I left Alamogordo High School in the spring of 1973. It had become increasingly obvious that I was not a very good teacher at all.

That summer, TV Cable of Space City hired me to be its Program Director for local origination programming. That job was eliminated after one year.

Jerry Watkins (I hope you remember him!) felt sorry for me and hired me to go to work at New Mexico School for the Visually Handicapped in the fall of 1974. I spent 21 years there, mostly as Director of Media Services. The role included being involved in cutting-edge technology for visually impaired students and establishing a statewide instructional resource center responsible for the identification, acquisition and sometimes actual production of alternate format materials, e.g. braille, large print and audio textbooks. I retired in 1995, but spent most of the next year working for the school's board of regents in conducting a nationwide search for someone to replace Jerry Watkins as superintendent.

I have proven to be good at retirement. Golf is on my agenda only six days a week. I used to be competitive, winning a few local tournaments and nailing down the solo spot from New Mexico in the 1998 U.S. Senior Amateur qualifier. Can't hit the ball out of my own shadow anymore, however.

JoAnn and I both read a lot (We each have Kindles and love them!) and still love to go on movie dates, often traveling to Las Cruces, El Paso, Albuquerque or Santa Fe to find a flick that probably won't make it to Alamogordo very soon at all.

A Honda Valkyrie motorcycle brought me back to that lifestyle last summer after having been away from the two-wheeled look at the world for about a decade. Love it yet again. A friend who rides a Harley joined me on a ride to Big Bend National Park in early March. I fantasize about longer trips into the West, but most often I just get on and take a ride around the perimeter of Alamogordo and perhaps into La Luz and back to the house. Sometimes, JoAnn gets on the back to join me in a ride up into the nearby mountains.

We just returned a week ago from our first-ever cruise taking the Inland Passage to Alaska. Still recovering from sensory and culinary overload.

Larry Clark, Ray Vincent and I used to irritate Faye Lee tremendously by tossing around a small rubber football in the hallway during the part of the lunch period before students were allowed back upstairs. She somehow surmised that we were less than totally serious about our jobs.

Truthfully though, I remember being often engaged by minds and spirits in this class far superior to mine. So many of you taught me much more than I ever taught anyone. Thank you. The times of the very early 70s were most interesting ones to be alive. It will be a hoot for me to learn at the reunion where some of your minds have traveled since then.