Let's face it.  Guys have to wear pants all the time, but gals can wear anything they want.  And do anything they want.
What's normal for girls wouldn't fly if a guy tried it.  And Harvey Shelton proves the point --
to the amusement of the assembled multitudes, right Betsy?

Left: Emily Blessing Sayers   center: Betsy Leahy, Harvey Shelton.  This and the other oldies are from the
Aprés Homecoming Game Party, October 1959
at Maggie and Amanda Ross's house.

Emily Blessing and Joe Sayers have lived on both coasts and in between.  Emily has been a “certified house nut” all her life.  She graduated with a degree in interior design and designed and built their own home in Southern California, among others.  She and Joe supervised the restoration of their biggest project ever, and everyone is invited to come for a getaway weekend.

         

left: John Budlong.  Right: Theo Veenkamp (click on any photo to enlarge) 

Theo writes,"When I applied for the AFS scholarship which brought me to McLean High I intended to study nuclear physics after returning to the Netherlands. When I actually went back I registered for political science at the Free University of Amsterdam. That change of direction had a lot to do with my  year at the US. Not only your society but  also the classes in government, history and sociology which I took at McLean High opened my eyes to a new world in all its positive and negative aspects. I became utterly fascinated by the challenge of governing an ever changing and complex society and I decided to become a public servant in the widest sense of the word. That is basically what I have been doing ever since.  .... The things we did together, the fun we had together, the long and endless conversations, the friendship and love; they all belong to one of the most uplifting experiences in my life, and in the end they have been the most decisive in shaping my year at McLean High into the year of my awakening.   So I returned to the Netherlands as another person. Of course at that time I did not realize this fully.  .....  . From 91 to 93 I was director in Brussels of the TEMPUS program of the European Union, set up to support higher education in Central and Eastern Europe in the transition from communism to capitalism after the fall of the Berlin wall. From 93 to 98 I was general director of the Netherlands Authority for the Reception of Asylum Seekers, the most turbulent job of all. Since 99 I am director of the strategic think tank of the Ministry of Justice."

Theo has retired (2005) and might be sympathetic to invitations to visit!!

John had summer jobs ("interned", we would say today) at a local electronics manufacturer (MelPar, where Bernie Spector '60 works; now part of Raytheon).  John built his own oscilloscope from parts.  (An oscilloscope is a TV-like display that draws any unknown electrical signal on the screen, so that you can see its waveform or shape, and measure its frequency, etc.  Some of us had cars that cost less than one of those.) 

The oscilloscope was fast enough to use in his Science Fair project to measure the speed of light -- from his setup behind a building on Chain Bridge Road to a reflector on Haycock Road and back again.  Somehow Budlong scrounged a corner-cube retroreflector for Haycock of the kind the astronauts later placed on the moon. 

One of his projects after college was an accelerometer connected to the same kind of calculation circuitry as the accelerometers in ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles).  They are called inertial navigation systems.  But, instead of figuring out where the missile was, John designed his to be bolted to piles being driven into the ground during construction projects.  Using the data, civil engineers could know exactly when to stop pounding on the pile because it was stable enough to support the coming building.  In fact, the data were so good you could resolve the soil and sediment layers the pile was going through on its way down.  The main output gave the depth of the pile and told the operator when to stop driving.  After all,  if you count up (integrate) the time you have been accelerating, you know what speed you've gotten to.  If you know how fast you're driving, counting up the time tells you how far you've gone. 

         
left: Maggie Ross '60 and Duke dePlanque '60.  right:  Amanda Ross, '59.
Thanks, Hunter L and Danny H for name fix.
"It was great seeing the photos. Remarkable that we had color back then. Also hair."
Jim.Howard at cox . net

For me, the cat's meow was an invitation to the little house on Springvale Avenue.
A sophisticated mother and two beautiful daughters -- how could you resist?
I listened to Ferlin Husky, Thomas Wayne, Jody Reynolds  -- they listened to Frank Sinatra.
The party began right at the front door, in a room with an upright piano, a checkered floor perfect for dancing.
Wrap-around window seats to sit and talk were in a room at one end, and a kitchen for snacks at the other.