Cathy Carrel (Sontheimer)
THIS WAS SENT TO ME BY MIKE LUCAS......
A shout out to some really close childhood friends that I stumbled, fumbled, and bumbled my way thru early childhood, puberty, and adolescence with: Gary Bockelman, Gary Bell, Charles Hinkle, Billy Scott, Stanley Adams, Eugene Moore; our forays onto Billy Goat Hill and Wyeth Hill, along MacArthur Drive and the Missouri River, our involvement with the YMCA and its summer camps, the summer playgrounds at Humboldt and College Hill, Bill Spalding and Bob Spalding joining our neighborhood football games of "kill the man with the ball"... You people are special because you were the neighborhood gang had been in my home a couple of times on our way to the auditorium for the wrestling matches and seen the poverty and difficulty of my home life, yet never commented to me about it.
Thank you for inviting me into your homes as children and for your families' treatment of me as one of their own. The '50's and '60's were not easy racial times but I was always well-received and never felt rejected. Much of my lifelong understanding of people is based on the interactions with you and your families, especially when viewed in the context of history.
There are many others of you who provided me a feeling of inclusion at Lafayette at a time when our country was at great odds about racial integration. I think of Jim Grimes, Marta Smith (Gore), Dr. Everett, Gary Thompson and Greg Angsten (I remember you guys from the summer playgrounds and baseball), Mike Wolf (whom I first met when I was 4 or 5 years old and we lived a block or two away from each other on a couple of occassions) Keith and Kent Clark, Daryl Inscho, big John Miller, lil' Joe Miller (short and powerful),
There are some other females who were very open to me (Marta was always smiling!), Charlicia Good and her cousin Betty Simpson (who I had a crush on from Humboldt, where we were in the 2nd and 3rd grades together and both transferred to Washington), Nancy Breit, Adele Lynn (she was real smart!), Perriann Davis (short and friendly!), Sharon Didlo (tall red-head), Kathy Adams, Ania Lyon, Donna French...
I know there are some others whom I did not mention and whose names I can't remember at the moment (I'm 57 years old, sue me!). I have thought of you all on numerous occassions thru the years. Any of you with memories of me, please feel free to share. I'm sure they can't all be positive memories because, after all, we are talking about human beings here, so share what you want. I would like to hear from any of you.
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