Gary-  glad to hear Bernadette is enjoying life again — and so sorry about the storm and all the damage to the area— 

I saw Odell Millang’s FB posting that his dad Dale (’61) had passed away. So so sad. He was a young man too. 

Our Condolences are with Dale’s with his passing.

Gary

Gwendolyn,

I showed your reply to Bernadette and she said “Thank You”. I think she plans on wearing that dress to our Cebu Expat Thanksgiving dinner.

Yesterday when were in the mall with her two Nieces, Novie and Mirasol, and also our two helpers, she bought each of them a dress too, for Thanksgiving dinner. Novie and Mirasol will have the camera’s so I know there will be lots of pictures taken that day.

Gary    

Good catch Marie,

I did indeed send yesterday’s blog to your group twice and in the process missed another. They have in now though.

Thank you,

Gary

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who share legendary pictures, words, and ideas that made us who we are.  So there

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We had been thinking of you and family. Glad to hear you are safe   

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I hope you are ok.  We have been reading the awful reports.

Diane

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Reply from Lynn Henriksen (’64):  Tiburon, CA

Thank God you are safe, Gary.  Keeping you and Bernadette and all the people in the Philippines and neighboring areas in my thoughts and prayers.  What a horrible disaster.

Keeping Spirits Alive,

Gary and Friends,Larry did a good job on the memory of his days with the ‘spit
wads’ and rubber bands.  I had one such episode as a sophomore.  We had
basketball practice on Friday after school and when I got out of the
shower,  one of the senior guys was waiting with a bath towel that he
had dipped the end of in water.  He snapped me on the back of my leg and
hit it just right so that it ripped the skin and blood ran down my leg.
I don’t think he intended to do that much damage but that was what
happened.  I got real ticked off and my anger grew even more while I was
getting dressed.  I took my basketball bag out to the front door of the
gym and then went to my locker and got my rubber bands and a gum wrapper
tin foil spit wad I had deemed too dangerous for use in ‘normal’
confrontations during school.  This was different.  I went back into the
locker room and looked for the guy and found him sitting down facing
away from me putting on his socks.  I pulled the big rubber bands back
until they were ready to break and let fly right in the middle of his
back!  I heard him scream and jump up in pain and I was on the run.  He
was just coming through the second door of the locker room as I was
going out of the gym and grabbing my gear for the long run home.  The
next day I was driving my old car down main street and he ran out of the
bakery and was yelling some obscenity at me as I went by.  I just smiled
and gave him the old salute we sometimes gave each other during such
minor confrontations.  It was a forgotten incident within a couple days
anyway.  He probably knew I was just getting even and let it slide.

One other memory involved one of the long foam and chamois erasers
we used to have besides the little black and white striped ones.  A few
of us were standing in the science room on the far south side by the
windows, talking before class.  An underclassman stepped through the one
door, grabbed a big eraser and threw it across the room at us.  He then
made a dash for the other door to make his getaway.  I caught the eraser
and threw it back at him.  He was on the run so I had to lead him a
little in order to have the eraser get to where he would be in about a
second.  That point happened to be right in the open doorway, if my
calculations were right.  He spotted Mr.  Dennis Espe just approaching
the door and he slammed on the brakes and ducked back inside the room.
Well,  the eraser was coming fast and heading right through the doorway
and SMACK!  It hit Mr. Espe right square on the shoulder of his new dark
blue suit!  He reached into the room and grabbed the underclassman
thinking he had thrown the eraser and took him down to the office for a
discussion on behaving in school.  When the kid came back to the next
study hall I was in,  he gave me a dirty look so I just held up both
hands for the old ‘that’s the way it goes’  look.  I got lucky.  Thanks
Gary!

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Dear Friends

 

As most of you know Dinah will be 60 a week today on the 25^th. I had been planning a party for her to which we hoped you would attend but Yolanda has changed things.

 

We visited the north of Cebu on Saturday, the day after the typhoon struck and although no way near as disastrous as Tacloban it is still very very bad up there. Hardly a tree standing, or if still left standing then denuded of foliage. Not a roof left undamaged with many just disappeared altogether, all wooden structures just like matchsticks, roads virtually impassable and everyone sleeping without shelter. Bogo was hit badly and Medellin and Kawit worse.

 

So instead of a party Dinah wants to use whatever it would have cost for the party to donate to relief work instead.  Kawit of course is our second home and has been for 30 years and we worry that international and domestic relief work will, deservedly so, concentrate on the hardest hit areas in Leyte and Samar but this likely means north Cebu will be left out when they still have a need for help, just not as bad as other parts. We owe Kawit so we are going to arrange relief supplies this week to be sent to Kawit and we will have no party next week. Perhaps we can have a celebration for 60.5 or something next year.

 

We have told Sam and Jamie not to buy a present for Mum but instead donate to our relief effort. This is what Dinah wants.

 

I am sure you will all understand.

 

Ian

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Hi,I have been unable to sleep tonight, thinking of what may have happened in Tacloban.
The media talk of 300 kl winds, and driving rain, and storm surges, dead bodies etc.
But that’s not what it is really.
On Friday morning we were watching as the weather got worse, more rain and more wind.
I took videos outside our house at 10am and 11am, with the intention of doing an hourly
video to record “our day” and our typhoon. I never posted these because I had seen worse rainy days here.
What we did not know here, at that time, was this.

Tacloban had already been hit. And I need Stephen King or Steven Spielberg to help me here.
In the 3rd world the coastal areas around a large city are not des-res. There are shanties of clapperboard walls
and corrugated roofs, 12 by 12, and sometimes 2/3 stories high. Narrow alleys run between.
I know this from visiting the Bagui tribespeople who were relocated to Cebu city coastal area from
some other island. A friend of mine, a baptist missionary (another long story) took me there. We took
a taxi as far as we could, then we took a tricicab ( bicycle with little sidecar ) as far as we could, then we walked
and we were very careful where we stepped. There are no conventional toilets here!. The shanties almost rub
against your shoulders. They are for sleeping in, not living in. People congregate on nearby “streets”.
Charles Dickens is just around the corner. We come to a sort of inlet from the sea, and have to walk across
the plank to where the tribe live. I look down into the weirdly green stagnant water. I feel if I fall off the plank
into the water it will be weeks in hospital before they clean out all the diseases I get. This is in the city ! ! !
I have never been to Tacloban, but it is not as big a modern provincial city as Cebu is, but these coastal dwellings
are where the poorest of the poor are.

Now add a little wind and rain, no major problem, the worst that will happen is piss and shit will be blown on you
by gusts of wind, but hey! the rain washes you for the next lot. Then the wind picks up and the rain is heavier and horizontal and carries things things that can hurt you, so piss and shit are the least of your worries. This is not the driving rain and wind we knew from summer seaside holidays, this wind is screaming and chucking you about…250+kl/hr we have no idea.
You cant see or hear your neighbours because of the wind and the rain. A lot of these families have 6/7 + kids.
Then the real nightmare hits. I dont know how water rises 20 feet, to cause a storm surge, but I understand the effect. Imagine what would happen if you were walking along Blackpool seafront, and the land, all of it, suddenly sank 20 feet.
You dont just get a wave coming in… The whole Irish Sea is coming in at a height of 20ft. Of course,  at your little shanty, in your narrow alleyway, where you thought you had some modicum of shelter, you dont see the water coming at you, you see the whole bloody shantytown coming. I suspect your lights go out. If your lights dont come back on your plight is over.

If your lights do come back on your nightmare begins. Your whole area is leveled and is a topsy turvey world from
“The Terminator” . Your kids have vanished. Everything you know has disappeared. You have no protection from the wind and rain, you are waist deep in fast receding water, and parts of houses, trees and furniture are flying lethally around you.
There is no let-up from the wind and rain. After a while you will be very thirsty from the salt water you swallowed, but there is no water. You are aware that your children, if they are alive, wherever they are, will be thirsty to, and they have no water. there is no food. Only screaming wind and horizontal rain…250kl/hr. You look for your kids even though there is
no hope, and you cant see and you cant hear. It as a long long day, you are exhausted, but you are afraid to sleep, you have to search. Night falls… I have no idea what you do , what you feel, what you think. The next day, maybe  someone comes, they see you walking around aimlessly, they wonder why you are not doing something. The wind has gone, the rain has gone, your family has gone, you are a guilty survivor. They seem to look at you oddly…..
But they dont know, they weren’t there. They ask you stupid questions like “what was it like?”, “what did you do to be alive?” You do not have the words to describe what happened to you, you dont even know what really happened.
When Speilberg does this, and he does it well, the hero is tall and handsome, the heroine is “to die for”, the little kid is
perfect. They seem to have water and a packed lunch handy. We really do not have any conception what it’s like
when hell comes to visit.

I did not see any of these people in the aftermath of Yolanda. I wonder what I would have written if I did. We have friends we have not heard from yet (only 50 miles away).
But a friend of mine did see these people, and I saw his eyes when he talked to me…. He was one of those who arrived at
the devastation, but he saw why they stood around (and this is in N. Cebu)… they had nothing to do anything with ! ! !
Today he goes back with the food parcels we packed yesterday, and tools to help them rebuild, hammers, nails, saws.
God knows there is enough wood around to be reused.

We are short of NOTHING here, and they are short of EVERYTHING there… 50 miles away ! ! !
He seems to know what he is doing there, and I hope to help him here…..
The icing on the cake……..next typhoon due Wed/Thurs, same track as Yolanda.

Sleep well.

No Apologies,

Mike.