8/6 Year of the Plague Atomic Bomb 1

Today is the 75^th anniversary of the Bomb. Which always brings to mind my father, Phil Lopresti. Will I put him into the outline as a famous person? We men/boys always have such relationships with our fathers. I can see the “skit of the transplanting of the bush” as one of my breaks (shoot-outs) with Phil.

Yes, he was one of my famous people, in his small compact strong smart way. And that day was not when I was smaller, not boyish. No, not like Devin's day when I knew he was not to be dallied with... he was 12. I'll tell about that in a Devin_N paragraph. But my Phil father/son reality check was in Poughkeepsie near the end of college. I would drive from the city up to their newly purchased very old Poughkeepsie house. It was 3 Hooker Avenue. Very much in the center of the old town. One Hooker was the failing church (failing along with Poughkeepsie from “white flight”), old gothic Episcopal church and parish house.

Phils career was archetypal “post world war II USA engineer's career. In those days, 1960ish, and starting in War Years, big firms – but first A-bomb, then International Resistor, then Univac, GE, Bausch & Lomb (and in Phil's well planned career the perfect last Firm – IBM. IBM had great benefits. These firms would hire 200 engineers at a time, enticing them from already good jobs, as well-financed contracts came by. Technology spawned out of the A-bomb led to the computer in an interesting path of discovery.

Which leaves us at the 75^th anniversary of the bomb on Japan. God bless – and I never had problems with his work. A-bomb – how crazy can we get.- could you invent better than history?