Kendall Savage:  

February 17, 2022, .... celebrated 54 years of marriage this month... March & April 2019, we visited Italy & Malta....page down to view our experiences & photos, July 2017, small changes & updates plus added a few photos. As the great quote goes...it was the best of times and the worst of times. I was a senior in the auditorium in South High on Nov 22, 1963 when they announced the death of president Kennedy. It was the beginning of lost innocence for our generation, and it just became worse between then and 1968 with Vietnam, and the deaths of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King. One memorable incident as a sophomore was being taken to see Mr. Fox in early 1962 (our principal)for shoving another student at the 1st floor drinking fountain by the front doors (the other guy shoved first, but I was the one noticed). To get out of trouble Fox "suggested" that as a favor to him, I should stoke his furnace in his home at 7am in the morning before school, and in the spring, weed his garden. When he personally escorted me back to study hall for that infraction, once again in the auditorium, I became an instant bad boy celebrity for a few weeks. Added 1-19-11, ...another memory of Mr. Fox. In 1962 he asked me to go to Miami of Ohio University to help pack up items for Cindy Fox, his daughter (SHS 1961), who was leaving Miami of Ohio for some interesting infractions. I never did know the complete story, but it was a quiet drive back to Springfield. This auditorium was also famous for falling light fixtures. While in study hall one afternoon, one of the old original large light globes from the 1930's fell into a crowd of seated students close to me and one had his hands sliced with broken glass. One of our quick thinking teachers grabbed his wrists to stop the bleeding and helped him to the 1st aid office (remember those?) & to the hospital to get a lot of stitches. No one else was injured & this lucky student soon recovered from his injuries. Added on 12-8-09...The wildest things I did during my HS years with a few friends, Terry Bowman, Dan Sharp, Bobby Mumaw was sneaking into the area swimming pools (Springfield Springs & others) after midnight during the summer. Skinny dipping was fun, but a few times we were almost caught as we had to run naked through fields and parking lots with our hands full of clothes. One night Terry knocked out both his upper front teeth doing pile drivers into the pool. Terry has lived in California for the past 40 or so years with his wife and sons. Like most silly kids our age, we also sneaked into the local drive ins ...sometimes I was one of two or three guys stuffed in the trunk. After jumping out in the back row, we would try to find some cars with groups of girls to flirt with and steam up the windows. Remembered on 1-22-10...I look like Clark who?....many times at SHS other students confused me with Clark Crable, another SHS 64 classmate. "Sorry, I am not Clark" sounded confusing to some, and other times I would go along with the miss-identification and tell them I would meet them somewhere or see them later after school. I wonder how many times Clark was confronted by classmates thinking he was supposed to be somewhere. Check out our senior photos in the 1964 yearbook. Clark was labeled "most handsome", but I believe I was better looking.. (lol). What do you think? The best thing about SHS was when I met my sweetheart, Virginia Gordon (class of 66), in 1964, when I was a senior and she a sophomore. After I graduated, I went into the US Air Force and was lucky to be assigned to Lockbourne AFB (now named Rickenbacker) near Columbus (87th Fighter Interceptor Squadron) so we were able to date during her last 2 years while she was still in school. We enjoyed going to her school sock hops, football games & other events like seeing the 4 Seasons and The Kingsmen live in concert at Indian Lake plus swimming at Springfield Springs with lots of other classmates, two of whom we still see regularly in Michigan, Carolyn Smith (66) and Gary Roush (65), who later married. Gary played football for Woody Hayes at OSU from 1965 to 1969. Check out our now and then photos taken in 2022 & 1966. After dating for almost 4 years & being in the USAF for 3 1/2 years we were married at Christ Episcopal church on High Street in Springfield on Feb 17, 1968, just 3 days after Ginny turned 20 (Valentine's Day-Feb 14). Some of her class mates and mine attended including Carolyn Smith & Penny Cornell. Terry Bowman was my best man (attended both SHS & North HS & now lives in CA) and Ray Schuette, another friend who attended Catholic Central HS was at our wedding showing a black eye from my bachelor party the night before. Still in the service, I was reassigned from the 87th Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS) in Columbus to the 75th FIS at Wurtsmith AFB in Oscoda, Michigan, in Nov 1967 where more adventures were soon to begin. Living together ..Part 2. Feb 1968 to April 1969. We started our honeymoon in a small A-frame cottage on the Lake Huron shore just a few miles south of Oscoda for a few months then moved to a small rented home on the Au Sable river west of Oscoda where I enjoyed fishing for trout & pike. Soon we moved into base housing and I was promoted to E-5 Staff Sgt. Northern Michigan was neat, but soon we were off to a real adventure when I was reassigned to Guam, an island in the south Pacific 3,000 miles SW of Hawaii & 8,000 miles from Ohio. This was soon to become a wonderful time for us from April 1969 to April 1971. Part 3, Guam, Marianas Islands, US Trust Territory, SW Pacific Ocean 1969 to 1971....Wow! What an adventure it was being assigned to the 54th Weather-Recon Squadron at Anderson AFB on this tiny jungle island that is only 4 to 8 miles wide and 30 miles long. I supervised all the life support systems on 105 B-52 bombers that made bombing runs to North Vietnam almost every day. Ginny worked at the air base computer center as a key punch operator (remember those early computer devices?) & after living in two small houses off base for a brief time, we moved on base. During our exciting time here, we took rest & recuperation (R&R) in 1970 in Tokyo, Atami, Nikko, Japan and another wonderful holiday the same year in Hong Kong, China. We also learned to scuba dive, and I went to Honolulu, Hawaii, for 12 days in 1970 to become a NAUI Scuba Instructor #2135 and became a PADI Instructor #2660 in Ohio in 1972. I ended up teaching scuba diving to hundreds of students over the next 20 years in Guam, NH, Maine, Ohio & Michigan (to 1990). I recently retired as a PADI Instructor after being with that organization for 35 years. Diving on sunken ships & planes from WW2 & sea shell collecting plus viewing all the wonders of ocean & coral reef life while swimming with large sharks, manta rays, barracudas, was a great past time for us on Guam. Unfortunately, the war raged on for the entire time we were here, and we lost many air crews and friends that never lived through these times. Part 4...Back home stateside to Pease AFB, New Hampshire, for my last tour of military duty & our first born child...April...Expand for more