Michael Barber:  

I came to Red Land in my sophomore year after my dad retired from the Army (an intelligence unit that was actually affiliated with the National Security Agency.). I learned much later from him and some of the people he worked with that he was among the top 1/10th percent of an elite "Supergroup" of signals intelligence gatherers and code breakers during the Cold War, who had evolved from the OSS. It was a relief to finally settle down to end my global travels across Europe and South America. I figure I went through 12 schools in 12 years. A lot of you may also know my two younger sisters, Donna, who still lives with her family in the vicinity of the high school, and Joanne (Jody). As I mentioned Jody died in 1996 at 36 from a sudden heart attack during an epileptic seizure. She and her family lived in Shiremanstown. She had a stomach bug one day in early 19967 so could not keep her epilepsy medication down and had stayed home from work that day when it happened. She was the most courageous one of us three kids. She had struggled with epilepsy since she was a baby, which doctors said was likely caused by a very high fever from measles when we lived in Spain. The was before there was a measles vaccine and lots more kids died from the high fevers it causes than we recall today. Through her life she had been cautioned not to do this or that, including having children. She also lived with the knowledge that epilepsy could shorten here life, but she decided to live a fulfilling life anyway. She was also a very talented artist. It is almost miraculous to see her oldest grand daughter — also named Jody — displaying similar talent. Jody's husband , Joseph Quesenberry, died a few years after she did. He was paralyzed by grief and sank into a depression from which he never recovered and medicated himself with alcohol. Their two kids, David and Amanda, 0ur niece and nephew, were 8 and 11 when Jody died. We tried to keep their family intact with their dad but they parachuted into our lives when he died, moving from Pennsylvania to Seattle. I became uncle-dad. It was an adjustment but we came through it and after some teenage challenges, both "kids" are doing well. Both now almost 40 with children of their own — who look to us as grandparents though I never want them to forget Jody and Joe. . Nephew Dave and his wife who was his high school sweetheart, and their three kids live near us in Edmonds, Wa. He owns his own eCommerce business. Our niece Amanda, who went to Willamette University in Oregon, eventually returned to Pennsylvania to help manage my mom's care until my mom passed away in 2022 at 92 of metastatic brain cancer. Mandy is now a social worker at Penn State's Hershey Medical Cente — where Donna's oldest daughter, Heather, now works as a professor in medicine. Mandy has a biological daughter and a stepdaughter by her first marriage, both with kids of their own so she is now a grandma at the ripe old age of 39. Tragically, my son-in-law (Mandy's second husband) a decorated Iraq war Army veteran, died in 2022 shortly after my mom died. They were living a good life in Indiana until one day the war caught up with him. Let's just say that as with many soldiers who have done and seen too much combat, he could not go on. Though I have a ton of relatives in Texas, Pennsylvania was the place my parents retired from the Army in 1967. My dad,was from Texas and left home at 17 to join the Army. My mom was born in Royalton, Pa., but grew up on the New Cumberland Army Depot where my grandfather, Clayton Tennis Sr., headed up the motor pool during WW II. Some of you might recall an Esso gas station and garage right at the iron bridge in New Cumberland in the 1950s and 1960s. That was his, too. My grandparents' home in New Market was our home base every time two year when my dad changed duty stations in the Army. We usually spent a month between duty stations there except for when I was in second grad and lived for nearly a year in the U.S. while my dad went to a National Security Agency school at Fort Meade, Md. Ironically I wound up many years later attending national security seminars at the Army War College in Carlisle as part of my job as a military and veterans affairs writer and war correspondent. I counted up all the schools I went to and I think it was about 12 or 13 in 12 years. I went to three schools in one year. - a few months in Greece, six in New Cumberland and several months in Virginia. It was interesting living overseas but also sad to lose friends every two years, which makes military brats who can handle it super resilient. When my dad retired, he made a second career with Sears while my mom went to work for the State of Pennsylvania. Dad's expertise in electronic warfare and working with the earliest computers served him well with Sears' electronics and technical maintenance department. I envied kids who had gone through school together. After we returned to the Texas from Ecuador in 1965, I started high school in Killeen, Texas ,and finished at Red Land. While it was good to settled down awhile, I subsequently realized I still had wanderlust — maybe as the oldest kid — while my sisters put down roots and started families in Central Pa. I wasn't sure I was college material but some great teachers like Mr. Malone, Mr. Fox, Mrs. O'Neal and Mr. Vorkapich -- our counselor-- convinced me otherwise. After knocking around for a couple of years as a carpenter and cabinetmaker, I joined the Marines to help with school. I first went to Shippensburg State U., where some great professors boosted my confidence and I transferred to Boston University. I also studied at the Harvard Extension School and years later earned another degree from Penn State. I continued my interests throughout life and earned technical certificates in 2020 in photovoltaic solar energy and home energy auditing from Shoreline Community College near my house here. A proficiency in technical things helped me get a second career later in life at Boeing. After trying out several careers unsuccessfully after high school, I found my way into newspapers and spent about 30+ years as a reporter and editor, working for several before winding up with Seattle's main morning paper in 1983, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In college I had gone into the Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Class program at Quantico, Va., to become a combat infantry officer. I thought of making a career of it but injured my spine and ankle in a training accident in 1976. It was also enough to end aspirations to compete in the decathlon in college-level track. I was honorably discharged with a service-connected disability. In one of my first jobs after college, I worked for a Spanish Speaking Center in Harrisburg, because I knew Spanish after living in Spain and Ecuador. I then worked at a couple of Pennsylvania state government jobs. After encountering some political corruption and blowing the whistle in one job, however, I lost my state job as well as ideals about politics. That steered me toward newspaper reporting. When one door closes another opens -- t opportunity in adversity. I never studied journalism in college but was encouraged to try it by the editor of a local investigative weekly newspaper who appreciated my concerns about corruption in government. That launched my career in newspapers. I began as a writer and then editor of an investigative Central Pennsylvania weekly in the 1970s and early 1980s called The Guide. That turned into being a business, labor and special projects reporter at a daily paper in Ohio and then 26 years with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It was a privilege to be a journalist in those days, standing up for the common person, holding the powerful accountable and, as the motto says, "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Interesting stories included the Green River Killer serial murders in the early 1980s. When Gary Ridgway finally was caught through advanced DNA testing and confessed 20 years later, he used a copy of a letter that...Expand for more