I have perhaps an item of slight interest.
March 4th will be the Founder's Day gathering for the Pikes Peak Chapter of the West Point Society. It will be well attended. Over 100. I think I will see if I can make to be the oldest living grad present. Only a '43 and '44 grad are ahead of me.
As Bill DeGraf reported before, my youngest son, Edward, travelled to China during the Tiananmen Troubles in 1989. He met and married Haning Zhou, which would not be remarkable except that both her mother and father are retired Red Army Colonel doctors, who were north of the Yalu River in 1950 patching them up, while I was south of the Yalu in the 7th Cavalry, sending them business. Now they are my in-laws.
Haning Hughes is in her 19th year teaching Chinese to Air Force Academy Cadets. She is so good she has been offered the Deputyship of all 8 foreign languages at the AFA. She already has 3 Air Force Lt Colonels reporting to her.
Now most Americans know – largely from media – that Chinese really insist that their children become as well educated as possible.
Well, that trait has passed to Haning's generation. For she insisted that my grandsons David Hughes XIII, and brother Justin, study hard. In the case of young David he became such a scholar that, in spite of his living through multiple operations for thyroid cancer, he was the only student out of 450 graduating in Colorado Springs largest high school in 2015 to be awarded a full-tuition Scholarship to Harvard.
He is there, doing so well he is already teaching other Harvard freshmen, computer science. And he has joined the Harvard gun club. The last news I had was that they competed against several other college clubs – including West Point's. I told him to tell the West Point team before their match that his grandfather was a West Pointer and I expected them to do well. He ruefully admitted afterward that the West Pointers outshot everybody in the competition. So I am glad to report the Corps hasn't.
-- Dave Hughes F-2 '50