What a Wonderful Thing the Internet Is
By
Brian V. Brunner ('64)
Powder Springs, GA - 2/10/02(Update 6/12/05)
Intorduction
The Internet is bringing the world of the past together with the world of the now and the future.
You can see this on our LWMA Alumni web site almost everyday. I can't list all the people who have sent us e-mail telling of how great it is to be able to find old friends listed on our pages.
Part I
Paul Strobel is Found
In May of 2000 I spent a lot of my time during the LWMA Alumni weekend with Paul Stroubel '43 and his daughters, Shannon and Gloria. They were having a kind of a reunion themselves. Shannon and Gloria had been separated from Paul for many years and had only recently located their father. They found Paul by having someone search the Internet for his name. Paul's eight stories on our web site made his e-mail address very easy to find. The Internet made their reunion possible. The reason for this part of their reunion taking place a LWMA was the fact that Paul had met Shannon's and Gloria's mother at the school when both of them were students at the Southern Industrial Institute in the early 1940's. All I know about the following years was that when the girls were small Paul his wife got a divorce and he never saw the girls again until shortly before the Alumni weekend in 2000.
Paul Strobel '43 and daughters Shannon and Gloria in Dr. Ward's former office Tallapoosa Hall - 5/6/2000 |
Part II
Where Do I Send It?
Or
One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure
Now for my own personal Internet story that has nothing to do with LWMA, but I thought some folks would enjoy it. A good friend of mine at Georgia State University, where I work, handed me an old Army yearbook he said he found in the trash. The book was dark blue with white lettering on it that read, "11th Airborne Division 1955 Yearbook." My friend said he had found it about five years before in a pile of trash of leftover items after a yard sale. Besides the wealth of B&W (and a few color) photographs in the book itself, there were some loose 8 1/2 x 11 B&W Public Information Office type photos in the back. The photos were of aircraft, paratroopers, and vehicles all having to do with that time period. Besides that there were some small personal B&W snapshots with writing on the back naming people and places in Taiwan in 1952. The yearbook pages, cover, and the loose photographs ewer all in excellent condition.
As a history buff and Phil Potts' helper on the web site I thought what a great resource something like this book would be to a web site somewhere. What I would give for the school to have a 1955 yearbook in the Alumni Center and Museum! Of course that's impossible because the first yearbook we ever had was the one printed in 1960. So I proceeded to search the Internet for sites about the "11th Airborne Division." I sent an E-mail note to the first one I found - No Answer. I sent one to the next Official looking site - reply = "I don't know who would like to have the yearbook." Then I found a site entitled "Paratroopers of the 50's". This site really looked great to me; Lots of pictures, stories, and a guest book a mile long with multiple pages. A fellow by the name of C. J. Magro (pronounced May-Grow) is the webmaster. I sent him the same form letter E-mail I sent to the other two sites. His reply was, "I would love to have it. I'm in it and I lost mine years ago." He said he would work up a whole set of pages from it and give me credit and a link back to our LWMA Alumni site. So I sent him the book and all the pictures via Priority Mail and he repaid me for the shipping cost.
I have a link on this page to his site that I think anyone halfway interested in the Airborne of 1950's and 1960's would enjoy it.
Oh, by the way, Mr. C. J. Magro lives in Town Creek, Alabama! Town Creek is in north Alabama near the Wheeler Dam. So now there is a connection between Camp Hill and Town Creek.
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Part III
Update 6/12/2005:
Here is a note we just received...
To Phillip M. Potts '63
Hey, Phil!
How are things going with you these days? I just dropped by my classroom at the high school to check my e-mail and found your message about the new forum. So I decided to register so that when I come by and check my e-mail I can check your new forum as well.
By the way, just a note of appreciation. Thanks to your LWMA Alumni website I was contacted by one of my former LWMA students who had been my student the first year that I taught there (1967-68). The last time that I saw his young man he came back to visit several of us teachers very early one morning on a quick trip to LWMA from Ft. Benning just before he shipped out to Viet Nam. This young man had been a fantastic student and showed tremendous potential as an academic but like so many young men of that time was detoured into the military and was sent to Viet Nam. It was heartbreaking to me that morning to see him leave our house with me knowing what a horrible destination was awaiting him. Through the years I have thought about, and worried about, this former student thousands of times wondering did he make it back from Viet Nam and, if he did, was he OK. I have asked other cadets who might have known this young man many times about him, and no one knew. Last week he found your LWMA Alumni website and wrote to me. We have exchanged several e-mails getting caught up on what has happened to both of us in the interim since that morning thirty something years ago. At last I can have some peace of mind knowing that he is well, has a great family and is doing fine in the world.
Again thanks for making the website possible! Hearing from this man, now not so young, has been a highlight in my life.
As always,
John T. Strunk
LWMA Faculty 1967-74