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28 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2025 worked as a chemist on the Manhattan Project. She had also been an AAU swim champion, so she appreciated sportsmanship and hard work. When I was young, we didn't have a TV, so I was le to my own devices to entertain myself. I would oen build my toys as the store versions were too expensive. Even for model airplanes, the plastic kits cost too much, so I bought inex- pensive balsa wood and paper plane kits which took a lot of time and skill to build. With rub- ber bands, they could actually fly. Of course, I added a JetEx miniature solid fuel rocket motor to give them power. We did have a radio, and I enjoyed listen- ing to those programs. I was a builder from my earliest days, and I eventually built a radio receiver. I was someone who wanted to know how things worked. I enjoyed taking things apart and putting them back together. I'm not surprised you were a tinkerer and a creator in your younger days. What else sparked your passion? I spent a lot of time in the library. Science fic- tion writing and film expanded my creative mind and my curiosity about what is possi- ble. I was an avid reader and fell in love with writers like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Robert A. Heinlein, and Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who was not only a science fiction writer but also an inventor, explorer, and futurist. I watched the science fiction films of the 1950s—"Forbidden Planet," "e Day the Earth Stood Still," and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"—which made an impression on me, and so many others in my generation. ese films showed future and alternate worlds that seemed beyond comprehension; it was mind-expanding stuff. Because of Sput- nik in 1957, I got the benefit of increased emphasis of science and math by middle Happy Holden and his older sister Melodye, on their dairy farm in Wisconsin. Happy's wooden model airplane made from a kit and an erector set for building. Happy Holden in 1960. 28 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2025