Ask him sometime about his and his wife Marion’s work in evacuating personnel from Saigon when that city fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975. “She was in a yoga class,” Joe recalls, “when I called Marion to tell her it was time to start moving people out.” For some time, Joe commuted daily between the Philippines and Saigon as part of the security staff, USAF, in the evacuation process. “We did our best,” he said; “it sometimes meant saving someone from a death sentence if we could get them out of there.” Marion, for her part, assisted in processing over 100,000 people out of the South. Said Joe, “she got them cleaned up, fed and clothed and on their way.” Ironically, one of the kids that Joe and Marion helped way back then is now a physician in practice here in San Antonio.

Joe retired from the Air Force in 1984 and — like so many of us — got involved in computers. He fondly recalls his Atari 130XE with its fabulously expensive 20-meg hard drive and its speedy 300 baud modem. Again like so many of us he wonders at the super-slim paperclip software he used then for word processing, which performed as well or better as the super bloated WP programs of today.

With that super fast modem of his, Joe checked out the local BBS scene. In its pre web heyday, local BBSs numbered in the hundreds, says Joe, and he really enjoyed participating in several of them, including that of Alamo PC. He is still an active chatter in the Olive Pit, a long time local BBS which continues its healthy existence despite intense competition from Internet based chat rooms.

When a serious controversy developed in the mid 90s over the ground rules of the Alamo PC bulletin board, Joe joined the BBS committee set up to resolve the matter, He's been involved in a variety of serious volunteer endeavors ever since. He's most visible the at moment as Member Discount Coordinator, writing the Member Deals column each month in the PC Alamode. Sometimes the money-saving opportunities knock on our door, says Joe, but often he's the one to spot and research what turns out to be a great opportunity for Alamo PC members.

I can't think of much of anything I enjoy more than saving money — unless it's a good story well told. Thanks, Joe!