Willie Nelson sang “Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys." But who could have guessed that Jerry Lance FARQUHAR would do just that--sport a Stetson, sling a six-shooter, slurp some sarsaparilla. Raised on the ocean's edge in Newport Beach, CA, and having excelled on the Swimming Team (4, 3, 2, 1) at the Academy, you might have thought he'd become a Navy SEAL, or maybe marry a merry mermaid and spawn a few baby groupers or something. But a cow­boy? Naahh. So listen up. Now living in Lighthouse Point, FL, Jerry writes: "My wife Joyce died in '93 of cancer, and I married Dotty Westby in '95. Dotty's a former B727 captain with Miami Air International. We both retired in'96--I had 33-plus years with Delta--,and we now fly Navajos around the Bahamas and Florida for Professional Air Charter and Keiser College. We keep our 44' Cherubim ketch rig, the "Paladin," in the Exumas, our 1946 Piper Cub lives on a grass strip just north of Lake Okeechobee, and we recently bought a nice Piper Aztec six-passenger twin. (R: now here's the best part.) We're having a lot of fun with Cowboy Action Shoot­ing Events. The Single Action Shooting Society (SASS) is the fastest-growing shoot­ing sport in which you wear period costumes and pre-1897 guns (two six-guns, rifle, shotgun) in a moving action shot. At the shootout in Mule Camp, GA in May '99, Dotty came in Southeast Regional Senior Woman's Champ, and I was 12th in the Senior Men's Division. Dotty has two grown children: her son Rob's a Citation jet pilot. He and wife Patricia live in Bath, ME. Her daughter Kristen is a realtor in Conifer, CO. She and husband David live in Morrison. WE'LL BOTH BE AT THE 40th!" (Before meeting Jerry, Dotty flew a charter taking the AFA football team to Utah, even getting a "thank you" letter from, then Dean, Randy CUBERO ('61). She says the team members were "very serious, and studied a lot." Sure you were on the right plane, Dotty?)

Clockwise from top left: Dotty and Jerry at the controls, Wild West Shooters, Piper Aztec, and Captains Jerry and Dotty

Gary and Susan GULBRANSEN were coming out of their hotel in Key West re­cently and heard a loud "Hey, Goose!" (R: Just imagine what must have gone thru the onlookers' minds when they heard that.) It was none other than George Thrower LESTER--ex-PanAm pilot but now retired from United--who's flying Cessna 310s between Naples, FL and Key West for a small charter operator. He had a couple of hours to kill between flights and was hanging out with some local Conch Re­public eccentrics swapping war stories. Goose said that he looked tanned and fit, and George said he would "make every effort" to be at our reunion, if only to apolo­gize to Greg BOYINGTON for not answering Poppy's hand-delivered invitation to the 30th.

James Walter CLARK, JR's still down in Fort Worth, got divorced in July'95, re­married to Jean Walbridge a year later. "She's a member of my church, where we met, and works as the assistant to the chancellor of TCU. (R to Jim: Suppose you could get her to change the score of that 1959 Cotton Bowl game from 0-0 to 3-0? Just to make George PUPICH feel better about missing that field goal?) We moved to a smaller (retirement) home very near TCU in November of 1998. I am now fully employed doing my prior hobby of woodworking and folk art, and having a great time. Know anyone who needs a very old-looking weathervane? Which works outdoors or indoors as a decoration: cocks, eagles, fish, buffalo, horses, sheep, pigs, cows? My two kids are grown and gone. James (34) is single and works on Wall Street, and Rachel (31) is single and a lawyer, having just completed a one year hitch as clerk to a judge on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco."

Tex-Res Leslie Alden HOBGOOD (Lacrosse Club 3,2,1) writes from Ole San Antone: "I retired from San Antonio International Airport in August '99 and promptly hit the road to Bowling Green, KY in my'60 Corvette for the 5th anniver­sary of the National Corvette Museum. Four thousand five hundred Vettes of all vintages showed up. The 2000-plus-mile trip was four days on the road in Sep­tember without an air conditioner. Top down and hair flying. Sweat a lot and drank a lot of water on the road, beer at night. In January, Pat and Earl VAN INWEGEN were here. I squired Pat around while Van was in meetings, then he and I played three straight days of golf, him winning all three matches. I really think they came for the Mexican food. See you at the 40th.

Left Photo: Corvette and friend. Right photo: Les and Van

"Pardon Me Boys, Is This the Chattanooga Choo-Choo?" That's music to the ears of Fred and Mary Lou PORTER, who have never met a train they didn't like. In January of last year they trained from Denver to Rochester, NY, enduring wind chills up to -50° (the conductor had to chisel the frozen switches open with a crow­bar), with a nine-hour delay. In April it was Denver to Seattle, over the Donner Pass and thru the Cascades, a week in Anacortes, WA. Took the ferry to Victoria, BC, Buchart Gardens, and to Mounts Baker and Rainier- then, the Empire Builder to Chicago thru Glacier National Park and across Montana, North Dakota, Minne­sota, then back to Denver. Fred's now teaching a class at Colorado Technical Uni­versity two nights a week. Their son Brad recently bought "Homes & Land" real estate magazine for the Denver Metro area, and the PORTER'S only grandson, Lo­gan, was three in December.

Dennis O'KEEFE (Jim GLAZA swears he looks just like Sean Connery, or is it James Bond?) writes that he's "retired from Boeing in 1995, and wife, Sandra, re­tired from McGraw-Hill in '98. Since retiring, our schedule has gone berserk. I really don't know how we had time to work. I'm active in the nonprofit world; started two nonprofit corporations--Health Resource Center (affiliated with Washington Cathedral), and Washington Seminary--and sit on the board of a third, Northwest Ontology Associates, which concentrates on tailoring support for cancer patients. The workload is part-time, and since I concentrate on the startups as a volunteer, I can turn the job over to others when it grows really ac­tive; it is a nice choice to have. We have three sons, and our youngest, Patrick, was the first to get married last July in NYC, where he works for the Bank of Tokyo. Second son, Robin, will be married in August after finishing his Ph.D. Fellowship at the U. of Chicago (R: never heard of it) in evolutionary biology. Our third son, John, lives in Seattle and is studying for his degree in computers. We've lived in the Seattle area (Sandra was born and raised here) since late 1981, and consider it home."

Reaching into the old mailbag I found this from New Mexico: "My wife of 33 years, Louisa, and I intend to be at the 40th come October. We have two kids, Michael, 29, and Jennifer, 28 (those were the only names allowed back in '70 and '71). They're both single and living in Seattle. Michael is still 'looking for himself,' and Jennifer works as an embryologist for a fertility doctor, and would like to be­come a doctor. We have a condo a couple of blocks from the Space Needle so we're dividing our time between Seattle and Albuquerque for now. I'm finally 'retired­ retired'. "Thus spoke Buck CONGDON. John MACARTNEY and wife, Lorna Aldrich, have moved: 3001 Veazey Terrace NW, #1120, Washington, DC 20008, three miles north of their former location, and overlooking Rock Creek Park (you Beltway Boys know where that's at). After four years at American University and five as professor with Syracuse U., Mac finally retired-retired" after spring semester '99. From now on it's just the "ings" - bik­ing, hiking, jogging, fiddling with his computer and editing a newsletter on intel­ligence. John's son Phen lives a mile down the road and is a budget analyst for the Federal Courts; last September they spent nine days in Aspen while Mac attended a reunion of former AFA professors, and Phen did genealogy research. Lorna and Mac spent mid-February thru March 15th in La Jolla, CA.

Kansas City, Here I Come! Bill KORNITZER's got a new wife and a new life in KC-MO: "I met this wonderful widow in '98, and we were married over Labor Day in '99. We now live in Kansas City, and I am enjoying it tremendously. My house in Wisconsin is for sale, but I'm keeping my lake cottage up there. Wife, Linda, owns a condo at Copper Mountain, so we are blessed with great locations for the holi­days. She has two children and I have three plus six grandkids. We travel a lot, play tennis, golf, and went to Hawaii for a couple of weeks in January, then on to Hong Kong. Looking forward to the 40th."

Just another seminal year in the life and times of Frank and Eve MAYBERRY (they've got more frequent-flyer miles than Phineas Fogg), who sent me their travelogue for 1999: In Colorado for January's snows and visiting the grandkids in Morrison; "Down Under" in February to New South Wales, South Australia, and Norfolk Island to where descendants from the good ship "Bounty" went in 1856 after outgrowing Pitcairn Island; May from Charleston to Ramstein and on to Paris, coasts of Normandy and Brittany, then the seaside towns of France; French Open in June, southern France for 14 days on an eight-passenger barge; back to Colorado, Nevada, California and Arizona in July. Returned to Queensland in September, staying in cabins at caravan parks, saw Jim and Erika KERR in Toowomba (the Dolphin's got gout, and he doesn't even drink!), fossicking for sapphires, then two weeks "On The Beach" at Caloundra; No­vember at a resort near Coolangatta, and a time-share at Noosa; and, Decem­ber back to ConUS visiting Vegas, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas for the Y2K.

Eve and Frank on the Canal du Midi in Southern France
Frank and the--Dolphin ("It's Alive")

Chuck (no known nickname) DIVER writes whenever (and these are his words) he's not watchin' his toes grow together: "The word on the street here in Sedro ­Woolley, WA is that Jim GLAZA is going to invite--at his expense--all classmates and their others to his wedding in July. I heard we'll be staying at the Broadmoor. That's a really fine thing for Jim to do." Also, Chuck sent us a new address for Jim and Martha ALEXANDER: PO. Box 388, Walhalla, SC 29691, (864) 638-4210. Jim found he was not fond of being retired--golf got old--and took a job last De­cember as director of Economic Development for Oconee County in the north­west corner of South Carolina.

POTPOURRI: Bill CARNEGIE e-mailed: "I work, I have fun, I play my bagpipes, and I bowl. Only the fun is humbling, and bagpipes got Gore-Tex--that alone is worth the entire cost of NASA for the last 40 years." Entrepreneur Sid NEWCOMB writes: "Our son-in-law Manuel, my wife, Marvann, and I stay very busy with the Martinez Food Company. We've grown to servicing 85 convenience stores and truck stops, delivering 1,500 tacos and burritos a day with our two small refrigerated delivery trucks."

George & Eve ELSEA had a busy '99, and are "making good progress with some of our fixer-up house projects in Texas and Scotland. Plus, we've been blessed with a second grandson here in Texas." Bill and Ellen LENINGER are still in Albuquer­que. Bill's "retired for good now." John (Whale) GONSKY and wife, Nancy, have moved into an apartment while their new house is being built: 1700 Weeping Wil­low Drive, Lynchburg, VA 24501, (804) 385-5841. John's retired from GE after 32 years, and is recovering well from his operation on cancer back in April 1999

NOTE: The What I Am Famous for Award will not be given this issue, since our ace reporter who handles this segment, Chips O'Toole, is on special assignment covering the Cocktail Party's run for the Presidency. Chips filed this report from the campaign trail: Presidential Race. With only five months remaining 'til the November election, Ron YATES and Tony BURSHNICK have announced the party's platform: Double the budget for the Raptor fighter, revocation of the Posse Comi­tatus Act of 1878, legalize urban sprawl, and creation of a "no-cal" chocolate. Oh, yeah, and land a gerbil on the planet Zercon 30 minutes after they're inaugurated. These guys are as serious as a heart attack--about winning, that is. The latest poll taken by Quinnipiac College shows that they're running a strong, but very respect­able, last. Almost. Bye.

Donald Edward SINGER died Sept. 29, 1999 of a malignant brain tumor, and his interment was in Las Vegas, NV. Don was diagnosed in May 1998 at Nellis AFB with the cancer, and he fought the disease heroically for a long 16 months, under­going radiation, two types of chemotherapy, stereotactic radio surgery and three brain surgeries. Don's first wife, Robin, died in Nov. 1995 from cancer, and his surviving wife, Judy, resides at 50 Radwick Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89110-5217.