Ken Finley

LHS '66

September 29, 1947 - April 12, 2002

Ken Finley, 74, went to his heavenly home on Tuesday, April 12, 2022 at Maury Regional Hospital after a brief illness. Ken was born September 29, 1947 to KC and Joyce Finley in Huntsville, Alabama. Ken was a devout Christian, a kind and loving son, brother, uncle, cousin, and friend. He was a member of Central Assembly of God on Sparkman Drive in Huntsville. Ken was employed at University Furniture.

  He was preceded in death by his parents, KC and Joyce Finley; and sister, Kathy Taylor.

  Ken is survived by his brothers, Keith Finley (Retia) and Kirk Finley (Belinda); several beloved nieces, Nichole McCormick (John) and Mindy Penney (Alan); great-nephews Ethan and Fisher Penney; cousins and a host of other family and friends.

My Memory is Improving

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

I mentioned last week about getting rid of stuff and in doing so I talked about the old computer hard drives I still had stashed away in a closet. Above is a photo of the drives I have discarded. These are ones that were replaced over the years with larger capacity drives and some of them are the ones that replaced some of the others as my need for storage increased. The data on all of them was transferred to one single (larger) drive. For your information, each of the ones discarded was "demilitarized" by drilling a hole through the drive - a recommended way to discard them. Even though people think they erase a disk before they get rid of it, there are a lot of software packages available which can recover erased or even reformatted disk drives. 

Almost twice the data from all of the computer hard disk drives in this photo will fit on the small Secure Digital (SD) card I have on my fingertip. The SD card holds one terabyte of data which will hold 250,000 digital songs which is 17,000 hours of music. Or it will hold 310,000 digital photos or 1,000 hours of movies. You can purchase an off-brand of the small SD card for less than $20 on Amazon, or a better-known brand for a little more. 

My first computer hard drive was for my IBM 5150 computer and it was a 20 megabyte one which cost me $399 in 1985. The little card holds 50,000 times more than my original hard drive.

Compare that tiny chip on my fingertip to the card required by the hard drive assembly I purchased in 1985. Above is a photo that Bruce Fowler and a few others will recognize as a hard disk controller for the IBM. This was not a hard drive, but only the electronic chips needed to make the 20-megabyte drive function. For all practical purposes, the small SD card is a stand-alone system, since all the required electronics for it is already built in computers, tablets, and cell phones. 

No personal computers existed when we were at Lee High School in the Sixties. The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de-facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981. The IBM PC was priced at $1,565 for a configuration with 16 kB RAM, Color Graphics Adapter, and no disk drives. The Apple I computer premiered five years earlier and went on sale in July 1976 at a price of $666.66.

The computer I use to create each week's Lee's Traveller has a 1 terabyte program disk and a 4 terabyte data drive. It would hold 100,000 digital songs on the data drive.

It makes me wonder. Looking at how technology has changed in the 50-plus years since we sat in those classroom desks, what will the next 50 years hold for the Lee students of today?

I want to share a little story with you. In my spring cleaning I came upon a set of calligraphy pens I had purchased a long time ago. I decided I wanted to play with them again so on a trip to Walmart I decided to buy a bottle of ink. Walmart must have 100,000 items in the store, but the bottle of ink for which I was searching was not among them. I looked in the school supplies and in their heavily stocked arts and crafts department and there was not a bottle of ink to be found. There was no ink pens either. It reminds me of the time I tried to buy a stylus for my Sony turntable. I could not make the salesperson understand what a stereo stylus was. I am quite sure if I had asked a Walmart employee (if I could have found one) where I could find a bottle of ink I would have encountered a similar problem. Even looking online I was directed to ink cartridges for computer printers. The next day I was looking for a hinge in my tool cabinet and there in one of the drawers was my old bottle of ink, still usable. It would rate as an antique I am sure.

Comments on Last Week's Issue

Rick Schrimsher, LHS '76, "Native Huntsvillian. Know some of people mentioned and enjoy your articles."

Photographic Memories - Who Are They?

Each week I plan to share a group of photos from the 1960 "The General" yearbook without disclosing the names of the individuals. You may stop and try to identify them here, and when you are through you may scroll to the bottom of this page to see the identities of your classmates in the photos.

 Turn Around, Look At Me - The Vogues

Someone jumped my next song question and last week sent me a note, "(I remember a song from) Carter's Skateland's couples' dance. The song was Turn around Look at Me by the Vogues."

"Turn Around, Look at Me" is a song written by Jerry Capehart and Glen Campbell, though Campbell is not officially credited.  In 1961, Glen Campbell released his version as a single. This was his first song to chart in the United States, hitting #62 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #15 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

 In 1968, The Vogues released their remake as a single. This version was by far the most successful, reaching #7 on the Hot 100 and #3 on the Adult Contemporary chart. In 2019 it was used in a Volkswagen commercial.