Celebrating a Sixty-Third (!) birthday	Bill Earner with Lynne and Paul Tobin

Tellers of tall tales and a few true stories

    Everyone asked me how I got him into a tux when it was a surprise but it was pretty easy. The party was a week after his birthday. I did that just to throw him off. On his birthday I gave him some gifts and the last one was the invitation to the dinner party that I had sent out to our friends. It was a poem that I had made up and I wrapped it up in a ribbon. When he opened it and saw that it was a "surprise" party and here I was telling him, he was full of questions. I simply said I'm not telling you who is coming or what we are having for dinner (I had it catered) -- just put on your tux and with a glass of champagne stand at the front door and greet your guests! It was such fun for both of us and I had a wonderful time planning it!

Sue and Ben Cole celebrate his milestone birthday

Sue and I are still in Summerville, SC, after coming here in 1979 on active duty. We have two daughters, Deb and Lorrie, and three granddaughters and son-in-law Michael all in Greenville, SC. I am now a Senior VP with our state public utility, Santee Cooper, in charge of economic development, corporate communications, and community relations. As we are a state agency, I am quite involved throughout South Carolina. We really love the Charleston area, and anyone who has been here will know why. We keep up with several'63ers who visit Charleston or keep in touch as part of our 23rd Company group. We've seen Jane and Bob Hecht, Barbara and Harry Hirsch Sheila and Mike Bonsignore (in New York City), Linda and Zimm Zimmerman Idaho), and Judy and Hoot Gibson who live at Seabrook Island near Charleston. Sue and I wish the best to all our classmates and their families. Despite the tragic events of September and their tremendous impact on our nation, we all have much to be thankful for and a country and its values to be proud of.

        Pete Deutermann tells us that he is

    Happy to report the marriage of my daughter Sarah Laffan Deutermann to LCDR Joe Franson (USNA '88) here on the farm in Baldwin County, Georgia, over Labor Day weekend. We had a lovely, small wedding in the front gardens, complete with jazz ensemble and a marrying judge, with close friends and parents in attendance. Sarah, an F-14 RIO, is currently assigned to the Navy Safety Center in Norfolk, and Joe, also an F-14 RIO, is assigned with the Red Rippers of VF-11, currently working up for some vengeance ops in faraway places. The new couple honeymooned at the Reynolds Plantation resort on nearby Lake Oconee, and will make their home in Virginia Beach for the next year or so.

    John and I completed another eight-day trek in the High Sierras with John's hiking group. This is the eighth year for him and the second for me. We departed Tuolumne Meadows in western Yosemite (8,600 ft) and went through Donohue Pass (11,000 ft) into the Ansell Adams Wilderness on the Pacific Crest Trail/John Muir Trail. The first night on the trail a very large black bear made off with one of our bear bags and we lost about ten percent of our food which was only a minor problem. The emphasis on this year's hike was trout fishing so we only hiked about 50 miles which was fairly easy. We came back out the same way we went in. We hope this will be an annual event for the two of us.

We have been busy these past few months at the World Championships in Montreal and the Head of the Charles in Boston. The NAVY Masters Crew is made up of alumni from a number of classes, from 1992 down to 1960. Jim Fontana and I rowed in the boats in Montreal with John Bates '67, Gordy Clefton and Bill Evans '68, Rand Case '65. Mike Pero was planning on joining us but needed an operation that took him out of action for the rest of the year. We have no medals to show for the effort but we had a good time. At the Head of the Charles we rowed in the oldest masters eight (58 average age). The race was very smooth and the boat strong. But not strong enough to place us anywhere near the top of the rest of the field that averaged 45. We were dusted, but had two great fights with young boats at critical turns. We were 45 seconds faster than last year. This race has well over 200,000 spectators and one hell of a party atmosphere. Jerry Robinson, '66 joined Dick Omohundro '63, Gordy Clefton '68, and me together with four guys from the Potomac Boat Club. The NAVY shirts always get attention and resulted in a great number of cheers.

Because of the injuries and confluence of many personal events, this year wasn't as productive on the water as in the past. But, off the water, the NAVY Crew Endowment Fund that we started is approaching $750,000 and we are pushing hard to get to $1.5M by next Spring. We have targeted $6M by 2008. The NCEF has already begun to make a difference to the quality of the USNA Rowing program. The Fund has supported the acquisition of a $35,000 shell, and Crew Team trips to the San Diego Crew Classic and the Royal English Henley in England. You may remember that the NAVY Masters also rowed an eight at Henley two years ago.

Chuck Adams just e-mailed me with a plan to raise money to fund an eight-oared shell to bear the name "Class of 1963". We are hoping that this project will result in a perpetual shell of that name. I have now been retired for about two years. I am doing some chembio emergency response consulting and the recent troubles have kept the phone ringing. Peggy and I row every day and have been competing together for seven years. We have released our second album of Irish/U.S. mountain music. Peggy has also released an album of stories that I added a bit of music to. We spent the summers of'99 and '00 in Ireland collecting tunes and playing. The trips were the basis of that album, "Mountain Ties." We will be in Ireland again in late Spring and I think we are being scheduled to travel through Cape Breton, NS, this summer. We are trying to get the next album in the can by September.

    Rich Weidman and I attended the game day alumni chapter gathering on Hilton Head Island. We had almost 50 alumni, spouses, children, and friends mustered to cheer on the Blue & Gold. I brought copies of fight songs from my Navy Song Book and a boom box with the Academy Glee Club and D& B CD's. We certainly made more noise than the small WooPoo contingent. As we used to say, "We knocked them together!" We have only about 359 days until Beat Army time again. Too bad the plebes can't carry on.

        Denny submitted this photo of himself and Rich taken at the party. :

Rich Weidman and Denny Tomlin at the Hilton Head Army-Navy game party

    I would like to extend my sincere thanks to you all for the cards, letters, notes and greetings I received during my recuperation from triple bypass heart surgery several weeks ago.

I am also writing to give you a little more detail on my medical background and condition. I am doing so in the hopes that it might prompt some of you to consider going in for some routine cardiac tests to ensure that everything is fine and there are no latent defects like the ones I discovered.

As you know, two years ago we lost our friend and teammate Jeff Cerney to a fatal heart attack. Jeff was playing lacrosse in San Diego when he died. I don't have the details on Jeff's medical condition, but I was aware that he was diabetic and that such a condition may have contributed to his heart problems.

This year another of my good friends and co-counsel Ted Forrest died of a heart attack in May. Ted was 51, had 7 sons and was a trial lawyer from Fresno, California. We were both scheduled to try a case together in Los Angeles this month. He was in shape, ate wisely and had no apparent symptoms or distress and had just lost 15 pounds. He was up at Lake Tahoe playing golf before dinner one evening when he suddenly collapsed and died on the golf course. His autopsy revealed massive occlusion of all of his arteries. His death was a wake up call for me. I vowed that I would have a complete check up to verify my condition and confirm that I did not have the same problems.

For those of you who don't know me, I have no known history of heart disease in my family. My dad is currently 95 years old and my Mom is 80. I have never been a smoker. I regularly exercise from 4-6 times per week balancing weight training with aerobics, spinning classes, and other vigorous forms of cardiovascular exercise. I have been very conscious about the things I eat since my wife has high cholesterol, we are heart- healthy eaters. My cholesterol was only "borderline high" at 220. While this was not ideal, it was not excessively high. On the other hand, I am a trial lawyer which is, without question, a stress generating occupation.

After returning from Vail this year, I resumed my regular exercise workouts. It was then that I began to feel a very slight tightness in my chest and a slight shortness of breath during my aerobic workouts. These symptoms were quite minimal. Had Ted and Jeff's death's not occurred, I would not have been sensitive to this slight change in feeling and would probably have blown it off and continued to workout. Because of their deaths, I was sensitive to my body and told myself that I would get a complete checkup to eliminate the possibility of heart disease.

I went to my GP who ordered a routine treadmill stress test. The test revealed some abnormal heartbeat recovery patterns (ST depression) which prompted the attending cardiologist to recommend a cardiac catheterization as a diagnostic procedure. Based on the result of the treadmill test, the cardiologist believed that my heart muscle was exceptionally strong, but that I might have a minor blockage which could be rectified by a simple angioplasty.

When they conducted the cardiac catheterization (injection of dye into the heart and arteries), however, both the doctors and I were shocked at what it revealed on the screen. I had a 90% blockage of the proximal left descending artery (the "widow maker"), 80% on another and 75% on a third. My condition was sufficiently serious that they cleared the operating room schedule for the following Monday and made my surgery a priority item. Doctors said that because I am an active athlete, I had developed a strong collateral circulatory system which helped mask the occlusions in my primary arteries.

There is a reason they call this disease the "silent killer". If you looked at my lifestyle and family history, you would have thought I would be the last person to have coronary artery disease. Unfortunately, heart disease is indiscriminate. It occurs in individuals with a wide range of medical profiles. Even for some of us who thought we were doing everything right.

I am providing you with this degree of detail in the hopes that it might inspire you to get a complete cardiac check-up or diagnostic testing for heart disease. It is never too late, or too early to investigate the health of your heart and circulatory system health. You owe it to yourself and your families.

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This page is  Shipmate:     Jan/Feb 2002  posted on:  10 December 2001

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