Midway through my seventh grade year at Kinross, my family moved from Nira to Wellman. Some of you may remember that my mother was an invalid, the result of several severe strokes, and she died the following summer. George, Evelyn and I lived with dad for the next six to eight months and we continued school at Wellman until midway through the next school year (eighth grade).

As a child you almost always have to defer to the older and wiser family members, so when three of our sisters decided to each take one of us to live with them, we went.

Evelyn went to Des Moines to live with Iva and Ival Redlinger where she continued school at Roosevelt. George went to live with Doris and Wade Hayes (Harvey's brother) at Wichita Falls, Texas, where Wade was stationed in the Air Force. Ethel and Don Dayton (they at one time owned the food store at Kinross) took me to Washington, Iowa, where they lived.

I didn't want to leave Dad and I didn't care much for junior high in Washington, but high school was great.

In the fall of 1956 with financial support and encouragement from the Daytons I enrolled in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Iowa. There I crossed paths with Gerald Kerr and Gary Johnson. In 1957 Harvey Hayes was also on campus.

After a year and a half I left college and went to work for Keating Boilermakers and Welders in Washington, Iowa.

Two and a half years of welding, playing softball, and dating,--welding, playing basketball, and dating,--welding, hunting and dating was great fun, but going almost nowhere. The one thing that was going somewhere during that period was my dating Linda McKinstry, a West Chester girl. Going back to college was made easier with Linda being there. By then she was a junior in Pharmacy. We were married December 30, 1961, and I graduated in February of 1964.

Off to Indianapolis to work for Link-Belt Bearing. About a year later we moved to Connecticut where I worked as Plant Engineer for Pepperidge Farm Bakery. After two years in Connecticut we decided to return to Iowa. My career in the overhead crane and monorail business then began at Louden's in Fairfield.

Employment for Linda was never a problem, as openings for pharmacists were always available.

I continued to participate in basketball and softball until my mid to late thirties. Now I hunt and play golf. My work in selling and management provided a lot of opportunity for travel throughout the United States.

Our daughter Paige was born April 9, 1972. She graduated from the University of Illinois this spring with a degree in vocal performance and will begin work on her master's degree this fall.

Brian was born January 25, 1977, in Illinois. He will be a high school senior this fall.

We lived in Fairfield, Iowa, from 1967 to 1975, in Salem, Illinois, from 1975 to 1977, in Iowa City from 1977 to 1978, Fairfield again from 1978 to 1983, Devitt, Iowa, from 1983 to 1986, and Maple Plain, Minnesota, from 1986 to the present.

I am now General Manager of TC/American Monorail in Hamel, Minnesota, where we manufacture and sell a complete line of underrunning cranes and monorail systems. Hamel is a suburb of Minneapolis.

Linda's parents still live near West Chester and we both have family members in Iowa, so we visit there often. Pheasant hunting is an annual event which sometimes takes me in and around Kinross.

Winters in Minnesota are too long for my taste so Linda and I hope to spend more time in the South after Brian graduates from high school. Southern Iowa!

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