Not knowing the extent of the Memorial Service on Fri 9 May 2003, I was UNprepared to offer a sufficient
remembrance, but since that time there have been a flood of memories come back that I wanted to share
more fully with his family and friends, and thus .......

Remembrances of  Ron Bigelow --- and Fenestration:::  

John Wayne said about John Ford's movies, that if they did not reflect life as it really was, then they showed
life as it should have been; and so it may be about the accuracy and integrity of my remembrances of Ron,
nevertheless .....

We met in 1962 at North American Aviation Space Systems Division in an avionics department managed by
Sam Wozniak in Building-1 in Downey, California; don't recall who was in that group first, but I had just
freshly transferred from another division of NAA and Ron was recently discharged from the Army; we were
both aged 26, with Ron being a couple of months older. 

As memory serves me --
- he had been drafted into the Army and spent a large percentage of his time at the Aberdeen Proving Ground
n.e. of Baltimore. 
- he and his close Army buddies were recent college graduates and understood how to get along with each
other and to accomplish tasks with a minimum of time and effort and a maximum of cooperation; generally
they drew the better duty assignments, but the Army was still not perfect to him.
- when the regulations required that the bulletin board be read once in the morning and once in the afternoon,
he organized his group to all gather there at 11:58 AM and read the board completely from one end to the
other and then do it again - thus complying the regulations.
- one of the civilian employees at Aberdeen was a local young lady from Port Deposit named
Joyce Devine Marshall with whom he struck up a budding acquaintance.
- her family occupied an very old home which was often mistaken by tourists as being one of the local
historical attractions; they had to post a prominent sign indicating that it was a private residence.
- after passing a VERY thorough inspection, her rather protective "big" brothers allowed the
relationship to blossom, and Ron and Joyce were married in 1961.
- we had adjacent desks in a typical aerospace large open office area know as a "bull-pen" and shared a
telephone line. Joyce called occasionally, and from Ron's end of the conversation, I learned how to
convincingly say "Yes, Dear" -- a lesson that has served me well since I was married a few years later.
- one day, after I thought that I knew them well enough to not cause any problems, when I answered a call
from Joyce asking for Ron, I inquired "is this his wife or his mistress?"; without missing a beat in the
conversational exchange, she responded with an emphatic "BOTH", which at once demonstrated the bond
and typified the relationship that this couple enjoyed. 
- in those days I was a amateur photographer and they invited me over to bring some of my slides and have
dinner - a tradition which went on for a few years. Once, after almost an hour of somewhat boring slides of
Freeway Construction scenes, Ron asked about the box labeled "Miscellaneous" and was dismayed to learn
that they were of miscellaneous freeway interchanges.
- on one occasion I was invited over for Ron's birthday, and when the cake came out the word "Birtday" had
been misspelled; we all remembered and joked about that for some years.
- they lived in the first house across the street from our work location, and we made up a little sign for his
front door indicating his grid location; as I recall it was something like E22N315.
- when we were relocated to Building-5 on the other side of the 200-acre NAA property, then it was about
10 times as far from home for Ron but only 3 for me.
- Ron had an uncanny talent for understanding my penchant for placing things in some order and attempting
accuracy; he'd see ahead how and where I was headed and very matter-of-factly throw some odd-ball quasi-
reasonable monkey wrench into the situation just to watch my reaction,  then he'd smile and say "had'ya
there for a minute didn't I?". I tried to turn the tables a few times, but could never see far enough ahead of
the situation like he did.
- While my tactics were always to cautiously evaluate and take a least-effort path to a smooth solution, Ron
was more adventurous and fearless and would march right in as long as he believed in the success of his
effortss, and I never recall his outcomes being the worse for his forthright approach. 
- sometimes he seemed to be a contrarian -- but often it was just to spark discussion to perhaps air more
facets of any situation; no matter for which politician I might indicate a preference, Ron could always recall
several things that he had done poorly.
- evidence of his contrarian ways is shown in his InterNet E-Mail name of RBIGREBEL, which I imagine
was derived as:  R for Ron, BIG for Bigelow, REB for his initials, and EL just to give it that "rebel" sound.
- there were stories about a cleaning lady who named her kids after brand names - one of them being Lavoris,
and about the sport of swatting bikers with brooms from the back seat of convertibles, and about chaining
police car rear axles to telephone poles; some of these were likely second or third hand, although that
certainty escapes me; then there were some limericks that will not be mentioned here.
- in time the tasks at NAA seemed to him to be a bit mundane and with no apparent product on the horizon,
and he got a good offer from General Electric to return to the more relaxed atmosphere of the green suburbs
of Philadelphia; always suspected that this had something to do with a desire for Joyce to be closer to her
roots, but Ron sure seemed to enjoy the new tasks at GE.
- when our first child was born I mailed-out standard IBM cards with NO printing but simply the vital
statistics punched into them; sure enough, in a couple of weeks I got back a congratulatory "message" from
Ron in the form of a punched paper tape with NO printing.
- once I recall reading about a metallurgist in the USA who was so proud of his having made a very small
diameter wire, that he sent a small length of his nearly invisible product to a colleague in Switzerland with
NO message; in a short time he received a similar envelope in the mail with NO message; at first it seemed to
contain just his original wire, but on closer inspection he discovered that the Swiss had put a hole in the
original wire and placed an EVEN smaller/finer wire thru the hole. Likely some who read this will recognize
the potential for Ron's being that Swiss.
- in time Ron returned to SoCalif with Douglas Aircraft's Space Systems and then joined another ex-NAA-
co-worker at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Lab - a place to which many good engineers and scientists aspire for
its many and continued challenges and rewards of seeing the performance of products in which they have had
a hand.
- there was a time when knock-knock and how-many-to-change-a-light-bulb jokes were all the rage, and I
called Ron's house with the latest joke so close to the front of my mouth that the opening line just came out
when the phone was answered -- and Joyce hung up on me.
- he had strong principles to which he adhered tenaciously, but if those in charge decided upon what he
considered a sub-optimal path, then he would still give the task his full and best effort for success.

Statistically Ron out-numbered me through our years together - years married to-date: 42/36,  addresses: 7/3,
employers: 4/1, children:  3/2, grandkids to-date: several/0. It was NEVER a matter of competition, but just
a matter of a great friendship. While we seldom saw each other face-to-face, we kept in close touch,
especially since the advent of E-Mail; my last message from him was a reply stamped
Tue, 8 Apr 2003 12:23:53 EDT, and the text was simply, "Look up fenestration!"

  --- Emerson on  SUCCESS ---
"To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
   and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty
to find the best in others
to leave the world a bit better,
      whether by a healthy child
                 a garden patch
              or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded."     ---  Ralph Waldo Emerson ---

Surely it can be agreed that Ron was a success - and worthy of much imitation.
Additionally, he possessed a great combination of logic, reason, and humanity,
and many have surely benefitted from knowing him.

Nearly everyone lives in multiple decades; today most live in multiple centuries; we have been privileged to
live in multiple millennia. The cultural anthropologists and historians of our era, like the Durants, have
researched and written a lot about the rise and fall of civilizations of the past. While such writings in the next
millennium about our current era may not mention Ron & Joyce by name, likely some of the descriptions of
the exemplary familial relations discovered respecting the here-and-now, will sound as though the authors
had truly spent time with that family.