When this b/w TV test pattern was seen late at night and Marshal Dillon was taping the first season of Gunsoke, my Cub Scout troop visited a teenage ham's radio shack. I was about eight years old. A dozen little boys gathered in that room and watched as he worked the dials of seperate receiver & transmitter. What really caught my imagination was the station on the other end. He was in QSO with a German station. When I was eight years old, Germany was big in our imaginations as a dark country. Our had fathers fought a war there just before our birth. I was sure he was a spy! Who else would be talking to a German radio station? I soon discoverd Germany was now an ali and that I wanted to be a ham.

Much later, in 1989, a coworker mentioned that he had always wanted to investigate ham radio. That's all it took to rekindle the interest - we were off to the races. He became a proficient CW operator and worked lots of DX. I became a rag chewer and worked a fair amount of DX. I made a number of good friends through those early QSO's.

I became excited about helping missionaries with phone patches because it was a way I could practice my faith and support some really hard working people for whom those phone calls meant a lot. So for a few years in the early 90's I would point my KLM tribander to South America and "bypass the phone company".

One missionary told me his story during our first QSO. It was in an evening QSO on 8 FEB 1990, 20 meter sideband. John, V31NB, had been a pilot flying charter runs all over Central and South America for years. He said there had been many close calls on these trips but on one particular night he was flying in a really bad storm and was in trouble. He believed this was his last flight.

John said a quick prayer with a promise "that if God would get him out of this one, he would work for Him from then on." John walked way from that jungle landing, his plane was destroyed! I don't think God "makes deals" but John upheld his part of the bargain and became a missionary to Belize where he served the poor, I believe until his death.

I didn't hear his call on the air for many years. But recently a group of vacationing hams were using V31NB to operate on a "ham-cation". I told them John's story. They were told the call had never before been issued. I told them the call had not only been issued - but used very well.

Three our grandkids play instruments and two are singing. Our oldest grandaughter is making her way in country music. A seventeen year old singer/songwriter, Savannah Berry has become a YouTube sensation, as the media describes her. Here is front page picture of Savannah on the Houston Chronicle, 15 May 2012.

You can hear her music and learn more at www.SavannahBerryMusic.com or on her YouTube channel, "SavannahSings."

Click her to read the Houston Chronicle article by Joey Guerra