Friday was only the second time London, Ontario, resident Maya Hirschman had been to Bellefontaine.
Eugene and Judy Keefer of Montoursville, Pa., who lived in Bellefontaine from 1963-1966 and had two of their three children at Mary Rutan Hospital, look over a selection of some 300 pocket patches brought to the reunion by Ernie Steedman of Toledo.
Her first trip was just passing through, but she was greeted by a thunderstorm then, much like the one that roared over the Ohio Hi-Point Career center campus Friday afternoon as members of the 664th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron assembled for their 15th biennial reunion.
The reception inside the commons where the Canadian curator of The Secrets of Radar Museum had set up a display was much more welcoming.
“We’re a small family — a radar family,” she said of her decision to bring down a display of artifacts from the Royal Canadian Air Force’s era that began prior to World War II through the Pinetree Line of radar bases that were intended to detect a Soviet bomber carrying a nuclear payload in the Cold War era.
Pick up a copy of Saturday’s Examiner for the full story.