John Van Norman
I had a rather short stay in Little Rock, and if you blinked I had already come and gone but it was a rewarding and memorable experience for me.
Sadly email had not yet become the tool that it is today and I lost track of many dear friends.
It took me a year to get over my hankering for Tex-Mex and jalapeño cornbread for lunch, and more seriously, I missed the everyday friendly greetings from strangers as well as friends.
Cheers everyone, J
Hello JJ, great to hear from you! How did you find the blog? There are several of us still left who will remember your short but memorable sojourn in the south. I visited your blog and I’m putting the URL in this comment for others to see, because your sign-in information is only visible to admin here. (John’s blog is http://evilclownjohnny.blogspot.com/).
Funny, I thought I remembered that your favorite Arkansas menu item was fried catfish…guess that’s part of the function of this blog, to straighten out our fading memories.
Do you have any info to share about Fran Huntoon, Wayne Herbst or Dave Durkee? I seem to recall hearing that Wayne passed away sometime back, but I have already made the mistake of incorrectly reporting the demise of some who are active members of this blog, so hopefully I’m wrong about Wayne as well.
Take care and thanks for the post…here’s a link that will bring back memories…hopefully fond. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckling_spring
Mike
By: Mike Brauer on August 6, 2008
at 10:56 am
Mike — it’s great to hear from you too!!!
Thanks for the “housekeeping” and your efforts behind this place.
I’m not exactly sure how I came across this place. I think it may have been an email via ex-teletype@yahoogroups.com and I bookmarked the page to come back later.
The catfish was memorable, but it was the jalapeño cornbread that got “under the skin”.
I’m afraid I can confirm Wayne did pass away a number of years ago. I checked my mail archive, but I was unable to find out the specifics of when.
Wayne’s longtime “comrade in arms”, Dave Geis passed away this year in March. Dave picked up the deployment of the “low cost” keyboard from Dave Durkee and was Mike Tate’s counterpart when I was in LR.
I’m afraid I lost track of Fran. When I returned to Skokie he was already retired or semi-retired at the time — he was not part of the group that moved to the Naperville/Lisle location. As I recall he had been in some ill health then. My memory is bit fuzzy.
Dave Durkee — I wound up working for him two more times after various reorgs, acquisitions, etc. Dave eventually left AT&T/Lucent right around the time of the Lucent divesture.
He went back to Ohio to be a professor and teach again. I lost track of him shortly after that.
There aren’t many left of us still on-roll in ALU from TTY. I think I can use one hand to count who’s left.
By: John Van Norman on August 7, 2008
at 10:26 am
Thanks for the updates on folks. I remember the name Dave Geis but I can’t put a face to it. I can relate to the lonely feeling…I think I am the final TTY holdover with Celestica, which was the final stop for LR through AT&T to Lucent to Avaya. Take care and stop by the blog now and then.
By: Mike Brauer on August 16, 2008
at 1:37 pm