10 May 2007
My Family & Friends
Cindy & Me
I have been blessed to share the past quarter century and some with Cindy Dianne Proctor Young.
We met around 1972, while Cindy and I were trying to avoid being responsible college students. We had seen each other passing in the halls at Wright State University, where we were students at the time. One afternoon I was sitting in the Yellow Gulch Saloon, trying to figure out what is today to me a simple computer programming language. Between my own ignorance and a beer, I was getting nowhere. Cindy walked in, I said hello and asked her if she knew anything about computers. From then on we began seeing more and more of each other and eventually decided to get married.
In retrospect, it was a decision that we made as calmly as if we were deciding to have chinese take-out for dinner.
Our lives together have been with the pleasure of seeing two sons grow into young men. Ian joined our madhouse in 1975; his brother Andy was born in 1987. Both of them are a pleasure to be
around. Their kindness & intelligence, most of it gotten from their mother's genes than mine, is a constant joy and amazement.
My life would be considerably less interesting without my family.
Cindy is a great a source of strength and patience in my otherwise frantic and chaotic life. Her intelligence, caring compassion, and kindness support me in my most dark moments. Her reason and determination keep me from being as big a blundering fool as I can easily be.
Ian George Bull Young
Our older son, Ian, joined the human race on a March morning in Kettering, Ohio. His grandmother squealed for joy when I called her up and called her "Grandma."
Ian is now on his own, making money and spending it no more wisely than I did at his age. You'd think that after watching him grow from that first breath to this day, over 30 years later, that there would be no further surprises. But he continues to do things that show the same crazy intelligence that I received from my parents.
Ian showed up at the house a couple years back with two round-trip tickets to Puerto Rico, a sort of belated birthday present to me that proved to be more than just a wonderful return trip to the island where I'd spent two years of my life in the military over 30 years ago. I got to see my son in a completely different light, although I know that for him it was a true chore to get up at 8:00 a.m. like the old man does. I only wish that he'd planned the trip for more than three days . . . and had arranged for Cindy and his brother, Andy, to go along.
As Richard Farinha said in Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, "the plot persists in thickening."
Anders Evan Proctor Young
Ian's brother, Anders Evan, was born on a Halloween morning over sixteen years ago. If there is any truth to the statement that every child is an only child, Andy is proof enough of that. He is as inventive with ideas and language as his brother and mother, and as interested
in the causal forces of his being here as his brother was at the same age.
Although the smile in Andy's high school graduation picture says a lot, the person who today is a college student has discovered the depth of knowledge & thought around him. When he comes home on weekends for free chow & a place to do his laundry, the dinner table conversations are truly amazing. I like to say that he's co-locating his knowledge, which is a nice way of saying that he is still adding to the things he thought about when he was a child. Like the day years ago when he asked, if we were cows, that we might not say "I don't need any of your man, bull!"
Andy plays guitar, electric bass & has taken a fleeting few saws on a very nice Romanian violin. He writes poetry. He's been drawing cartoons & other art since was four or five. And he enjoys taking philosophical perspectives of things like belief, ethics and human evolution.
At which point I must admit that for both my sons, things like that make me sure that they will probably end up like me so involved, as Charles Bukowski suggested, with our minor dragons that the big one goes waiting.
Of course, I would not be here
to tell this tale if it weren't for the fateful meeting of my mother and
father. My parents gave me more than life. They gave me love and an opportunity to learn and reflect on the way things work in this world. They are gone now, both of them, and I miss their advice and interest.
My father, George Bull Young, was the son of a Canadian cobbler and a Norwegian nurse. His parents met in Chicago around the turn of the century. Dad and his brother, Nils Young, after whom I am named, lived for a while in Norway, having returned there in the early days of WW I after the death of their maternal grandfather, after whom Dad's brother was named.
Dad was a journalist. He had learned the trade the old way, coming from the composing room and into the journalist's desk by a slow process of apprenticeship and attention to scribal detail. He served with the 614th Army Ordnance Company on the
Solomons and Marianas during WW II and was wounded in action. He returned
to the US and, after the war, became involved in what was to become the
present US Forces Radio & Television Service. He left that golden opportunity
to be a radio journalist in a variety of radio stations across the country
up to and after my birth. In 1964 Dad's voice was considered too refined
and "old-fashioned" for the smart-ass sounds of radio as it had become
then and still is today. He went back to the things he knew and loved,
working for a while at the University of Dayton's printshop
before signing on as a beat reporter with the Kettering-Oakwood Times,
a newspaper founded and run by two local families of some means. He worked
there until his retirement in 1978. Dad, who never liked the hubbub of
Christmas, left this world on 22 December, 1982 at the frighteningly young
age of 71 years.
My mother, Audrey Elizabeth
Schreiber Young, was the only girl in a large family of farming men outside of
Kersey, Pennsylvania. Mom graduated from Johnstown Teachers College and
taught school in the same one room school house as her mother had taught
years earlier.
Mom met Dad through some friends and they inevitably fell in love. The joy in their lives together covered all the troubles that they had lived through as they became the parents of my sister & me.
Mom always gave my sister & me the best opportunities to learn. She had taught us to read before we started elementary school and she was always on us about doing our homework and studying. But then Mom & Dad were always concerned with our intellectual growth. No book was too expensive, no knowledge too remote.
Mom finished off an MA in Education at Wright State University and taught at Stebbins High School until her retirement around 1976 when she had the first of two surgeries that eventually left her partially aphasic and incapacitated. Dad took care of her as best he could until he died. Then my sister took over & cared for Mom until she died in 1984.
I know that I was blessed with my parents in my life. They were the kind of parents that I can only hope that I have been all these years.
My Sister: Mary Janet
My sister lives in A south Dayton suburb. Formerly a nurse in the psych ward of a local hospital, she often suggested that I never show up at her workplace without documentation. She was afraid that they'd put me up in leathers and let me squeal. Probably a good suggestion.
Sis took care of Mom and Dad in their later years, traveling back and forth from her home in the countryside to make sure that Dad was properly grumpy and that Mom didn't take too much guff from Dad. After Dad's passing, Sis moved Mom into her home and took care of her there until Mom's death.
Sis retired from her job as a nurse some years ago. She now lives in a big house with her husband, Mike, a couple dogs and cats, doing sculpture in acrylic and painting with needle & thread.
Sis has two daughters, who have gifted Sis' life with grandchildren, extra in-laws and the usual accouterments of her own personal narrative. Every year just before the ball falls in New York on New Year's Eve, Sis calls me to remind me that for just one month she has been as old as I am. After the ball hits the revelers' sense of futility, I'm back to one year older.
I met Rishat Mohammed almost by accident, while taping an evaluation session for international student teaching assistants as the university where I work. Rishat said he was
from China. Only later did I discover that he is a member of the great
Turkic tribes that caused the Han Chinese to build that wall so many years
ago. Rishat has been through a lot. The 1980s protests at Tien Anmin Square,
a "re-education" camp as a result of the protest, and a round of badgering
by Organs of State sent from Washington to "correct" his thinking about
his people & his homeland.
Rishat was lucky to get his girlfriend, Rehima, out of the country before the gates closed. They were married at the mosque in Dayton, Ohio & now live in Cincinnati, where Rishat works for a prestigious international chemical firm. Rehima is studying to be a surgical nurse.
Rishat won his PhD in chemistry from the University of Florida in Gainesville. Rehima also went to school in Florida as part of her quest for a position as a surgical nurse. Now that they live in California, where Rishat works with a chemical engineering firm. Rehima has continued her studies.
My In-Laws
Last New Years morning I was sitting at the breakfast table with Cindy's eldest brother, his wife and their daughter. The conversation had evolved into deeply philosophical areas. I was forced to jump into the middle of the conversation to express my amazement at my good fortune.
I am a very lucky person. My wife and sons are such wonderful, thoughtful people. My wife's family is full of the joy of mutual and shared values and beliefs. We don't all agree each one of us with the other or with the group on some matters, but each person is respectful of the others and together we have many moments of what can only be termed fellowship. That New Year's day morning was just one of many epiphanies I have
had over the many years that I've shared with these folks.
Gordon and Brenda and their daughter, Rachel, live a fair distance off across the state. Evenso, we see them often and have gone on family beach vacations with them. Each of them is truly family to me.
Don and Fran and their son, Tyler, and their daughter, Kim, and her husband Sean and their children are a very active group. Tyler is now a college student and the grandkids, twin boys and an older girl, are fun to watch. The children are blessed with caring, loving parents and grandparents. And Don is the master chef on vacations.
Cindy's youngest brother, Doug, passed away near Christmas a couple years ago. We all think of his widow, Debbie, as much a member of the family as anyone else whose life has been part of ours. We miss Doug deeply. He was a cantakerous person in some ways but a loveable one in all ways. Doug's daughter by a previous marriage, Stacey, is, like her cousins, an intelligent and savvy person. All of them are part of my life in ways I never could have imagined.
to My Friends Page
to my Family Heritage Page
I have been blessed to share the past quarter century and some with Cindy Dianne Proctor Young. We met around 1972, while Cindy and I were trying to avoid being responsible college students. We had seen each other passing in the halls at Wright State University, where we were students at the time. One afternoon I was sitting in the Yellow Gulch Saloon, trying to figure out what is today to me a simple computer programming language. Between my own ignorance and a beer, I was getting nowhere. Cindy walked in, I said hello and asked her if she knew anything about computers. From then on we began seeing more and more of each other and eventually decided to get married.
In retrospect, it was a decision that we made as calmly as if we were deciding to have chinese take-out for dinner.
Our lives together have been with the pleasure of seeing two sons grow into young men. Ian joined our madhouse in 1975; his brother Andy was born in 1987. Both of them are a pleasure to be
around. Their kindness & intelligence, most of it gotten from their mother's genes than mine, is a constant joy and amazement.My life would be considerably less interesting without my family.
Cindy is a great a source of strength and patience in my otherwise frantic and chaotic life. Her intelligence, caring compassion, and kindness support me in my most dark moments. Her reason and determination keep me from being as big a blundering fool as I can easily be.
My Sons
Cindy & I are responsible for two other persons on this planet, two sons who are a constant surprise to me. They are perfect brothers, the kind of men who have a relationship that extends almost magically throughout their two separate and yet intertwined lives.Ian George Bull Young
Our older son, Ian, joined the human race on a March morning in Kettering, Ohio. His grandmother squealed for joy when I called her up and called her "Grandma."
Ian is now on his own, making money and spending it no more wisely than I did at his age. You'd think that after watching him grow from that first breath to this day, over 30 years later, that there would be no further surprises. But he continues to do things that show the same crazy intelligence that I received from my parents.
Ian showed up at the house a couple years back with two round-trip tickets to Puerto Rico, a sort of belated birthday present to me that proved to be more than just a wonderful return trip to the island where I'd spent two years of my life in the military over 30 years ago. I got to see my son in a completely different light, although I know that for him it was a true chore to get up at 8:00 a.m. like the old man does. I only wish that he'd planned the trip for more than three days . . . and had arranged for Cindy and his brother, Andy, to go along.As Richard Farinha said in Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, "the plot persists in thickening."
Anders Evan Proctor Young
Ian's brother, Anders Evan, was born on a Halloween morning over sixteen years ago. If there is any truth to the statement that every child is an only child, Andy is proof enough of that. He is as inventive with ideas and language as his brother and mother, and as interested
in the causal forces of his being here as his brother was at the same age.
Although the smile in Andy's high school graduation picture says a lot, the person who today is a college student has discovered the depth of knowledge & thought around him. When he comes home on weekends for free chow & a place to do his laundry, the dinner table conversations are truly amazing. I like to say that he's co-locating his knowledge, which is a nice way of saying that he is still adding to the things he thought about when he was a child. Like the day years ago when he asked, if we were cows, that we might not say "I don't need any of your man, bull!"Andy plays guitar, electric bass & has taken a fleeting few saws on a very nice Romanian violin. He writes poetry. He's been drawing cartoons & other art since was four or five. And he enjoys taking philosophical perspectives of things like belief, ethics and human evolution.
At which point I must admit that for both my sons, things like that make me sure that they will probably end up like me so involved, as Charles Bukowski suggested, with our minor dragons that the big one goes waiting.
My Parents & Sister
George B. & Audrey E. YoungOf course, I would not be here
to tell this tale if it weren't for the fateful meeting of my mother and
father. My parents gave me more than life. They gave me love and an opportunity to learn and reflect on the way things work in this world. They are gone now, both of them, and I miss their advice and interest.My father, George Bull Young, was the son of a Canadian cobbler and a Norwegian nurse. His parents met in Chicago around the turn of the century. Dad and his brother, Nils Young, after whom I am named, lived for a while in Norway, having returned there in the early days of WW I after the death of their maternal grandfather, after whom Dad's brother was named.
Dad was a journalist. He had learned the trade the old way, coming from the composing room and into the journalist's desk by a slow process of apprenticeship and attention to scribal detail. He served with the 614th Army Ordnance Company on the
Solomons and Marianas during WW II and was wounded in action. He returned
to the US and, after the war, became involved in what was to become the
present US Forces Radio & Television Service. He left that golden opportunity
to be a radio journalist in a variety of radio stations across the country
up to and after my birth. In 1964 Dad's voice was considered too refined
and "old-fashioned" for the smart-ass sounds of radio as it had become
then and still is today. He went back to the things he knew and loved,
working for a while at the University of Dayton's printshop
before signing on as a beat reporter with the Kettering-Oakwood Times,
a newspaper founded and run by two local families of some means. He worked
there until his retirement in 1978. Dad, who never liked the hubbub of
Christmas, left this world on 22 December, 1982 at the frighteningly young
age of 71 years.My mother, Audrey Elizabeth
Schreiber Young, was the only girl in a large family of farming men outside of
Kersey, Pennsylvania. Mom graduated from Johnstown Teachers College and
taught school in the same one room school house as her mother had taught
years earlier.Mom met Dad through some friends and they inevitably fell in love. The joy in their lives together covered all the troubles that they had lived through as they became the parents of my sister & me.
Mom always gave my sister & me the best opportunities to learn. She had taught us to read before we started elementary school and she was always on us about doing our homework and studying. But then Mom & Dad were always concerned with our intellectual growth. No book was too expensive, no knowledge too remote.
Mom finished off an MA in Education at Wright State University and taught at Stebbins High School until her retirement around 1976 when she had the first of two surgeries that eventually left her partially aphasic and incapacitated. Dad took care of her as best he could until he died. Then my sister took over & cared for Mom until she died in 1984.
I know that I was blessed with my parents in my life. They were the kind of parents that I can only hope that I have been all these years.
My Sister: Mary Janet
My sister lives in A south Dayton suburb. Formerly a nurse in the psych ward of a local hospital, she often suggested that I never show up at her workplace without documentation. She was afraid that they'd put me up in leathers and let me squeal. Probably a good suggestion.
Sis took care of Mom and Dad in their later years, traveling back and forth from her home in the countryside to make sure that Dad was properly grumpy and that Mom didn't take too much guff from Dad. After Dad's passing, Sis moved Mom into her home and took care of her there until Mom's death.
Sis retired from her job as a nurse some years ago. She now lives in a big house with her husband, Mike, a couple dogs and cats, doing sculpture in acrylic and painting with needle & thread.
Sis has two daughters, who have gifted Sis' life with grandchildren, extra in-laws and the usual accouterments of her own personal narrative. Every year just before the ball falls in New York on New Year's Eve, Sis calls me to remind me that for just one month she has been as old as I am. After the ball hits the revelers' sense of futility, I'm back to one year older.
My Extended Family
Rishat Mohammed & Rema AbdourovaI met Rishat Mohammed almost by accident, while taping an evaluation session for international student teaching assistants as the university where I work. Rishat said he was
from China. Only later did I discover that he is a member of the great
Turkic tribes that caused the Han Chinese to build that wall so many years
ago. Rishat has been through a lot. The 1980s protests at Tien Anmin Square,
a "re-education" camp as a result of the protest, and a round of badgering
by Organs of State sent from Washington to "correct" his thinking about
his people & his homeland.Rishat was lucky to get his girlfriend, Rehima, out of the country before the gates closed. They were married at the mosque in Dayton, Ohio & now live in Cincinnati, where Rishat works for a prestigious international chemical firm. Rehima is studying to be a surgical nurse.
Rishat won his PhD in chemistry from the University of Florida in Gainesville. Rehima also went to school in Florida as part of her quest for a position as a surgical nurse. Now that they live in California, where Rishat works with a chemical engineering firm. Rehima has continued her studies.
My In-Laws
Last New Years morning I was sitting at the breakfast table with Cindy's eldest brother, his wife and their daughter. The conversation had evolved into deeply philosophical areas. I was forced to jump into the middle of the conversation to express my amazement at my good fortune.
I am a very lucky person. My wife and sons are such wonderful, thoughtful people. My wife's family is full of the joy of mutual and shared values and beliefs. We don't all agree each one of us with the other or with the group on some matters, but each person is respectful of the others and together we have many moments of what can only be termed fellowship. That New Year's day morning was just one of many epiphanies I have
had over the many years that I've shared with these folks.Gordon and Brenda and their daughter, Rachel, live a fair distance off across the state. Evenso, we see them often and have gone on family beach vacations with them. Each of them is truly family to me.
Don and Fran and their son, Tyler, and their daughter, Kim, and her husband Sean and their children are a very active group. Tyler is now a college student and the grandkids, twin boys and an older girl, are fun to watch. The children are blessed with caring, loving parents and grandparents. And Don is the master chef on vacations.
Cindy's youngest brother, Doug, passed away near Christmas a couple years ago. We all think of his widow, Debbie, as much a member of the family as anyone else whose life has been part of ours. We miss Doug deeply. He was a cantakerous person in some ways but a loveable one in all ways. Doug's daughter by a previous marriage, Stacey, is, like her cousins, an intelligent and savvy person. All of them are part of my life in ways I never could have imagined.
to My Friends Page
to my Family Heritage Page
