Time Passes - Part 1

Someone once wrote, “Seasons change, young man,” meaning, I suppose, that things will not stay the same, no matter how much we would like them to do so.
While writing this blog has been an interesting exercise in introspection and has been visited by a number of my old classmates, I’ve been a bit surprised to observe that not many wanted to chime in. It seems to have been more of a venue for some of their offspring to drop by to try and learn something of their parents, or uncles, or aunts, or something like that. And that’s O.K., too.

Today, I was thinking about the advances our society has made during the past 40-50 years and I was a little perplexed to think of much that has changed to any great degree. Computers arrived to our desks, of course…but it seems to me to be a dubious claim that life is better for everyone since the wide application of the computer.

Think of it…now entire airlines that once ran on schedule are shut down not only when their own computers fail, but also when the FAA computers fail. I cannot recall a time 50-years ago when much of the air traffic control system shut down on a clear day.

One way of looking at it is to consider the accompanying pictures. The jets are rotating approximately 50-years apart, yet they look very similar to each other. On the other hand, look how far we had come during the 50-years before our 63 Highlander year.

And we have the recent event where a commercial flight crew overshot their intended destination by about 100-miles or so. This, while the 2-man crew was either asleep or monkeying around with their computers, depending on what story you believe. Also note that where we formerly had 4-engines, we now have but 2; and where we once had a 3-man crew up front, we now have but 2.


Adios

Robert Franklin Ladd, Jr.

I just discovered that Bob Ladd passed away in April 2008 after a brief illness. Bob was a 2-year football lettermen and a member of our 1962 Ft. Worth City championship team. He was also a 3-year contestant in the Golden Gloves. I always liked that picture of him delivering a shot on the chin of that other boxer.

Bob was a quiet, energetic, and good humored kid. He would have been a starter at cornerback had we not already had a couple of stellar performers at that position—Tom Koebernick and Ted Harris, both of them All-District honorable mentions. Bobby wasn’t a big kid, nor particularly fast, but you could rely on him to do the best he could and he rarely screwed up. All things considered, that's not a bad attribute. I think he became a Ft. Worth policeman.

Vaya con Dios, Roberto