Dear Friends and Family,
We began the year celebrating our 20th anniversary in Las Vegas by going to see Tony and Tina’s Wedding. We decided to try for another 20, at least…
We lost and gained family members this year. Great granddaughter Ariana Cuadra was born in June, joining her 2-year-old brother Jonathan. Janet’s Aunt Freida passed away shortly after celebrating her 101st birthday, and her Uncle Albert passed away at the age of 96. One of the Greatest Generation, Albert, in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, fought in Europe during World War II. Both will be missed.
Grandson Mike recently returned from Afghanistan and will be a U.S. Army recruiter in Valencia. His brother, Sam, continues his studies at Le Cordon Bleu and is working at The Foundry, a terrific restaurant on Melrose in Hollywood.
Granddaughter Sarah is completing her Child Development Studies at West L.A. College and plans to continue for a four-year degree in Environmental Science. Granddaughter Neda, now caring for two small kids, is continuing her medical assistant studies. She called the end of last term to let us know that she had gotten an “A” in Math and “B’s” in both Med Asst classes. We’re very proud of her.
Charley continues to mentor CSU Long Beach students in the Dept. of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering who participate in the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA) Club. They took second place in the annual Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) in Utah in 2011.
A website with research available to all rocket engineers, Rocket Science and Technology www.rsandt.com, was updated by Charley. He has also had a paper “Sounding Rocket Boost Phase Gust Angle of Attack“ accepted by the AIAA, which will appear in an upcoming issue of their Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets.
As a professor emerita at Cal State L.A., Janet has moved on from chairing the Emeriti Assn. Fellowship Fund Committee to becoming VP for Programs. Both of us continue to participate in the CSULA Annual Research Symposium as judges and coaches of the winners to prepare them for the CSU statewide competition. We have established legacies with both universities as endowments for student scholarships – at CSULB for engineering students and at CSULA for biology students. You might be interested in an article that appeared in the Fall 2011 issue of CalStateLA Today that featured us. http://www.calstatela.edu/univ/ppa/publicat/today/?page=6
Janet continues to write poetry with her Santa Monica-based Green Poets and her book Body Parts is available on Amazon.com. Just be sure to add “Poetry” or you will get all the anatomy listings. She has more poetry books in the works, but has had to slow down after rotator cuff surgery in August. She also hasn’t been able to play her ukulele with the Culver City Strummers (she’s in a couple of the C.C. Strummer YouTube videos wearing a red and white Hawaiian shirt and a white hat with red flowers)..!
Ukulele playing and computer tasks have had to wait until physical therapy has done its work on the muscular problems that resulted from over three months in an arm sling.
In October, we met Charley’s MIT classmates (1956) at the Getty for our annual gathering and to check out the latest Pacific Standard Time Exhibit. Later that month, family members helped Janet celebrate her 75th birthday on the Queen Mary, both Janet and the Queen were launched in 1936…!
In November, even though Janet was in an arm sling, we went to our timeshare in Spain and then drove to Lisbon, Portugal. This is our second visit to Portugal. Both of us have decided to learn Portuguese and go back as well as plan a visit to Brazil.
We just celebrated Charley’s 78th birthday by purchasing a new Prius with lots of bells and whistles. The navigation book (over 300 pages) is daunting, but, although it will take us some time until we learn how to use the systems, we know we will be saving gas.
Plans afoot for next year include a reunion with Janet’s friends from the Community School in Tehran, Iran, which no longer exists, but where she graduated in 1953. Every three years former students from all over the world meet to reminisce – Montreal in 2009 and for 2012 the planning committee (Janet’s a member) is organizing a weekend cruise to Mexico. Later next year, we will be joining the Griffith Park Friends of the Observatory (FOTO) on a cruise to view our 7th total solar eclipse. We begin in Hawaii and end in Australia with stops along the way including New Zealand.
We’ll let you know how our year turns out and hope that the coming year will be a good one for you and yours.
Love,
Janet and Charley
The Hoults may be contacted at HoulTight@aol.com
