Richard was born on June 9, 1930

In the Methodist Hospital to Chester and Ruth Kelly in Indianapolis, Indiana - Well yes this was right during the great depression.  A bad time for a lot of people back then.

Of course since Richard was just a baby he didn't know anything about the depression!

At the time the family lived on Mac Pherson Av. in Indianapolis near 30th street and Fall Creek with the Monon railway running very close by, I can remember going into what they called a "Roundhouse" and it was a building where they could pull the engines inside to work on them..  Along in 1935 Richard and his younger sister Margaret came down with Scarlet Fever and both were admitted to the City Hospital, Margaret would die from the disease.  Richard attended a kindergarten that was located on 30th street very near to Fall Creek, back then Fall Creek was used by many for swimming since it was pretty and clean back then.  Also on 30th street there were several stores, a drugstore, an A&P grocery store and some others, I can remember two old ladies pulling up in and old electric car to shop at the A&P, which was an abbreviation for Alantic and Pacific Tea Company..  Below is a picture of  Richard and his older sister Marian along with some cousins and was taken at Grandfather's home on Winthrop which was just the next block over, I think all have passed away except Richard that were in this photo.

Sometime along the way before I was six years old the family moved a little to the north and east to a home on Schoefield Av. and I went to a city school that was on Keystone Av. and 34th street and was school number 69 and I do believe that it still exists to this day.

The family again moved to a home out near Lawrence, IN on 42 street near Post Road.  This home was pretty much in the country at that time and the family had a cow and a small barn which I enjoyed playing in.  Richard attended Lawrence School located on Pendleton Pike near Post Road and at that time served for grades 1 through 12.  No pictures are available for this time period.  Father Chester was a carpenter and purchased 12 acres mostly woods in Hancock County about 2 miles from Mt. Comfort.  Chester built a new home for the family in the woods and we all moved in sometime in 1941.  It was a really nice place to grow up and was surrounded by farms back then.  When school started Richard started in the 6th grade at Mt Comfort and graduated from that school in 1948. Below is a picture of the Mt. Comfort as it appeared in 1948.

A few months after graduating Richard joined the Marine Corps along with classmate James Lansinger, (later to become my brother-in-law)  Served for a year and then was discharged.  Attended boot camp at Parris Island, SC and then was sent out to California to Camp Pendleton and later to the Hunters Point Naval station in San Francisco.  Below is a picture of the barracks that I lived in at Camp Pendleton.  Don't have any pictures of Hunters Point however it was a large Naval shipyard where they had several dry docks to repair ships and the Marine detachment served as guards for the base.

My barracks at Parris Island Marine boot camp.

My barracks at Camp Pendleton, CA

This picture was taken in San Francisco, CA in 1949

I was sent to the Great Lakes Naval Base for discharge and was home for Christmas 1949.

So back home and worked for the farmer across the road, (Willie Collins) and then started to attend Purdue University in Indiana in the fall of 1950 when the Korean War had started I got a letter from the Gov. telling me to report for duty so that's what I did and that was the end of my Purdue career, (I thought I would become an Electrical Engineer).  So off to the Fed bldg in Indianapolis and I did mange to get reclassified from an infantryman to a radar classification in an anti-aircraft battalion and was sent to Camp Lejune, NC where I spent the next two years doing much of nothing,  One morning I found that I had been changed from the radar section to the machine gun section!  So much for that career in electronics!  So at that time in the Korean Was going on jet airplanes were coming to use and the anti-aircraft guns that we had were not any good against the jets so we were never sent to Korea.  I did make Sargent along the way but I didn't like the discipline of the Marines so I was anxious to get my discharge. 

  

This was the quad mount 50 cal machine guns that I was assigned to, I wouldn't want to have been shot at with these things, rapid rate of fire but too slow for shooting at jet airplanes, the sights only went up to a 250 mph target!  You sat inside the turrent and rotated it up and around with control handles.  We used to go out to a private Marine Corps beach in NC and stay for about a month messing around with these things and the 90mm anti-aircraft guns.

This was me out at the beach in 1952, we stayed in tents and spent about a month out there and it was a pretty nice beach too so we got to play in the water etc.  I was discharged in April 1952 while I was out here.  This was between the Atlantic and the Inland Coastal Waterway so we got to watch lots of nice boats going by.  We shot the guns out here on the beach at airplanes towing big socks and a few times the Navy pilots would try flying a drone but they usually failed before we ever shot at them.

This was me and my 1948 Hudson Commodore straight 8 with overdrive that I had while at Lejune and it was a very good car too, drove it home to Indiana on long weekends quite a few times as well as up to NY and PA with some of my buddies.  After being discharged I traded this on in on a 1952 Hudson coupe below.

My 52 Hudson was green like this one although this one wasn't mine.  After getting married I crashed it into a telephone pole that carried the "lead line"  just in front of our house after being married and having our first child Scott and ruined it pretty much so that I traded it for another Hudson.

Well after being discharged from the Marines in April 1952 I was in need of a companion of the opposite sex so got a date with Betty JoAnn Arthur from Hancock County, a graduate of Mt. Comfort also and a pretty young girl of 19 so in short order we got married in August of 1952 after I had gotten a job at IBM and was scheduled to go to their factory school in Poughkeepsie, NY.

So here we are on our wedding day August 30, 1952 and we are standing in the yard at Betty's house.

After the wedding we went on our Honeymoon to Clifty Falls State Park and stayed in a little cabin that had a terrible bed, so waked around in the park and next morning before returning home we drove to Louisville and had breakfast at some hotel there.

 where we lived for a short while, until renting Betty's Mom's house down the road about a half mile.  Note the telephone "lead line" on the opposite side of the road and it's the one I ran the 1952 Hudson into in front of the rental home.

A picture of Betty and family and she was the baby probably about 1933?

                            
After wrecking the 1952 Green Hudson we got this one from Charlie King who had a Shell Station down on Highway 40.  We also bought coal oil from him for our heating stove in the rental house, it was a really cold house in the winter time too!

I think this is where I attended the factory school in Poughkeepsie, NY and it was a very scenic area, pretty along the Hudson River and upstate NY so mountains around too.  I was here about 6 weeks I believe.

Well next April of 1953 little Scott was born, he is on the left and his cousin Lynn on the right, my older sister's first child and the picture was taken at Ruth and Chester's place on 38th St. in Hancock county

A few years later and 5 kids at this time along with our 1955 Chevy ready for church on Easter Sunday.  Along about this time we also moved into our new home on 100N in Hancock County and purchased a VW Beetle from a neighbors named Cass like the one in the picture below but ours wasn't a rag top, but was this color, then a few years later we bought a new 1965 VW blue in color, pretty good little cars back then.

Well what did we do in the 60's?  Moved into our new home on Christmas Eve of 1960 and proceeded to raise our family by this time Betty and I and 5 children.  Some of our neighbors and Betty's mom and dad helped us move from the rental house to the new one which was about 500' down the road.  We used Betty's Dad's farm wagon to move our stuff to the new home and then the neighbors brought some food and we all ate it sitting on the kitchen floor!  There also had been a snow storm so a lot of snow outside.

This was in 1972 and we went to the World Series game in Cinn. to watch the Reds play the Oakland A's, the A's won the series. Pictures of Betty below was around 1970's she had gone out to get the mail and still in her housecoat.

1970's

Don't have any pictures of Betty back into the 1950's and 60's but above is one from around 1975 and we were at Lake Monroe south of Bloomington, IN.  At the time we had an inboard/outboard boat that we took down there and cruised the lake.  Another pic of Betty below shooting basketball, she was a pretty good shot!  This was taken at one of the Arthur Reunion's and was at cousin Tammy's home near Charlottesville, IN.  At that time her father and mother and uncles and aunts were still living.

A picture of Betty in 1975 when we were at a seminar put on by the Ames company whom we were a dealer for,  the name of the company was "AMCO" and they sold IBM reconditioned typewriters which we bought and sold.  We were at Hilton Head Island and we took a little drive over to Savanna, GA to have a look around.

These pictures were taken during the same trip to Hilton Head, SC and we did have a good time there.  Both of us were in our mid 40's then so still just youngsters!

                        

Added this car to our collection about 1975 I think and it was a 1974 Delta Royal Convertable and this model was used as the Indy 500 Pace Car that year.  Somehow Robin ended up with it out in Colorado where she was stationed in the Army at Fort Carson below.

This is the 74 olds out in Colorado at Robin's apartment, we stayed all night with her and that night we had about a 12" snowfall!  Next morning we took off to the south and toured part of Colorado and when coming back east on I70 we had to stop in Vail, CO because this snowfall had closed Vail Pass so spent the night in Vail in a Hotel.

Later Jayne and I drove this car out to Colorado and drove the 1974 back to Indiana.

On this trip we drove this Lincoln to SC. and also out to Colorado in 1975 I think it was.

This picture taken in Feb of 1976 and we had a bad Ice Storm then, Betty was bundled up too!