Dave Harr

I'm sort of going to follow the order of the questionnaire.

 

I'm retired, living again in Naperville. My wife, San, is from Burma (Myanmar). I met her when she was working for the US Library of Congress, with an office in our Embassy in Rangoon, liaising with Burmese universities and libraries to acquire books for the LOC. We have two daughters: Adrienne, married and living in the Los Angeles area, and Lynn, who recently finished college and is living at home while she looks for opportunities.

 

I'm sort of a traveler, having spent most of my working life abroad with the US Government, and was fortunate to see a lot of interesting places. Two of the most memorable were Thyangboche Monastery, at 13,000 feet altitude at the base of Mt. Everest, where I helped bury an American mountain climber who had been killed trying to climb Mt Everest. There, we were virtually surrounded by the spectacular snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas. Also near the top of my favorite places is Nemrut Dag in east-central Turkey. Nemrut Dag is a mountain capped by a huge pyramid of "loose" stone protecting the remains of an ancient king. The pyramid is surrounded by large stone carvings. From the top of that mountain one can look over vast swaths of "the land between the waters", Mesopotamia, the land of the Tigris and the Euphrates. A third favorite would be We Lake, a large, shallow lake in eastern Burma, on which most of the water traffic is in boats propelled by 'leg-rowers", who give force to near vertical oars using their legs. And then there are the beautiful beaches of Sri Lanka.

 

I certainly can still sing the NCHS alma mater! As an interesting note of trivia, two of our teachers were involved in its creation. The music was written by band director Elmer Koerner, and I understand the words were written by our orchestra teacher Robert McCabe.

 

I am careful how I answer the question "Am I a war veteran." This is one of those "not exactly" questions. I did my military service in the Air Force right after high school. A few years later, my second assignment in the US State Department's Foreign Service took me to Vietnam, where I was an advisor in a district near the Cambodian border, on a joint military-civilian team. On a subsequent tour in Vietnam, in 1975 I was on one of the last helicopters out of DaNang before the communists took over that city a month before the fall of Saigon. So I saw war, but would not claim to be a Viet-nam war veteran like those who fought in uniform.

One of my current volunteer activities is a carry-on of one I did in high-school. As a young ham radio operator, I was recruited by Doug White to help in Civil Defense radio, "checking in" once a week to a county radio net from a radio kept in the back of the (then) new police station in the north side of Jefferson Street. Only, now the organization is called "Naperville Emergency Management Agency," and the radio operating position is in a much more elaborate facility beneath a fire station on Aurora Avenue.

 

Memories:

 

One of my favorite memories was the first memorial day Mr. Koerner allowed me to "march back" from Naperville Cemetery to downtown.... a little kid (probably sixth grade) with a baritone horn among the "big guys" – the high school band and the municipal band. The music for this last part of the memorial day parade was always the march "Military Escort," which, although a real march, was easy to play. Such a thrill when the drums gave the "roll off' and we hit the first notes of that march!

 

I would like again to visit the old soda fountain at "Ozzies." As an indication of how much Naperville has changed, I think at present the only two businesses of our time which still operate in the downtime area are Beidelman's furniture and Breitweiser cleaners.

 

In high school, we had some really good teachers: the ones I remember most are William Hill (bio and physics), "Chalky" Williams (math), Mr. Welzel (also math), and Miss Scroggie and Mrs. Warnell (English). I also have strong impressions of teachers from Jr. High: Miss Morrisey, the wonderfully demanding English teacher, and Roger Feeney, who taught social studies and had his wartime pictures of Mussolini and the dictator's mistress after they were caught and executed by partisans.

 

The cool cars I remember were owned by Doug Hastert, Jack Weissenborn, and Hank Sheehan.

 

As for "fashion statements", pre-high school there was this fad for charcoal and pink. And there were the "low slung" blue jeans. I always wondered about public schools in other parts of the country which banned blue jeans. Blue jeans were so normal in Naperville, both because we had a lot of classmates who lived on farms, and also because they offered such good wear-to-cost value for thrifty families.

 

Favorite eating places? Naperville didn't have a lot of restaurants. I can remember eating in the "Rafter House" when very young. And as a teenager, Chobar's Restaurant out on Aurora Avenue and "Wheel-O-Meal" at the comer of Columbia and Ogden were among my favorites ... also Prince Castle and the A&W stand. For proper meals, our family liked that Western-theme restaurant in Warrenville where we had one of our pre-graduation meals; that restaurant offered a family favorite for dessert: gooseberry pie.

 

Sunday Activities: My dad was a preacher and seminary professor, so – never any argument allowed – on mornings it was Sunday School and church services. In the afternoons it was youth fellowship, and frequently an event at the church such as a travelogue. In between we filled time listening to the radio. But apart from church activities, anything organized, such as ball games, generally weren't in the cards.

 

The most memorable cafeteria meal was the time we had a "protest sit down strike." I always felt guilty about that. I never thought our cafeteria food was that bad, and thought that those who prepared it were doing a pretty good job. I also remember the cartons of milk for 2 cents each.

 

Among the interesting characters was Dean Perry, who ran a gas station by the seminary where Dad taught. I remember Dean as a "rough and ready" type whose personal lifestyle contrasted with that of the preachers-to-be and their professors next door. and was thus always interesting. Dean always had a friendly word of greeting as I would walk past to and from school, and helped me numerous times with my bicycle.

 

My first job was weekly cleaning the law offices of Mel Abrahamson above the Naperville National Bank Although before that, I tasted work selling Christmas Cards one holiday season, and peddling fresh corn one summer from my bicycle.

 

I had favorite radio programs – the Lone Ranger, the Shadow, Jack Benny, Twenty Questions, before I had favorite TV programs: What's My Line, and Shock Theater. We were among the last families to get TV in Naperville – my sophomore year in high school. I think the slowness was a cultural thing on my dad's part rationalized on the basis of expense. But when Dad was fated to spend a couple of weeks at home recuperating from an appendix operation (at the beginning of baseball season), my mother, for her own sanity's sake, went down to Atherton's (as I recall) and brought home a TV.

 

Ads and jingles: Remember "I will bring a mountain to Chicago!" (Folger's coffee); the Hamm's beer bear ("From the land of sky blue waters. . . ") and "I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Wiener. . ." Of course our English teachers got upset over the bad grammar of "Winston tastes good... like a cigarette should."

 

Scary things in Naperville? Was there really a "Black Shirt Gang" from Aurora, or was that just a legend?

 

Summer in Naperville: baseball and softball (remember the OLD ball diamond on 5th Ave which was razed for the Kroehler parking lot. YMCA field trips into the city – the Cubs and the Sox every summer. And of course, the beach and band concerts. Our family also spent lots of summer time in northern Wisconsin and in Nashville, TN, where Dad taught summer school.