Washington Area Luncheon

Washington Area Lunch - May 8, 2015
Report and pictures were submitted by Dave Carruth

Yesterday 29 Classmates, wives, widows, widower, and children gathered at the Army/Navy Country Club. There was to be a WWII memorial fly by which we believed we could see, with binoculars, from the Clubhouse roof terrace. Since the fly by was to start at 1210 we met 30 minutes early, sat down at 1130, ate our salads then went up to the roof. This is the first time any of us had been anywhere in the new building and I must report it is POSH digs. There are dining rooms all over the place. The roof terrace is a very large area, which is open but has a roof over about half the area. It is set up so you can bring your hamburger or whatever out to tables, which are there and enjoy your meal outdoors. The flight path for the fly by went from the Lincoln Memorial, east across the WWII memorial then down the river to leave the area. My binoculars are good enough that I could identify the planes but not too many of the 100 plus people on the roof had binocs and I suspect they were quite disappointed. The show lasted until 1230 and when we returned to the dining room the wait staff immediately brought our meals and they were hot. Everyone was absolutely blown away by the quality of the service yesterday. The food was also better than we have had there recently.

Charlie & Marguerite’s daughter Sheree Wydra was with them. Sheree’s daughter is a graduate of the Academy and a helicopter pilot. Charlie and Marguerite’s grandson, I don’t know if he is Sheree’s son or not, graduates next week, Class of ’15.

Our daughter Sharon and her husband Paul joined us.

Judy Flood passed out a suggested approach to future luncheon planning and it was decided that our next luncheon will be on Sept. 11 again at Army/Navy. At that time we’ll decide how to proceed. For many reasons, most of which you can name, it is getting more and more difficult to attract a reasonable number of people. John Fry is having the same problem with the Homecoming dinner, which this year will be on Friday, Oct. 23rd. Remember when we used to fill the huge room at the boathouse?

We had no speaker this time and most people there told me they really had a wonderful time just talking to tablemates. Of course it has been a long time since the last luncheon so we all had “stuff” to report and discuss. As you can see from the pictures we are still a pretty good-looking group even though the men’s ages ranged from 88 to 90. Tony Duncan asked me how many of us are still above ground and the answer from my data is 257 as of this month. There is no way I can be certain of that number but I’m certain that improved data would only make the number smaller.