Lee Avery Chambers:  

I grew up four miles up Gile Hollow road west from Hinsdale, up past the old and now collapsing Crosby dairy barn, on a small dairy farm at the top of the hills. Until I was about 9 the road was dirt; the school bus ride was a lot of fun as we were tossed all over the back! Dad was an English teacher at Hinsdale Central School; he grew up on that same farm and he went to a one room school house a mile below us on the road into town, that closed when Hinsdale Central School was built. One of my teachers, Lila Cooper, was also Dad's teacher at that one room school. It was located on the Elling farm and was a nice museum of bygone times, but vandals wrecked it so it was burned for practice by the fire department. I went to Hinsdale Central School from first thru seventh grades. Then dad got a teaching job in Franklinville and I rode with him to Ten Brock Academy (TBA) , a much larger grade school, where I really got interested in electronics and had a great time. I remember winning a speaking contest with my speech “Talleyrand and Arnold,” and especially remember my first prom with my date, Barb McLure. She was a marvelous dancer! I went to TBA from 8th thru 10th grades and have stayed connected with my class there. My science teacher was Mr. Schubeck, who was a ham radio operator and taught me electronics. He helped me get into ham radio with my Novice license--WV2EKW, and then with a Conditional license, WA2EKW. That started my career in electronics. Unfortunately Dad got a teaching job in Olean and I had to return to Hinsdale Central—my ride up route 16 to Franklinville with him was gone and for several reasons I couldn’t go to Olean--I had cows to milk being one. I learned to roller skate on the Hinsdale gym floor, a skill I used wherever the Navy took me. After Hinsdale I went to St. Bonaventure as a physics major, math minor, on a Regents scholarship. I was woefully unprepared—I didn’t really understand the calculus or even algebra II, let alone Trig— and so didn’t last the semester--but I had a show on the campus radio station and learned the radio station process. I then had a couple dead-end jobs: pin setter at a bowling alley, Olean House restaurant bus boy, Acme Electric learning to wind transformers and being general sweep-up guy. If I wasn’t working or farming I hung out at Dick Polly’s gas station in Maplehurst. There Sonny Grimes and I built a couple race cars and towed them to Cuba and Holland race tracks. Fun but not useful as a career choice! So, on a lark with Francis (Butch) Fouts, I joined the Navy. I was in for a total of seven years, becoming a “First Class Aviation Electronics Technician”, (E-6), working on A6A Intruder aircraft radar systems. Francis and I went to Great Lakes for boot camp but he got into the Navy band and we lost track. I spent a year in Memphis Tennessee in "A" electronics school, went to Norden to learn the APQ-88/112 track radar system, and went to Vietnam with Attack Squadron 65 in 1966 on the USS Constellation aircraft carrier. I also was on the carriers USS Forrestal and USS Kitty Hawk, setting up radar test equipment. I received the Secretary of the Navy Commendation for Achievement—it’s a long story. When on land I was stationed at NAS Oceana, near Virginia Beach, VA. In the late ‘60’s for fun I became general manager of a hippy coffeehouse in Norfolk called the "Folk Ghetto." We had 50 entertainers who regularly played us. A few became famous--Emmy Lou Harris, John Basset, The New Lost City Ramblers, Gove Scrivenor, Merilee Pick. Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell dropped in when they were in town. I had a house on the beach in Virginia Beach on 24th Street; there's a huge hotel there now, and I hosted a party there every Saturday morning with all these entertainers. We have occasional reunions of the entertainers who played the Ghetto and other coffee houses up and down the east coast. After the Navy I moved to Washington State and graduated from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wa, in 1974. What an excellent college! I was first chief engineer, second General Manager, of ...Expand for more