Rick and I loved your parents! Two memories come forward in our minds. We remember seeing John rowing down Filucy Bay with Addie in the stern wearing a long white dress and holding a white parasol. They were an elegant couple!

We also remember seeing a row boat floating into the bay at dusk. The boat didn't appear to have anyone in it. Don Lind got his speed boat out to rescue the row boat and motored out to it. Laying in the bottom of the boat were John and Addie looking at the sky as the stars appeared. 

Lessons learned from John and Addie---  do something fun and enjoy each day!
They are missed!

Addie made the best jam in the world.  Himalayan blackberries, marionberries, and her favorite, wild blackberries.  I can remember going out to pick berries with Addie.  She would pick a berry and say “One for the jam” as she put it in the container.  Then pick another and say “One for me” at which point she would pop it into her mouth.  Once we had enough, she would cook the berries and put the resulting jam in small glass jars with a metal lid.  As the final touch, she would put a label on it, which might read, Wild Blackberry 1992, just like a bottle of fine wine.  The most valued Christmas present was a jar of Addie’s jam.  Yum.

June 1995 was the 10th wedding anniversary for Dave and Lindsay and 25th anniversary for Stu and Laurie.  To celebrate, we all went to the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite Valley.  Unknown to us, Lindsay contacted John and Addie and invited them to come also and surprise us.  So John and Addie flew from Seattle to Fresno, rented a car and drove to Yosemite Valley.

Our first night we were sitting in the bar waiting for our reservation time in the Ahwahnee Dining Room when Laurie spotted John and Addie walking toward the Dining Room and said “That looks like John and Addie.”  When Lindsay disagreed (wanting to keep the surprise), Laurie said “They are walking like John and Addie,” to which Lindsay replied “All older people walk like that.”  It was truly a surprise.

At dinner, Stu had brought a couple of special bottles of red wine.  When the wine steward was opening the first one, he was impressed and asked Stu where he got the wine.  Stu replied “I traded a surfboard for it,” which was actually true.

The next day, we all took a walk around the valley, with John giving us biology lessons.  The lesson I remember most is how to tell the difference between a Ponderosa Pine and a Jeffrey Pine.  The points on a Jeffrey pinecone point down while the points on a Ponderosa point out, and when you pick one up, you feel the points and “ponder” why you picked up.

We had a great time at this celebration, and will always remember it.

We took our first backpack trip in 1963.  We first drove from L.A. to the trailhead to Big Pines Lakes in the Eastern Sierra, then immediately started hiking with the goal of camping at Big Pine Lake #2.  John, Stu and I had our new, fully-loaded Kelty backpacks on, and Addie had on a fanny pack.  Being teenagers, Stu and I hiked with John and Addie for a while, but eventually got ahead of them, arrived at the lake and started to set up camp.  An hour later, when John and Addie hadn’t arrived yet, we got worried.  I hiked back down the trail and found Addie carrying John’s pack.  She told me that John was asleep on a rock by the river down the trail a little.  It turned out that John had altitude sickness.  We finally managed to get to the camp, and by the time we hiked out a couple of days later, John was back to normal.  From this experience we learned to acclimatize ourselves before starting to hike at higher elevations.

For a dinner party at the McMenamin home for the Occidental College Biology Department faculty and their families, Addie made Sausage and Rice Casserole (and, of course, Red Salad), one batch for the faculty members and their spouses (who were eating in the dining room) and another batch for the kids (who were eating outside).  Addie had one of her sons (who shall go nameless) carry the casserole for the kids to the picnic table outside.  Since the dish was hot, she placed it on a trivet with handles that adjusted to the dish size using springs.  As the unnamed son moved from the kitchen to the dining room on his way to the door outside, the spring popped and the casserole dish fell, landing on the carpet upside down.  John immediately ran outside and got a shovel, which he used to scrape the casserole off the carpet and take it into the kitchen.  Addie then said “I guess we’ll have to use the second casserole for everyone,” to which one of the guests quietly said “Yea, right.”

When Addie started working in the Alumni Office at Occidental College, everything was done manually.  Alumni addresses were kept in two places.  First, there was a 5x7 card system in the office.  When an Alum changed their address, the new address was manually typed in under the previous address.  This provided a history of an Alum’s addresses.  Second, addresses were kept in an Addressograph system consisting of a metal plate for each Alum with their name and address in raised letters.  These plates were used to address mailings.  When an Alum changed their name, the old metal plate was discarded and a new plate was manually created.  This was an extremely manual system. 

Addie lobbied to automate this manual address system, and it became one of the first systems in the college to be computerized.  In the conversion from the manual system to a computer database, only the most recent address was moved from the manual system to the database.  Once the database contained the addresses for all Alums, Dick Galbreth (the Alumni Director at the time) argued that they could get rid of the address cards that they had been updating manually.  Addie was cautious and wanted to keep the manual system for a while.  Addie loved to tell the story that one day she found Dick looking at his card in the old manual system.  It turned out he needed the history of his former addresses, something that was not moved over to the database. 

In fact, in his letter to Addie on her retirement, Dick Galbreth said “I can think of no greater legacy that you left me or Occidental College than the file of 23,075 address cards—it’s a fascinating file—so interesting in fact that I determined after considerable time and effort that alumni have resided at a total of 783,632 addresses, including their final resting places, but not including addresses for those who were or are lost.  In honor of this legacy, and recognizing that other college departments retire jerseys, numbers, library cards, etc., I deliver herewith your own address card showing a lower than average five residences, but a higher than average set of hieroglyphics, i.e., NS, A, SP, P and W.”  Attached to this was the actual address card.