Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:
It's Saturday Night again -
time for some more Genealogy Fun!!
Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):
1) The SCGS Genealogy Jamboree has a contest going - tell them your 1960s memories in 400 words or less (see http://www.scgsgenealogy.com/Jamboree/2014/Memories%20of%20the%2060s.htm).
2) I know that not ALL SNGF players are going to Jamboree next week, or were alive in the 1960s, but this is such a great challenge - you can play along by writing about "My memories of the decade of my choice."
3) Share your memories of some decade on your own blog, in comments to this blog post, or on Facebook or Google+. If you are going to Jamboree, and have memories of the 1960s, please join the SCGS contest to win a free Jamboree 2015 registration.
Here's mine:
I was born in 1943, and the 1960s were the years that I was aged 16 to 26, my formative years. Here are my top memories from the decade (in no particular order):
* I attended San Diego High School, and took Honors courses in English, Math and Science, graduating in June 1961. I loved math (trig, geometry, calculus) and science (biology, chemistry, physics) and enrolled at San Diego State University as a Math major, and changed to Aerospace Engineering after one semester. An excellent career move.
* Coaching baseball became a summertime interest - I coached Little League with my father from 1964-1968, and then managed my own team in Little League from 1969 to 1973.
* My first paying job was in the summer of 1963 as a training camp boy with the San Diego Chargers out in the San Diego County high desert. That was interesting, and I got free exhibition game tickets too. One of the football players, Frank Buncom, took several camp boys out hunting and hiking in the early morning. We invited Frank to dinner in early 1964 to meet the family - what a great big guy.
* My first aerospace paying job was in the summer of 1964, with Wagner Aircraft, a small aircraft startup. I worked with experienced aerodynamicists and designers who helped me later in my career. The next two summers, I worked at Sunrise Aircraft, a successor to Wagner Aircraft still owned by Fred Wagner, a World War II German emigre. The part-time job became full-time after I graduated from college in January, 1966. I got to travel to Boston on business to attend meetings with a contractor, and was able to write a NASA Contractor's Report for the project. Sunrise shut its doors in March 1967, and I was unemployed for six months. I finally got a job in October 1967 at Rohr Aircraft in Chula Vista, where two of my Wagner colleagues were working. This was fortuitous and stabilizing, and turned into a 35 year career.
* I lived at home with my parents all through college, taking the bus to SDSU every day. I took the bus to work also until I got a car in 1966. That enabled me to move out into a series of apartments in North Park and Pacific Beach. I also bowled in several leagues each week and started drinking and hanging out in bowling alley bars, which didn't help my bowling average much.
* The first significant hobby during the 1960s was listening to the AM local radio, collecting radio station Top 40 surveys, and making my own Top 40 favorites list every week. My favorite artists in the decade were the Shirelles, Beach Boys, Neil Sedaka, Elvis Presley, Four Seasons, Righteous Brothers, Supremes, Herman's Hermits, etc. I liked ballads, upbeat rhythm and blues, surf music, etc. My favorite all-time song is I Love How You Love Me by the Paris Sisters.
* I met a fellow named Randy Lee at my brother's baseball game, and he was into DXing (listening for distant radio stations) and that became my all-consuming interest. I became a weekly DX bulletin editor (blogging by mimeograph!) for foreign reception for several years, and attended DX conventions in Milwaukee, Montreal and Boston, plus several California meetings. Eventually, I became somewhat of an expert in radio wave propagation.
* I didn't date at all until I met Randy Lee and he had female friends (I didn't have many - too shy!), and then it was only once in awhile until I got a car in 1966. I had several girlfriends in the 1968-1969 time frame, and met Linda in early 1968 but we didn't date steadily until August 1969. Then it was full-time until I proposed on Valentine's Day, 1970. This was another great decision!
* San Diego sports (especially Chargers football, Aztecs football, Padres baseball) have always been of interest. The Chargers came to town in 1961 and I attended many games from 1963 into the 1970s, often with my bowling buddies and Linda. They won the AFL championship in 1963, and I was there. The Padres were a Pacific Coast League team until 1969 when they became a National League expansion team. The Aztecs became a regional power in the 1960s under Don Coryell. I'm still a diehard fan!
* National and world affairs have always interested me. President Kennedy's assassination, the Space Race (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Moon landing), the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, the Watts and other riots, and the Vietnam War were the big national stories and I avidly followed them all. I voted for the first time in 1964 for Barry Goldwater, and in 1968 for Richard Nixon, and in 1966 for Ronald Reagan for California Governor.
* The two trips to Boston introduced me to my father's siblings and their families, my cousins, who lived in New England. With my aunt Gerry, I visited some of the Seaver family homes and did some sightseeing. Most of all, the aunt/uncle and cousin contacts started me thinking about family history.
I hope that was 400 words or less [Nope - 861!]. For this SNGF that doesn't matter. I'll have to edit it for the SCGS contest.
The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/05/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-memories.html
Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver
