In high school I was on the track team with Jeff Bleich, future friend of Obama who would become Special Counsel to Obama and the US Ambassador in Australia.
I met Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager in 1987 at a company function. Hexcel Corporation provided the advanced composites materials for their airplane, Voyager, and after their flight Hexcel hosted a dinner for them and that’s where I met them. He is pretty tall, maybe 6’5", and she’s a tiny thing, maybe 5’2" and 90 lbs or so.
Also while working at Hexcel, I worked with Leroy Chiao, who would go on to be a shuttle and ISS astronaut. In the late-1980s Leroy told me his dream was to become a NASA astronaut. In 1990 he was selected by NASA.
In Marine artillery I served directly with a Corporal Farrah. I was his section chief for a time. We were mobilized in support of Desert Shield / Desert Storm together. Later, around the time of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, Corporal Farrah served in Somalia because he was the only Marine who spoke the language. It turns out that Farrah was the son of Somali General Mohamed Farrah Aidid, the faction warlord and President of Somalia. When the General died, his son the USMC Corporal became for a time the President of Somalia.
I met Cold War era spy chief James Jesus Angleton on at least two occasions. He was the executor for the estate of one of his friends, and I was the paralegal doing the routine stuff on the estate for the law firm that was handling it.
Just noticed his date of birth when I looked at the Wikipedia article. He would have been in his early 60s when I met him. I would have never guessed - he looked about 20 years older at the time.
And one of my classmates in junior high in the mid-1960s was the son of Gen. Leslie Groves of Manhattan Project fame. Again, I had no idea who my classmate’s dad was supposed to be, but I could tell from the reaction of one teacher when she heard his dad’s name, that he was supposed to be some sort of big deal.
My grandfather owned a hardware store in Roswell NM. He became friends with some guy who was shooting off rockets in the desert. Robert Goddard bought a lot of pipe and rigging parts for his gantry from my grandfather for his rocket testing.
I have an uncle and aunt who watched much of the Juan Peron events unfold in Argentina, from their nearby company balcony. She remembered Eva making speeches.
I interviewed Bill Buckner in May 1986, and he was a prick.
Timothy Leary yelled at me once.
My grandfather worked at Grumman and helped build the Apollo lunar module. I’ve interviewed a space shuttle astronaut and a moonwalker.
My parents met the Clintons when Bill was in office. It was a formal dinner and my dad didn’t want to go because he hates getting dressed up. Through work I’ve met Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan and some of Obama’s advisors.
James Earl Jones passed me in a hallway when I was in grad school.
My great-grandfather was a cop. There was this anarchist leader he brought in several times. Years later, the anarchist leader was the Councilor of Justice of the Catalan government (yes, serious); his car happened to drive by a spot where a cop was being put against the wall…
I’d heard that story from Grandfather (usually in two parts, sometimes he’d tell the bit about how the two met, sometimes the part about the aborted lynching) and one day I realized, hey, now we have internet, if such a man existed I should be able to find his name. I mean, how many anarchists have been part of a government?
The gentleman’s name was Andreu Nin.
Do you know how 3d printing was invented?
It was at a Canadian university, and the purpose was to be able to build 3D models of molecules so a blind student could study advanced-level chemistry. The professor whose team had come up with the nifty new machine gave a talk at my graduate school. She was just so happy it had worked, you know? They were thinking there might be some other practical purposes, but having been able to get that blind student to “see” the shapes of molecular orbitals had her on a cloud.
Although its a sort of history brush, its not exactly the sort you’d want,
I was one of the thousands that were visited by police who were trying to catch the Yorkshire Ripper when he murdered Wilma Mcann, I can remember the officer asking me if I knew her - she was his first murder victim but even then the police must have been extremely concerned that this was an even more serious matter than the death of one person.
They must have been desperate to find him and had very few leads, they were just doing a trawl of anyone in an age range starting at around 15 years old and upwards
My dad was in the Air Force. In the mid-'70s, there was a guy in his squadron (outranked him by a grade or two) who got transferred to another base, and a couple years later got sent to a cushy, diplomatic post.
Tehran.
When he came back to the states and retired he lived on my paper route. Must have liked the area.
Also, dad was one of the pilots who brought the Vietnam POWs back to the U.S. I saw a documentary about it once. A plane was sent to Hanoi to pick them up, and they spent a week or two at a base hospital in the Philippines, and came from there back to California (more than one plane on that trip, I believe). That was the leg dad flew. He descended early so his passengers could see the Golden Gate Bridge.
When that aircraft type was retired and the Air Force Museum kept one for the collection, they chose the one that had been to Hanoi.
My little sister kissed Ronald Reagan. He was running for governor and she was three. While my parents were waiting in line to shake his hand at a rally, a man in a suit came up and told her that he’d give her a balloon if she gave that nice man at the end of the line a kiss. I’m assuming photo op.
My parents met Pope John Paul II when he was a mere cardinal. They were very involved in the Polish community in Baltimore and were at an event attended by (honoring?) Cardinal Karol Wojtyła.
I was visiting my sister the bartender at work and Maya Angelou was sitting at the far end of the bar with a group of friends.
Not quite in the same league, but along the same lines, I met Rowan Williams when he was Bishop of Monmouth, Wales (in the Church of England, that is). He later became Archbishop of Canterbury.
Nothing close to some of the experiences above, but my few:
I was in the same class in High School (and on the Speech team) with Jim Jarmusch, a noted movie director.
I have had breakfast (at the same table, made conversation with) Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann.
I listened to Jane Goodall speak and shook her hand.
One family friend was a bombader on a B24; Another was pulled from Officer’s Candidate School and send into the Battle of the Bulge; in the 60 years he lived after that, he never could be persuaded to speak of it, even to his wife.
Some high school mates of mine did a thing. A very bad thing (well depending on your philosophy at the very least a very poorly thought out high risk thing). A thing that ended up being national news for awhile. A thing I think an idealistic/foolish version of me could have gotten sucked into at the time. But I was not.
Which camp? There was more than one. I used to work with a gentleman who was also in a Japanese internment camp. His family was given that choice or going to Japan. He hasn’t physically seen his brother since, as his brother went to japan.
I had Cecil Andrus (Secretary of Interior under Jimmy Carter) walk into my shop and order a custom boat cover from me.
He allowed me to waste about 30 minutes of his time after the ordering was complete. Fascinating man.
