Addendum from the Boeing Office Gallery

One:

Thursday, 12/1/2011: 90-100 mph Gusts...The Starkey's were ok.  The structure was well, mostly ok

Lost 50% roof,

 

gained a couple cracks on inside ceiling and wall, also gained two neighbors’ pine trees

over the fence almost going into our bedroom.  They are not growing the right direction, however.  Well actually they are not exactly growing anymore.

Stay tuned…….it is not finished…….have you ever worked in an office and thought the roof was coming off? 


It is a fun day.  Our neighbor across the street said it reminded her of The Wizard of OZ.

(Documented in the  web album  )  The final picture is a video, showing what is presently being torn off, as we write, hopefully to be replaced by Saturday, then sealed with WARM WEATHER :)

Note a teen comment:  "Can we go inside now? (In other words,  this is entertaining, but can we be done?)

Back to Boeing…..

Two: Boeing celebrated the certification and beginning deliveries of two new aircraft models: the 787 and the 747-800 after long delays.             

Documenting progress! 

A funny addendum to this addendum:  This Sunday as the neighbors neared in jeans with rakes and forklift machinery to remove tree fodder to prepare for a second predicted windstorm, we peered down our cul de sac to see two police cars parallel, conversing.  First, we hoped that our little neighbor who has seizures was all right.  Then another neighbor deduced that police had noticed an empty church with all the LDS neighbors out in jeans on a Sunday--there had to be something wrong!  (The 14 year old boys and the men had such a good time they are petitioning for a pilot program to make such an activity every week.)

The trees were removed (from our curbside and then the whole neighborhood) within two hours. 

May your roofs remain intact, your trees upright.  But if not, may approaching winds bring your family huddling close and your neighbors in tandem to help. 

Mastering 440,000 square feet

During the last half of the Monday Conferences, Carma, Pat, and I visited the Alamo. 

  

After the banquet and a short night, James scored an unexpected one-stop return flight early Tuesday and was able to help Carma and Patrick make their Seattle connection with a minute or two to spare. 

After finding closer accommodations, Mom and I did a river tour and meandered the city while Dad took in another day of meetings.  

I was to meet my father at 8 p.m. at a reception to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Soil Science Society of America.  Dad had given us tickets earlier in the day, and I was to meet at or near The Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, which has 67 rooms and 440,000 square feet of exhibition space. 

                                               This is great for seeing exhibitions. 



It is less than good, when the invitation in question is lost. It was 8 p.m. and no father was to be found. 



I called Kristen, Amber, and Val to ask them to pray for me, as I realized I was on my own.  Val did answer, and Amber called back, shortly after I visited the empty information booth with a lead from the security officer.  "Try the Arneson Theatre (people have been asking me directions there.)"  So, I walked intrepidly to find this elusive River Theatre. 

After I hung up with Amber, people around in every direction but none appearing familiar or connected, I saw a man passing me with a name badge on a green lanyard that matched mine.

"Sir, your badge matches mine.  Where are you coming from?  Can you direct me?" He sent me straight, down the street, and then my father serendipitously called.  (His phone had been off as it rings like a cow mooing, not being appropriate for awards banquets.)  Dad directed me to him. 

                       The 440,000 square feet were mastered--prayer conquers all!

Tale of Two Desert Peoples

Dr. Daniel Hillel

During a winter storm, some years ago, snowed in at the Dulles airport for two days, my father read The Negev, one of the books that Dr. Hillel had authored about irrigating the southern desert of Israel. Dad was impressed, found Danny's contact information and invited him to speak at Hanford. It was through Danny, who was then teaching at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, that my father met and hired Mike Fayer, a graduate student, who now manages the lab from which my father retired in 2005. It was Mike who organized this honorary symposium and who planned the dinner which Danny rose to speak.

Daniel Hillel went to school in the United States, served in the Israeli military in more than one war, and married a professor of archeology for the University of Norway and a college in Massachusetts, who manages archeological digs in Haifa, Israel. Danny tells a story of when he was a young man, about 23 years old, after having graduated from Rutgers University in New Jersey at 19, began a kibbutz, or commune to study and tame the desert, harvesting water and working to grow crops in the arid soil of Israel.  The group began with 12 individuals.  Three of the group died at the hands of marauding Bedouins; later six more joined to make 15 in total.  One day, they looked up to find a military convoy approaching with a black limousine.  Out stepped the prime minister of Israel.  Did they have permission to be there?  No.  As they scurried to justify their project, the aging inspecting leader, David Ben Gurion expressed interest.  Before long, the prime minister resigned his post in the government (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion) and brought his wife to join the kibbutz.  Danny was asked to be in charge of Ben Gurion, and he described with a glow, that he was one of the few who could ever say he had been boss to David Ben Gurion.
                                                       ---------------------------------------

I had a tape recorder and for a moment thought of recording the speech, but it felt irreverent, so I will try to remember the essence.  Danny reviewed the story of two peoples--one, an oppressed group, who escaped captivity with a strong leader crossing a Red Sea to tame a desert near a dead sea.  Danny then described another group that escaped oppression.  They crossed a wilderness with a strong leader and came to another desert near another dead sea, even near a Jordan River. This desert also began to flourish.

The "promised land" of Utah raised up pioneers in Soil Science such as Richards, Gardner, Kirkham, Israelson, Anderson, Widstoe, (and Gee.)  Dr. Kirkham's granddaughter sat across from both Danny and my father at their center table and beamed.  During my folks’ mission to New Zealand this past year and a half, Mary Beth has scanned and sent her grandfather's missionary journals to New Zealand to my father.  Though her father had married a Presbyterian, and she has been baptized into both faiths, she seemed glad to claim the legacy, as Danny lauded her father and others. 

My father responded, remembering his visit with my brother and grandfather to Israel, as Danny had been late to the airport, parking in a no parking zone, jumping up and down to be seen over the crowd with his diminutive stature, and upon finding them, went to the impoundment station to retrieve his vehicle.  When they asked him to pay, he refused to speak Arabic or Hebrew, in which he is fluent, to avoid paying elevated fees.  My father lauded him as a host, for his kindness. 

When Dad closed, I noticed he had forgotten to invite them to test our congeniality, so I stood quickly and mentioned that my parents loved company, and because my father's mission president had taught them the joy of ice cream sticks, as president of an ice cream company in Logan, they had five boxes of Creamies in their freezer waiting for guests.  (No desert there.  And here is your double dare--test their hospitality!) 

Dad's den, sheltering autographed tribute from SSSA conference



Remembering a requested Kaddish

Daniel Hillel, third from left in brown, Glendon to the right in blue

Another Texas tribute was an exchange that occurred at the banquet honoring my Dad.  A good friend from Israel stood first.  To give some background, this man, Daniel Hillel, was born in southern California.  In 1927, when Daniel was a year old, his father died.  After a business partner confiscated all the proceeds of their business, Danny's mother took her five children and joined her parents in Palestine.  Her father was a rabbi from North Carolina, and Danny was raised in the house of this grandfather, the rabbi.  Daniel had entertained doubts as he grew up, and at his bar mitzvah, Danny proclaimed his agnosticism, which naturally put a rift between Daniel and his grandfather.  I remember in my own college days reading the article Daniel had written called "Kaddish" (the blessing upon the grave) in which he described his search for his grandfather's grave.  Before his grandfather died, the old rabbi had told Danny of his confidence that Danny would someday return, in his own way, to faith.  The grandfather told Danny of his wish for Danny to read the prayer, or Kaddish, over his grave. 

The article describes a gnawing, unexplainable longing to find this grandfather's grave that had been desecrated in the war between the Jewish and Arab peoples, where tanks had rolled over headstones, scattering them so none could be identified in the future.  Danny went to an Orthodox Jewish school and found a very old gentleman who had memorized the locations of the graves.  The man had not been outside his room for years.  His health was such that he did not want to leave his room again.  Danny, at his own robust five foot two inches, took the old man in his arms and carried him to a vehicle to bring him to scout the area of the graves. 

Together, they found the broken headstone and put it into place.  Danny then gathered his four sisters, his mother to rededicate the long displaced grave with the Kaddish that his grandfather had wished to have read.  "So, even the secular man that I am, I need to honor my grandfather."  And a heart of a child turned to his father. 

Soils in San Antonio

SOILS IN SAN ANTONIO

On 17 October 2012, my dad was to be honored in San Antonio, Texas for serving over 50 years in the Soil Science Society of America.  A symposium was organized in his name to honor his contributions.   So, James

                          organized the adventure,  inviting any siblings who could come...

                                                                            Carma and Patrick

met James for a Seaworld Saturday;

                                 Mom and Dad & I followed along, arriving  in the nick of time. 

(I got to be side-kick who sat nearby and watched him add and remove slides to his presentation,

running at 8:03 a.m. 600 yards to make an introductory session, watching student after student and colleague after colleague approach him to express the difference that he had made in their careers and their lives.)  It reminded me of what heaven may be like--standing with George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life learning the little things that made the difference in someone else's path. 

                                                                         We met Jody W.,

married to a member of the Church for years and years, who worked with Dad at a research lab in southeastern Washington.  Jody, acknowledging the consistency of choices in his “Mormon” comrade, designated Dad as “a gentleman and a scholar.”  Over time, Jody  felt inclined to join his  spouse fully in church activities, sending a son to BYU and then on to MIT to pursue nuclear physics.  A colleague of Jody reminded us of another friend, Ananda, soils student from Sri Lanka.  When my father emptied his suitcase there to fill with souvenirs, he gave Ananda pamphlets and a pair of plaid pants, popular at the time (late seventies).  Fifteen year s later, Ananda called, asking my father to attend his orals for a doctoral thesis at a nearby university.  

"I would like you to attend my thesis presentation,” was the message my dad heard over the phone, “and afterward, my baptism.”  When Dad arrived to offer congratulations, Ananda presented the plaid pants!
                                                  ----------------------

During a break at the symposium, while I dashed to the front to load Dad’s flash drive into the computer near a front podium, a quiet voice near Dad’s elbow, asked my father if he remembered him.  Dad looked, puzzled, then prodded, “Remind me of your name! “  His name was Tan, and if my father could not place him, it might have been because 40 years had passed since he had seen Tan as his graduate professor of soils in Durham, New Hampshire.  Now managing a soils lab in Canada, Tan was encouraged by one of his work partners to attend the soils meetings, though his travel arrangements included a trip to China the day following his return.  Tan opened his Monday schedule to choose classes and found to his surprise, the man who had taken him under his wing and helped him embark as an early student. 

Tan insisted on treating Dad and five of his family members with lunch, following the meetings.  He told us of his work, his family.  He is from Taiwan, married a girl from Shang Hai; was on his way there to visit his extended family that Thursday.  As my mom

handed him a signed Book of Mormon pass-a-long card, she told him about their mission to New Zealand, and asked what he knew about our Church, he told her that his brother had joined, then his sister and his mother.  “Well, you need to read the book,” she encouraged.  “And the reason you need to read it is because it is true!”  It is interesting to ponder about people who helped us along in our beginning paths…

to wonder when and if we will ever meet them again, and what we might say. Regardless of words,

                         

         the feelings are unsurpassable, the gratitude indescribable--tangible joy!