Dear Harbour Lights Folks:

I will apologize right off the bat for this impersonal response to each of your very kind and touching contributions to my Dad's 75th birthday memory book. There are so many of you to thank that this seems the only way to reply. (I considered turning to my wife Gerry for assistance, but she is yet recovering from Chriatmas card carmp... just seemed like a bad idea.

Dad's celebration was terrific. You will see in the photo that he is dressed for what he expected to be a very nice dinner. As our party placed its dinner order, in walked Dad's brother and sister-in-law, all the way from Des Moines!

The look on Dad's face was increditble and truly touched all of us. After dinner we took a walk down the hall to see the hotel's lighted lake view and turned into a room where nearly a hundred friends, co-workers, neighbors and family awaited him with champagne and dessert.

Mickey, my sister, had decorated the ballroom with hundreds of photos. There was a walk through the years of Dad's life, starting from 1929 when he was two. The large photos continued around the walls of the room, including many shots of him and his brother as youngsters in Iowa, military photos, dating and wedding photos of Dad and Mom, shots of graduations, grandchildren's birth photos, and well... it went on and one.

Mick had even made table decorations which were pictoral displays of Dad with family and friends, including many from the Harbour Lights family.

Prior to dessert, I made a toast to Dad with a special nod to his engineering mind's love of numbers (including how many months, weeks, days, hours, etc... you get the idea.. were in 75 years!)

I offered a Power Point presentation of the faces of family, work associates, neighbors and you Harbour Lights and other collector friends. The presentation was set to Louis Armstrong's "Memories of You" and "What a Wonderful Life" (Pretty fair effort, if I say so myself.

Then of course, Dad offered his own toast to all of us. (That guy always manages to get the last word!)

Two memory books (more than 120 pages total) were available for guests to enjoy throughout the evening. You wouldn't believe the wild wonderful nutty contributions to those books: U.S. Currency won in sports bets, old ticket stubs, family photos none of us had ever seen... and of course, many zany tales of Dad's falling from the rafters in high school hijinks, workplace stories of unfortunate encounters between Dad's fingers and paper cutters, his making of three-dimensional large felt-covered bells (that really light up!) for all the houses on our block of "Bela" Drive in San Jose.

Harbour Lights people sent a large number of photos, memories and stories for the book, which made for some very interesting reading. The books have been read several times over and I understand there is a waiting list for a closer read by local friends at Dad's house.

Many thanks to each of you for all you have done for my father. He is a pretty special guy. Our celebration for his 75th is already a great memory and we couldn't have done it without you.

(Signed)
Steve Kuhlman