be problematic even until now. As I say, her head injury is very much like having had a stroke, but she is doing pretty well with most things now.
I am going to be adding some links over to the right to The American Red Cross and The National Bone Marrow Registry.
I give blood as often as I can and I also donate platelets although I have been derelict in this lately. Platelet donations take about 2 1/2 hours so scheduling this is, more often than not, a problem for me. I am also registered as a bone marrow donor.
A good friend, Ronnie, died of leukemia several years ago, but before he passed away his family had organized a bone marrow drive and I participated. As it turns out I was a preliminary match with the child of a U.S. soldier. A preliminary match triggers another round of blood testing which can take a couple of months. Unfortunately before the testing was complete the child had passed away. I wish I had been able to help, but I remain active on the donor list.
I urge everyone to donate to whichever charitable cause is most important to them. United Way contributions can be designated and I always make sure that hospice care gets the majority of my donation.
My wife was heading home from work on January 23, 1998 and was about 1/2 mile from home when her little Toyota pickup was hit by an 18 wheeler. She was ejected through the passenger door window, which was rolled up, and she landed about 40 feet away. Luckily one of the witnesses was a nurse who helped greatly until the ambulance got to the scene.
The force of the blow and ejection tore the subclavian artery which goes from the heart to the left arm in half. When I got to the hospital the trauma surgeons as well as the heart surgeon met with me and described what needed to be done. I sincerely hope that no reader has had to sit down with doctors to discuss such a serious situation because they're not going to give you much positive hope. The heart surgeon told me that, in his experience, less than 5% of patients with an injury such as my what my wife faced lived. That is a sobering thing to hear.
The surgeons worked through the night and J. came out of surgery at around 4am. She was given a goretex arterial graft and immediately taken to the neurological intensive care unit. Amazingly there was little other damage. The cheek bones in the right cheek were broken and her jaw was broken. During one surgical session the plastic surgeon took the broken cheek bones out and put in a titanium plate and the maxillofacial surgeon wired the jaw.
J. was in a coma for exactly 5 weeks and spent a total of 8 weeks in the neurological intensive care unit. The head injury is very much like having had a stroke and she spent another 8 weeks in the local rehabilitation hospital. She basically had to relearn how to walk and her cognitive reasoning ability was severely damaged and continues to be problematic even until now. As I say, her head injury is very much like having had a stroke, but she is doing pretty well with most things now.
I am going to be adding some links over to the right to The American Red Cross and The National Bone Marrow Registry.
I give blood as often as I can and I also donate platelets although I have been derelict in this lately. Platelet donations take about 2 1/2 hours so scheduling this is, more often than not, a problem for me. I am also registered as a bone marrow donor.
A good friend, Ronnie, died of leukemia several years ago, but before he passed away his family had organized a bone marrow drive and I participated. As it turns out I was a preliminary match with the child of a U.S. soldier. A preliminary match triggers another round of blood testing which can take a couple of months. Unfortunately before the testing was complete the child had passed away. I wish I had been able to help, but I remain active on the donor list.
I urge everyone to donate to whichever charitable cause is most important to them. United Way contributions can be designated and I always make sure that hospice care gets the majority of my donation.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
More Sad News
Bill's post below was followed by an e-mail from Buster. Here's the text:
I'll have more to say later. I almost never blog from work, but I made an exception for this news.
Hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but unfortunately we have reached the age were life throws us curves as health problems. While I know some of you have probably not seen or heard from some of these individuals for over 40 years [neither have I in a couple of cases] I thought the clustering was unusual and you may know someone who was friends with one of these classmates and you may want to say a prayer.
Dr. Larry Owens has a brain tumor. The tumor is inoperable and they are starting treatments this week.
I was told that Elizabeth Goodale Long has suffered a stroke and that they are assessing the situation.
I ran in to Ray Robinson this a.m. and he told me that Barry Hendrix has terminal cancer and has about 3 weeks to live.
He also said that he ran into Joe Myers and that Joe is waiting on a liver transplant.
Buster
I'll have more to say later. I almost never blog from work, but I made an exception for this news.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
And Keith Adams Checks In As Well
The Adams Family can report in that all is ok. We were some distance away from the Colonial Heights damage. Our country place had some limbs down from wind, not tornado stuff. The severe damage was in the southeastern portion of the state in the Norfolk portion. Suffolk is basically the rural portion of this area.
Thanks for thinking of us and hope all is well.
Keith
I am very glad that all is well, but there must be a Gomez joke flitting around here somewhere!
Jim Ring Checks In
We're AOK. Lots of damage in Colonial Heights (about 30 miles south of us), and along the bottom of the state between I-95 and VA Beach. Colonial Heights was hit at essentially the same place a tornado hit 15 years ago. That time I was eating lunch about two miles from where the tornado hit. Whew.
Good news!
Monday, April 28, 2008
Tornado In Virginia
I've been following the news of the tornado damage in Virginia. I know that Keith Adams and Jim Ring live in Virginia, but, to the best of my knowledge, they live East of the tornado path. I sent each an e-mail asking if they're ok and I'll pass on any news I get. I don't know if any other classmates live in that area or not. If anyone knows of anyone let me know.
I moved to Huntsville in February of 1989 and in November of that year a tornado roared through at around 4:30 pm just about 3 or 4 miles from where I was working killing 22 people and doing a horrendous amount of damage so I have witnessed the outcome of a strong tornado first hand. We become very familiar with the sound of tornado warning sirens around here!
I moved to Huntsville in February of 1989 and in November of that year a tornado roared through at around 4:30 pm just about 3 or 4 miles from where I was working killing 22 people and doing a horrendous amount of damage so I have witnessed the outcome of a strong tornado first hand. We become very familiar with the sound of tornado warning sirens around here!
Friday, April 25, 2008
Lost In Cyberspace ::
I got an e-mail from Keith Adams yesterday wondering about my lack of posting. I depend on all of you to feed me information related to our classmates and I need help from everyone who reads this blog and I would encourage anyone who wants to become an author to let me know. Everyone listed over to the right can post originally to the blog and if anyone wants administrative rights then just let me know and I will grant them. With admin rights you can change the look of the blog via the stylesheets to however you wish. I have no problem with that-if you may be worried about breaking something then don't worry! We can fix any problems.
I would truly welcome some other authors here. I edit 3 personal web sites in addition to this one as well as 2 NASA web sites and I'm working with archive.org on another NASA related project which is tentatively scheduled to go live sometime in June. I'll pass on the URL when this project is complete. My energy level seems to ebb and flow and is definitely on an ebbing downturn right now.
I have taken a couple of days off work with the hopes that the spring season will renew my energy. I am working in my yard and planting things (which will be the subject of another post).
Take care and write me! The e-mail address is over there on the right.
I would truly welcome some other authors here. I edit 3 personal web sites in addition to this one as well as 2 NASA web sites and I'm working with archive.org on another NASA related project which is tentatively scheduled to go live sometime in June. I'll pass on the URL when this project is complete. My energy level seems to ebb and flow and is definitely on an ebbing downturn right now.
I have taken a couple of days off work with the hopes that the spring season will renew my energy. I am working in my yard and planting things (which will be the subject of another post).
Take care and write me! The e-mail address is over there on the right.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Upcoming Posts ::
I've been out of pocket lately with some interesting projects at work. We're beginning to partner with archive.org to centralize NASA historical photographs which are deemed to be of interest to students, writers, and publishers. One site that I edit will be incorporated into the archive.org database and will, most probably be going away in a couple of months as we're looking at the new site going live sometime around the end of June. All of this came together this week at a time when we were preparing for The Great Moonbuggy races which are an annual event at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. The races bring national and international high school and university teams with their unique designs of what they conceive a moonbuggy to represent. Here is a photograph of one of the high school teams from the Friday competition:
I seem to have lost track of what I had originally posted about. The article about the Michael Christmas memorial has been published in the Camden newspaper. the Chronicle-Independent web site should be updated tomorrow (Monday), but I doubt if I will be able to get the entire article. Buster has indicated that he will send it out and I will post the article in its entirety when it is available.
I read what information is available on-line each week and I have been following the downtown revitalization project news with some interest. I will have some thoughts on this based on what I saw on neighborhood revitalization in Atlanta when I lived there.
A couple of years ago Gene Kranz spoke here at the Marshall Space Flight Center primarily about his experience as mission director of Apollo 13. Kranz is a wonderful motivational speaker and I have a DVD I can send anyone if they are interested. If you would like one send me and e-mail to the address over to the right and I'll get a copy out to you. Getting the direct recollections of the person who successfully headed the effort to bring home the crippled Apollo 13 was, to me, fascinating.
I apologize if this post seems to be a bit disjointed. I have been working on a headache for the past couple of hours which is very unusual. I can't remember when I last suffered from a headache.
Hoping a great week for everyone!
I seem to have lost track of what I had originally posted about. The article about the Michael Christmas memorial has been published in the Camden newspaper. the Chronicle-Independent web site should be updated tomorrow (Monday), but I doubt if I will be able to get the entire article. Buster has indicated that he will send it out and I will post the article in its entirety when it is available.
I read what information is available on-line each week and I have been following the downtown revitalization project news with some interest. I will have some thoughts on this based on what I saw on neighborhood revitalization in Atlanta when I lived there.
A couple of years ago Gene Kranz spoke here at the Marshall Space Flight Center primarily about his experience as mission director of Apollo 13. Kranz is a wonderful motivational speaker and I have a DVD I can send anyone if they are interested. If you would like one send me and e-mail to the address over to the right and I'll get a copy out to you. Getting the direct recollections of the person who successfully headed the effort to bring home the crippled Apollo 13 was, to me, fascinating.
I apologize if this post seems to be a bit disjointed. I have been working on a headache for the past couple of hours which is very unusual. I can't remember when I last suffered from a headache.
Hoping a great week for everyone!
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