Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Memories of the Decade of Your Choice

 Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along - cue the Mission Impossible music!):

1)  This week, let's write about "My memories of the decade of my choice."  Choose ten years and write about your memories.

3)  Share your memories of your chosen decade on your own blog, in comments to this blog post, or in comments on Facebook.   

Here's mine:

The 1970's were a time to build a career and start a family in San Diego, California, plus exploring the world on vacations.

I was 26 when Linda and I I married on 21 March 1970 in Chula Vista Presbyterian Church.  After our honeymoon in Acapulco, we moved into the one-bedroom apartment at 540 C Street in Chula Vista.  It had a pool just outside the doorway, and my parents, brother, and friends were frequent visitors.  We enjoyed date nights out together and with friends.

Linda was an elementary school teacher at Crown School in Coronado from 1967-1974, usually with 4th or 5th grade classes.  She retired for the first time in February 1974, when pregnant with our first daughter, Lori.  I started work at Rohr Corporation in Chula Vista in 1967 with my BS Aerospace Engineering degree, and was hired as an Aerodynamicist, designing and analyzing aircraft engine parts  for military and commercial aircraft.   

In December 1971, we went house hunting in the South Bay area, and bought a relatively new and beautifully situated 3-bedroom home at 755 Coleman Court on Otay Mesa.  It was next to an elementary school and there was fairly easy to travel to work.  The families on the street played volleyball every weekend in the cul-de-sac, and had neighborhood barbecues frequently.

We took our first "big" summer vacation in 1972 to Europe - a fly and bus trip to Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Paris and London in 14 days.  That was an excellent experience and whetted our interest in traveling all over the USA and the world.  We had a Hawaiian vacation in 1973, visiting Kauai, Oahu, Maui and the Big Island.

Our daughter Lori Lee was born in May 1974, and now our house was fuller.  Who knew that being a father could be so much work?  I loved it.  If we went out, we needed a babysitter.  Our social life centered around church and the monthly couple's group.  

So we looked for a home closer to the church and Rohr, since Linda was "retired."  We found a 4-bedroom home, only 3 years old, at the end of a cul-de-sac at 1154 Via Trieste.  It had a small front yard, a big back yard, was a few blocks from an excellent school, had a view to the west, including San Diego Bay, Point Loma and the Coronado Islands off the coast.  We bought this home in April 1975 and still reside in it.  Soon there were play items in the back yard.

Buying the new home was a wise choice, because our second daughter Tami Joy was born in October 1976.  We already had experienced the infant/toddler years and it was great to watch both girls grow up and go to school.  

One of the best things we ever did as a family was to attend a weeklong Christian camp in the San Bernardino mountains, called Forest Home.  The toddlers and infants slept with their parents, and the other groups had a separate camp with age-appropriate programs and counselors. There were hikes in the mountains, swimming in the lake, doing crafts, etc. For the adults, the schedule was breakfast, then Bible Study with a preacher, lunch, free time activity in the afternoon (we usually went to the lake), dinner, an Evening song service with the camp leader, and free time until bedtime.  Our church sponsored going to this camp every year and quite a few church families went.  We went every other year from 1975 to 1985 and gained spiritual and intellectual knowledge.

Our church had a nursery and a pre-school, so the girls started in the nursery and when they were 3 years old, they went to the pre-school for two years.  Lori started kindergarten at the local Kellogg elementary  in September 1979, and Tami started kindergarten at Kellogg in September 1981.  

I became a Senior Aerodynamicist at Rohr in 1972, and was promoted to be a Group Engineer in 1978, with about 6 employees to manage.  Along with the promotions came responsibility, and customer meetings in far away places.  In 1973, I attended a wind tunnel test at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia,.  Linda and I had a wonderful visit to England in 1979, where I was part of a team working with Roll-Royce in Derby.  Church friends watched our girls.  We stayed for four days  in a small Derby hotel, and Linda took excursions to castles and mansions on tours.  After my work time was over, we took the train to London and stayed in a Kensington-area hotel for three days.  We explored most of London's attractions traveling by walking and the Underground.  Randy had several other business trips during the late 1970s to Minneapolis, Seattle, Hartford, Cincinnati, Long Beach, and Derby.  I served on the San Diego board of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and attended national conferences  held every year, usually in east coast cities, to further his engineering knowledge and to meet peers.

Every year, there were car trips to San Francisco to see Linda's parents and her brother, and Linda's school friends.    We usually drove up Highway 101 because it was cooler - the 1968 Mustang did not have air conditioning, nor did the 1974 Datsun.  Sometimes we went in the summer, and sometimes at Christmas time.   In some years, we flew on PSA to San Francisco and back.  

Those are the highlights.  We don't have many photos of these years after the wedding.  I'm sure I've missed many highlights and may update this post over time.

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