T-Ball Competition!

I had never played T-ball before, so I had no idea what it was until someone told me that it was a variation of baseball for players who were too young to play with the regular settings. They put a ball on a stick (that is the "T") and, since the ball is stationary, it is much easier to hit for the young boys. This perhaps is only played in the US, as the parents here could not wait for their boys to play their favorite game and thus they invented a variation so their sons could start to play. Of course, Steven started to play as soon as he was of the age he could join. Steven was the fourth from left in the top picture and seventh from left in the second top picture.  We had all the equipment and uniforms, I had no idea if they would win or lose, but they had a ball!

 

Chinese Students

Over the years we had quite a number of foreign students coming to the Chemistry Department and other Departments at ETSU to study. In the early years, from 1971 and lasting for a little more than a decade, we had many Taiwanese students on campus. They usually used our home as their their gathering center. They came to play at our place or to hike with me on the weekends. We had cook-outs for them sometimes, and they enjoyed playing games with our kids. And of course, they came to our home to introduce us to their relatives when they came for their graduation. In the picture below, it was Shireley and her mother coming to visit us after the ceremony. Shireley had often baby-sat with our kids, so they knew her very well!

Dancing Lessions

 Margaret started her dancing lessons in the fall of 1978. It was at the Bowman Dancing School on Unaka Avenue. She enjoyed it very much. She went there a couple of times a week and learned some basic dancing steps. And once a session they had a performance and we went there to support her effort. She quit the dancing school only when she joined the cheer-leading group at University School. The pictures below were taken with her in costume in the spring of 1979.

Birthday Celebration!

Margaret’s 10th birthday celebration was a very happy event for the whole family. Both the Fernald grandparents were here in Johnson City for the event. And Margaret had her favorite chocolate cake on the day.Of course, Grandpa was taking pictures! It was a very beautiful day with the dogwood trees in full bloom. Later Grandpa went to have a bicycle ride, and the next thing we saw was his fall. Followed by Margaret running to the rescue. Nothing serious, all was well!

Chemistry Department Party

During the Christmas Holidays we had another party, one which we   continued to have for more than two decades: the Chemistry Department Christmas Party. That first year, we did not have the whole department in our home, but invited only those who had supported me and agreed with my points of view! We had a relaxed and fun get-together. The group picture below is very good. It includes Larry and Joann Miller, Boris and Betty Franzus,  Jeff and Brenda Wardeska, Bill and Susan Campbell, and us. And I like the T-shirt that I was wearing with the words “Teachers have class”!

Johnson City Civic Chorale

Bob Lapella started the Civic Chorale early in 1973. He asked the singers he knew, and some he recruited, to form a loose group of people who enjoyed singing. In the Fall of 1976, I was elected as the president of the group. With the help of a Johnson City Lawyer, John Goodin, we started the application process to have the Chorale   officially registered as a non-profit organization. In 1978, we did became official, so our donations would, from then on, be non-taxable for our supporters. We had a Chorale party during the holidays in 1978 and Janice worked hard to make it successful. Quite a number of the original chorale members were there, some of whose names I no longer remember! Besides Bob LaPella, there were John Dowd and his wife, Anne, Judy Nickell, Anita Crawford, and Harry Keuper, as well as many others. 

Christmas is for Friends

As usual, Christmas is for friends.  The Christmas Holidays have enough days for friends to travel longer distances to visit, to share happy days, to renew lost memories,to tell new stories, and to catch up on lost events. Right after Christmas, 1978, Kai and her roommate, Rosanna Chan at the University of Kentucky, came to visit. This was Kai’s last year in the Biochemistry Department at UK. They both were quite a bit more relaxed and we had a great time together. The following pictures recorded our relaxed  moments together! Yes, they looked so young in these pictures!

Christmas, 1978

We usually had a lot of friends or relatives coming to our home on Christmas day, but  in 1978 we did not have any visitors at home.  Our children opened their gifts and we took our official Christmas pictures together. It was unusual, but very nice. Our dog, Princess, was very happy to be part of our celebration and we had the official picture taken with her in it. That was one good feature. As we did not have to worry about how to arrange a lot of people in the picture, the dog could be included. The tree we had that year was one which we cut down on our Fall Branch property. What do you think? These pictures were scanned from slides, clearly some of them were washed out quite a bit and very tough to regenerate back to normal!.

Chemistry Department Politics

Where there are human beings, there is politics. In a society of intelligent people, there will be different points of view, there would be conflicts, and these would result in  some “give and take”. And, good or bad, politics would be there to sort out “the best outcome”. After Dr. Nicholson retired in early 1978, his choice for a replacement for his position as Chair of the Department of Chemistry, Dr. Robert Snell, was vetoed by the University administration. The chair position was temporarily occupied by Dr. Richard Kopp, who was thought to have no conflicts with any members of the Department. I was on the search committee for an external chair. Just before the Christmas vacation, we were told that the University did not have enough funds for an external search and we had to change direction and search internally. Another committee would be formed. I resigned from the old search committee and seriously considered becoming a candidate for the chair of the Department. This event caused a big loud explosion at the time for everyone in the Department, even though everything in the Department still went on as if nothing had happened. Students still met in the lab doing their experiments, went to their classes, took their quizzes, etc. Who could imagine that this would be the biggest turning point of the Department. The picture below was my vacuum line, it gave me stability and some calmness when I needed!

A long week-end in Nashville

We do not remember the exact date, but we have some pictures to prove that the four of us spent a very nice weekend in Nashville. Apparently we drove to Nashville, and visited the Hermitage first, including Uncle Alfred’s Log Cabin and Museum. Then we spent at least one full day at Opry Land, USA, which was a smaller version of Disneyworld located at that time in Nashville. Our children enjoyed all kinds of rides there, and we attended some concerts as well. Music was a primary focus of Opry Land. We had very nice weather that weekend, but it was a bit on the cold side.

Elaine and Rolf Haug

Elaine was in the Brown Chorus with Janice. Rolf and Elaine were married in the summer of 1977 and they had settled in Rolf’s home country, Norway. In the Fall of 1978, they came to visit the USA. Liz Nowlin, who was a classmate of Elaine and Janice at Brown, and Janice made arrangements to meet Elaine’s new husband at Liz’s place in Maryland. On a beautiful Fall weekend Janice and I drove up without our children to have a mini-reunion. We visited Annapolis, MD, including the Maryland State House, and enjoyed a very nice day outdoors. It was the first time for us to meet Rolf, and it was the start of our longtime relationship for many years to follow. Rolf was learning  the rules of American Football for the first time then, along with myself, who was not much better about the rules!