Random Thoughts from a Random Memory

By Edward Master

I have known three Harold Eugene men in my life. The first was my father. His friends, especially from growing up together, often called him Harley. We in the family often called him H-E. Most of his co-workers called him Harold.

The second Harold Eugene was a friend from school days, Harold Eugene Winkler. I went to school with Wink from grade school through four years at Clarion University. Wink and I participated in track and band together in high school and worked one summer together at the Quaker State oil refinery in Emlenton. Wink kept up the band part in college; he played the trombone. At A-C he was mostly Gene. He graduated from CUP with a degree in chemistry and ended up working for the Johnson Space Flight Center out of Houston, TX.

I gave up on the baritone horn by my junior year in high school. I was pursued to enlist in the Golden Eagle marching band at Clarion, but I had lost interest in the music bug by then.

My third Harold Eugene was Harry Roberts. I go back to fourth grade at St. Petersburg elementary with Harry, but he didn’t get labeled Harry until I bestowed that upon him in senior high school at A-C Valley. I’m not sure why I did, but as far as I know that name (nickname?) stuck until he passed away just a few years ago from Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Harry turned out to be quite the unique character in life. He was the last fellow I thought would go into teaching and make a career out of education. Harry began as a ninth-grade science teacher at Caesar Rodney school district in Delaware. He was a mid-year hire so he started around January 1972. Soon after he became the district high school attendance officer. A few years down the road, Harry received his doctorate in education and later became the school district superintendent for Caesar Rodney.

Harry ran some track in high school and was a manager for the basketball team. He was my big brother when I pledged the Phi Sigma Epsilon social fraternity at CUP. He guided me through ‘Hell Night’ as part of his ‘brotherly’ duties. Harry had pledged in Fall 1968, and I knew most of his pledge class from when we all started college together (guys who lived in the same dorm as he did where I would visit). In turn, those guys all knew me when I signed up.

You could say Harry and I had ‘history’, in addition to grade school, junior high, high school, and college. We each decided in our junior year (because we each had a high priority number to be drafted) to enlist in the U.S. Navy. We each took the eye test to become pilots. We each were each eventually rejected by military service. Harry due to a hernia and me due to pinched nerves.

Then, before we were supposed to graduate, we took a trip through New England in Harry’s Volkswagon Beetle. Harry’s dad made us a couple wooden fillers to place in the back seat area and so we just slept in the car. For two six-footers it was a bit cramped. We washed off in Lake Seneca, NY, and in a Vermont stream in very cold water in both places.

Our overnight pull-offs to sleep included a dirt road in Lake Chatauqua, NY, and a rest stop above Syracuse, NY (after an-almost-all-night Clint Eastwood film festival at a drive-in). Then, we took a next-day ferry across Lake Champlain, NY, and a jaunt through downtown Boston. Eventually, we were back in Pennsy.

Our final overnight was at an I-80 rest stop. The next morning we ate cold eggs at a White Haven, PA, greasy spoon dive in which the waitress was the town’s local attraction for retirees. That was our sendoff to college.

The Pirates are really in need of offense as they waist Skenes and Jones on the pitching mound. I’ve pulled an oblique like Bednar a couple of times and it’s no fun.