His first call was a W2 when he was still living in NJ. He told me once 
what it was, but I don't remember.

I don't think he had been on the air in a good while before he moved to 
the assisted living place where he was when he died.

Sometime in either 1990 or 1991, Fred came to town to teach the Braille 
'N Speak and some other things to the teachers at the Mississippi 
School for the Blind. That evening, two other blind friends and I took 
him to dinner. Following dinner, we sat at his hotel, and talked for at 
least two hours. The conversation covered everything from the abacus to 
Braille, to various ham radio subjects, including Bob Gunderson.

During that visit, Fred tried to explain to me how to use a slate, 
stylus, and a piece of string to make a Braille dial plate from a plastic lid.

I went home and tried to do what he said, but my results were disasterous.

The rest of the dial story was that he and Bob Gunderson had figured 
out how to make Braille dial skirts for the Drake twins, and for the 
TR4. He told me that they had the markings down to 5 KHZ for the VFO dials.

Someone, I'm not sure who, actually sold those custom dials for a brief time.

Then he told us about Tim Cranmer modifying the Japanese version of the 
abacus so that the beads would not slip, and about writing the 
instructions more or less from scratch. He said he had no choice but to 
write them since the only book he and Tim Cranmer could find had a 
title that translated into something like Abacus, how use, any time, 
any where, any when.

As I said at the end of the piece I used about him in the ACB Reports 
program for October, "May he rest in peace, knowing that his work on 
earth was well done."

-- 
Mike Duke, K5XU