<h4 align="center">A Letter to Jack</h4>

Hi Jack, It been about 55 years ago when you left us... A lot has happened since then. Some good... Some not so good.. Some just outright bad... I need to ask you to forgive me for trying to blame you for messing up the pencil sharpener when somebody sharpened their crayon in it. It was me... At the time I didn't realize what I had done... I'm really sorry about that. You missed some wars and stuff. Some of the guys you knew went to Vietnam. A few came back in body bags. And there was all the anti-war crap, and drugs and the false gods of the so called "Age of Aquarius". We haven't exactly blown up the world yet, but we keep working on it... There's been some good stuff along the way too... Little League baseball, Cub Scouts and then Boy Scouts, 4-H and the county fair. High school plays and sports. A wife, kids and grand kids and good times with friends... Sunsets, ocean beaches, and all that kind of stuff is pretty nice... We've had some good music, art, books, and film along the way too. A lot of good things have happened medically... Ironic that if we had had some of the stuff we have now, you might have been able to stay and go on through life with us. I've wondered over the years about what might have been had you not left us. Maybe we would have had a chance to be friends; if not close friends, at least acquaintances sharing a period of our life together with our other classmates... But... You were gone... They didn't talk to us about it hardly at all. Miss Laseer went to the funeral and that was it. It was only years latter with the experiances of a lifetime under our belt that we found in our remembering that there was a loss. The last 55 years have gone by so fast.. The years are adding up... The autumn and winter of life are upon us. Eventually if the Lord tarries, we also will die. Jack, there is a lot about life and death that I do not pretend to understand. It could have happened to any one of us. When I think of it, I wonder that any of us survived to gorw up, graduate from high school, and go on into life. You were not forgotten. Somehow, someway, your life, as brief as it was, had meaning and purpose. Well... That's about it... Only God Almighty knows what the future will bring. I really want to beleive that just maybe... just maybe... Lord willing... someday we will see each other again... That would be really nice... Regards, Bill