Alfred Foster Foster

In a nutshell, 3 days after graduation I was in the US Air Force, where I remained for the next 21 years. I served (in order), in San Antonio, TX; San Angelo, TX; Misawa, Japan; San Antonio, TX; Misawa, Japan; Key West, FL; Minot, ND; Omaha, NE; Ramstein, Germany; Montgomery, AL and Albuquerque, NM, where I retired as a MSgt in 1984. I was hired immediately by USWEST Communications (phone company) in Denver, CO, where I worked for 13 years in computer security. Just before USWEST was sold, I moved to Hutchinson, MN and worked in computer security for HTI, Inc. until that job vaporized just before Y2K (and the predicted end of everything we knew due to computer crashes). I was subsequently hired by CGU Insurance Co. in Foxboro, MA as a computer security administrator, where I remained until my last job at the Department of the Interior, Information Business Center in Denver, CO. I retired from the IBC in 2016.

While at LHS, I lived with my mother on Lime Street. No way to get around it - we were po folks. My mother sewed my shirts from inexpensive material and I always had a serious inferiority complex. As a result, I was very much in the shadows, watching and envying all of the more well-to-do kids in my classes as they joined clubs, excelled in athletics, and circulated in cliques that I knew I wasn't good enough to approach. My one claim to fame was being a staff member on the Bagpipe. I became the staff photographer and was entrusted with the school's big Graflex Speed Graphic camera and the key to the school's darkroom. My position enabled me to attend functions and briefly encounter student body "celebrities" to take pictures for the newspaper, and I spent countless hours in the darkroom experimenting with film and photo developing and printing techniques, and I Miss Davis even allowed me to put my own "Foto by Foster" tag on my pictures in the Bagpipe. Those experiences were among my most valued during my years at LHS. It wasn't until after joining the Air Force and becoming involved in a popular off-duty R&R band that I finally emerged from my shell, became their lead singer, and never stopped singing from that time on. I was in bands from Japan to Texas, to Ramstein and back. In Japan we appeared on stage in Sendai coliseum on a goodwill tour for the Air Force, for a crowd of 5000 screaming Japanese students, and that was the high point in my long singing career. I still own my own professional karaoke system and a large collection of karaoke CDs, and I mostly just entertain myself nowadays.

As for other LHS memories of note: there was the time that someone flushed a cherry bomb down a 2nd floor toilet and ruptured the water pipe. We had to evacuate the building as a river of water was cascading down the stairs! Someone also set off a cherry bomb in an upper book locker. It blew the bottom out of the locker and blew the door off. The books and papers that had been in there were so much confetti afterwards! Lastly, I remember when some guys somehow hoisted a toilet onto the top of the LHS clock tower as a prank. That was quite a feat of engineering:-).

Another interesting memory was (I believe Lucia Strawbridge's) yellow hearse that she drove to school everyday (filled with her peeps). I always thought that was super cool to have a hearse for your personal set of wheels.

There was the time I was tasked to take pictures for the paper at the football stadium for the presentation of that year's calendar model selections. It was night time and the stage was out on the grass, so I was out there with the school's camera. You had to first open the shutter, raise it up and look through the back and focus it, then close the back, close the lens, insert a sheet film holder, insert a flash bulb, and then take the picture. I was nervous being out in front of so many people on the field, so when I went through those steps, I forgot to close the shutter. The end result was that when I inserted the flash bulb (as big as a half a lemon), the open shutter caused it to instantly flash right in my face! I was stone blind for the next 10 minutes, so I was having to kind of aim by using the force and hoping I was getting good pictures. Fortunately I got enough good ones for the paper, but man was I embarrassed!