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Bea Findlay
When I left Muir (a
hundred years ago now) I moved to Sacramento and attended Sacramento State
College, as a theatre arts major, for three and a half years. Six months from
graduation I headed back to Southern California and went to work for Knottís
Berry Farm singing rag-time on the medicine wagon in the square next to the
saloon. There I met my future husband who was a "train robber." We
married and had two children, Jeffrey and Stacy. The marriage lasted 9 years and
the kids were forever. They both turned out well with my daughter living in
Norfolk, VA with her husband and four sons and my son is now living in Aspen, CO
with his second wife (his HS sweetheart) and her two children and his daughter.
He has 3 sons living in Idaho with their mother.
After leaving my husband and Southern California I moved to Hawaii where I lived with my kids while working as a district manager for Avon Cosmetics. Great job, just hated Hawaii. After two years in Hawaii, (where I did certify as a scuba diver), I moved back to California and Santa Monica where I worked as a sales rep for Proctor and Gamble then as a manager for Shasta Beverages and then as a manager for a large restaurant chain.
In 1981 my daughter joined the Navy and in 1982 my son married and I moved to Juneau, Alaska. From the first, I was involved in theatre and tourism, then singing at the "Ore House" for a show in the summer for seven years, then performing on the cruise ships and traveling to Hawaii to perform at the Sheraton Waikiki one summer. I have worked in retail both sales and management, driven a tour bus, done various shows, etc. No grass growing under my feet ;-)).
In 1992, I left Juneau
and moved for a short period to Skagway, Alaska and then on to Homer, Alaska.
From Homer, I joined a Christian Theatre Company called Covenant Players and
toured the U.S., Mexico and South America for five years. I returned to Alaska
in 1966 living in Sitka, Haines and have been back in Juneau for he past two
years. Last year I joined the Juneau Marching Band as a bass drummer and ended
up as the drum major for the
4th of July parade (a two and a half-mile parade down Main
Street) then of to another community across the bridge for a second parade. I
think I may be he worldís oldest drum major! And I loved it. My last parade
before hat had been in 1956. 
I have two very cute
doxies (Bark-ley and Virginia) and most recently purchased an 800 cc BMW
motorcycle on eBay. It is beautiful and I hope to hit the road in the next two
years traveling the U.S. on my bike with a sidecar for my dogs. I have managed
to stay in touch with many of my Muir friends and now I can contact even more of
you on this site. Anyone wanting to travel by motorcycle with me can let me
know. I am looking for a traveling companion . . . see you at the 50th
reunion in í06.
Bea
John
Kerr
The summer of '56 was
busy one for me. I was trying to
avoid getting serious about going off to college; while, at the same time hiding
my car racing activities from my folks. My
dad wanted me to go into architecture. I wanted to go in to art, race sports cars, hang out in jazz
clubs, and chase wild, wild women. I
was able to convince my parents that I should go to UCLA for basics (and I'd
sneak some art classes in). I was
absolutely turned off by the huge classes (I think my English class numbered in
the hundreds). I dropped out within
a couple of weeks; and ran over to Pasadena City College (PCC).
That winter, I
inadvertently won a place (can't remember if it was win, place or show) at a
race at Willow Springs (a most miserable place northwest of Lancaster).
I guess I left before the trophies were given out (I think, up in the
High Desert, you could count the number of teeth in the head of the Trophy Girls
on your left hand). They sent the trophy to the house in Linda Vista. My Mom
opened it and showed it to my dad. The
roof, indeed, fell in. I was on my
way to the School of Architectural Engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo (SLO).
In the winter of 1957,
there were no women at Cal Poly. We
had to run down to UC at Santa Barbara to find the nifty dollies (fathers of San
Luis Obispo girls were known to threaten Poly men with mayhem should the
students give a look at their daughters). San Luis Obispo, in those days, was the end of the line.
I was in exile.
I wanted to fly, and
didn't want to be drafted, so joined the Navy Air Reserve out of Los Alamitos
NAS. I didn't know Bill; but, I was
going to try to pull a "Clinton" (at that time I was a wild, red
bearded, ultra-left wing radical). I
enrolled in the Navy Reserve Officer Training (NROTC).
I think they gave me $50 a month if I read their stuff and attended
meetings. I worked a deal with the
Navy so that I could be attached to an Electronics outfit at the SLO airport.
That worked out dandy as long as I showed up for meetings.
As I was between two
Naval Districts, I was able to work both sides against the middle for a long
time. I figured that I could work
the scam forever,
escaping active duty.
Then, and this is where "Slick Willie" did it better than I;
when pressed, I was going to tell them I'd had enough time in the reserves, and
say, "I never did like you guys!"
After about six years of the nonsense, they, the Navy, in cooperation
with those ultraconservative, right-wingers at Cal Poly; called me in and issued
me the ultimatum. "You finish
up your degree; and get outta here!" The
Navy added, "or you'll be chipping paint on a garbage skow at Hampton
Roads" (Kennedy and his buddies hadn't gotten Viet Nam started yet). I did
just that.
After months of
retraining, I ended up with a fat posting to Washington D.C. Real V.I.P. duty. I
was the only reservist in the unit. I
later was to learn that a reservist, for the most part, was considered a pariah.
I lived with 5 other pretenders in a townhouse in Georgetown, right
across from the University's main gate. We
were the only men on the block. The
place was infested with congressional secretaries and airline stewardi. We wore uniforms so seldom that, when there was a cocktail
party, I rented my dress blues or whites.
For me, it didn't last
long. I was a westerner.
To the eastern blue bloods, the only thing worse than a westerner, is a
Midwesterner. I first was sent up
to Fort Holabird, in Baltimore. It
seems that "The Skipper," the true Harvard man that he was, thought
the Intelligence Orientation course was for 12 months, rather than 12 weeks (or
something like that). So, like a
bad skin disease, I was back. I
wasn't to last long in paradise. Within
months I had orders to the Far East.
We were thrust into
John Kennedy's, McGeorge Bundy"s, and Robert McNamara's secret war.
Actually, most of the hot stuff they had going was up in Laos; with the
exception of the little matter of the assassination of Diem and his
brother-in-law down in Saigon. Through
all this and the experience in D.C., I went from a wild-eyed liberal (I voted
for Kennedy) to an arch-conservative. I
was somewhat fortunate, though; my range, most of the time, took me from Japan
to Korea to Okinawa to the Philippines and up to Hong Kong; with an occasional
trip to Vientiane. I spent a lot of
time in Korea; and, later in Vientiane.
I got out of the
service in 1966, married my college sweetheart; and, after "kicking
around" a bit in So Cal, I came back to San Luis Obispo.
I worked, albeit briefly, as a flight engineer for the old Western
Airlines; but with the furloughs and fear of WAL's looming bankruptcy, I went to
work as a stockbroker. Using what
finance acumen I'd acquired, I began to put businesses together, run them, and
then sell them. This proved quite profitable, allowing me to go off and do what
I wanted to do.
An old buddy of mine
from WAL, who became the Chief Pilot for a regional airline, talked me into
coming to work for him. I flew out
of Salt Lake City for about seven years. My
bride of near 30 years was diagnosed with breast cancer; so I quit the
foolishness of flying the tourists into places like Jackson's Hole every night;
and ministered to her in her final illness.
She died November 22, 1996.
As, one usually does
with such a loss, I guess I over compensated; and threw myself into the bizarre
hobbies of antique aircraft (although I did have one for many years) and fast
cars (of which I hadn't done in near forty years).
I think somewhere in the website there maybe photos of these atrocious
contrivances.
So here I am. I tell my friends and relatives that I'm falling back in time. I think I've slipped all they way back to the '50s.
Click Here for John's Photographs
John can be reached at: Kerrav8tr@aol.com
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