Well, no one can say that I don’t have at least some readers out there-after my last pitiful request for input, accompanied by a substantial amount of verbal groveling, I received enough information and photographs to make this column a little less anemic than it was for the last two quarters. My thanks to everyone who wrote-but you should know that I’ll begin to use up material now at a fairly good clip. For those of you who haven’t dropped me a line in a while, I’m always looking for more information.

FIRST RESPONDERS: A voice from out of my past--specifically my BCT squad roommate --Vince Sharp (Suzanne) makes its first appearance in the countdown with news of his retirement at Little Rock several years ago and immediate employment with the Army. Vince’s email title lists him as an "Exercise Specialist," and we’re not talking Richard Simmons here, folks. All right, we’re not talking PX-90, either, for those of you with a more modern bent. Vince is heading up chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear exercise training for local responders and National Guard units out of San Antonio. He’s handling pretty much the entire middle part of the United States, including the Zoo, and is on the road most of the time. He’s also in the process of completing a Master’s degree in Homeland Security at Monterrey. Vince closed note with a comment to the effect of it was "scary" how much he’s learned out CBRNE over the last few years. I can only imagine.

Roger Gullet (Theresa) wrote with his "first correspondence for Checkpoints ever!" For some reason I’m detecting a note of exuberance in that comment. Maybe it’s because Roger was pleased not to have communicated with a lawyer all that time. In any event, welcome to the neighborhood. Roger is a Reserve 6 and the ops group commander for the airlift wing out of Wright-Pat, operating the oldest C-5s in the fleet. Roger says he’s living the good life and only has

Wear his blue suit on Monday because he’s in a bag there most of the time. Because Roger is a Cubs fan, he knows that he has now permanently jinxed this season with his optimism about the remainder of the year. And at the risk of further insulting Roger’s airplanes, I recall a former C-5 pilot telling me that when you see three C-5s lined up on the tarmac, and two of them are up on jacks, it means that the base has two sets of jacks. Thanks again for the update, Roger, let’s try not to make it 32 years until the next one.

LINKAGES: Mike Crane (Sue) sent me a quick message (via ZoomieNation) from D.C. where he is working for Booz Allen after retiring in 2005. For two years, Mike’s client has been another classmate, RayJ ohns (Diana), the DCS for Strategic Plans and Programs. Mike occasionally runs into Eric Reffett (Lori) who works at Booz Allen-I refuse to shorten it to "Booz" -in McLean as a senior associate with the company, and Bobby Wilkes, who is working in OSD following his retirement from the Pentagon.

Joe Niemeyer (Louise) also posted on ZoomieNation with a quick update. He is our AOG Senate rep and is now living in Colorado after working in the U.K. for several years. He and Louise are in Denver, at least when they are not out skiing, and Joe assures me that he’s been getting in plenty of that. Joe will be posting his notes from the AOG Senate meetings on ZN, and any of you with questions or concerns, please feel free to contact him there. We have a class affinity group that has been fairly active recently.

Which is a nice segue into a recent post that I saw just before deadline concerning Dave Ebelke (Patti) -Dave just completed his third Boston Marathon this year with a personal record time of 321:30. Dave is running his own spinal surgery business out of KC, Mo., and my hat is off to anybody completing a marathon these days. It won’t happen for your humble narrator; I suffer from Football Players Syndrome, which means that anything over 40 yards is a walk.

Ron Ladnier (Pam) sent this picture at a recent ’77 rejoin over at his place at Ramstein. Ron is the commander of 17^th Air Force, the air component to Africa Command. Ron notes his two biggest challenges are roughly the same in scope: managing Africa and managing his two teenagers. He did say that Pam and the kids were traveling all over Europe and loving it, so at least one of the challenges gets out of the house every now and then. Ron set up this get together on the occasion of Mark Matthews’ (Christy) visit from ACC at Langley Mark is the requirements guy there and was getting out to see the rest of the world when he stopped by.

Mark is the first guy on the left, next to him is Doyle Gage (Debi), who is working as a contractor on the USAFE A3 staff. Ron notes that Doyle is retired, something I would have guessed from the beard. General Ladnier occupies the center position, and next to him is Rex Williams, who is probably our most junior member still on active duty--you may remember Rex’s saga from previous columns; he is now a chaplain after having separated from the Air Force early on and gone to seminary. Rex is assigned directly to 17^th Air Force. On the far right is John Mol (Deb), also a regular contributor to this column and who is teaching physics while Deb teaches German at Ramstein High. Finally Ron notes that the quantity of gray hair in the picture is not the result of PhotoShop. Gentlemen, at this point, I don’t care what color it is, as long as it’s there.

Chuck Curran (Claudia) fired off a note to me via LinkedIn. They’ve got one kid on the waiting list for Duke Medical, and another finishing up his ROTC commitment with the Army and heading to med school in Scotland, and the third, their daughter, at UPT at Pensacola. The pilot child is changing her preference from the C-17 to the ‘130, according to Chuck, because the ‘130 goes into more exciting places. Sounds like she should be flying fighters. Chuck also noted that he was chatting up a Russian speaker or two, recently, reminiscing about our classes at the Zoo. The difference between Chuck using Russian and my using Russian is that Chuck was practicing his in Vail; the last time I used mine was in Moscow. I’ll let you guess who had the most comfortable place to sleep.

John Visser (Anne) was laid over at Dulles from his piloting duties and got together with Greg Hanson (Linda) for dinner.

Greg left his post as the information officer for the Senate and is now an Executive VP for Criterion Systems, while also teaching graduate computer science courses at Maryland. Good pics of both you guys.