CLASS
OF
Catalina High School, Tucson, Arizona, USA
Your
Humble
Webmaster
Writes...
Winter, 2007
It's great to be back.
In May we sold our retail stores in Nevada and in August, 2007 I moved back to Tucson. I was away for 42 years.
In 1965 I graduated from the U of A. I put myself through school by disc jockeying at KTKT radio. After getting my diploma I decided to start up the ladder to broadcast management and that meant moving to Phoenix and starting in our sister station's sales department. I packed my car and U-Haul trailer with a few sticks of furniture and my new, pregnant wife, and waved goodbye to the Old Pueblo, off to make my fortune in the big city.
After 7 years in Phoenix radio and TV it finally dawned on me that I would just never make it working for somebody else. I guess as an only child I just couldn't stand to have anybody tell me what to do. The politics of corporate advancement were things I just couldn't understand. So, I quit, started the first of a bunch of different businesses, left Phoenix for Nevada in 1993 and....yada, yada, yada, now I'm back.
The wife is gone and the U-Haul trailer turned into a Penske truck, but other than that nothing else has changed.
My Dad still lives here...just a few blocks away. He's 91 and can take care of me in my declining years.
When I left here, Tucson had a population of 200,000. Now it's 800,000. But, it seems the same. Still as charming as it once was. I bet you guys who stayed here don't appreciate what you've got. It takes a few years in Phoenix and Las Vegas (both have turned into mini-Los Angeleses) to REALLLLY love Tucson.
It almost feels like I never even left. I have coffee once a week with my old KGUN-TV boss Larry Schnebly and a group of other old geezers from the media-past. Jack Parris, Bob Lee, Art Waller, Jake Crellin, Jim Arnold, Jack Jacobson (remember Dr. Scar?). Burt Schneider and I are still buddies and have frequent discussions eschewing the state of broadcasting. I still see Frank and George Kalil. I took my dad to a U of A basketball game and I saw some familiar faces: Nate Foster, Jim Sakrison, Pete Hand, and Mike Nagle.
And, there are a zillion connections. Serving dinner at Christmas to the homeless at the Salvation Army, I discovered that a fellow server was Cathy Burneo's sister Marilyn. Bert Roberts called me up to just say hi the other day. I could go on and on.
It's just great to be back home.
I live in the Oro Valley area, but I am always up for a cup of Starbucks anywhere in town. Give me a call: (520) 797-2405.
Ray LIndstrom
Your Humble Webmaster
PS: Don't forget, I need your continuing input for maintaining this website. Let me know what you're doing.
July 2, 2019
Dear Classmates,
I've been meaning to write for a long time...finally the ink is coming out of my pen. Did you still have inkwells in desks when you started grade school? I remember that. Wow, lots of stuff has changed since then.
This website has been active now for 15 years. If you haven't looked at it lately...why not go through it...it's full of great stuff, things maybe you have forgotten, and who knows how long it will be here. The service I use for creating this has changed their format and made it difficult to add and change things. I still try, but it is not as easy or as fun as it once was.
And the content is not pouring in as it once was either. Mostly I get notices of classmates passing on. Actually, I find out usually way after the fact. Like Patty Odom yesterday. She and I worked at Channel 9 television together in 1960-61. She married a friend of mine, a director Frank Bezila, later divorced. Yesterday I had contact with her son Erik and asked about his mother. He reported that she passed away 3 years ago. Hence, a new bulletin line in our front page. Things like that happen quite often.
I really like to post stories about what our classmates are up to these days. If you have things like that, send me a note. We had a terrific class and many have had rewarding careers and now find themselves in various Halls of Fame. If you hear about a classmate receiving an award, let me know. Did you know that Barry McCoy, Pete Ronstadt, Dave Giles and Paul Hazen are all in the Catalina High school Hall of Fame? Yup.
Anyway, I like doing this site and will keep it up. I'm in good health and hope to keep it up to date for a good long time, at least for another 23 years until I turn 100.
Ray Lindstrom, Your Humble (LOL) Webmaster
PS: If you never got a copy of my recent book; FEARLESS! Confessions of A Serial Entrepreneur, just drop a note with your current mailing address to raythewatchman@aol.com. I'll see that the publisher, Varberg Press, sends you a complimentary (FREEE!) copy of the hardcover version, 326 pages, $28.95
It's gotten good reviews. Part of it is about the early days in Tucson and at CHS. I think you'll enjoy it.
January 23, 2023
Dear Classmates,
I’ve been doing this website now for almost 20 years. As had my friend Jack Wojnowski been for his website for the class of 1958. He did a terrific job; his site was filled with class news, reunion photos and info, memories of days gone by and the like. We both started out doing our sites around the same time and we were learning the ins and outs of being a webmaster. We shared ideas and tips. We linked to each other’s site.
Last week, I was checking my site links and clicked on chs1958.com. It was gone. Disappeared. What I feared happened turned out to be true. I checked legacy.com, an obituary site. Jack died in December, 2022, a month ago.
Jack was 82, a year older than me, actually most of us ‘59ers. In addition to being saddened by my friends demise, I also thought, “What a shame, all of his good work on the website…all that information he had collected the past 20 years, all those great pictures, everything he posted, gone.” Because when you stop paying for the program and the domain, which we all do, it ends. And, that’s what happened.
It made me think about this site and what we have here. I no longer have to worry about being shot by an angry husband (rimshot) or a fall whilst climbing the Matterhorn. But, at this age, anything can happen. Renee has threatened several times to poison me or bludgeon me while sleeping. Just kidding, she’s too sweet for that even though it would be well deserved.
If something were to happen to me, this website would disappear.
BUT WAIT, THERE IS A SOLUTION…AND HERE IT IS!
There is a website called https://archive.org/ They have what is called the Wayback Machine. For years they have been copying virtually every website on the internet. Just go there, put the name of the website you are looking for in the search box, in our case CHS1959.com. Up pops a calendar page for every year from when we started in 2004 until now.
Incredible. So, we may expire, but our website goes on and on for classmates and future generations to enjoy.
You can go there directly by clicking here: https://web.archive.org/web/20221001000000*/chs1959.com
In our links section of our website, I will put this info along with Jack’s archived site for chs1958. If you know folks from that class, be sure to alert them to that fact.
So, that’s it. I plan to be around for a long time. My dad lasted until he was almost 97. While my lifestyle was more like Keith Richards than him, I think genes go a long way. But, still, one never knows.
Hope you will continue to enjoy our class site and be sure to notify me of any special news you want posted.
Sincerely, Your Humble Webmaster
Ray
