An Email Update from Sam Richardson

Carl,

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading your blog and how much I appreciate the effort that has gone into it. I was shocked to hear Larry's sad news about Aurora. I only met her once or twice and she seemed to be an incredibly nice person. Larry was a good friend in high school and it shames me terribly how I've neglected that friendship and others. I didn't go to the last reunion because it conflicted with the first week of school here in VA. ( I teach third grade, if you can believe that.) I didn't go to the one before that because I was back in college and taking 18 summer credits. Reading about Aurora and reading the growing list of classmates that are no longer with us has made me determined to make a better effort to stay in touch with more people.

As I said, I am a teacher and Roanoke County has trusted me to mold impressionable young minds for the last six years. I can't imagine how some of the teachers I tortured in school would react to that. Sometimes when I have a bad day I think "what goes around, comes around." I am constantly talking to my classes about how things used to be. They cannot believe we survived living in the prehistoric, predigital, unwired days. Whenever I talk about those times you can feel how sorry they are for me and how happy they are to be living in "modern" times. The truth is, I feel infinitely more sorry for them. We grew up in a special time and place. We were united by shared experiences in a way that will never happen again. We watched the same telvision shows, listened to the same songs on the radio, and shared a limited list of activities. Today there are hundreds of channels on television, thousands of songs stored on your personal Ipod and millions of websites availiable on the web. They have all that and we had each other. We got the better deal.

After high school I went to Edinboro for my first attempt to be a teacher. A year and a half later the school and I came to the mutual agreement that I wasn't cut out for academia. I left school and married Brenda. Much to Dick Mahon's surprise and her mother's chagrin, it has lasted 40 years.You might fault Brenda's judgement, but you have to admire her tenacity. We have two sons, Jeremy, 39 and Jon 38. I worked in the lab at Hammermill for 30 years until thay closed it in 2002. It was an interesting job and I worked with some of the greatest people in the world. During those 30 years I lived a pretty uneventful life in Wesleyville about a mile from where I grew up. We'd always intended to move back to Harborcreek, but the boys loved our neighborhood, they a lot friends there and they did incredibly well in school. So we stayed,

My sons both went to Virginia Tech. After they graduated they both married southern girls and settled far away from the ice and snow of Erie. Just when Brenda and I resigned ourselves to being long distance grandparents, the mill closed. it was devastating at the time, but became a blessing in disguise. Because of my aborted year and a half at Edinboro I had enough credits to qualify for a two-year training program. I had to do 100 credits in two years and it was mind-numbing for an old and atrophied brain. I did much better the second time around and getting a teaching degree allowed Brenda and me to follow our sons south.

We have two grandchildren here in Roanoke and two more in Greenville SC. We ge to see them much more often than we would have if we had stayed in PA. Having grandchildren is infinitely better than having children. All the fun an little or no responsibilty. I hope I haven't bored you to tears, but I enjoyed reading and catching up other classmates lives and wanted share mine.

Sam Richardson