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with Tom Weiskopf as his partner. Uncle Stan graduated from Massachusetts A & M at Amherst, where he played football for them. He was good enough that he was offered a position with the now defunct Brooklyn Dodgers football team. Before he could report to the football team, he ended up on a different team, the U. S. Navy. Uncle Stan became eventually a skipper of an LST, which was shot out from under him. He brought me a navy sheath knife, that I treasured. He taught me how to throw it at a wooden target, the way he said the navy had taught him, not overhand as they showed from Hollywood but underhanded for accuracy. After the war, they set up housekeeping first in Orange at Grandpa's and Grandma's house. One summer they rented Finney's Camp on Lake Mattawa, and invited me to spend some time on the lake. I will never forget going out on the lake in a row boat with Uncle Stan, where he taught me to fish with a reel used as a hand line, while trolling. Pickerel were small but good fighters. I really enjoyed myself. Later Stan became a coach on the staff at Amherst. They set up housekeeping at one of the student dorms. He was working his way through the diplomas to his doctorate. Their next residence was in West Lafayette, Ind., where Stan was big ten coordinator and taught highly specialized graduate programs for the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Purdue University, and University of Wisconsin, better known as the big ten. From there they went to Presque Isle, Maine where Stan became President of Orono State College, also known as the University of Maine at Presque Isle. When Bill Sullivan left as Western Regional Postmaster General, he reappeared as Chancellor of the University of Maine and also on the Board of Governors of the U. S. Postal Service, he was Stan's boss. Fran, at one reception asked him if he knew me. When he was told I worked at Colorado Springs District Office, and was told of one of my projects he said that he indeed did remember me. It's a small world, especially from San Francisco to Presque Isle. After retiring from UMPI they moved from the president's mansion to San Diego, Ca., where Stan eventually started teaching high school chemistry and physics. Aunt Fran has published a work on Agatha Christie and is currently working on her first novel. Raymond Lloyd Bachelder was born on March 13, 1901 in Orange, Massachusetts. He died on June 29, 1962 at Fitzsimons General Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. He is buried in section P Grave 583, Fort Logan National Cemetery, Denver, Colorado. At the age of 16 he lied about his age to go into the U. S. Marine Corps to fight in the first world war. In later years he would tell how he began to regret his decision while in boot camp at Paris Island, S. C.. It must have been tough for a 16 year old to be forced into a man's mind and body. At any rate, he completed boot camp and became a trumpeter in France. Among his other duties, he served as courier for the company commander. France during the first world war was no place for a 16 year old, but there he was. One of his friends, I believe his name was Ole Hansen, was running beside him in a charge between trenches. My dad heard a howitzer shell coming and the next second Hansen was no longer there. The shell had decapitated him. There was write up in the Athol Daily News that I received after my father's death, that cleared up the mystery around the nick in his right index finger and nail. I had asked him how he got it, when I was younger. He had answered by saying that he had gotten too friendly with his table saw. What really happened was as follows: he had just returned from the front with a message for the commanding officer, and just as he saluted, a sniper squeezed his trigger. There was just one inch of helmet brim between my existence and no existence for me. He fought at the Marne and St. Mehiel, and Argonne with it's network of interwoven trenches that averaged seven miles wide with barbed wire and concrete machine gun emplacements. This occurred between September 20 and November 11,1918. After he recovered from being gassed with mustard gas, and a short stay in Germany, and with two years service, he got a trip home, the recipient of the Purple Heart. Beyond those two instances, I never was made aware of the war horrors that he went through. -16-
