- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 04/21/05
 

- Gloria Woolard Price (HHS - '65) of FL - 04/25/05
 

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 04/25/05
 

Hi Carol - Oh, Boy, do I remember Chandler Nelms (Hampton HS - '63). I dated Chandler in high school and he was also at East Carolina when I was there. When he would come to pick me up for a date my mother would spend more time "primping" than I did. Everyone should have a "Moon Doggie" (spelling?) in their life - at least once - and I'm glad to say I did. What a "Hunk"!!!

- Jo Ann Stewart ('64) of TX - 04/26/05
 

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 04/26/05
 

   I've no doubt your mama was heartbroken when y'all stopped dating.  She was probably envisioning the World's Prettiest Grandchildren and The Most Beautiful Family Reunions for years to come - not to mention the introductions to her friends - "This is my son-in-law, Darden Nelms" - and then watching the ladies all drop to the ground in a near-lethal swoon!

   Congratulations to you, too - oh, I mean, thank you, Neta!

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 04/26/05
 

Carol,

My name is Chandler Nelms. I’m actually a graduate of HHS class of ’63, but I’ve taken great interest in the NNHS Newsletters brought to my attention by my sister-in-law, Jackie Veneris Nelms. She was surfing the website and came upon a (dialogue) between Neta Collins (Hastings - '60 - of VA) and Jo Ann Stewart ('64 - of TX) which named both my brother Darden and myself as two brothers that had dated these two girls back in our high school days. Dave Spriggs ('64 - of VA) helped me get in contact with Jo Ann a couple of days ago and we are now having a blast catching up on 40+ years since we dated, thanks to your efforts and the newsletter. How can I join in the newsletter?

- Chandler Nelms (HHS - '63) of MD - 09/09/05
 

   (The loud clunk just heard all over the eastern half of the United States was me - falling off my chair in a dead swoon............ This is but an echo of the same sound I once made in his father's office forty-eleven years ago when I saw the incredibly gorgeous Chandler for the first time......As I recall, his mama laughed at me and my inept and fruitless attempts to hide my uncontrollable gawking....)

   Welcome, Chandler!  We're delighted to have you join us!  (Thanks, David!!!) 

   As Dave must have already told you, "Crabbers are always welcome, and you won't be the first."

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 09/09/05
 

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 09/10/05
 

Carol/Gloria,

Reading further through the “Puff” newsletter, you girls are really silly and make ME blush. You make
me wish I was younger and had the stamina. So cut it out. You’re giving me an inferiority complex. 

“I’m not as good as I once was, but I’m good once as I ever was.”   - Toby Keith   

   Making people blush is part of my job description.  And I should know; I wrote it myself. 

   Hey, Wayne Honey and Rip Precious, do you think we should.......?!?  No, probably not - WILD GIGGLES!!!

   But we'll try to behave, Chandler.  Maybe.  Naaaah.....

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 09/12/05
 

   By the way, your dear mother was a sweetheart!  I remember both your parents quite fondly, and many times have longed for the Good Old Days when your father was still my personal physician.

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 09/13/05
 

... I’m sorry, but I searched high and low and could not find that picture of Dad in uniform.
Possibly, one of my brothers has it instead. I’ll ask them.

- Chandler Nelms (HHS - ‘63) of MD - 09/16/05
 

   Thanks, Chandler!

   (Wayne Honey and Rip Precious, I can hardly believe that you two are maintaining radio silence throughout this entire drooling thread.  "It ain't natural!"  But of course, it's not my fault that they're gorgeous!)

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 09/20/05
 

- Wayne Stokes ('65) of VA - 09/21/05
 

Now I can give my poor salivary glands a break and rest for a season!  Thanks for checking back!

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 09/21/05
 

Gloria – Yes, Robert (aka Edwin, aka Bob, Darden and I call him Robwin) is retired from the AF
and lives in Shalimar, FL (aka southern Alabama).

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 10/03/05
 

 - Gloria Woolard Price (HHS '65) of FL - 10/03/05
 

 - Gloria Woolard Price (HHS '65) of FL - 10/06/05
 

- Joan Lauterbach Krause ('60) of VA - 11/10/05
 

   Our family all thought very highly of Dr. Nelms - especially my father, who served with him in WWII, and was not given to passing out praise lightly.  We thought nothing of driving over to see him.  There was never any question of seeing another physician.

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 11/11/05
 

First, Joan (Lauterbach Krause - '60 - of VA), and you too, Carol ('65 - of NC)…..thanks for all the kind words about my dad (Nowell D. Nelms, M.D.). In my mind, he was one of a kind. He continued to make house calls well after most doctors had given that practice up. I can remember a few times when some patients couldn’t afford to pay their bills and he simply let it go (which drove my mother crazy). He also had the gentlest bed side manner I’ve ever seen.

 - Chandler Nelms (HHS - ‘63) of MD - 11/16/05
 

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of NC - 11/16/05
 

- Joan Ownby Mathieson ('58) of VA - 01/20/06
 

- Carol Buckley Harty ('65) of VA - 01/20/06
 

- Joan Ownby Mathieson ('58) of VA - 01/29/06
 

My family at the time lived at 1419 24th Street in Newport News. We were fortunate to have Doctor Nowell Nelms as our family physician and he diagnosed Rheumatic Fever brought on by a strep infection that I had had and everyone thought was cured. I was always falling into any available body of water more than a few inches deep and got the strep from an accidental dive into chilly Indian Creek and swallowing a pint of water not so pure as when the Indians had it - but I digress.

I can recall Janie Penn (whose family owned Penn's Luggage in NN) bringing me my 'homework' from first grade and carrying back to Magruder School* my completed (crayola art) assignments. I can also remember overhearing Doc Nelms tell my parents that my chances of living to see twenty-one were slim due to mitral valve damage that had occurred. RF back in those days was often a death sentence for children and the preferred treatment was sulfa-drugs.

Months went by and I can't be sure of the timing, but Dr. Nelms arrived on one of his regular house calls with news of a new medicine. Seems there was recently made available in the US in sufficient quantity a 'miracle drug' that had been used in England, and to treat troops of the D-day invasion, with astounding success. The drug was Penicillin, and the good doctor started me on it that day, and that was the first day of my long, steady recovery over the following months.

Fast forward to the early sixties when Andrea** and I had returned to the peninsula and lived on Chesapeake Avenue, near LaSalle in Hampton. It was Doctor Nelms that diagnosed Andrea as ''with-child' in his Kecoughtan office. Whenever I accompanied her to his office for follow-up he always sent his nurse out to the waiting room to fetch me. When I arrived he would say; "Get in here young man, pull up your shirt so I can check out your 'ticker.' He sometimes paid more attention to me than to Andrea. I think that he and I both understood that he (and mold) had literally saved my life.

- John London (Warwick HS - '57) of VA - 07/26/06

* The Magruder school that I attended was I think much older than the one that has been discussed here before. It was an gothic-looking red-brick building, ancient even back in the mid 40's.

** Andrea is my squaw of WAY MUCH years. <said with a grin, and the hope that she never sees this lest I not live to see another lovely Virginia Sunrise>
 

- Gloria Woolard Price (HHS '65) of FL - 07/30/06
Thanks, Gloria!

If you are in touch with Jane [Janie, as I knew her] Penn Clark ('57 of MD) would you send to her greetings from me. If she is of the family of Penn's Luggage of Newport News then we knew each other as children. 

I spent a few formative years at 1419 24th street in NN and her family lived directly across the street. This would have been circa 1945-47. At that time I contracted Rheumatic Fever, a deadly disease back in those days. The wonderful Dr. Nelms was our family physician and was treating me at that time. This event coincided with, and prevented, my starting first grade which was profoundly vexing to me. I was disabled for over a year.

Anyway, it was the lovely little 'Janie' Penn that so kindly ported the daily assignments and materials from school [Magruder] each day to me and dutifully picked up the work that I had completed from the previous day and took it back to school, thus allowing me to eventually 'graduate' first grade without missing a beat.

She was a sweetie then and I'll bet she still is [never end a sentence  ...]

Thanks, Janie!

- John London (Warwick HS - '57) of VA - 07/31/09
Thanks, John!

Published in the Northwest Florida Daily News, April 01, 1998
 

Originally, Dr. Nelms, who had just graduated from medical school at UVA, took over a practice from an aging doctor in Mathews County. He became my mother's family doctor when she was 13. Years later, after WWII and his divorce from his first wife (my two step-brothers' real mother), he re-met my mother (when I was 7 or 8) who was in nursing training at Riverside.

Besides his practice at the corner of Kecoughtan and Elizabeth Road, he was on staff at Riverside. She had been a stay-at-home mom when she divorced my biological father (who was also a doctor and a graduate from UVA) when I was 4, so she decided to go into nursing.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

- Chandler Nelms (HHS - '63) of MD - 03/25/08
WOWZERS! Thank you, Chandler!