Message Forum

Just had lunch with Dave Dunn, Brian McNamara, Bill Tribbie, Chuck Kaps,and Fred Clem. They asked about the money that I am collecting for the reunion. I explained to them that everytime I get a check, I have a fond memory or association of some sort. For example, Barb Boggs reminded Sue that they not only have the same birthday, but they were born in the same hospital with cribs right next to each other. Kathy Harper's payment made me think of the great backrubs she graciously gives at our reunions, I can visualize Bob Curtin walking the hallway with his boisterous laugh and big smile just making everyone feel better.

Joe McCarthy wanted me to let everyone know that Homewood Suites is a great place to stay. Latasha is there from 9 to 4 and gives a special rate to friends of Joe and Watterson reunions. Joe, would you put her phone number and address on USER FORUMS ?

The payments have been coming in steadily. We have enough to put down deposits for St. Andrew Church, The Berwick Party House, and The Eck Center.

If you have not send in your payment please do so in order for me to have another pleasant memory. Make out your check to - Watterson Class of 1966 Jane Blank and mail it to -Mike Boulware - 2056 Thistlewood Drive, Columbus, Ohio 43235

03/18/26 03:28 PM

#17000

Joseph Gentilini

Mike B - let me know if someone says they can't come because of the $60. I can help them by paying their $60. joe

03/18/26 04:38 PM

#17001

Joe, You are an example of the kindness and generosity of our classmates. I really anticipate this reunion to be a really special occasion.Thanks

03/18/26 06:41 PM

#17002

Coolest invention ever!

03/18/26 07:17 PM

#17003

Joe McCarthy's suggestion for a hotel is 3841 Park Mill Drive in Hilliard. Joe ALWAYS give great suggestions, Check it out.

03/18/26 07:41 PM

#17004

Joe G.:

I, too, appreciate your generous spirit.

03/20/26 10:56 AM

#17005

useful nerd-alert:

statistics indicate that neglecting to floss can negatively influence longevity. Or to phrase it more positively, flossing, if only incrementally, will help you to live longer, statistically. How they did the research and came up with the estimate I couldn't tell you. A survey of some sort, I'd assume.

Flossing influences longevity by reducing chronic inflammation and preventing harmful oral bacteria from entering the bloodstream, which lowers the risk of systemic diseases like heart disease, stroke, and dementia. Daily flossing removes plaque and prevents gum disease (periodontitis), which is strongly linked to reduced mortality and, in some studies, an increased lifespan of 1 to 6 years.

Key ways flossing impacts longevity include:

Reduced Systemic Inflammation: Gum disease triggers chronic inflammation, which can cause damage to blood vessels and arteries throughout the body.
Preventing Bacterial Spread: Harmful bacteria, such as Porphyromonas gingivalis, can travel from infected gums to the brain and heart, contributing to dementia and cardiovascular disease.
Heart Health: Regular flossing helps prevent bacteria from adhering to heart valves and arteries, decreasing the risk of cardiovascular events.
Preventing Tooth Loss: Studies show that maintaining natural teeth through proper hygiene, including daily flossing, is associated with a lower risk of death compared to people with substantial tooth loss.
Improved Immune Function: By eliminating consistent oral infections, the body faces lower levels of chronic immune system stress.

In essence, because flossing clears the roughly 40% of tooth surface that brushing misses, it acts as a crucial preventive measure for overall physical health, not just oral health.

03/20/26 11:16 PM

#17006

Oral Health

Good advice, Mike 🪥!

😁

Jim

03/21/26 06:43 AM

#17007

Joe McCarthy and Fred Clem endorsed Homeland Suites by Hilton
3841 Parkland Mill Run Drive in Hilliard 43026. You can book on line at a great rate.

03/21/26 09:23 AM

#17008

Forgive me if I've shared this before.

It's a poem that helped inspire me to pursue an occupation I loved, that being journalism.

I never met Robert Frost but he gave me the advice that put me on the path I chose for myself when I read this poem many years ago..

Such a gift that man had: it's poetry, but upon reading it you feel more like you're a kid, sitting on a davenport in your jammies in your grandparent's living room, and your grandpa's reading you a story before sending you off to bed.

Here's a good example, and one of my favorites among his many beautiful poems. And I truly believe that reading this poem when I was young played a role in my decision to "unite my avocation and vocation" and choose a workaday path that I would love.

I like how arftully yet humbly he sums up the weather. that was frost through and through: brilliant, but so down to earth. And I love how he phrases his admission that beating the crap out of those logs is therapeutic for him, helping him to work out the frustrations of his day, whatever they were.

Two Tramps in Mud Time

- by Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily “Hit them hard!”
I knew pretty well why he dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Good blocks of beech it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good
That day, giving a loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And fronts the wind to unruffle a plume
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake: and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn’t blue,
But he wouldn’t advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheel rut’s now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
These two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You’d think I never had felt before
The weight of an axhead poised aloft,
The grip on earth of outspread feet.
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the woods two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps.)
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax,
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right — agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future’s sakes

03/21/26 02:23 PM

#17009

Back to the movies for a moment.

For a long boring evening I decided to watch Braveheart with Mel Gibson as lead actor and director. It's one of those epic films (I guess) that I had never watched all the way through, and I had a whole evening to kill.

And yes, it is loooong!

Anyway, there is a part where Rob Bruce (another historic Scottish hero) comes into the story and betrays William Wallace (Gibson) in a key battle. That seemed odd to me so I looked it up.

Apparantly there was never such a betrayal, and in fact, historians believe the two men never met.

So I ask myself, why on earth would you create such a major falsehood in such an important movie?

(You three readers can go back to something interesting now)

03/21/26 02:52 PM

#17010

Joseph D. McCarthy

Mike, The best rates for thw Homewood suites inHilliard can be obtained IF someone in the committe calls, ask for Latasha, and sees about a Group rate or discount.

Spoiler alert, Spoiler alert. Dave is once again giving away the biggest film plot in Braveheart. Way to go, now I don't have to watch the film.

03/21/26 02:53 PM

#17011

March Madness

You are probably all familiar with the young NBA star from France, Victor Wembanyama. He's 7' 4".

But Florida has a young player who is 7' 9"!

His name is Oliver Rioux

Look it up.

03/21/26 08:22 PM

#17012

Did somebody say March Madness?

The same group of 6 of us - one Captain, 2 of us Warrant Officers - (alll 3 pilots) and 3 enlisted guys, played full court (partly pictured) basketball several nights a week off and on throughout the year. Great way to relax.

03/21/26 08:55 PM

#17013

that picture reminds me of basic training.

and dave I know this is gonna break your heart but movies are make-believe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee6_xG788LE

03/22/26 02:34 PM

#17014

Interesting referrence - thanks Mike

03/23/26 01:22 PM

#17015

Seeking the Shade

Five does taking a siesta break.

Jim

03/23/26 04:42 PM

#17016

About a week back, Jack posted a great story about a mortar attack.

Here is an episode that cost us one of our best local "buddies".

MORTAR ATTACKS - A Regular "Visitor"

Life on Vinh Long Airfield was relatively secure - at times even boring. A property the size of a regional shopping center had a perimeter that was well manned with plenty of little two-story guard shacks (manned 24 hours a day) and several small towers along the more exposed south and east sides. Barbed wire was everywhere, and the one main gate was heavily guarded.

But we still had an unwelcome visitor every few weeks - always late at night – usual after most of us were asleep for the night. Sometime in the middle of the night, a few small teams of Viet Cong would set up mortar tubes in the open fields out to our southeast and send us their life-threatening calling cards. I never learned if they were the smaller 60mm or the larger 80mm tubes, but it didn't matter - they were scary as hell and could wreak havoc on humans or our parked aircraft on the flight line. A few photos throughout the book show the "Revetments" (concrete walls) between parking spaces to cut down on the splash effect of mortar explosions. They might hit one, but the spreading lateral damage was partly mitigated by the revetements.

Looking down at the short end of our flightline - row after row of concrete "revetments".

It seemed like their usual target was our aircraft out on the flight line, but the noise was enough to wake us up and scare the crap out of us a few hundred yards away in our beds. I can recall jumping up in my underwear in sheer panic and scrambling down the hall of our hooch and into the bunker just ten feet from our back door. We would stand there in the dim light of a single bare bulb, listening to our Cobra gunships (a team always circling high above the airfield throughout the night), firing rockets down on those mortar tubes, as soon as they could detect the location of a flash from the tubes. It was usually over in ten or fifteen minutes, then back to bed.

The first several attacks scared the living crap out of me! I was quick to jump up and dash down the hall and into the bunker. But as time went on, I grew somewhat accustomed to sound and was slower to respond. I recall the last two times, someone actually had to come back in and wake me to get me up for my dash to safety.

TBC

03/23/26 05:07 PM

#17017

MORTAR ATTACKS - A Regular "Visitor" - conclusion

* I have edited out a portion that would not be suitable here. We once had a serious injury

On another of those occasions when they were aiming at the supply yard next to our hooch, we suffered no casualties, but we lost a valued member of the "Scout family".

There was a space outside our back door where we sometimes gathered in the evenings to relax and chat outside. When we returned from our mission one day, we were blessed to find three ducks strutting around in this outdoor space. We fed them food crumbs and played with them. To our surprise and delight, they stayed - at least for a while.

We created a small space just for them. We were able to salvage one half of a barrel shaped “shipping cannisters" (from one of our little "Allison" Loach engines). We sunk that into the ground and filled it with about fifteen inches of water. We also replanted a small nipa-palm tree - maybe five feet tall and propped a large wooden box on its side for shelter from the rain. And someone managed to "requisition" (stole) some small sections of very short garden fencing - supposedly from in front of the Officers Club. I never did find out who did that. We used the fencing to enclose the entire "complex" making about a six by-six-foot "home".

Two of the ducks left in a few days but one of them stayed and stayed - maybe a month or two. We named him "Choy". "Choy Duc" in Vietnamese means something like "Goddammit." Weren't we clever? We fed him and held him and played with him every day when we came back off the flight line.

But on one of those mortar attacks - the ones dropping on that supply yard – Choy decided to relocate to a safer neighborhood. We never saw him again.

We were distraught!

You can see three ducks just inside the fence at right.

03/24/26 03:34 AM

#17018

You guys had a lot more to beware of than ducks, dave.

I appreciate your discretion when it comes to relating the things you had to deal with in the service -- and count my lucky stars that I lucked out and wound up with a desk job for the duration. Scariest duty I ever had was cleaning the latrines.

03/24/26 05:17 PM

#17019

Hmmmmm...

Something to think about as we consider moving back to the Buckeye State in the future:

🤔😀,

Jim

03/24/26 08:04 PM

#17020

you really thinking of going home, jim? I've entertained that notion myself.

03/25/26 11:57 AM

#17021

Mike McL

Yes, we are probably going to be back to Ohio as that will be best for us as we approach our eighties. Janet's family is quite large and will be more able to help us if ever needed. Even though the thought of such a move is daunting it will probably be the best option.

Jim

03/25/26 01:57 PM

#17022