[Dean Romig]

Please join me if you wish, in remembering our mentors - those men who made a deep impression on us and helped to shape the men we came to be.

I pay tribute to a man I wish had been my grandfather but who was not even blood-related to me. Hubert G. Simons, former fire chief of St. Johnsbury Vt. but was a great deal more than that to me. He, who walked barefoot to the one-room schoolhouse in Tampico around the time of "The War to End All Wars" - who pot-shot grouse on the ground and from trees to augment the family's food needs - who went to war in '42 and joined the fire dept upon his return - who loved horses - who bought twelve acres in Tampico and built a camp on it in '54 - and who invited my Dad to hunt with him - and unknowingly fostered in this boy a deep respect and love for the hills and fields, the melodious mountain brooks and blazing autumn maples, the deer and pa'tridge and woodcock, the gravel roads and stone walls of the Tampico of his youth.

Please post your pictures too.



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