Monday August 5          Lincoln Night at the Tacoma Rainiers game – Cheney Stadium

Thursday August 8        Lincoln Night at the Tacoma Comedy Club – 933 Market Street

Saturday August 10       Tacoma Summerfest honors Lincoln High School – Downtown Tacoma

Sunday August 11         All-Era Car Show – Lincoln Bowl; Official Ceremony – Lincoln High School

Saturday September 14 Lincoln vs Stadium football game (Turkey Day Game revival) - Lincoln Bowl

Gary Robert Hansen Sr. (Hummer) February 7, 1941 to June 8, 2011 Gary passed away peacefully on June 8th, 2011 in Nebraska. Gary was born in Tacoma, WA. He graduated from Lincoln High School in 1960. A Celebration of Life will be held for Gary on September 8, 2011 from 4 to 6pm at the Fabulous Fifties Hall (The Classic Car Showroom) on the corner of 6th and St Helen's in Tacoma.

 

"There will be a Potluck lunch at Pt Defiance - Nisqually Fort area - for the classes of 58, 59, 60 and 61 on Thursday Sept 9th from 11 to 3:00.  All Alums from these classes are invited"

 

 

 

The Donald G. Topping Hope Center is a multi-use facility designed to promote collaboration among non-profit agencies in order to better serve youth and families in the community. HOPE stands for Home of Opportunity, Possibility, and Empowerment.

 

Developed by the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound, the center will provide 45,000 sq. ft. of comfortable, functional space for youth, families and nonprofits.

 

An announcement reminder and a recent aerial view of the building are shown below.  Additional info can be found at their web site ( http://www.dgthc.org/ ) or from Lew Overbo ( ldrilsoc@comcast.net ) or Fred Brown ( Brownsville@nventure.com   ).

 

Contact Jerry Dunlap Rcboats@earthlink.com or Jan (Thomas) Wright janw8242@gmail.com to volunteer for the committee.  A group photo of attendees is shown below.

(2/27/10) - Added Classmate Carolyn Lee SOKOLOWSKI Grismore to deceased list - deceased 28 Jun 2008

Darlene Mae ALLISON-Holland - deceased 15 Oct 2007  and Edward William Foley - deceased 15 Nov 2009  and Donna R. BITZ Ferguson - deceased 1 Jan 2010

The Saturday dinner and celebration will NOT include a live band.  Another Memory Book will be compiled.  Let your chairpersons know if you'd like to be part of the Reunion Committee and/or have specific recommendations.  Jerry Dunlap ( Rcboats@earthlink.com ) and Jan (Thomas) Wright ( janw8242@gmail.com ) are the Chairpersons.  Expect a "Save The Date" reminder in the September 2009 mail.  Please make sure we have your latest contact information.

 

Also, we have about 15 classmates signed up on Facebook.com, where we have a Lincoln Class of 1960 Reunion Group.  Give this FREE social network a look.

 

 

 

Attendees were: Jim Summers, Karleen (Vieneau) & Tom Purvis, Marcy Horst, Larry Felt, Jean (Hokold) Patterson, Carol (Strobel)  Colleran, Ruby (Haggstrom) Davis-Reed, Cheryl (Way) Taglieri, Shirley (Heggen) LaVelle, Bob Latterell, Jackie (Brebner) & Nick Rade, Chuck Kinzner, John Barnes, Stan Kohout and co-chairs Jerry Dunlap and Jan (Thomas) Wright. 

 

The next Committee meeting is scheduled for September 16, 2009 and will include stuffing envelopes for our initial "save the date" mailing.  Three pics from the meeting are shown below, including one with identification of last names/maiden names.

Grunge was king in the early ’90s when Nirvana, Pearl Jam and other Western Washington bands stormed the pop charts. And now a new generation of Northwest outfits – the likes of Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse and the Decemberists – continues to redefine pop chic.

 

But the original Northwest sound invaded radio airwaves five decades ago, in 1959. And a pair of concerts in Seattle next weekend will serve as reminders of how South Sound bands – especially, the Ventures, the Fabulous Wailers and the Fleetwoods – helped put Northwest rock and pop on the map.

 

see  http://www.thenewstribune.com/soundlife/story/699644.html

or click on "From The Past - Part I" on the left side of this page

 

and some article pics below

 

 

 

Classmate John Mansfield's Web pages can be used to display a personal Bio for each classmate.  You can BRIEFLY discuss your life, accomplishments, family, hobbies, or whatever.  You can also submit a single photo.  Submit your bios and photo by e-mail to John at john@erasumner.com .  

 

 

 

 

Boys, Girls Club gets $1.3 million from volunteer

BRIAN EVERSTINE; brian.everstine@thenewstribune.com

Published: July 20th, 2008 01:00 AM

 

Donald G. Topping never had brothers in the traditional sense.

 

Instead of siblings, Topping grew up with his “Brotherhood.” Guys like Lou, Bish, Moe, Chuck and many more from his days at Whitman Elementary and Lincoln High School in Tacoma.

 

They were the group he played with and heckled during pee-wee sports when they were young, and in golf when they got older. They were the men who carried him from his house to an ambulance, and stood with him around the clock at the hospice while he fought what his obituary called “the dreaded ‘C’.”

 

“Top” died May 11, 2007 after a short fight with cancer. He was 65.

 

He was an unmarried and never fathered children of his own, but he found fulfillment guiding dozens of kids through his volunteer work at the Boys & Girls Club.

 

Now his legacy will help countless more over decades to come.

 

Topping left approximately $1.3 million of his estate to the Boys & Girls Club of South Puget Sound.

 

Not bad for a guy who drove a 1995 Honda Accord with 165,000 miles on the odometer.

 

“As close as I was to him – I was like a brother – I never knew of his wealth,” said Lewis Overbo, who met Topping when they both were 11. “He knew what he was going to do with his money.”

 

Topping, who spent his entire life in Tacoma, worked as a marketing director at Washington Natural Gas (now Puget Sound Energy) before retiring in 1997. He studied economics at Pacific Lutheran University and worked the stock market.

 

But no one knew how much money he had until they saw his gift to the Boys & Girls Club.

 

“He could have had any car he wanted. He could have had a BMW, he could afford that,” Overbo said. “But I think his plan was more directly related to giving to those who needed it.”

 

Most of the gift will go toward building the Donald G. Topping Regional HOPE Center, with about $250,000 designated for scholarships for children in the club.

 

“Education was really important (to Topping),” said Rick Guild, president of Boys & Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound and a friend of Topping. “He said that was kind of an equalizer for him, and he thought helping kids go to college would make a difference in their lives.”

 

The building, set to open next summer, will replace the South End Boys & Girls Club. The $12.6 million project is at the old Mount Tahoma High School site, and will use existing buildings and playfields.

 

The site will double the amount of children the club can reach from the current 150, Guild said. And the gift’s effect will be felt for quite awhile.

 

“For a man of his means to make a gift at this level is phenomenal,” Guild said. “It’s too bad that he’s not going to be able to see the opportunities that this gift is going to give for at least six more generations.”

 

 

 

 

Family lays to rest WWII airman lost over Himalayas

MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune
Published: March 5th, 2006 02:30 AM

From his base deep in northern India, Gerard Rugers Jr., wrote the letter that would be sent home to his family if he were to die or go missing.

It was World War II, and he was a 24-year-old radio operator and private first class in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He flew the treacherous Hump missions over the Himalayas – from India to China and back again – that between 1942 and 1945 would claim more than 1,000 U.S. fliers.

Over seven tender pages, he shared his fears, his sense that a good life was there for him if he made it back home, and his regret that if his family were reading these words, he would not be there to see that life through.

“These last few years, these hopes showed the first faint glimmering of fulfillment,” Rugers wrote. “It’s true that this war may have terminated the hopes of some, but these are only fragments of the whole. There are others to carry on.”

A little bit of that world he left behind 62 years ago came together again Saturday, as his family and friends gathered at Cavalry Cemetery to finally lay him to rest at home in Tacoma.

Rugers had been missing and presumed dead since March 27, 1944. His remains were identified last fall after a U.S. military forensics team trekked to the long-hidden crash site along the Tibetan frontier.

Most of his family passed away long ago, and went to their graves believing an Army Air Corps colonel’s claim that Gerard had received a military burial in India soon after his plane went down. Only in the course of the last few years did relatives learn that story was a mysterious fabrication.

But on Saturday, his sister Frances Lusier – at 87 his last surviving sibling – was there to see his proper burial with military honors, right next to his mother and his father. Nieces and nephews gathered, too, and old friends. The woman he planned to marry was there to remember the young love they’d shared.

A Fort Lewis honor guard fired rifle volleys, played taps and performed the ritual unfolding and folding of the flag. It was presented to his sister “on behalf of a grateful nation.”

“This day is long overdue,” said Capt. Dale Goetz, an Army chaplain.

Lusier, whose memories of her brother have been dimmed by Alzheimer’s disease, still keeps a handsome portrait of him in uniform on the mantel of her Proctor District home.

“Everybody loved him that knew him,” she said.

Phyllis Johnson – her name back then was Markota – was his sweetheart. He attended Lincoln High School, and she Stadium, and they worked together at a Sixth Avenue movie theater.

“He was the manager of the place, but he didn’t push anybody around,” recalled Johnson, now 82. “He didn’t make any advances or anything like that, but he just decided that he’d like to take me out.

“We dated and got to the point where we decided to become a little more serious, and then when he went into the Army it got more serious still,” she said. “We decided to get married when he got back.”

Learning that he wouldn’t return was devastating. But time passed. She married, raised a family, mourned the passing of her husband. Rugers’ niece, Andrea Cook, tracked her down and let her know about the discovery in Tibet.

“It does bring back some things,” she said. “I had a happy marriage. … But it was my second love.”

VILLAGERS’ REPORTS

Rugers’ long journey home began in May 2000, when the Chinese government sent a team to investigate villagers’ reports of a crash site on Meiduobai Mountain in Tibet. The team found wreckage of a U.S. C-46 Commando, tail number 124688.

The following January, the Chinese reported their findings to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. The information reached the military’s Prisoner of War/Missing in Action office, where officials quickly determined it was the C-46 that had been lost with Rugers and three others aboard back in 1944.

A 14-member team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii – known by the acronym JPAC – made an expedition to the crash site in July and August 2002. The command and its predecessor agencies for decades have searched crash sites and battlefields around the world to find some of the 88,000 military men and women still listed as missing or unaccounted for in World War II, Korea, Vietnam and other conflicts.

The trek into the Himalayas was one of their most arduous recovery missions, said James Pokines, a JPAC anthropologist who made the trip.

The team hiked 14 days through mountain valleys, across streams and up steep terrain, and made camp at 15,500 feet – about 1,100 feet higher than the summit of Mount Rainier.

“Just climbing from our little cluster of tents the 300 feet or so up to the site took like 10 minutes, it was so exhausting because of the altitude,” Pokines said.

The harsh Tibetan winters had destroyed most of the bones. They found mostly fragments, the anthropologist said.

When team members returned to the JPAC lab at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, they sought DNA samples from surviving family members and got to work trying to identify the remains.

By last October, they concluded some of the bones were those of Rugers and one other crew member, Pokines said.

The mission to supply U.S. and Chinese troops fighting the Japanese in China was the U.S. military’s first great airlift operation, but it came at a price. The route over the Himalayas bore the grim nickname, “The Aluminum Trail.”

Rugers’ C-46 was one of more than 600 U.S. aircraft that crashed or were shot down flying in the China-Burma-India theater.

It appeared Rugers’ plane crashed straight into a cliff, perhaps out of fuel, since there was no evidence of a fire, Pokines said. It was many miles off course, and traveling northbound – the wrong direction.

“I suspect that kind of thing happened all the time,” the anthropologist said. “When we were there, the heavy clouds would roll in in the afternoons. You can’t see anything. … There are plenty of things to hit.

“You get lost in the clouds, what are you going to do?”

a telegram and letters

The War Department notified Rugers’ parents, Collette and Gerard Sr., by telegram five days after the crash that their son was missing, and followed up by letter five days later. More letters followed in June, July and October, with little additional information, and in January 1946 the War Department wrote to inform the Rugers that their son was presumed dead.

Then, in August of that year, they received a letter from a Lt. Col. Byron K. Enyart, who said he was the executive officer of the Sookerating air base in India where Rugers had been stationed.

In explicit detail, Enyart described how he personally searched for the crash site and found the wreckage on an island in the nearby Brahmaputra River, not far from the base – on the very same day the craft vanished.

He wrote that he found the crewmen dead inside the wrecked aircraft and buried them in temporary graves. He said he returned days later despite difficult conditions – a native guide drowned on the trip, Enyart said – and that he and the unit’s quartermaster and chaplain gave the downed airmen a military burial.

“I have made some 25 searches throughout the Sahara Desert area and the Hump and I assure you I remember this case specifically due to my own experience and the fact that I knew Private Rugers quite well,” the lieutenant colonel wrote.

But the account raised suspicions at the office of the War Department’s inspector general. Investigators summoned Enyart to Washington, D.C., where his story fell apart under questioning. They learned he’d even been in the hospital with malaria at the time of the purported second trip up the river.

The inspector general determined there was no evidence to substantiate any part of Enyart’s story, other than the date of the plane’s disappearance. And in 1948, the military determined that the four crewmens’ remains were likely unrecoverable.

Military officials today are at a loss to explain why Enyart – who went on to serve as a White House military aide in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations – would make up the tale, except perhaps as a misguided attempt to bring a sense of closure to the Rugers family.

But word that it was a fabrication apparently never reached the downed radioman’s loved ones in Tacoma.

A SHOCKING REQUEST

Growing up, there were competing versions about what happened to Uncle Gerard, said Cook, his niece. She is Frances Lusier’s daughter, born two weeks before Gerard was killed.

“There were conflicting stories,” Cook said. “In one, he was shot down. In another, he ran into a mountain. In another, his plane crashed into another plane.”

The versions faded into family lore. His parents passed away – his father in 1955, his mother in 1960 – and mostly, people just remembered how much they loved and missed him.

“Especially my mother,” Cook said. “They were the two youngest, and they were very close.”

And then Cook got a call from the Pentagon’s casualty office in 2003, asking if she or others from her family would be willing to give a blood sample for use as DNA evidence.

“It was all pretty shocking,” she said.

She said she’s still not sure she’ll ever know exactly what happened to her uncle’s airplane, but one thing is certain: His remains were found, and he’s come home.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Charles Brass from Fort Lewis has worked with the family since last October, helping them with the funeral arrangements and other details. He was on hand Friday to greet Cook on her arrival from her home in San Diego, and go over last-minute details.

He smiled as she and her sons, Troy and Tim, talked about the cousins and old friends who would be there at the funeral the next day – people they hadn’t seen in decades, and some they’d never met.

“Your uncle is bringing the whole family back together,” Brass said, “even after all these years.”

Rugers appeared to have foreseen that in his “just in case” letter.

He expressed his love for his family and friends, his recognition that “there is much good and kindness in everyone, even the enemy,” and his hope that some good would come from the war.

“And dearest mom and dad, and everyone,” he concluded, “though I am with you in spirit only, I am ever waiting. And some day we shall be together again and then in truth we shall share the happiness we’ve dreamed of.

“Ever and always, your loving Gerard.”

and photo below with caption:

"Fort Lewis honor guard members fold a flag Saturday to present to Frances Lusier, the last living sibling of Army Pfc. Gerard Rugers Jr. Front, from left: great-nephew Troy Stucker, niece Andrea Cook and Lusier. Back, from left: Tim Stucker and nieces Diana West and Carol Wells."

(2/26/06)  News Tribune Article about deceased Classmate Diane (Morse) Roeser:

 

This antique buff doesn’t abhor a vacuum

The News Tribune
Published: February 26th, 2006 02:30 AM

Forget bagless. In the late 1800s, people were lucky if they could use their vacuum cleaners without help.

Marlowe Roeser pushed an 1885 Leasure Vacuum Cleaner along the carpet in his South Hill home on a recent morning.

“You’ll never see one like it,” Roeser said.

He’s not kidding.

It’s a good thing the label reads “The last word in vacuum” because the black metal container on two wheels could easily be mistaken for anything but a vacuum cleaner. Picture a cross between a baby stroller and a lawn mower. The motion of the cleaner’s wheels operates a bellows that provides suction at the base of the container as it passes over the carpet.

“I can’t believe it still has the label on it,” said Roeser, 65.

His wonder for the way things worked in the old days is vast. His antique collections include cars, records and roller organs, which are hand-cranked and function like player pianos.

He’s particularly interested in the days before electricity. And vacuum cleaners, washing machines and other household cleaning devices from the 1880s to early 1900s are vivid examples of what a difference an electrical socket makes.

“It’s fascinating how crude things were,” Roeser said. “And how far we’ve come.”

Four decades ago, he and his wife, Diane, came across an 1885 vacuum cleaner in an antique store.

“That’s the one that started it all,” said Roeser, standing in the large room of his home where he neatly displays 150 vacuum cleaners, a couple of dozen washing machines and 300 dust mop tins.

While he focused on collecting cleaners, his wife favored dust mop tins and block puzzles. Diane, 63, died unexpectedly in January; the couple was married 45 years.

“We had a good life,” Roeser said. “We did just about everything we wanted to do.”

Roeser retired from Gai’s Bakery 11 years ago. The couple’s Puyallup Fair food concession stand, Marlowe’s, and his longtime service as host coordinator for Washington Interscholastic Activities Association high school state basketball tournaments keeps him busy.

Roeser’s daughter, Judi Moore of Olympia, said she’s encouraging her father to move his collections to a museum. “People need to see these,” she said.

Meanwhile, Roeser still seeks vacuums on eBay and pays about $80 for his finds.

“It’s exciting,” he said. “I have pieces of history. And the more you have, the more you want.”

and photo below with caption:

"Collector Marlowe Roeser shows how a pump-style vacuum cleaner works"

Sherrill (Tandberg) Miller.  My husband Jerry and I moved to California eight days before my 23rd birthday and I lived in California 23 yrs.  I moved back here in 1987 because my mother was getting older and my sister needed help with her.  My husband and I divorced after 30+ yrs but remain good friends to this day.  We moved to Calif. so he could pursue his musicial career and he was in a popular band in the late 60s to late 70s.  In fact Rolling Stone magazine had the best 100 guitar players of all time and he made the list.  He has won the blues award in Seattle twice. He still plays music here and travels a bit.  We had two children, Colleen and Dennis.  Colleen has three children Haley (19) Danielle (17) and Dillon (15).  Haley takes after her grandfather, great grandfather and great great grandfather who were all accomplished musicians.  In fact she and my daughter traveled to Sweden to find her great great grandfather's grave. They found living realives there so I'm planning to go back with them possibly this sumner.  Danielle and my daughter Colleen are champion Irish Dancers.  They saw "Lord of the Dance" and that was all it took. Dillon is very artistic and loves to draw and build things.  He must take after my father who was an architect and built some homes in the Tacoma area.  He even built a boat in our back yard when I was in grade school.  My son Dennis has one child, Cody (10) who is also starting to take an interest in music.  We all live up here now.

From Sherrill TANDBERG Miller: I'm still in touch with Veronica (Martin) Durnin, Boyer.  She still lives and works in Tacoma.  After graduation she got married and moved away for a time and them moved back here.  She has four children, two girls and two boys.  She is very involved with her children and grandchildren.  She and her first husband divorced and she remarried.  She remained married to her second husband until he passed away a few years ago.  They did not have any children