My story was similar to what Chris described.  I was 10 years old, about a
year away from going blind due to detatched retinas, when I started taking
my 8 transister radio apart.  I did not know what ham radio was until I went
over to a friend's house and discovered, in his basement, one large room
filled with all sorts of electronics and boxes of parts.  He was a TV repair
man.  I began going with him on house calls and he started teaching me about
antennas and the like.  One night he said, "You should become a ham radio
operator."  I told him I had never heard of that.  He took me into his ham
shack on the other side of the basement.  He had a DX60 and an HQ129X set
up.  this would have been about late 1962 or early 1963 I would guess.  I
had a blast tuning around with that receiver and was dead set on getting my
license, no matter what.  All my time, thereafter, was spent in his TV
repair room, even if he wasn't there, just looking at parts and equipment
and dreaming.

Soon after that, my father died unexpectedly and six months after his death,
I started going to the hospital for retinal surgeries.  After a dozen
operations, they told me I would never see again and sent me home with
instructions for my mother to put me into a school for the blind
immediately.

Two weeks later, I was at the Nebraska school for the blind, crying my eyes
out from home sickness every day.  After lunch, I would go into the
visitor's lounge, find a comfortable couch, and sit and cry from the ache in
my heart until the bell rang at 1 o'clock, signaling the next class.

One day, while crying, someone sat down on the other end of the couch and
began talking to me.  I wished he would leave me alone so I could cry
privately but he kept asking me all kinds of questions to keep my mind off
the home sickness.  He was my age, or a year older perhaps, and one day, he
said, "Do you know anything about ham radio."  I immediately stop crying and
told him I was going to get my license but then my dad died and I went
blind.  He told me that he was studying for his novice and that the school
had their own station just down the hall and did I want to see it.  I
suddenly forgot all about my homesickness and we practically ran down the
hall to the radio room.  The school had a DX60, with which I was somewhat
familiar, or at least had seen before, and an old SX99 receiver.  From then
on, when school was out between lunch and the first afternoon class, and
when school was out for the afternoon, my friend and I were in the radio
shack, listening to the receiver, and using a code practice oscillator
brushing up on our code so we could take the test.

By the time we got our tickets close together, the old DX60 had faithfully
broken down again.  So, for a replacement radio, we had a little 30 watt AT1
and that was what I used for my very first novice band contact on 80 meters
after school one afternoon.  Yes, we still had the SX99 but I didn't care.
A couple of years later, the school let us buy the HT37 and HQ180X receiver.
Wow, talk about having a big station.  At home, I ran a DX20 on a 100 foot
long wire and no tuner.  I worked 80 and 40 but spent most of my time on 40
because I got out so much better but 80 was always my favorite.  Eventually,
I got up an 80 and 40 dipole and my mom let me buy a Ranger 1 but I was
still using the BC348 receiver I had gotten for 20 dollars.  What fun.  I
had my novice at age 14 from April 25, 1966 till October when I passed my
general class.  To my utter amazement, mom bought me a Drake TR4 for
Christmas.  I never had so much fun with the TR4 operating 80 through 10
meters, than anything else in my whole life.  Well, girls came first, but
since we had no girls in the school interested in ham radio, they came
second.

I am not nearly as active as I used to be and I have had periods of
inactivity when going to college, and when first married and was too poor to
own any equipment.  But I always got back into the swing of things one way
or another and usually by going over to a friend's house to get on the air.
Back in the days you could save glass pop bottles and get 2 and 3 cents for
them, I began collecting.  Eventually, I saved enough money to buy an
already assembled HW7 QRP rig from a friend for 40 dollars.  I owned a
trapped 14AVQ vertical I had kept so slapped it up on the ground, bought
cheap, and I do mean cheap, coax from Radio Shack and fired that rig up.  In
18 months, during the mid seventies when the bands weren't all that great, I
made 609 contacts, 14 countries, and all 50 states on 40 meters with that
set up.  I never dreamed QRP could be that fun.

Over the years, I have tried other aspects of the hobby, too, including DX
hunting.  I slowed down after hitting country number 300 so I only have
about 312 countries now but I bought a 2 element 40 meter beam once and got
into CW contesting and 40 meter DX work pretty heavily and really loved it.
I guess that is what I like about ham radio.  You can change to different
aspects of the hobby every year and never run out of new things to become
involved in.

I even waited long enough to finally get a 1 by 2 call sign that I had
always dreamed of having as a teenage ham.

So, for me, ham radio has been, and still is, a great hobby.

Phil.
K0NX