Sammie Lowe Beasley

Helen Lindsay Rigg provided the following info.

Sammie Lowe Beasley is in the hospital. She is scheduled to have triple bypass surgery on Wednesday, 4/29/2009. Remember her in prayer.

Opal Long Weidner

Mrs. Opal Long Weidner, 88, of Alexandria peacefully passed away Sunday, April 26, 2009, in Rapides Regional Medical Center after a short illness. She was surrounded by many family members singing her favorite hymns. Services will be held at 11:00 a.m., Wednesday, April 29, 2009, at Pentecostals of Alexandria. Burial will be at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Ball, LA.

Mrs. Weidner is the Mother of classmate Garland Weidner. Please keep Garland and his entire family in your prayers as they go through this time of sorrow. The online Guest Book for Mrs. Weidner is available by clicking on her name in the Title line of this posting. If you need home address info for Garland please let me know.

What Do You Read Most On The Blog?

The above page is part of a report of the various blog articles that classmates have clicked on the blog article title to open and read the selected article. During the first 4 months of 2009 a total of 70 articles were clicked and read, but only 14 of those articles are shown in the info above to illustrate the process. Please note that if you use your mouse, or keyboard, to scroll down the blog page and read the articles (without ever clicking on their titles) then Google's software does not capture that info and that info isn't part of the info shown above.

To the extent that the data shown in the summary above is accurate it provides insight into the different type info that folks prefer to read about the most. That info could be used to ensure that as many of those type articles as possible are included in the blog. To help us move in that direction I'd like to request that you click on the blog article titles to read those articles that interest you. The links at the bottom of each article will help you move back to the list of blog articles so you can make additional choices. Info provided by Google from this process could become a real help to us in making our blog as interesting as possible.

One thing we don't want to do is get in a rut and stay there. If anyone has info that you think might be interesting to others, use the Email News To Blog link near the top left of the blog page to send that info to me. Your info could motivate someone else to do the same thing.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to drop me a note.

Hello To All From Joanie Stockard

I have been retired since 2002 from being a Regional Customer Service Manager in Dallas and here in Lake Charles for a BellSouth communications company. I absolutely LOVE being so lucky to have my time to enjoy each of these days since retirement. When home, I love working in the yard, even if it’s hard "on the ole body" when pulling weeds. Larry has put several bird feeders in the yard for us to enjoy and we have a multitude of varieties that visit us daily - love it!

I am so blessed every day, and Larry and I just enjoy each other, our families and friends that we are so blessed to have, and, of course, our "running the roads" every chance we get, whether in one of the jeeps or on the Harley. We definitely ride the back roads and the jeep trails.

Larry has been at PPG Industries here in Lake Charles for almost 30 years where he is a Master Electrician. His real love there is being a First Responder. He is also a Fire Captain and Instructor on the Emergency Fire and Rescue Squad at the plant.

We can hardly wait for his retirement in the next couple of years, but in the meantime, we are fortunate to have a lot of days free due to him being on "Shift." It gives him some 22 weeks every year of off days (including regular 4 weeks of vacation days) so we get to "play" a lot. But, most of all, he is a Marine! Oooohrah! He served two tours in Viet Nam and is 1st Marine - 1st Division. I absolutely adore him - he is my "best" everything! Ironically, Johnny's cousin, Camelia Anne Kircus (class of '60) and her husband, Ray, got Larry and I together. That was over ten years ago, and I am still "grinning" from ear to ear.

My daughter (although she claims Larry before me – Hee hee - they are close!) Tracee is a Nurse Practitioner. She is Johnny Kircus' daughter and laughs and says, "Larry is my Daddy grown up." She is a doll with four daughters from 9 to 13, and one son, 21, Chris, who you read about (see February 01, 2009 blog article). We are excited to learn that Chris will be stationed at Ft. Polk for awhile where he will be serving as an instructor for "Airborne" trainees. Hopefully, he will not serve another tour in Iraq.

That about sums it up. While living in Louisiana Cajun country we enjoy the fantastic foods and riding the coastal roads seeing all the birds, ducks, and geese along the way, not to mention counting alligators as we go. Hopefully, after Larry's retirement in a couple of years, we will move out to Texas Hill Country. We love it out there!

God Bless and Love!

Cleolice A. Foster

Funeral services celebrating the life of Cleolice A. Foster, 92, will be held at 11:30 a.m. Saturday April 25, 2009 at Rose-Neath's Southside Chapel. Cleolice was born January 26, 1917 in Cass County, TX to Russell and Willie Amox. She passed away after a brief illness on April 22, 2009 in Shreveport. She is survived by son, Jan Russell Foster; daughter, Willie Pat Binderim; six grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren; and a number of nieces and nephews.

We have home address info for classmate Willie Pat Binderim, but no current email address. If you wish to leave a message in the Guest Book just click on Mrs. Foster's name in the Title bar to this posting. Please keep Willie Pat and her family in your prayers.

Rosie Aline Ricketts Davis

This obituary appears to be for the Mother of deceased '61 classmate James Ricketts. If anyone knows for sure that this is James' Mother please drop me a note and let me know. If that happens, I'll add a note to this posting confirming the information.

Rosie Aline Ricketts Davis, 81, was born on June 26, 1927 and passed away Saturday, April 18, 2009, in Shreveport, LA after a lengthy illness. Visitation will be held on Monday, April 20, 2009 from 3 PM until 5:30 PM at Rose-Neath Southside Funeral Home. Services to follow.

C. F. (Charlie) Biggs

Services for the Celebration of Life of Charlie Biggs, 96, will be held at 3:00 p.m., Saturday, April 18, 2009, at Tatum Chapel of Broadmoor Baptist Church. Officiating will be Dr. Tom Harrison. Interment will follow in Forest Park Cemetery, St. Vincent Avenue. Mr. Biggs is the Father of Molly Biggs Templin, wife of classmate H.R. Templin.

You can access the obituary and Guest Book for Mr. Biggs by clicking on his name in the title line of this article. Please keep Molly and H.R., and other family members in your prayers.

For Your Information

I recently read that Microsoft will soon start asking users of Internet Explorer 6 to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft says IE6 is very old technology and may not work well for modern web sites. They also noted IE6 has security weaknesses that are corrected in IE8.

The table below shows browsers used by folks visiting our class web site. About 17 percent of the visits between January 1 and April 13 of this year used IE6. If you use IE6 or IE7 and want to upgrade your browser, you can use IE 8, Firefox, or the Google Chrome browser and be reasonably confident that any of those browsers will do a good job for you on our web site.

	Browser	Visitors	% of Total Visitors
1	Internet Explorer 7.x	1,511	60.76%
2	Internet Explorer 6.x	413	16.61%
3	Google Chrome	203	8.16%
4	Unnamed Others	104	4.18%
5	Firefox	100	4.02%
6	Internet Explorer 8.x	27	1.09%
7	26 Other Special Purpose Browsers	129	5.19%
	Total	2,487	100.00%

Camilla Fulco Doughty

On 4/6/2009 I forwarded a note to everyone on our email list regarding Camilla Fulco Doughty's recent receipt of unspent monies from a previous combined reunion of Fair Park's Classes of the 60's. Camilla would like to get input from '61 classmates on how these funds should be handled.

If you are a member of FP's Class of 1961, email Camilla on this matter by clicking HERE.

Conficker Worm Virus

A recent "60 Minutes" program did a story on the Conficker Worm virus. Some have said the actual danger of the virus was not properly presented by the program. I don't know about that, but I do know I want to avoid the virus if I can. And the program certainly promoted that concept, at least for me.

Clicking on the title to this post will take you to a transcript of the program. If you wish to do so you can click on a video link in the article and watch the actual report presented on "60 Minutes." Its the first video link in the article. If you want to run the video, press the Esc key on your keyboard to stop the website music from playing. Then click on the video link to start it running.