[R-390] Passing of Barry and Wally

[Tisha Hayes]

What we do with hollow state technologies and our love of working in the
smoke of a soldering iron. The constant back-ache from lifting that anchor
to the workbench for another round of tweaking, testing and modifying. The
late nights spent trying to dig out that impossible to hear station from
some island in the Pacific. The slow saunter through the flea markets and
hamfests, looking for a forgotten piece of hardware from the 40's or 50's.

This is a love, a passion, that fewer and fewer people understand. As we
grow older it is harder to find kindred spirits where the lure of the
miniaturized transceiver and out-of-the-box performance have been
re-defining the art into a mere commercial hobby. Eventually we all are
removed from the face of the earth.

We can only hope that some remembrance of our words, our contributions, will
pass on after we are gone to the next world. We hope not to be reduced to
fading black-and-white photographs in a forgotten shoebox by our
descendants. For the works of love that we have dedicated so many long hours
to, we pray that they will not end up in a recycling bin of scrap metal or
worse, parted out and sold on Ebay for some clearinghouse who buys up
equipment at estate auctions, only to chop it apart to make $50 in parts
sales.

This is akin to having your cremated remains sitting on the fireplace mantle
until eventually, our descendants forget who we even where.

To keep the art alive, to keep our works of love appreciated, we need to
pass the passion on to future generations. We need to remember that thrill
that we all experienced when we overhauled our first radio and the gradual
noise of static filled the speaker. We need to involve the younger
generations in our misunderstood obsession.

We need to be clear to those who survive us that on our passing, our works
go along to those who would truly appreciate the artistry and elegance of a
electro/mechanical wonder and can discover ways to improve upon what we have
now.

Make it clear to your family of what your wishes are. Find and adopt a boy
or girl who gets that gleam in their eyes when they see the filaments begin
to glow. Make sure that we pass it forward.
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