Monday, September 15, 2008

Letter from Tom Gettings (Monroe Co. native) September 15, 2008

Dear Ms. Howard,

I saw the obituary for your husband, Dr. Howard in the Tompkinsville News today, which I still subscribe to after being away from Tompkinsville for many years.

I never knew your husband, however, I remember my father, Royce Gettings, telling me about your husband being a professor at MIT when I was in high school. I was planning to study engineering at UK and found it astonishing that someone from Tompkinsville would be a professor of engineering at MIT. Even then, twenty years after your husband graduated from UK, when you said you were going to study engineering most people in the county looked at you and asked if you were going to teach school J, so it is really something to have achieved the level of engineering success he did.

I remember when I first read about buckyballs in Popular Science and it's fascinating to see what a connection someone from Tompkinsville ended up having to them.

It is touching to see he was buried in Monroe County.

Thank you for sharing the story in the local paper. And as a engineer I particularly appreciate the incorporation of a equation into it. Of course you know that would make your husband, a true engineer, happy.

Sincerely,

Tom Gettings
Taylorville, IL

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