Let's face it. Guys have to wear
pants all the time, but gals can wear anything they want. And do
anything they want.
What's normal for girls wouldn't fly if a guy tried it. And Harvey Shelton proves the point --
to the amusement of the assembled multitudes, right Betsy?
Left: Emily Blessing Sayers center: Betsy Leahy, Harvey Shelton. This and the others are from the
Aprés Homecoming Game Party, October 1959
at Maggie and Amanda Ross's house.
What's normal for girls wouldn't fly if a guy tried it. And Harvey Shelton proves the point --
to the amusement of the assembled multitudes, right Betsy?
Left: Emily Blessing Sayers center: Betsy Leahy, Harvey Shelton. This and the others are from the
Aprés Homecoming Game Party, October 1959
at Maggie and Amanda Ross's house.
| Emily Blessing and Joe Sayers have lived on both coasts and in between. Emily has been a “certified house nut” all her life. She graduated with a degree in interior design and designed and built their own home in Southern California, among others. She and Joe supervised the restoration of their biggest project ever, and everyone is invited to come for a getaway weekend. |  |
left: John Budlong. Right: Theo
Veenkamp (click on any photo to enlarge)
The Budlongs were Theo's adopted family during his year at McLean High School. Theo was our American Friends Service Committee (AFS; a Quaker group) Exchange Student from the Netherlands, a place where, unlike New Orleans, the dikes hold.
Theo Veenkamp (& Eli)
Theo writes,"When I applied for the
AFS scholarship which brought me to McLean High I intended to study
nuclear
physics after returning to the Netherlands. When I actually went back I
registered for political science at the Free University of Amsterdam.
That
change of direction had a lot to do with my
year at the US. Not only your society but also
the classes in government, history and
sociology which I took at McLean High opened my eyes to a new world in
all its
positive and negative aspects. I became utterly fascinated by the
challenge of
governing an ever changing and complex society and I decided to become
a
public
servant in the widest sense of the word. That is basically what I have
been
doing ever since. .... The things we did
together, the fun we had together, the long and endless conversations,
the
friendship and love; they all belong to one of the most uplifting
experiences
in my life, and in the end they have been the most decisive in shaping
my year
at McLean High into the year of my awakening.
Theo has retired (2005) and might be sympathetic to invitations to visit!!
theo.veenkamp at planet dot nl, short for nederland
Theo has retired (2005) and might be sympathetic to invitations to visit!!
theo.veenkamp at planet dot nl, short for nederland
John Budlong
John had summer jobs ("interned", we
would say today) at a local electronics manufacturer (MelPar, where
Bernie Spector '60 had a career; now part of Raytheon). John
built his own oscilloscope from parts. An oscilloscope is a
TV-like display that draws any unknown electrical signal on the
screen--the voltage going up and down, spread out (left-to-right) across time--so that you can see
its waveform or shape, and measure its frequency,
etc. Some of us had cars that cost less than one of those.
John's dad wasn't very supportive of his love of technology, so
John built his own oscilloscope from scratch. Many people
were awed at what John knew and built in electronics, but
apparently his father was not one of them.
John's home-brew oscilloscope was fast enough to use in his Science Fair project to measure the speed of light. The time it would take a flash of light to go from his setup behind a building on Chain Bridge Road to a reflector on the Haycock Road FAA towers and back again was not much, but John's home-brew oscilloscope would be able to separate the pulses and measure the delay. If you work in military radar, you can appreciate the problem. Somehow (with the help of legendary teacher General Rumbough) Budlong scrounged a corner-cube retroreflector for Haycock of the kind the astronauts later placed on the moon. Because of trespassing, theft, and sabotage by another student, this project was never completed and John measured the speed of sound instead, but that's a story for another time, another Web page, another collection of photos from the archives.
In true garage entrepreneur style, John founded his own company and put out his first product. John built an accelerometer connected to the same kind of calculation circuitry as the accelerometers in an ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) guidance systems. Missile nose cone guidance systems are also called inertial navigation systems. But, instead of figuring out where the missile was, John designed his inertial navigation system to be bolted to piles being driven into the ground for major civil engineering construction projects (think skyscraper foundation). Using the data, civil engineers could know exactly when to stop pounding on the pile because it was stable enough to support the coming building. In fact, the data were so good you could resolve the soil and sediment layers the pile was going through on its way down. The main output gave the depth of the pile and told the operator when to stop driving. After all, if you count up (integrate) the time you have been accelerating, you know what speed you've gotten to. If you know how fast you're going, counting up the time tells you how far you've gone.
John's home-brew oscilloscope was fast enough to use in his Science Fair project to measure the speed of light. The time it would take a flash of light to go from his setup behind a building on Chain Bridge Road to a reflector on the Haycock Road FAA towers and back again was not much, but John's home-brew oscilloscope would be able to separate the pulses and measure the delay. If you work in military radar, you can appreciate the problem. Somehow (with the help of legendary teacher General Rumbough) Budlong scrounged a corner-cube retroreflector for Haycock of the kind the astronauts later placed on the moon. Because of trespassing, theft, and sabotage by another student, this project was never completed and John measured the speed of sound instead, but that's a story for another time, another Web page, another collection of photos from the archives.
In true garage entrepreneur style, John founded his own company and put out his first product. John built an accelerometer connected to the same kind of calculation circuitry as the accelerometers in an ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) guidance systems. Missile nose cone guidance systems are also called inertial navigation systems. But, instead of figuring out where the missile was, John designed his inertial navigation system to be bolted to piles being driven into the ground for major civil engineering construction projects (think skyscraper foundation). Using the data, civil engineers could know exactly when to stop pounding on the pile because it was stable enough to support the coming building. In fact, the data were so good you could resolve the soil and sediment layers the pile was going through on its way down. The main output gave the depth of the pile and told the operator when to stop driving. After all, if you count up (integrate) the time you have been accelerating, you know what speed you've gotten to. If you know how fast you're going, counting up the time tells you how far you've gone.
left: Maggie Ross '60 and Duke dePlanque '60. right: Amanda Ross, '61.
Thanks, Hunter L and Danny H for name fix.
"It was great seeing the photos. Remarkable that we had color back then.
Also hair." james.o.howard at gmail dotcom
For me, the cat's meow was always an invitation to the little house on
Springvale Avenue.
A sophisticated mother and two beautiful daughters -- what more is there?
I listened to Ferlin Husky, Thomas Wayne, Jody Reynolds -- they listened to Frank Sinatra.
The party began right at the front door, in a room with an upright piano & a checkered floor perfect for dancing.
Wrap-around window seats to sit and talk were in a room at one end, and a kitchen for snacks at the other.
It was originally a mail-order house from Sears and Roebuck, maybe even a little run-down. We helped Mrs. Ross paint it.
Today, median household incomes have been over $100,000 in the area for over ten years, and there are solid acres of houses over three million dollars each.
I couldn't care less.
A house is worth the life it holds.
A sophisticated mother and two beautiful daughters -- what more is there?
I listened to Ferlin Husky, Thomas Wayne, Jody Reynolds -- they listened to Frank Sinatra.
The party began right at the front door, in a room with an upright piano & a checkered floor perfect for dancing.
Wrap-around window seats to sit and talk were in a room at one end, and a kitchen for snacks at the other.
It was originally a mail-order house from Sears and Roebuck, maybe even a little run-down. We helped Mrs. Ross paint it.
Today, median household incomes have been over $100,000 in the area for over ten years, and there are solid acres of houses over three million dollars each.
I couldn't care less.
A house is worth the life it holds.
(OK, here's what you were looking for:
Ferlin Husky sang "(Since you're) Gone", 1957
Thomas Wayne and the DeLons sang "Tragedy", 1959
Jody Reynolds hit was "Endless Sleep", 1958.)
(Use the browser's BACK button if you go out to a music player and never come back. Sorry about that.)
100 Springvale Avenue, then and now (Oct 59, June 05).