Dee Cumple
December 11, 2008
In my last post I asserted that the name David C. Ayers is listed with the sailors lost when the U.S.S. Arizona sank at Pearl Harbor. I stumbled across a WW II information web site that allows searching of the names engraved on the memorial roster. There is even a photograph of the name on the marble slab.
The listing actually says “Ayers, D. C.”, while my infallible mind’s eye registered “Ayers, David C.”. The sailor man (woman?) lost was Ayers, Dee Cumple, which at least is a lot more unusual. I’m thinking about changing my middle name from Charles to Cumple in an attempt to salvage a tiny bit of believability.
Dave, who finds these confessions so wearing.
Another Sunday, 67 years ago
December 7, 2008
On Sunday, December 7, 1941, I was a ten-year-old playing in the front yard of our home in Hutchinson, Kansas, when Mom called me inside to listen to the radio. I’m not sure just how much of what I was hearing sunk in, but I knew that something terrible had happened from the manner of Mom and Dad.
The story of events leading up to that day has been chronicled many times, but the classic historical account was written in 1981 by Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. I have been stimulated to re-read it a number of times, and I’m getting the urge to do so again. From the book cover:
The late Gordon W. Prange, Professor of History at the University of Maryland, spent thirty-seven years preparing his book. He knew more about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor than any other person. As former Chief of the Historical Section in Japan under General MacArthur, he interviewed virtually every surviving Japanese officer who took part in the Pearl Harbor operation. He also interviewed every important U.S. source.
During a visit to Honolulu in the 1990s, we toured the Arizona Memorial. The image above is from a brochure we brought back and lists some of the grim statistics. On the list of names of crew members who lost their lives that Sunday morning was a seaman named David C. Ayers. I have not tried to see if there is a family connection, but I probably should.
Dave, having no trouble remembering that Sunday 67 years ago.
More on the four bears
November 26, 2008
On November 21, I rashly promised to opine about how the global economy got so screwed up that it is causing a lot of pain. I’m not smart enough, so I won’t try to analyze and explain. What I can do, perhaps, is to look at things from a more personal level since it is on that level that we must try to weather the storm.
What storm? Me worry?
In case you aren’t feeling the wind and the rain just yet, here is the kind of a storm I am talking about. It is a storm that is making itself felt at many levels. It causes anxiety about the dependability of our sources of income, and this concern unconsciously ripples down to mundane things like making us picky while grocery shopping, causing us to cut back on travel plans, chop the Christmas gift budget. Some of us are getting the queasy feeling that life suddenly isn’t quite as rosy as it seemed last week and not as secure.
Is this just Y2K all over again? Don’t I wish I knew! You won’t find the answer in this little essay, but the financial pain we all feel may well get worse before it gets better.
Having stated the obvious (I’m pretty good at that), what constructively can I add? Here are some points that occur to me:
Either there is a God firmly in control of the world of government and finance, or there is not. If you lean, as I do, on the authority of the Bible on such matters, you can take comfort in the fact that He is definitely the God of presidents-elect and investment bankers as well as of simple folk, far-fetched as that may seem during these turbulent times. Read Romans 13:1-7, swallow hard, and believe.
The alternative is the terrible helpless feeling that comes from concluding that we are just victims of our fate, so quit your bellyaching. My faith just isn’t strong enough to believe that.
However, that gray mass between our ears is there for a purpose, and it still is helpful to look at the evidence and try to draw our own conclusions. It’s probably not oversimplification to conclude that our dwindling finances are the partly the result of the fear and greed of a handful of people we trusted to know better. Download and read The End to see what I mean.
The Great Depression and All That
If you will humor me for a moment, there may be some helpful lessons from the past that I can dredge up. I can just barely claim to have lived through the Great Depression. I was born in 1931, I am told, and since the Depression didn’t really end until the early 1940s, a few of my early memories may provide a clue about what may be ahead for us. (Or not, as the case may be.)
In the early 1940s, we lived on the north edge of Topeka, Kansas, not too far from the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe tracks leading into the Topeka train-yard. Hobos were still riding the rails as the last victims of high unemployment during the Depression, and my brothers and I would now and then find the remains of their campfires in the woods between our house and the tracks. (We never found a real live hobo, to our disappointment.) Do you suppose we might be in for another time of very high unemployment?
My best guess is that such deep unemployment will not be repeated this time around. Hasn’t president-elect Obama just said that he would give consumer spending “a jolt?” Don’t the majority of consumers already work for Uncle Sam? I’m a consumer and I’m quite willing to be jolted into spending like crazy. (no pride, here!)
“Jolt” the money supply is exactly what President Roosevelt did not do after he was elected in 1934, but I hear that we are all Keynesians now, which may mean more of us will avoid layoffs. Or it may mean that the Inflation Monster is being uncaged, thereby increasing and spreading the financial pain.
A more important lesson, I believe, is that the Great Depression, proved that you and I and our neighbors are pretty darned tough when push comes to shove. Maybe, even in these days of hopping a bus to school or driving ourselves to work or depending on the County Market shelves to remain stocked 24/7, we will surprise ourselves with our resilience.
Will our paychecks continue non-stop? Will our Social Security checks always hit our bank accounts on time? We may be finding out soon.
I’m tempted to preach a bit at this point about the wisdom of “saving for a rainy day,” but I don’t dare, because I have never done that. I unaccountably got blessed way beyond reason with the right education and the right set of skills for my times. (Avoiding the draft helped. Choosing a frugal wife also helped. Frugal I am not!)
Relax – I’m about through.
Worldview, is the translation of the German word Weltanschauung, meaning how we look at the world and the culture around us. The original use of the term conveyed relativism, and was later introduced into Christian circles by neo-Calvinists thinkers like Abraham Kuyper, who argued
that Christians cannot counter the spirit of the age in which they live unless they develop an equally comprehensive biblical worldview – an outlook on life that gives rise to distinctive Christian forms of culture – with the important qualification that it is not merely the relativistic belief of a particular culture but is based on the very Word of God, true for all times and places.
A Christian worldview is a long term view that sees our present financial crisis as just another chapter in the human story. This, too, shall pass.
The secular worldview places its trust in people in high places for a quick fix.
More reading…
The Economist has some interesting things to say about personal and business savings in The End of the Affair and All You Need is Cash.
Then, to go along with The End, cited earlier, look at Worst of Times. On how the crisis is redrawing the boundaries between government and markets, read When Fortune Frowned.
Dave, which he is wondering how this will read in 5 years.
Bumper 2
October 1, 2008
In July, 1950, a new chapter in space flight began with the launch of Bumper 2 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Bumper 2 was a two-stage rocket with a V-2 missile base topped by a WAC Corporal rocket. The upper stage reached a record altitude of almost 400 kilometers. Those who have visited the modern Cape Canaveral should be interested in how it looked almost 60 years ago.
Seven years later, in response to Bumper 2 and friends, the Soviets launched Sputniks I and II. Our response to their response was to create NASA, 50 years ago today.
In 1950, Harry Truman was President, and I was a sophomore electrical engineering student at Kansas State College. In 1958 I became an engineer for Collins Radio Company (Now Rockwell Collins), provider of space communications for NASA. I wasn’t involved with the space program but contributed to the technology war with the Soviets with long-distance earth-bound radio communications.
Dave, A little spacey himself, at times.
Laughing Waters
September 29, 2008
Or, if you are an Osage Indian, hahatonka or, if you are at the Lake of the Ozarks, Ha Ha Tonka State Park. Here is an excellent site that tells all about this unique State Park. It is the location of Missouri’s eleventh largest spring, one that pumps out an average of 48 million gallons a day at a frigid 55 degrees all year round, more than enough to make the water downstream ripple and laugh. Here is what the spring looked like during a recent visit with daughter and son-in-law Linda and Kim Schmidt.
The spring feeds the Niangua arm of the Lake of the Ozarks. Another attraction at the Park is a ‘castle,’ perched at the top of a steep bluff some 316 steps and 200 feet above the spring. I just have to mention that this septuagenarian negotiated those steps without puffing, first down and then back up. Here is the castle as viewed from about halfway down the steps.
The castle was built of limestone blocks. The link above gives some of the details. The several buildings were built in the 1930s and destroyed by fire in 1942. Today, many of the blocks are still scarred by the fire. The view of the Ozark forest from the castle looks like this.
There are many nature trails for the hikers and naturalists. There can’t be many better ways to spend a fall day.
Dave
Temporarily immortal
August 4, 2008
Thanks to blogger Michael Kruse for pointing me to Into the sunset. It is about the new trend in end-of-life care and raises the question: “The idea that the terminally ill need pain relief and humane care care instead of “curing” is catching on. But what about the people who just grow old?”
In America, the hospice movement was founded in 1974 to deal with the pain relief and humane care of the terminally ill, but what about those who cannot be easily defined as “terminally ill?”
Yet for all its successes, the hospice movement faces challenges that will far outstrip the resources now dedicated to palliative care, even in the richest countries. Hospices are generally associated with cancer, where after a certain stage life expectancy is short and fairly predictable. But the current habit of treating people as “either temporarily immortal, or dying”—as Joanne Lynn, an American geriatrics expert, puts it—makes no sense when patients suffer chronic disease of the heart or lungs, or succumb slowly to dementia, or to general decay. An important category of people, already huge in the rich world and soon to grow in developing countries (see article), consists of elderly people who will never be well, but have no idea when they will die. There is no single answer: hospitals, nursing homes and family care will all play a role.
My mother- and father-in law were elderly folk who would never be well, but had no idea of when they would die. In God’s good time they finally met their end in nursing home beds, and they had good, compassionate care for the most part, but it’s still a hell of a way to die.
To all who are still young enough to shrug off this situation, that’s okay, but it’s becoming more of an attention-grabber for this gent in his 78th year. I was on the local hospital Board of Trustees when the first hospice was formed in my town, so I already have a healthy appreciation for the “live-and-let-die” convictions of hospice leaders. For those not familiar with hospices I commend this article.
Dave, not fearing death but a tad uneasy about the process.
Lake dreams
June 29, 2008
In the early eighties, when we time-shared a lake front condo near the Lodge of the Four Seasons at about the 13-mile marker, I would hop in the car early in the morning and drive a mile to the Four Seasons Village City Hall to start my morning jog. I would cover my 4 miles at a brisk ten minute mile pace. As I jogged along Cherokee Drive I dreamed of moving to the lake full time and living in a small, waterfront home with a dish on the roof for telecommuting to my office at Quintron Corporation, a company I helped found in 1969 and was sure that I would manage until I decided to retire. My dream home would look something like this.
Fast forward twenty years.
My daily walk at a not-so-brisk twenty minute mile pace now covers two miles on a good day. Its starting point is a 3rd level condo apartment in an obscene high rise on a raped hillside overlooking Sandpiper Cove at about the 2-mile marker.
What happened?
Well, such matters as an elevator to lake level and easier maintenance somehow bubbled up to the top of our priority list. So when decision time came, we signed for the condo with a wistful last thought of what-might-have-been and didn’t look back.
It was a wise decision. I have my bass boat cradled on its lift below our condo, only a few minutes from first cast. Marilyn has a lake view and her binoculars to keep track of the Blue Herons. Provisions come up in the convenient elevator. We have become comfortable with the wimpy life.
Dave, almost believing what he just said.
Pershing Rifles
June 13, 2008
During my college years at K-State I joined the R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officers Training Corps), affectionally/derisively pronounced “rotzee.” For paying attention to my Army training and attending the weekly classes, I was issued a uniform and received, as I recall, a $50 monthly stipend. During the summer of my Junior year, we shavetails-in-waiting attended summer camp for a month at Camp Gordon, Georgia. Upon graduation from college we were commissioned as U.S. Army Second Lieutenants.
Associated with the R.O.T.C. in college was a precision drill team called the Pershing Rifles, and I ended up as the ‘Captain’ of the platoon-sized unit and conducted drills once a week, Hup-Toop-Threep-Four! I won’t attempt to describe the intricacies of the march and counter-march stuff, but we drilled carrying (and doing tricks with) the ten-pound M1 Garand rifle.
One of the tricks was synchronized spinning of the rifles as we marched in formation. During half-time of one football game, we performed a drill with loaded (blanks) rifles. After drilling in formation for a while, we peeled off in one long file at mid-field. As the file formed, everyone went to one knee with their rifles positioned vertically behind their left shoulder. Captain Dave was front and center, facing the home stands.. Get the picture? (Oh, well.)
Anyway, Captain Dave, standing at rigid attention, slowly raised his right hand in salute. When his fingers touched his cap, the rifles were discharged, starting at one end of the file and rippling down to the other end. That accomplished two things: It woke everyone up and probably damaged the hearing in a bunch of left ears.
If you will indulge me with some comments on the M1 rifle, I confess to somewhat of a love affair with that weapon. It was the standard infantry weapon in World War II and Korea. Besides learning to do tricks with it in college, I later trained to be a Range Officer at Fort Benning, GA. I fired off many 8-round clips on the various ranges, which may account for some of my high-range hearing loss. No ear plugs in those days. I’m not sure I could field-strip, clean, and re-assemble the M1 now, but I sure could then.
For you gun-nuts, it fired a .30-06 Springfield cartridge, semi-automatic, at an effective rate of 16-24 rounds/min. It was almost as accurate as the bolt-action Springfield M1903 rifle that it replaced. The Springfield became a very accurate sniper rifle.
But enough. I mainly wanted you to know that I got rhythm.
Dave, still hupping along.
D. Paul Ayers
June 1, 2008
The father of the three Ayers brothers was D. Paul Ayers (1907-1967). At our recent reunion, we talked about our parents and tried to re-construct a chronology of our growing up years. I was later asked by son-in-law Kerry Layton for details of Dad’s engineering career. My reply is below.
(Mom’s annotation on back of photo.)
Thank you, Kerry, for supplying this history of S&P.
Laura and Kerry,
I guess I should put some information about my Dad in the ‘Old Gent’ section of my website, shouldn’t I?
Dad was born in 1907 on a farm near Iola, KS (southeastern corner of the state). Granddad was a prosperous farmer, row crops and small dairy, and one of the early adopters of agricultural advances like crop rotation and contour plowing. The farm was one of the few at that time with electricity (windmill charger for a bank of batteries) and indoor plumbing. The outhouse remained, however, to conserve water, which had to be pumped from a well. When we visited, it was out the door to the back that we went.
Dad was interested in scientific things and constructed one of the first crystal radio sets in the area when he was a boy. He did well in High School and was able to go to college in Manhattan (Kansas State Agricultural College in those days), graduating in 1928 or 1929 with a B.S.E.E. degree. His first job was with Kansas Power and Light in Manhattan, Hutchnson, and Topeka, KS. His specialty was design of power transmission systems (the wire highlines that criss-cross the country carrying electricity hither and yon).
In 1947, Dad apparently decided it was time to move on and left KP&L for CopperWeld Steel Company in McKeesPort, Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh). We lived for one year in Mt. Lebanon, PA, all very different and eye-opening to this 10th-grader, but for reasons unknown (to me) it didn’t live up to Dad’s expectations, and we moved to Webster Groves. Dad commuted downtown to Sverdrup & Parcel every day with a few fellow-workers. He was involved with the electrical engineering aspects of various S&P projects in St. Louis and around the midwest.
I’m hazy about the particulars, Don and Tom and I couldn’t decide, but Dad left Sverdrup in the mid-1950s for two or three years to be part owner of a business in Hutchinson, KS. Marilyn and I were living in Hutchinson at the time, before and after my brief Army service, but I cannot remember what kind of a business it was. I thought it was a hardware store, but my brothers say I’m not even close, and they’re probably right. I do remember that we all went to a brand new Presbyterian church for a year or two until I left Hutchinson to work at Collins Radio in Cedar Rapids. Dad returned to Sverdrup & Parcel in St. Louis and was shortly assigned as Project Engineer for Sverdrup’s part of Bush Gardens under construction in Tampa. I am the only one of the Ayers boys who didn’t find an opportunity to visit the folks in sunny Florida.
Returning to S&P in St. Louis, Dad continued to work as an Electrical Engineer there until his premature death in 1967 at age 59.
So there you have it, Kerry. I sort of followed in Dad’s footsteps and entered the Engineering school at K-State in 1949, studying under some of the same professors as Dad did, some 20+ years earlier. But where Dad learned about dynamos and generators and transmission lines, I leaned more to electron tubes (no transistors yet) and radio transmission.
As sort of a post-script, Dad lost some pension benefits when he left S&P and returned later, so his major goal was to get their little house paid for as soon as possible. They burned the mortgage less than a year before he died.
Never ask an old man to reminisce unless you have a few minutes to spare!
Love,
Dad
Bullet now or cancer later
May 3, 2008
I commend to you a little book I am reading now: The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis, a series of essays based on talks given by Lewis during the 1940s. One of the essays is “Learning in Wartime,” a talk to Oxford students who were uncomfortable because they were in school while their contemporaries were risking death in the early days of World War II. Lewis talks about several ‘enemies’ that may keep the students from doing their best at their studies.
The third enemy is fear. War threatens us with death and pain. No man — and specially no Christian who remembers Gethsemane — need try to attain a stoic indifference about these things, but we can guard against the illusions of the imagination. We think of the streets of Warsaw and contrast the deaths there suffered with an abstraction called Life. But there is no question of death or life for any of us, only a question of this death or that — machine gun bullet now or a cancer forty years later. What does war do to death? It certainly does not make it more frequent; 100 percent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased. It puts several deaths earlier, but I hardly suppose that that is what we fear. Certainly when the moment comes, it will make little difference how many years we have behind us. Does it increase our chances of a painful death? I doubt it. As far as I can find out, what we call natural death is usually preceded by suffering, and a battlefield is one of the very few places where one has a reasonable prospect of dying with no pain at all.
In 1952 I was a college student with a draft deferment, and I was quite aware of my contemporaries serving in Korea while I was drilling with the ROTC. I can’t say that it caused me much, if any, mental anguish. I wonder what I would have thought if I had read these words. In those days I assumed I was immortal and didn’t think much about death, like most 21-year-olds.
It’s now 55 years later, and I know I am not immortal in the temporal sense, and I’ve long since lost my reasonable prospect of dying with no pain at all. But I am moved by C.S. Lewis’s words and his way of thinking.
Dave, not fearful at all, at all.
