So I get up at 0430 to make a 0830 conference at Woods Hole. Three hours later, still half asleep despite the 2.5 hour wake up drive, I'm trying to download a presentation on the conference laptops. "Sorry, the floppy drive on our computer isn't working." No problem, I've got a CD. "Sorry, we don't." OK, let me get my laptop. And as I am now scrambling to get the pictures on the screen for the show part of the tell part, I hear a familiar, "So there you are." (It was a three day conference and the day job (and my dislike for travel) took up the first two days). To my surprise, it was Lurilla Lee, imported from Seattle for the meeting. Following that I hear a "Hey, it's a class party" from yet another '83er: Chris Roberts. Big world, small circles.
The Woods Hole/Harvard/NMFIS conference, "The International Fishing Safety and Health Conference" was a natural for the 83 crowd, as Lurilla is the Vice President, Vessel Safety for Trident Seafood Corporation (our class' first VP?) and Chris works the safety equation from CGHQ. As for myself, I was there to talk about how we've been getting cadets to do forensic investigations on commercial fishing industry casualties. It was my first chance to run into classmates at a professional meeting. Both LurillaChris are doing great.
As for other firsts, our class (Leaders for Change) narrowly missed its first chance to have a classmate in office. As the photo shows, Joe Fischetti, running as Libertarian, gave his opponent a scare in the race for the Massachusetts House of Representatives. and
Joe was truly a grassroots candidate, even to the extent that his campaign headquarters shown in the photo, "Freedom One," was donated from one of his supporters. While I don't have the exact figures, Joe brought in nearly 100 times as many votes as there are Libertarians in his district, thus showing that people were indeed pulling for Joe and not just following the party line. JoeLowell Sun who filed a rather glowing account of the marathon race conducted by our classmate under the headline "Libertarian Calls lack of Experience is a Plus in State Rep Race."
Proving that folks do indeed read these notes, I got the following from Pete Hoffman after filing a missing persons report last issue. "I understand from the last Bulletin that Jack Aherne is looking for me. Well, I'm still here in Southeast Michigan where we've been for 5 years. Of course, one of the benefits of not being on active duty is that you don't have to move every 2-3 years!" Pete is with Airtouch, which I believe is a subcomponent of Verizon, so if you need a better cellular rate, zap me a note and I can put you in air-touch with Pete.
Latest message traffic announced the of Reserve Program Administrator LCDR Patrick K. Aboagye. Congratulations Kofi!
A brief international note came from Raul Mangalindanmangalr@hotmail.com), "I'm going on a business trip and may be able to touch base with some buddies, if I only know where they live. Fortunately for you, I've got no stories -for now." No additional details from Raul. Anyone hear from him on his business trip?
A move was in the cards for Nick Guerrero who headed to Orlando, FL, to continue to sell trainloads of machinery lubricants. When I last spoke with Nick, I was getting powerboat advice, so I suspect he may have moved south to squeak out an additional month of underway time. Speaking of Delta Company and boats, a great time was had by the classmates that participated in "83 Tube Run 2000" where we escorted Eagle back into homeport on glorious afternoon. I would have included some photos, but the prints are still being reviewed by CG legal to determine who had right of way, a powerboat pulling a tuber or a tallship under tug escort.
One of the CG's best kept secrets was unveiled in an e-mail from the Captain of the Port, Huntington, WV: Lincoln Stroh. "Huntington is a nice surprise. The family and I are really enjoying West Virginia. The job is interesting and the pace is easy to live with. I have an 8 minute commute ... 3.8 miles each way. Occasionally, I go home for lunch. Quite a change from HQ. The children are growing up fast. Jessica is now 14. She's a JV cheerleader at school. Glenn is 11 and playing tackle football through a neighborhood club ... they take their football serious here in WV. Allison will be 7 in December. She likes the outdoors. She likes to help me with everything ... home repairs, changing oil in the cars, painting. The children and church are keeping Tracy busy. I'm doing a lot of home renovations as we spruce up our 1954 brick home. Most people don't realize that the Port of Huntington/Tri-State is the busiest inland port in the nation. Though most of the cargo is not regulated ... i.e. coal; there is still plenty of product going up and down the river." Thanks Linc, good to hear of the great news.
Some 83-web news from Charlie Jager, "Just thought I'd mention that I made a few updates to the website, mainly I changed the interface for the Class Notes page a little bit. I also included the Lowell Sun article about Joe Fischetti in the October 2000 Notes. "I started a new discussion topic in the Microcommunity section to see what kind of input people might have for the 20 year reunion. I'm hoping that it leads to a productive discussion where everyone can provide some input in terms of what they want for such a celebration and then we'll have a really fun event. I didn't mean to step on any toes. I realize that all of you at CGA will be pretty busy planning the event but I just wanted to introduce the Forum concept for gathering input. Maybe when a committee is assembled they'll use the online forum also.
"I was going to start by putting each person's cadet picture on their individual page in the Classmate Locator section. It'd make an interesting before/after play if anyone wants to send some current photos.
"Here's a funny '83 thing. I was in a training course last week, Managing IT Projects, and who should just happen to plop down across the table from me but Bob Carmack. It was pretty funny, not only were we taking the same course, but he just arbitrarily happened to sit down at the same table as me. It turns out that he also does his reserve work in G-MRI-1 (I'm in MRI-3) so we had that in common too. Small world." Thanks Charlie - hope folks start sending some photos.
To close, some interesting photos came in from Jennifer Lay. Sorry no captions were included but she had to get airborne to hunt down a few flying chads to resolve the Presidential election for Dade County. clearly was favored by at least one reporter from the (
Thanks to all for the notes. You write 'em, I edit 'em, Jean prints 'em.
Go '83! Best wishes to you and your families as we enter the holidays and a new year.