Hard to compose these notes as I watch CNN airing the tragedy unfolding in NOLA and the Gulf Coast.  Thankfully, GORDON and JULIE MARSH are safe in Baton Rouge: “JULIE and I are safe in Baton Rouge with our two daughters who are both expecting and due in September.  But that is the only good news!  Other than one truck and 5 days of cloths plus a few vital documents, we lost everything.  Our house was flooded with 8 ft of water due to over topping of the London Canal by UNO during the initial surge.  I don't expect to be able to go back in and salvage any durable items for two or three weeks.  And have no idea when if ever we will start rebuilding  Also after seeing the stack of sail boats at west end park, I have no expectation that my 38' hunter located at south shore marina survived.”  If you want to make a donation to help, consider contacting Coast Guard Mutual Assistance <www.cgmahq.org> or the Red Cross <www.redcross.org>.  With our thoughts and prayers with the thousands of victims, the Court will come to order.

Good news...BILL PHILLIPS has reported around from Phoenix: “I guess that I have pretty well lost touch with most of our classmates, but I haven't forgotten, although my memory is getting so that it's hard to remember what I had for lunch yesterday! I'm glad that you took the trouble to find me and you had good information; I work for the City of Phoenix and I'm in the middle of implementing a new public safety radio system for Police, Fire and municipal services. That project is why it took me so long to respond, we have been going through a pretty intense period for the past few weeks (years actually but the past few weeks have been particularly busy).”  BILL must be really busy as I’m still waiting for my Classmate to provide a beefed up update, Sir!

AL GRACEWSKI’s response to what’s new? “NADA (and that is not the National Automotive Dealers Association).  Only interesting thing is that SUZANNE and I went over to the WENDETTI home this past week for dinner and had a great time catching up, drinking wine, and eating a fine meal. ROB and NANCY are doing great.  ROB is driving his BMW motorcycle to Palo Alto where he is consulting on some project for Stanford University.  He is technically retired, but is working 3 days a week there.  We plan to have them out in the Bertram in the near future.”  NADA really isn’t true as AL also sent in a couple of great photos.  “The first is a graduation shot of my son Nate's graduation from Virginia Tech.  People in the photo from right to left are:  Captain Al, Grandma Gracewski, son Nathan, SUZANNE, and daughter Jessica.  Now I can start paying the house mortgage down!  The second was taken during a San Francisco Officers Association get together which coincided with the Flag Conference in the South Bay area...MARIO, SUZANNE, CAPT AL, NANCY, PAM & THADMIRAL.  Note that I am able to wear our CGA BlazerÖsaved all these yearsÖ.but alas am not able to button it up anymore!”

ROGER COURSEY reports that SUSAN is still taking real good care of him.  His knee is doing pretty good, all things considered.  ROGER says he now has about 95 degrees of flexion.   

CONGRATULATIONS to Grand Champion AL DUJENSKI!  “After a close 3rd in Poulsbo, I managed to finally take a Grand Champion in BBQ at Black Diamond. The fella with me (Steve) was first time cooking with the old master. This old body just can't take the wear and tear so it was good to retire from the BBQ circuit with a big win.  No I don't smoke but Steve had some Dominican cigars and felt like a good time to celebrate.”  AL provides a little more beef to update: “Steve is a friend of my son's. I got him hooked when my son and Steve and I went to Poulsbo and they got 4th in chicken (first time cooking) and I missed out of 2nd by 1 point.  At Black Diamond we cooked ribs, chicken, tri-tip, and homemade sausage and also competed in chili competition. We managed 1st in tritip, 2nd in chicken, 4th in Ribs,
6th in Sausage, and 3rd in chili.  In Poulsbo, I got a little distracted teaching the boys the ins and outs of BBQ, but still took 1st in tritip, 4th in chicken, 6th in ribs and 7th in sausage. I learned you can't lose focus and have found using Kobe beef (which is better than prime) tough to lose.  I still work about 50 hours a week for the insurance brokerage as their safety guru and working out of the home about 3 days a week.”  Maybe we can coerce AL to do a pregame BBQ for our 35th?

More CONGRATULATIONS, this time to new Grandpa TOM RUMMEL.  “Last week, while I was out stomping the mountains of Virginia at Boy Scout camp, this little guy showed up in Newport News. He's Nathan Alan Rummel, born July 21, 2005. Weighed in at 8 lbs, 11 ozs and was 22 inches tall. Mom, Kelly, & dad, Erik are doing nearly as well as I am.  He is Numero Uno. Know I'm behind lots of others when it comes to grandkids. Being the oldest man in the class, I'll attribute it to the slow learning skills I exhibited in my first SWAB year.  Erik, only son & oldest, is a police officer in the city of Hampton and Mom, Kelly, will return to being a juvenile probation officer for Newport News in a few months. Different jurisdictions otherwise it could be a family business.  Gretchen, #2 - oldest daughter is a surgical tech in Killeen, TX to be near her true love at Ft Hood.  Lauren, #3, is still at home and going to Old Dominion and working on an elementary education degree. Maybe she can help me.”

PASTOR STAN is alive and well.  “SUE and I have not fallen off the end of the earth, but, as they say, you can see it from here.  We are firmly established as the pastoral family of a wonderful congregation of about 150 saints and sinners in the Willapa Valley of Pacific County at the southwestern tip of Washington.  Our parsonage is an old farmhouse on a working cattle farm that SUE has already turned into a home.  As you can see, we actually have high-speed internet into the house.  After graduation from Fuller Seminary on June 4th, we headed for Texas and Florida.  We spent about a week in Houston with our oldest son Derek and his family and then continued on to Florida for a week with my Mom.  The Spirit is indeed at work here in the Valley.  Our worship attendance has nearly tripled since we got here and we had 52 kids attend Vacation Bible School.  We are also keeping up with the bills and hope to be self-sufficient by the end of the year.  SUE is taking the summer “off,” but she is very busy in the church and the community.  This is small town, rural, ministry at its best!  For example, with the help of five friends in Tacoma we loaded our household in a rental truck and trailer on June 29th.  It took all day.  When we arrived here on June 30th, a crew of sixteen was on hand to unload the truck and trailer in an hour, and then serve lunch.”

JIM RIESZ sends in an update: “My oldest daughter is back in school learning to be an Arabic linguist.  She has pretty much completed the education requirement, spent 3 months in an emersion class, and uses Arabic on her PC instead of English.  In fact, she claims to not remember English, so I can't understand a word she says!  The good news there is that if she's asking for money, I don't know it!  My youngest (Holly) and last daughter (I have only 2) works for Wi-Fi in Las Vegas as a compliance officer for cell phone towers... a growing business with a bright future.  Both of them are career oriented, so no grandkids. My wife, CINDY, and I are doing great.  We live just outside the beltway in the Springfield area, and anyone passing through is welcome.  We have 5 bedrooms, so there we have space.  I purchased a Prius last year, and with gasoline prices it was absolutely the right choice in vehicles.  I think I've become a hybrid snob.  We play golf and like to play different courses, so the car comes in handy.  The DC metro area is really very close to Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.  If it wasn't for the traffic and summer heat, I think I'd retire here.  But, looking ahead (way, way, ahead), we just purchased 2.4 acres on the top of a mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee for our retirement home.  Unfortunately, it will be a few years before we start building.  I work at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and last year I was appointed to the Official Staff.  I am now the Assistant Director for Technology Support and Compliance.  I hope to stay in good health, and in the not too distant future to start squandering the kids inheritance.”

AL told us about dinner at the WENDETTI’s, now MARIO provides an update: “I did in fact retire from the Univ. of California on April 1 of this year.  Two weeks later I was restless but opportunities presented themselves.  (By the way, it took Nancy only one week to get restless.  Read below.)  I got a series of consulting jobs with Stanford University, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and even a small job back at Berkeley Lab.  Now I have to learn to say no or what's a retirement for?  You might be amused to know that between my first and second consulting jobs with Stanford, I had a nice dinner with the director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.  As we thanked him for dinner and said good night, he turned to NANCY and said "We plan on asking your husband to come back for a few more projects.  I hope you don't mind."  NANCY’s reaction?  Well, she was somewhat reserved but I know on the inside she was doing an end-zone celebration.  'Yes, yes, yes!"  she thought to herself.  I think I saw her pumping her fists.  Evidently, she can only take me in the proper dose (she's not alone).  (By the way, does that phrase ring a bell with any of you with Conn. College spouses out there?)  My presence in the house was, well, a little more than she had planned on this early in our lives.  We've had fun having Heidi home for a couple of months this summer.  She goes back to school at the end of August.  Her main squeeze Kris came out to visit for about a week and for once, there was male companionship in the house.  (Even our dog is a female.)  Nice.  Heidi and NANCY have taught a zillion swimming lessons this summer at our house so September will see a real decline in activity.  Also nice.  WENDETTI can claim a few personal accomplishments.  Breaking clay still makes my day and I did fairly well in the California State Skeet Championships.  This is a sport where you need to bust 100 in a row and I kept falling a bird or two short.  But, I did take first in the Retired Military category in three events - Doubles, 12 gauge, and 20 gauge.  My goal next year is to qualify for the zone 7 (western states) Retired Military All-American team.  A lofty goal to be sure, but goals must exceed our grasp our what's a heaven for?”

DAVE HENRICKSON is still exiled in Australia.  “I'm not sure of the end of sentence date and frankly, I'm not pushing for one. The country's beautiful, wine unbeatable, food outstanding, sheilas and blokes - easy to get along with ... and the company pays me too.  I think we're out of the drought for the season anyway ... it's been wet in most areas and probably saved a lot of farmers and ranchers from losing everything. But these folks are resilient ... real scrappers.  Just got back from a week in Vanuatu - part of the visa requirement to leave every three months. Can't complain too much about that either.”

Wonder if the Sharon Cooperative Bank is still standing?  Why?  After literally years of persistent cajoling, STEVE and BETTY ANN DECESARE finally took a vacation to visit Casa de Swedberg and the great Pacific Northwest.  Couldn’t get him to change his watch to “real” time or to turn off the cell phone, but we had a great time showing off our part of the country.  Did all the stuff...Snoqualmis waterfall, Seattle underground, wineries, brewery, Mount Rainier, and even a long day trip to Victoria.  Mount Rainier was amazing.  MARY JANE was able to get off on Tuesday and wouldn’t you know it...overcast and cloudy.  Couldn’t be Seattle in August?  Real low lying clouds...couldn’t see any of the mountains around us and certainly not Mount Rainier.  It must be clean living...as we headed south and got just east of Mount Rainier it got brighter out.  A few miles further south and the sun came out and we saw blue skies.  A few miles further and there was Mount Rainier.  We enjoyed a great picnic at Paradise and then headed home in sunshine.  Really couldn’t have been a better experience, made even more so from the dreary and pessimistic way the day started!  The trip to Victoria 2 days later was eerily similar.  We left at about 0600 and there was considerable ground fog almost the whole trip north to the Tsawwassen ferry.  Timing was great and we virtually drove onto the ferry.  Hour and a half later and we’re driving to Butchart Gardens.  Temperature perfect...mid 70s and a bright sunny day.  The gardens are truly spectacular.  We had a wonderful lunch there and then headed to the Empress and had a little libation in the Bengal Room.  Then the ferry across to Port Angeles and a great sunset crossing the Straits of Juan de Fuca.  An hour drive to the ferry back to Seattle...with a beautiful full moon suspended over the city.  For a final night, dinner at the Space Needle.  And again clean living...got there just before a gorgeous sunset over the Olympic Mountains and then just as we made our 1st revolution and were facing east, a huge golden moon rose over the Cascades.  Couldn’t pay for a better advertisement of the Pacific Northwest...or buy a better vacation experience!”

Before adjourning, once again consider making a donation to support Hurricane Katrina relief efforts to the Red Cross or Coast Guard Mutual Assistance.  We’re adjourned.