In my lifetime I have experienced many Christmas celebrations. None but one stands out as memorable, and I am not certain why this particular year should carry the memory it does. It was long ago.

In 1955 we had moved back to Portland, OR after spending a long hot summer in Downey, a suburb of Los Angeles. My parents had split up, attempted a reconciliation which failed, and separated for good. My three older sisters, my younger brother, and myself, were back to the city of my birth, Portland, in time for winter. My older brother, Dalep (who hangs arond the VB&G), was a gunny Marine at the time and I nearly burst with pride for him and was in awe of his smart uniform, et al.

I was late entering school that year and was again the new kid. Never comfortable at this, I was slow to make friends - I hated meeting new people. I attended Chief Joseph grade school and I was in the fourth grade.

That October it snowed, and we went "trick or treating" in a miserable blizzard. We lived in a two-story house which had bare bulbs for illumination, a wood-fired furnace in the cellar which continually beckoned, and more than once I recall using the fireplace poker to break ice away in the toilet so it would flush. We had a television and I recall falling in love with Annette Funicello.

Several things happened between the time we moved there and the time we left. My mother worked at the tavern across our lawn: Shanty's tavern, and it is still there and I, as an adult, have drawn more than one beer there. I had a friend who's father had died recently, possibly a war victim, but he had amateur radio equipment, and I had just read a story in one of our school books about that subject. The idea that a person could talk by telegraph or voice to people around the world was enchanting and I wanted to know more. My friend showed my his father's radio equipment and I knew I had to understand this stuff.

That Christmas my mother "authorized" her boyfriend, Joe, to take us boys shopping for gifts. Joe was a sailor stationed at Swan Island, Portland, and was a Texan from the Brownsville area. He talked funny, but he seemed interested in doing his best to please. I told him I wanted a crystal radio kit which was $4.50. He was pretty sure that was outside the budget, but he finally caved in.

Sometimes life delivers gifts in strange ways, gifts which seem on the surface to be trivial or of little consequence. On that day, that crystal radio kit solidified my future. In looking back over my life I cannot recall any single thing that was nearly so influential. I went on to earn an amateur radio license (WA6ZGL), I earned a commercial radiotelephone license, and from all of that I studied radio, became an electronics engineer with several notable commercial successes to my credit, and am now a computer support engineer for the Boeing company. None of this would have happened if my mother's boyfriend, who later became my step-father, had chosen against buying that simple crystal radio kit.

I've just recently become aware of how much I owe to Joe and the simple thing he did that day, and I am ashamed I have never thought to thank him for what he did. I wonder if maybe some of you might have somebody in your life who did a simple thing for you that had such a profound effect. Thank them for that, because as surely as time slips away, the opportunity to do so may slip away with it.

Would you all lift a glass to a really classy guy who is going to be very suprised to be reading this: To Joe Lamb, Berkeley California, thank you for what you did then, and for all you have done since. I owe you so much.