[PBARC] W5ZXS SK

[E. Glenn Wolf, Jr.]

>From Paul Wynne -	




I have just gotten word that my old friend J.M. Jolly W5ZXS passed away
yesterday evening. I first met Jolly in 1968, when I moved in a block away
from him. I noticed that there was a little 15 meter rotatable dipole on
this house that had a carport with a car in it with a license plate with the
call of W5ZXS. A few weeks later I knocked on his door and told him I was
interested in amateur radio. He became my Elmer, and eventually gave me my
novice exam  in early 1969. I received my ticket in April, 1969 and had my
first contact on 40 mtr CW with W5ZXS. My QSL card to him was returned to me
by him a few years back and is framed and on my shack wall.

I recall that he showed me his shack the day I knocked on his door. He was
using a Hallicrafters SX-71 receiver and a 35 watt Globe Scout with a little
Heathkit VFO on the 15 meter rotatable dipole. I noted that his logbook
contained many european contacts that he had made with the little CW rig.

He got me interested in DX and I worked 33 countries in the 9 months I was a
novice all on a crystal controlled Knight T60 running 19 watts to a Mosley
mini-beam. Jolly helped me put up my first tower, and he and I both saw good
times and some hard times together. 

He was a charter member of the Arkansas DX Association when it was
re-chartered and reincarnated in March 1973.

The last 5 or 6 years, Jolly had been in and out of VA hospitals with
various problems, with the most damage coming from a stroke. Most recently
he was in Chenal Rehab on Bowman road, having lost a foot to diabetes,
almost totally blind from macular degeneration that had progressed over the
years, and no healing from the stroke that damaged his right arm and leg. He
passed away early yesterday afternoon at a nursing home in Benton, from an
apparent stroke.

I will miss him, his sense of humor, and good nature. His old J-38 key that
sent such good CW is silent.

Paul Wynne AF5M