Greetings to all from across the great expanse of time! Okay, few of you probably have even the first clue who I am, so it's time to make a trip to the Ekatak collection and/or borrow some time on Mr. Peabody's "way back" machine and see if you can put a face to the name. The photo on this page will hopefully aid this endeavour, and also reveals two very important facts: in 1976, I had no hair style, and by 2006 I don't have enough hair to be worth styling. You'll find a photo of me in the 1975 Ekatak in Mrs. Taylor's 4^th grade class, and in the 1976 edition in Mr. Haley's 5^th grade class. I was in Mr. Hildebrand's 6^th grade class, but was apparently absent when they took the class photo for the 1977 Ekatak. Our tour on Kwaj ended in the summer of 1977 and I returned with my family to our former home in Huntsville, AL where I still reside today. Well, I still live in Huntsville anyway, but not with my parents.

While some of you are still scratching around in an Ekatak or an old photo album, wracking your brain in an attempt to recall anything about me, the rest of you are likely asking yourselves, Why are we hearing from this guy now, and why the @#$%& didn't he bother to say even one word to us in the last 30 years?!? Good questions, and I really don't have a satisfactory answer other than to say that it's entirely my fault. I dearly loved the few years I spent on Kwaj, and enjoyed many hours of fun with my friends both in and out of school. Be it a focus on our upcoming return to Huntsville and the life I knew before Kwaj, or a lack of maturity to realize that I needed to expend some effort to maintain contact with those I was about to leave behind, I simply neglected to make note of anyone's address or keep any lines of communication open. After a few short years I quickly concluded that this was likely the biggest mistake of my life, one I've been paying for ever since.

In the past 3 decades I've thought of you often, and would flip through my Ekataks or rummage through my box of old photos and wonder in desperation what became of everyone. Until the Internet, I seemed to have no way of tracking anyone down. When the Internet first began to take shape among the general population, I found a USENET newsgroup that was devoted to finding lost friends, and I posted a note there in hope that someone would see it and recognize me or some of the names I was looking for. Nothing ever materialized from that effort, but some years later I again tried to find some links to long-lost friends and managed to track a couple of you down. Sadly, neither seemed to remember me at all, which was demoralizing but not altogether surprising since I basically vanished in 1977 without so much as a burp after that.

Finally, I renewed my quest again this year and began to have some success, mostly thanks to Matt Goff's Kwaj Address Book and Kwaj Kids Reunion database. While I'm far from reaching everyone in our class, I'm overwhelmed to once again have some contact with friends I feared were forever lost to time. I know I sound more than a little melodramatic, and you may be wondering what the big deal is. To me, though, this is a VERY big deal. If you've ever lost something of value, searched in vain for it, finally resigning yourself to never see it again, and then years later having it returned to you, then you have some idea of how important this really is to me.

Okay, on to the present. I'm hoping to hear from each of you and discover what you've been up to all this time. If you're wondering the same about me, read on. If not, skip to the last paragraph. As I said, I ended up in Huntsville again after Kwaj and spent two years in middle school before winding up at Grissom High School. Having begun my band career as a trumpet player in Ms. Beck's elementary band at George Seitz, I became very involved in the band programs in middle and high school, and switched from trumpet to euphonium in 8^th grade when they needed more low brass. I was privileged to be a part of the Grissom High School Band, which was (and is) a widely-renowned band program in the Southeast. The best friends I made after leaving Kwaj were found in the band program. Following high school, I ended up at Auburn University studying electrical engineering and alternating terms of school and work as a co-op student at Intergraph, the company I still work for today. My EE degree was not put into use, though, since I became interested in computers and programming shortly after our Kwaj departure when we acquired a Radio Shack TRS-80 personal computer, and I wound up making a career out of software development. I currently work on a team that develops computer applications for 911 call/dispatch centers. Immediately after Kwaj I pursued an interest in radio communication, beginning with CB since it was in full swing back in the mid and late 70s. I later obtained an amateur radio licence and enjoyed using that as a trained weather spotter during severe weather season, but in recent times my radio hobby has mostly fallen dormant.

I met my future wife only 3 years after leaving Kwaj, and we were married in 1987 after dating for 7 years. We have two children, the youngest of which gets her driver's license in a few weeks. When I think of this milestone I really began to feel my age, and it's dawning on me that my parenting years are rapidly coming to a close, with college just around the corner, followed by a substantially emptier (and quieter) house.

What do I remember about Kwaj? Lots, really, but much of my time was devoted to snorkeling, shell collecting, and photography. I spent many hours in the photo lab at Special Services, just to the right of the bowling alley, developing black & white photos that I took of various things and people around the island. I am currently working on scanning those photos to post in an online album so I can share them with you. Many will not be of much interest to you, but I think you'll find some of them (mostly the shots of people) well worth a look. I'd love to hear some of your best Kwaj memories, which might jar loose some long-lost recollections of my own.

I have much more that I can share, but perhaps the best way to do that is one-on-one. If you remember me at all and take a notion, please and let me know how you're doing and what you've been up to. If you'd like to chat in real time, you can sometimes catch me on Yahoo Messenger (ID: hsvrailfan). My limited years on Kwaj were very unique and special to me, and my time there was made enjoyable by the friendship shared with each of you. I may not factor significantly into what you consider to be the memorable moments of your life, but you collectively define some of those moments for me, for which I owe a debt of gratitude. Stay well and happy, and let me hear from you!

Yours truly,

Rex