Introduction
[hb_1_introduction.doc , hb_1_introduction.html]
[ Last updated May 11, 2020 ]
Chapter 1 : Introduction to Harry Baya’s Memories
This is a first cut at a collection of written memories describing my life. With a little luck there will be future editions. I am happy to get this far.
I am writing this in May of 2020. I turned 80 in July of 2019 and decided I would like to write something like this. My goal was to give at least a brief description of each of the major parts of my life. I have done that.
This collection of memories will initially be in the form of a group of files. The first file will be an index of all the other files. The files that follow consist of a set of numbered chapters and a collection of related essays. A brief description of the contents of each chapter & essay is given in the index. Click here to see the index.
This introduction is intentionally brief in the interest of making this collection of memories available to others as soon as possible. The primary format for this work will be HTML and the first edition will be in the form of a website.
I believe a very brief outline of my life will help readers to understand my memories.
I was born in Tampa, Florida on July 31, 1939. My father was a native of Tampa and my mother was a native of Abingdon, Virginia. I spent the first few years of my life in Tampa. My father was on active duty in the U.S. Army during WWII and I spent some years in Abingdon before he returned from the war in 1945.
My father stayed in the army and worked in the Pentagon in Washngton, D.C. until the summer of 1950 when we moved to England. While he was working at the Pentagon we first lived in Falls Church, Virginia and then moved to Fairlington, Virginia, part of Alexandra.
We were in England from the summer of 1950 until the summer of 1952. At that point we moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania for one year and then to Monterey, California for six months. We moved to Caracas, Venezuela in the spring of 1954 and I lived there till the summer of 1957. I attended an English speaking high school in Caracas and graduated from there in 1957. My family moved to Atlanta, Georgia and lived there till my father retired from the army in 1962 and moved to Tampa.
I started college at MIT in the fall of 1957 and got a BS degree in 1961 and an MS degree in 1963. In the summer of 1963 I went on active duty as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers. I was stationed in Germany from the fall of 1963 till the summer of 1965. I got married to Bonnie Birdsall in the fall of 1964. I retunred to the US for that wedding and Bonnie and I lived in Germany until the summer of 1965. We traveld in Europe from July of 1965 to September of that year.
Bonnie and I returned to the U.S. in the fall of 1965 and moved to Columbus, Indiana where I worked till 1970. Our first son, Matthew, was born in Columbus in January of 1969.
In early 1970 we moved to Hasting-on-Hudson, New York, and I worked in New York City. Our second son, Paul, was born in March of 1973. Bonnie divorced me in 1978 and this experience was by far the worst of my life.
I lived in Hastings, and later in Yonkers, until retiring at age 65 from Hofstra University and moving to Abingdon, Virginia, in the summer of 2004. Elaine Appleby and I had lived together for years and were married in December of 2001. We lived together in our house in Abingdon until she divorced me in 2007. I continued to live in Abingdon until May of 2012 when I moved in with Phyllis Haile in Bristol, Virginia. Phyllis and I were married in December of 2012. Phyllis and I continue to live happily together in her house in Bristol.
I hope to continue working on enhancing these memories for the rest of my life.
Harry Baya, 108 Pebble Beach Dr., Bristol, Virginia, May 10, 2020