I think I’ve posted this before, then again, maybe not.
As a kid we would organize ourselves into teams and play baseball in the neighborhood. One of the kids was Dan Tani {who would grow up to be a NASA astronaut and fly on the Space Shuttle}. He was a few years older than me and I remember him because he was Asian. I’m sure he has no idea who I am.
He was once quoted as saying “The U.S. government put my parents into an internment camp and also put me into space”. Pretty profound if you think about it.
Unfortunately, a few years ago, his 90+ year old Mother was driving here in town and drove around some train gates that had come down and was struck and killed by a train.
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I was a Biology major in the School of Agriculture, and I think he was a Fine Arts major in the School of Arts and Sciences, so our professors might not have overlapped much. Maybe if it was History or Anthropology or some other humanities courses I took.
A friend of mine was our current governor’s sixth grade teacher. Said he was a smart kid.
Another friend had a job in Hollywood in the 60’s and 70’s that meant he was on the sets of many of the big movies back then. If there was a scene that was set outdoors, there was a good chance he was there. Met all the the big stars of the day.
Another one. My mother was from Arkansas, and my great-grandmother’s maiden name was Faubus. She was Orval Faubus’ cousin. He’s the governor who took a stand against desegregation in 1957.
ok, I know this thread is dead, mostly, but I was thinking about my high school class for some reason this am and decided to look up whoever I could find, to my astonishment I found this guy and this gal who I apparently went to high school and graduated with.
Your grandfather was Indiana Jones?
So back when I was deployed to Iraq we were tasked with security of a motorcade route for a presidential visit. I was on foot about 500 meters from the destination, the prime ministers house. The motorcade drove by and our job was done. Someone else had the job of security after he left. We headed to midnight chow and I got some pancakes. While we were eating my boss got a call from our interpreter who told us that someone threw a shoe at President Bush.
My workmans comp judge was Dr Joyce Brothers’ sister.
A friend lived a block or two from where they caught Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in the boat. She had to tell her daughter (who was 4) that the police were outside all day because a movie was being filmed and they had to be very quiet and stay inside so they didn’t disturb the movie. She sent everyone at work updates from Facebook with what was going on and photos she was able to take. I was really worried about them. Wood buildings suck at stopping bullets.
Went to the same high school in the middle of nowhere as Terence Trent D’Arby (another video here). If you don’t have to look up who that is, you’re middle-aged like me.
Family lore says my paternal grandfather played sandlot baseball with Satchel Paige.
Much less spectacular. He was a worker and he was assigned (as a member of the Organisation Todt, I believe) to work on the Siegfried Line. Hitler personally inspected the construction sites and he had contact with the workers. The scene would have looked something like this:
I’ve played Bridge with a concentration camp survivor; I knew other survivors when young. It seems my grandparents may have helped a pair of Jews escape. A friend was a survivor of the Japanese concentration camps.
Both my grandfathers worked on the Manhattan Project. Unfortunately, they were both low level workers (pipe fitter and mechanic) and probably didn’t meet anyone famous.
I just remembered this: My mother flew with Orville Wright.
When she was in 8th grade, in 1926, there was an art contest. The two winners would be flown around Cleveland in a biplane, piloted by Orville Wright. Her entire large extended family went to the air field to see them off.
The other winner of the contest was my father (yes, they met in art class). But his mother, fearing that these newfangled aeroplanes were unsafe, wouldn’t let him go.
I was in a room once listening to Al Gore, the Dalai Lama, and DC’s Catholic Cardinal (or maybe a bishop, one of those guys with red beanies and red pajamas) discussing the concept of sin.
