Steve Pedersen (1948 - 2011)

I learned last night of the passing of Steve Pedersen, my close friend from high school and my best friend, roommate, and fraternity brother from my first two years of college in Emporia, Kansas.  We last saw each other in Indianapolis in 1970, shortly before I entered the military during Viet Nam. Steve was working that summer as an intern for Papermate pen company and that work brought him through Indy.  My military service, followed by the migratory corporate lives that both of us led caused us to lose contact for almost forty years. Steve tracked me down in Irvine, California, in 2008, and we had a couple of long phone conversations.

Steve's high school yearbook photo

Steve had retired in Virginia. When I retired in 2009, Beth and I decided to relocate to the east coast to be close to our three daughters and their families.  They had settled there when we lived in southern New Jersey for thirteen years, just outside Philadelphia.  For our retirement we chose a home on Maryland’s eastern shore, about three hours from Steve.  My Dad is still living and is in western North Carolina.  The path from here to there takes me right past where I knew Steve lived, and I had wished to stop and see him.  We never hooked up, and for that I have deep regrets.  I was somewhat near in central Virginia this past week during my fall foliage photo excursion. Had I known more about his situation I would have tried to visit him.  We had some great times together.  I will miss the opportunity to see him.

Steve singing lead vocals during a talent contest in 1967 at Emporia State. Photo provided by fellow Phi Sig fraternity brother Jim Albertson who is the guitarist in the center of the photo. (Click on photo for larger image)

Here is a message I got from Steve when we traded some life history back in June of this year:

…………………………………………………………….

 Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2011 10:40 AM

From: Steve Pedersen

To: Frank Patton
Subject: Re: catching up

 well…

i graduated in dec 70, after dodging the draft, my lottery number was 8, due to my high arches.  if i recall correctly, ron brown and i went to the physical together…asthma got him out. 

 yes i saw you during a college internship with paper mate in summer of 70.  that led to a job with them in january and they sent me to columbus ohio…got married march 71.  in december of 71, paper mate decided to go after the stick pen market owned at the time by bic…a tough competitor…to do so, they took 8 of us and placed us in key markets so we moved to cleveland and i covered ohio, western pa, and cinncinati/northern ky.  after 15 months of averaging over 4000 miles a week traveling, i was promoted to eastern region sales trainer in new york…office in new jersey.  9 months later we moved to boston to become the assistant sales promotion manager.  in 1977, i was appointed the central regional manager so we moved to chicago.  during all this our daughter and first son were born.

 ryan was born with a kidney disease and passed away at age 10…so we were in chicago for a little over a year and the chance to move back to boston came up (best doctors for ryan) so we took the position as sales promotion mgr.  that was in 1978.  while in boston, i had various positions, the last 10 years were with gillette military division as marketing manager.  it was alot of fun, as we marketed and sold all gillette division products, from oral b, braun, shaving, pens – the whole ball of wax.

in 1996 i became the account manager for worldwide sales to military and in 99 we moved to richmond where the us commisary is headquartered and navy in norfolk.  i too took advantage of early retirement in 2003….after having some heart issues etc.  my dad passed away in 1974 – heart attack and my mom this past january.  in 1985, kevin was born and he is now living south of denver with megan still in the boston area.

there is alot to dislike about richmond…but we dont shovel snow here, and 2 hrs from dc, the beach and the mountains.  we have a condo in sun city az that my mom was living in…so we have made 3 trips out there this year to do some modern updates in anticipation of living there 3 to 4 months of the year.  we have traveled a lot, had a lot of fun.

 in august we head to amsterdam for a cruise in the baltics…finland, sweden, denmark, russia etc

 so that’s it – now i have to go mow a lawn

later

…………………………………………………..

Another message exchange regarding our days at Emporia.  Prophetic comment Steve made about the Buick convertible likely never happening:

…………………………………………………

From: “Frank Patton”
To: “Steve Pedersen”
Sent: Mon 6/6/2011 8:33 AM
Subject: Some history, Tap Room, Emporia

Funny you should mention the MG.  I have a couple of service issues to attend to so I am missing out on a cross country rally to the annual MG gathering, which this year is in Reno.  The Rally started at Ocean City. MD this past Saturday.  The participants are taking US50 all the way from Maryland to Reno.  It was due to that I was poking around in Google looking at areas along US50 where I have had experiences.  Emporia is one of those places.  I first searched for Renfro’s, and came up empty.  Then I took a shot at the Tap Room and came up with the article I emailed earlier.  Yes, it was Gary and Mary.  If you recall I worked for them for a while, cleaning up early in the day before they opened.

East coast is fine.  We live about 5 miles south of Queenstown, which is where US50 and US301 split, about 12 miles from the Bay Bridge.  We are about 5 miles down Bennett Point peninsula, near, but not on the water, which is both to the east and west.  The area is heavily wooded.  Greatest adjustment is to the humidity.  Has been a lot of work.  Bought a nice single level home, 1988 vintage, but one that needed a lot of refreshing.  Original owners, then elderly. redecorated in about 2002 and the décor was straight out of the 1960’s.  Same wallpaper patterns we knew as kids, 1960’s Formica counters, etc.  House had been mostly vacant for about two years so needed a lot.  I am currently working the grounds getting the lawn and landscaping back in shape.

Frank

From: Steve Pedersen

Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 7:40 AM
To: Frank Patton
Subject: Re: Some history, Tap Room, Emporia

wow that brought back great memories.  that lady that worked the bar (owner) was named mary.  so how do you like being an east coaster?  adjusted to the stay up late time zone?

still have your mg i assume.  i have been looking for a fun car and have settled on a buick reatta convertable…limited production in the early 90′s..a good driver car – two seater…now to find one and figure out where i would garage it….probably will never happen, but fun to think about.

hope to hear from you more often

steve

—– Original Message —–

From: “Frank Patton”
To: “Steve Pedersen”
Sent: Sunday, June 5, 2011 10:50:20 PM
Subject: Some history, Tap Room, Emporia

Remember this history?  Starts in fourth paragraph!
http://www.bruffs.com/history.shtml

Frank (Jack) Patton
Now on Maryland’s Eastern Shore

…………………………………………………………..

Then here is another email exchange from mid-September regarding our forty-fifth high school reunion:

………………………………………………………….

Steve.  Health issues? Fill me in a bit.  Am chagrin about not seeing you as twice I went through Colonial Heights last month on the way to the Carolinas and back.  The return trip was afternoon on the Sunday of hurricane Irene. Was not a good day to call and try to stop.  Had a sister-in-law in tow, trouble finding  a gas station with power (to pump), and was lucky to find food service along 301 after crossing the Potamic.

—–Original Message—–

From: Steve Pedersen 

Sent: Friday, September 16, 2011 8:08 PM

To: Frank Patton

Subject: Re: 45th reunion

It would be great!

I am working thru somehealth issues so I won’t be able to make it Steve

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 16, 2011, at 7:49 PM, “Frank Patton” wrote:

> Hi Steve,

> Are you planning to attend this year’s reunion in OP?  I am

> considering, but need to juggle some other commitments.  Got a message

> from Jim Walsh today about this.  Would be great to all be together after all this time.

>

> -Frank

> <winmail.dat>

……………………………………………………..

Farewell Steve!  With deep regrets!

-Frank

The full panorama. Click to see larger image!

Back in August, just before hurricane Irene hit, we traveled to North and South Carolina for a family wedding and to see my parents. When en-route we made a pit stop at an Outdoor World (Bass Pro Shop) in Charlotte, NC, and while there we got snagged by a special promotion by a timeshare organization.  We recognized one of their locations was near the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, an area we will likely travel often.  We checked availability for the promotion for that location for late October and were able to book a stay from the 24th to 26th, right in the middle of what we expected would be Fall foliage season.  As you can see in the panoramic photo above, we hit it just right!

For those photo buffs among you, the panorama was taken on the grounds of the timeshare property, Shenandoah Crossing, approximately 20 minutes northeast of Charlottesville, Va.  It is stitched from twelve overlapping shots taken from a leveled tripod and a Canon 5D Mark II camera with EF16~28 f2.8L wide angle lens.  The photo header at the very top of this web site is restricted by this page template to exactly 1000 by 288 pixels.  That required considerable cropping from the width of the full panoromic.  I chose to crop from the left to preserve the large lodge to the right.  The full uncropped version appears at the top of this article and includes five additional shots and about 30% more scenery, all to left.  I wish I had mounted the camera in portrait position (vertical) to capture more height.  That would have allowed better balance when cropped to 1000 by 288 and may have allowed me to include the full width in the photo header.

Beth and I spent much of the day on October 26th up on Skyline Drive, high above the Shenandoah Valley.  We shot several more panoramic scenes of the colorful fall foliage with the picturesque green valley below.  I exposure-bracketed each frame in those sequences and plan to apply high dynamic range (HDR) techniques to even out the lighting before stitching them into the final panoramas.  When I have completed that processing I plan to upload them here and have each panorama automatically rotate in and out as the header photo on this page.

Big Twist! This was a huge tree, some 30" in diameter!

Another view of the fallen tree

Hurricane Irene hit our area late Saturday evening through Sunday mid-morning, August 27-28.  We were in South Carolina for a family wedding, but had prepared before we left the previous Tuesday, knowing that far ahead there was a high probability the storm would affect our area to some extent.  Rated only as a Category 1 hurricane, Irene still did record damage in many areas.  It was a unique storm due to the combination of the vast size of it’s wind field (over 300 miles in diameter) and it’s slow forward movement (around 12 MPH).  That subjected those in it’s path to over 18 hours of continuous hurricane and tropical storm force winds and over 10″ of rain. Those winds over time shifted around from easterly to northeasterly, then northerly to northwesterly to southwesterly.  We were fortunate that we had no damage to our home.

The 30″ diameter tree pictured above is just off the edge of our property.  It was twisted counterclockwise and felled by the storm.  It appears to have broken at a point that had some rot, likely from the nest of an animal.  There were (7) trees this size down in the immediate neighborhood.

Doesn't look like much until you start to clean it up. Click for larger image.

Several of our neighbors were not as lucky.  One next door neighbor had a tree this large fall onto his garage. It was sawed up by the time we arrived home.  Our neighbor across the street had a large limb penetrate his roof in an upstairs bedroom.  We had a great deal of fallen debris, with medium sized limbs and an incredible amount of twig-connected leaf clusters.  It appears the winds stripped the last foot or so off of most tree branches.  On our one-acre property I cleaned up a volume of debris to fill a dump truck.  And I had no trees down.

Clay mud boil

The photo to the left shows clay that gushed out from under the trunk of a large tree.  The owner of a tree service says clay boils like this occur when heavy rains saturate the area around a tree and the winds raise and drop the tree repeatedly into the mud similar to the action of a plunger. That forces out the clay from under the tree.  Trees that are so affected must be removed as the root system is weakened to the point of danger.