Lee Note 11 Charles Coleman April 1, 2001

Dear Robert E. Lee Classmates of 60,

It is truly a pleasure and somewhat of an honor for me being able to write this letter. Just knowing that my long separated classmates will be able to read this and maybe learn to understand just a little more about me, kind of makes this special and unbelievable to say the least.

This is a second chance to tell everyone something extra special, about me that they may never have known before. I know that I wasn’t very widely known, I wasn’t the most popular person on campus, and I wasn’t even a sports jock, but what I was, I didn’t learn until way after High School. I was a little mixed up and searching for stability in my life. I’m proud to have been in our "Class of 60." You helped me establish goals in my life.

Please allow me this chance to identify myself to those of you who may not have known me and refresh the memories of those who did know me, but didn’t know everything. I will only try to keep it kind of short and simple, but I feel it will enlighten many of you as to just who the heck was "Charles L. Coleman." Many of you didn’t know that I was a year and a half older than most you. Yes, I was a victim of the Texas Educational (High/Low) grading system back then. With school systems and policies like that and with parents like mine, I was lucky to have been in school at all.

At the time I just wanted to get along and be accepted as having a normal upbringing. I did think that my childhood was normal, even as disruptive as it was and I just had to make the best of it. I didn’t have the skills at the time to change it. Now I can tell you that my childhood was everything but normal and that by the Grace of God and my fellow classmates, as roll models, I was able to cope and make the very best of a very bad situation.

I was able to find out that there is something out there called normal. My folks moved around Texas many times during my earlier school years. Most of the times we moved, I would get set back in grade levels, because I wasn’t ready emotionally or academically to be advanced. Life sucks would have been a way to look at it.

My mother was a big verbal abuser and that is no way for a child to find out what normal is. This information that I give to you is so that you have a better understanding of the path my life has gone and just how important my High School days mean to me. Very rarely did I miss school. It was the time in my life that I was learning how normal people lived.

Thanks in advance for letting me spill my guts and air my dirty laundry, but I feel that after reading most of the e-mail messages from others that I have an obligation to you to set the record straight. Bless you.

I know that I wasn’t widely known; I think that I have covered this subject earlier in this letter. My time was kind of short in the Baytown School system for anyone to have ever gotten to know me. One of the many moves we made, my folks moved to Highlands during my 9th grade year in school. I was sick and tired of all the moving. I was trying everything I could to have a normal live, stability that is. So I got a car and drove back and forth to South Houston because I just wanted to finish with my classmates there. Kind of a big mistake on my part because that did not allow me the chance to make friends in the new neighborhood the last half of that school year. In fact, I didn’t meet anyone or get a chance to make friends with anyone in town before or during that first summer as a result of that little maneuver.

Being kind of shy made it awful slow for me to fit in when my freshman year finally started, understandable. Thus my claim of not being the most popular person on campus. I wasn’t even a sports jock; well little did anyone know that I was medically unable to play sports because of a heart condition. Yes, you heard it first right here.

Inside of me was a major sports lover and on the outside I was unable to take part in strenuous sports. This killed me big time and only added to my dilemma. You’ll find my picture in the varsity baseball picture of the yearbooks. I was the Student Manager of the team. I was crying out to belong. This was as close to any sport as my Doctors would allow.

Enough of this pity me stuff, this letter gets much better and nicer later on. Please, continue to read. I graduated somewhere near the middle of our class. Not bad for a troubled child with all these hang ups. With the loving support of my family hurting me more that helping me, I joined the Navy and moved out and away from home. I spent four and a half years with U.S. Navy and I got several medals for getting shot at a lot aboard the USS Rupertus (DD-851).

The Navy was kind of like home, I moved around more that I would have liked and they would scatter my close friends around the world without notice. I served my time and got out. I did some growing up while in the Navy and I felt that with my new knowledge of how things should and could have been normal, I made a last ditch attempt to reconnect with my family. Naturally, they had moved several more times after I left high school and I found them in Seattle. So much for letters from home.

After several days visiting them I couldn’t reconnect, it was the same. I finished my Naval career the first chance I could. I got out of the Navy in San Francisco in January of 1965. Lost and confused about what the heck I was going to do with my life, I stopped by Seattle to see my family one last time. Lord wouldn’t you know it, they moved to Portland, Oregon. I chased them down and at long last I was able connect.

We pulled off several years of a normal family life after that. That was because I learned to manage, not change, the verbal abuse of my Mother. Her problem was more than I could understand and she was beyond getting help. She just became ineffective in her negative attitude.

When I got to Portland I naturally had to get a job. I found one with a large paper manufacturing company, which I have been with for the past 36 years. I am a Logistics Coordinator with them and one who is thinking about retirement. Now for some good news.

When I started working for Crown Zellerback back in 1965 I meet some new friends, one of which set me up with a blind date. About a year later I married that blind date, Glenda and I have been married forever. We had three children, David, Steve, and Debra. We just became grandparents, thanks to my son Steve and his wife Kristi. Life is good. Life is real good.

Steve is with the Navy, making a career out of it. They live near Bremerton, Washington, as he is stationed at the Naval Hospital there. This I tell you because I am burning up the road between here and there just to see my grandson. Life is truly good. Not bad for a guy who finished near the middle of his high school class and kind of made it on his own.

I have 36 years seniority on my job; I have lived in the same house for nearly 30 years, my children all went from beginning to end in the same school system. They have made life long friends and they still have their original parents married together. I now have a normal life. They are well-adjusted young adults and they also have some stability in their lives.

After running into several classmates while in the Navy, I have only been in contact with my best friend Pat Tobin. A house fire many years ago took my class yearbooks and all known connections with Baytown. I am having a hard time with all of the names on the list of classmates. Some I remember with great fondness and I often wonder if they remember me.

I have not been to any of the class reunions but I do want to attend the next one for sure. I have a copy of the Baytown Sun’s picture of the Varsity Baseball team. It was the one that they put in the Yearbook. Without having my yearbooks anymore and I would very much like to obtain a list of the names that appear under that picture. Someone help me with this one, please.

If anyone feels so inclined as to e-mail me about the good old days at R.E.L. please do so. In the subject line please indicate Class of 60 and I will read it and respond to it quickly. I buzz off anything that looks like junk mail.

As I close with much sadness, I feel that I have washed away all the hard times of the past. I live only for the good times of the future. My folks have long since passed away and my life is much more stable now. Thanks much to having been in the Class of 60. I find such joy in reading all the success stories of my fellow classmates. I hope you enjoy this story of my life and that you find much happiness in knowing that a middle class person is still alive and well in the Pacific Northwest (God’s Country).

Please include me as a success story. God Bless all the girls who attended the "Quack Shack" and you just got to love the Lee Brigadiers.

Charlie Coleman

Beaverton, Oregon