Hey fellow ‘66ers! It’s me again with updates from a relatively small number of respondents (four including me), two of them being first time communicators.
The first of those is David Brann. Dave was an ROTC graduate from UMaine. He now lives in Lemont, IL, with his wife, Donna, whom he met in graduate school at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Before graduate school, Dave was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers. He was trained at Fort Belvoir, VA, then at the Army Aviation Systems Command in St Louis. He then spent a year of active duty in South Vietnam. He had a 42-year career with Electro-Motive Division of General Motors, which manufactures railway locomotives, from which he has been retired for 11 years. Dave and Donna have a son, a daughter, and four grandchildren.
Barbara Barth Flewelling also confessed to not corresponding regularly, but her excitement about traveling on a riverboat cruise through Rhineland, Lyon, and Provence with her brother and sister-in-law compelled her to communicate with all of us (see the Meserve update at the end, Barby). Their cruise will be on a 125-year-old restored riverboat, and one of the stops will be at a windmill built in 1630.
Thomas Doane confesses that he was confused by turning 80 on March 19 (10 days after I did, Tom — there’s a lot of that going around) and wondering how he got there and what to do next. Tom’s UMaine civil engineering degree program also had a new specialty, environmental engineering. This resulted in his working for several engineering companies, as well as the EPA. Tom’s career took him to 33 states from the east coast (Maine, New Jersey) to west coast (Alaska) and from north (Michigan) to south(ish) (Nevada).
The Meserves (Marge and I) are not letting grass grow under our feet, even though the two of us also turned 80 this year, and we had our 56th anniversary in September. We have become enamored of being gallery members at LPGA golf tournaments and volunteers at some. There’s an annual tournament 20 miles from us in Sylvania, OH, originally called the Jamie Farr Classic (now the Dana Open) that has been going on for 40 years. I’ve volunteered for 36 of those and Marge has worked 34. In mid-September, we drove to the Robert Trent Jones course in eastern Virginia to watch the 12 best US women golfers compete against the 12 best European ones for a week of matches with the winning team receiving the Solheim Cup. The US team won!
And here’s my connection to your excitement, Barby. In the middle of October, Marge and I took our sixth (and quite likely final) European riverboat cruise, this one on the Danube. We have loved each and every one of them and I’m confident you will feel the same about yours. We’ve also done two domestic ones, one on the Mississippi and the other on the Snake and Columbia Rivers. There’s one through the Great Lakes and down the east coast to Portland that we may try, too.
Well, that’s it for this go around. If you know other ‘66ers that you can nudge to send me a blurb, please do. Until next time, stay healthy, be happy, and be good to your friends and yourselves.