College Station TX

We arrived late in 1969.  I did a postdoc in the Chemistry Department at the Texas A & M Varriable Energy Cyclotron under T T Sugihara doing research for Rand Watson.  I was paid through the end of 1970.

While in College Station:

• We lived a few blocks off the street containing Tamvec in a one story, two unit apartment building.  We lived in the unit nearest the street.


• Sharyn worked as a dispatcher for the University police.


• We attended the parish, St Mary's, which functioned as the Newman Club.


• I wrote another general purpose display and analysis program for a IBM 7094 situated in the basement of Tamvec.

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Christmas 1969

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Christmas 1969

part one of trip

At some point we entered I-55 north.  Somewhere in Mississippi, Sharyn was driving and I was sleeping.  We had agreed that when she passed a car, she would slow down to the speed limit.

At some point I jerked awake. She had slowed down and then began speeding up again.  However I saw a cop in the windshield with a red flashlight.  She pulled over.  She used her East TN accent to get the officer to write a 10 over ticket even though she had been going 85 in a 70 zone.

We sped through the night and got to Cincinnati in the morning.  We spent a few hours sleeping (probably at mom & dad's).  We arose and went to the wedding of Cathy Winstel Cook.

They left on  the honeymoon in the Poconos, where the snow was so heavy they were trapped in the hotel.

On Monday, we took the car into be repaired.  The points had been destroyed by the hard driving.

We stayed in Cincinnati through Christmas.

When we left, we took I-71 to Columbus then I-70 east.  We were about to enter the PA turnpike at New Stanton when we pulled off to get hot drinks.  There we found out the turnpike was about to close because of the snow storm.  We immediately left.

Somewhere between New Stanton and Breezewood, we were going down a slight grade with a slight curve.  I thought I saw something in the road, so I braked hard.  We did not have ABS so we started a skid and the car shifted to about 20-30 degrees to the right.  At the end of the skid, we hit a snow bank.  There was a skrunch.

Earlier a Cadillac had been abandoned on the turnpike.  It became covered in snow.  Three sailors in a Chevy rear-ended it.  They were the "something in the road".  When I skidded, they jumped into the snow bank.

They explained they were going to be AWOL at Norfolk.  We put one of them and his gear into the car, somehow.  We drove him to the Greyhound station in Richmond.  We then drove down Mechanicsville Pike.

We turned right over a creek that had a Civil War history marker.  We took the road to Cold Harbor.  On the road was the house of Sharyn's mother's mother and father - the Southworth's.  We stayed with them a few days.

We left for Oak Ridge where we stayed with Bob and Ruby Burrell.  A few more days and we went back to College Station.

William R Owens

In 1963Sep, my parents drove me to Western Reserve University in Cleveland OH.  One of the incoming graduate students was Bill Owens.

All the incoming first year students took the same classes.  So we hung out togehter.  We all stayed at the Graduate House on Carnegie afair.

Bill had gone to Wesleyan University in Connecticut.  His adviser was John K Major, the chairman of the physics department.  His area of study was Mossbauer Effect.

Before Bill did his PhD thesis, John K Major left WRU and went to work for NSF.

Bill did his post-doc at Tulane.  When he went looking for a permanent job, he could not find one in the USA.  We went to work at the Catholic Pontifical University in Rio de Janeiro.

After returning to the USA, he worked for DoD in Florida,  He later moved to Stone Mountain GA.  He worked at GTRI in the area of infrared.

In 1995Sep, after I was laid off in Pittsburgh in 1995Aug, I came to work in Atlanta.  I lived with him and his wife until 1995Nov.

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On the Friday before Christmas 1969, Sharyn and I left College Station TX in the morning.  That evening we arrived in NOLA.  We stayed that night in a b&b created in a beautiful old house on St Charles.  We also went to a very upscale restaurant where we had the rehearsal dinner for Bill's wedding.  Afterward Sharyn, Bill and his fiance went down to the French Quarter for the evening.

I slept in the next day.  Late afternoon we went to a Unitarian church.  The marriage was done in the upper level.  I was best man.  Sharyn was matron of honor.

After the short ceremony, we went downstairs and had a short reception.  We then hit the road for Cincinnati.

continue with Christmas 1969