VC-8 Redtails      1970s Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, PR

Welcome Redtails! 

Everybody loves a reunion, but they’re a lot of work to plan and execute, and the older you get, the less inclined we are to exit our safe areas, travel a long way, try to recall names and events that happened years ago, and then confront the realities of life’s erosive effects over long periods of time on all of us.  One of our ‘70s shipmates, an A-4 driver from the 1972 arrivals, Bob Jackson, came up with the brilliant idea to hold an electronic “Virtual  Reunion” instead of a live reunion, a thought which has been transformed by his energy and creativity into this 1970s era interactive website.  Bob was able to recruit an assistant to help him, another 1972 Redtail arrival and chopper guy, Pete Lumianski.

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Together, over a six month period, they worked on assembling people, pictures, mementoes, updates, memories and VC-8 trivia all into one place, so we could each ‘attend’ the reunion from our couches with just a finger touch of effort.  Our initial release of this website was seeded with an overabundance of Lumianski-Jackson stuff because it was the most readily available.  We’re hoping you will all contribute something to our website, and thus get everyone represented in a satisfactory manner.  Among the nice things about a virtual reunion are the facts you can come and go whenever you want, you can tinker with the website to add, subtract, or download your favorite content, and the reunion can last a really long time.  In fact, the initial website is meant to just establish a structure into which we can all deposit our content –over time, it will be our collective contributions that make this website great!  We have booked the site for a year, but we could extend it for as long as we’d like.  Let us know what you think with any of your ideas or feedback.

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Organization

     The website is organized into these sections:

• Home – Self-explanatory

• About – You’re on it (!)

• Shipmates – A major collection of ‘stuff’:  Current updates and photos; VC-8 memorabilia and mementoes; Redtail Certificates; odds and ends to share

• Gallery – A collection of still photos in various categories

• Videos – A collection of YouTube videos in various categories

• Yearbooks and Pubs – Squadron yearbooks and other Roosy-related publications

• Forum – Interact with your squadron mates about various subjects or about anything   

• Contact – Contact Bob or Pete to add things to the website; order shirts and hats

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How-to-Use Tips  (Saving copies of photos, viewing videos, etc.)

Much of the website content opens in separate windows if you click on the link -- or for example, clicking once on one of the big pages of the Yearbook invokes a full screen display that is easier to read text and view pictures with.  

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 Also, once you've clicked into the 'full screen editor', you can also Right Click on an image of interest, and use the 'Save Image As', or 'Copy Image' to download that image onto your home computer (and into your personal 'archives', if you wish).  Use the big < > arrows to flips through the other pages in the book.  This technique also works for all the Gallery photos too.  Pretty much any content on the website can be downloaded to your own computer, if you want your own personal copy.  PDF documents once open can be downloaded using the little page with down arrow (Download icon) in the top right corner.

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If you see a picture or content without a caption -- and you know something about it -- please send us your suggested caption addition.  This will make the photos and other content much more meaningful and interesting.  And please send us your photos and stories and mementos as you find them digging through your stuff during the next year.

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Clicking on a Video opens it in a new 'YouTube' web browser tab.  To return to the Redtail70s.org site after the video finishes, either close the new 'YouTube' tab or re-select the original Redtail70s.org browser tab.

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Forum

If you have someone to 'raz', a great memory or something to say to everyone now 40 years later -- please participate in the Forum.  On your first visit, click the little 'people' icon in the top right corner to generate your Logon info.