See anyone familiar?

Quite a crowd appeared at the Wild Mango at Great Northern Shopping Center for the April 29, 2011 Pd retirees luncheon. We got some of them to give us some notes on what they've been doing since leaving The PD.

Jim Strang reports: "When I was in high school, I thought I would be a history teacher - even in retirement, I'm trying the "road not taken" and subbing in Avon schools - Grades 3-11, all subjects. I love it. The kids seem to like it, too, since they've built me two facebook tribute pages and give glowing reports on ratemyteacher.com. Life is good, so far -- hortator45@yahoo.com."

Jim and Marianne Hatch were in town for Hatch's sister's funeral. " We love 'California'. The sun shines everyday. The women are all beautiful and the wine is cheap," he said.

Pat Gessler is ready for baseball after attending spring training.
We still go to see the Cleveland Indians play in March. But this year was especially good -- we found the best spring training facility we've seen to date, the newly opened Salt River Fields at Talking Stick, which is on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. It puts the Goodyear park to shame. Goodyear is sterile with the exception of the entrance and a few palm trees behind center field; Salt River has panoramic views of the Camelback and McDowell mountains and beautiful desert landscaping. And where else can you buy Indian fry bread at a ballpark! There were only lawn seats available the day we went, but the tickets we bought allowed us to roam the stadium, where we found an umbrella-covered table big enough for our party of five to sit (and watch the Indians beat the Diamondbacks). Salt River is also the spring training home of the Colorado Rockies. If you go to Phoenix this stadium and very fan friendly site, is a must see. p.s. There is no more baseball in Tucson, where Hi Corbett (Cleveland's old spring training home) was the first Cactus League ballpark.

Tom Gaumer joined Alana Baranack and Tom Quinn. Gaumer is a docent at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and a volunteer on the Cuyahoga National Park Railroad. Alana continues her obituary work while Quinn is an editor at an ecology newspaper.




Stu Abbey, with his wife Bobby, has been doing artistic things and has a website: ArtofStuartAbbey.blog.com, called Paintings and Ponderings.

Wilma Salisbury, Janet Beigle French who organized the soiree and Bob McAuley were there.
Janet says: "I keep busy in The West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church -- singing in the choir, knitting shawls, etc in the knitting group, helping with the gardening. And I make necklaces and earrings to sell at the church auction, and at a small shop. And send many for gifts. As I have time, I'm also mending and indexing my old PD food dept. scrapbooks and giving them to the CSU special collections library. (A Stark County librarian
found me this week and asked for dates of a special series that ran in 1983. ")

Brian and Terry (Considine) Williams and their daughter Katy now live in Hudson, Oh, "having returned to the 'North Coast' after living on both the Pacific (San Diego) and Atlantic (Long Island) for 30 years. Brian was an editor and sometimes columnist for Newsday and Terry reported and did features for the Long Island desk of the N.Y.Times. We've been back about five years. Our email address is go minnie@bigplanet.com." Brian worked on the PD's city desk and left about 1969.

Finally,Doris O'Donnell and John Coyne say "Hi".