PENDLETON — Growing up in Pendleton during the 1950s and ’60s was a wonderful time for Tim Craig, and he wants others who feel the same about the town to share their childhood stories in a book he plans to publish this spring.

Craig, 72, Ashiya, Japan, is the owner of BlueSky Academic Services, where he enjoys publishing books he feels enthusiastic about. That includes a book about Pendleton during the time he grew up in the town.

Craig recently began writing and editing a book titled “Pendleton Sketches: Growing Up in Pendleton, Indiana in the 1950s and 60s.”

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To make the book as memorable and accurate as possible, Craig is reaching out to others who grew up in the area during the same time period who might like to share stories about the Pendleton of their youth in the form of short chapters.

The purpose of the book is to preserve a bit of the past and for the enjoyment of people who love their hometown as much as Craig does, he said in an email to The Times-Post from Japan.

As Craig has gotten older, he’s begun feeling a little nostalgic, he said, and wants to capture some of those precious memories from his youth before they fade away.

Craig went to Pendleton schools from first grade through his freshman year of high school before finishing at Westtown School in Westtown, Pennsylvania, but he’s never forgotten those formative years in Pendleton, he said.

Craig moved away from Indiana when he was 23, after graduating from Wabash College in 1969, but the farther he’s gotten from Pendleton physically and from the 1950s and ’60s era, the more he’s realized how much Pendleton is part of him and how lucky he was to grow up in the town, he said.

“I hope to gather together a wide variety of stories and sketches by as many people as possible, to paint a colorful picture of what life in Pendleton was like in the 1950s and ‘60s for those of us who lived there growing up,” he wrote in his email.

He’s hoping to hear from folks with fond memories, who would like to share stories about people, places, events and things they did when they were children. Craig is looking for stories about things such as Pendleton schools, Pendleton Irish sports, Little League baseball, scouting, church and music.

While Craig has done many things during his career, his main focus was as a business school professor at University of Victoria in Canada and then at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.

He retired from university instruction two years ago and now has his own small company, BlueSky Academic Services, where he does editing, some translation (Japanese to English), and publishing. The website is https://www.blueskyacademic.net.

Anyone interested in contributing can contact Craig via email at [email protected] or Annie Wills, [email protected] or Katy Burke, [email protected] with your chapter idea.

They will then invite you to either send in a written draft of your chapter or Craig will listen to your story via Skype or in-person and write up the chapter.

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Introduction:

Near the end of World War II, my dad wrote a letter to his brother, Syd Craig, Jr., and Syd’s wife Liz, from somewhere in the Pacific, where he was recuperating from fighting on Iwojima. Along with the news that he’d survived, he wrote, “I imagine you are all very very happy now cause you’ve a second son or daughter & Mike [Syd & Liz’s daughter, age 2 at the time] has a new brother or sister. Boy am I jealous … Sure wish I had a few.” Well, when he got back home again in Indiana, he didn’t waste any time. I was born in 1947, the first of six Craig kids who would grow up in Pendleton.

All my brothers and sisters—Pete, Katy, Annie, Sally, and Tom—still live in Pendleton, and my mom, Pat Craig, who turned 94 this year, is still living in the house where we all grew up, on the hill just north of the Pendleton Avenue bridge over Fall Creek. I moved away after I graduated from college and ended up in Japan, of all places, but Pendleton is in my DNA and has never been far from my heart. I’ve always thought there could not have been a better place to grow up.

This book is about growing up in Pendleton in the 1950s and 60s, written by a bunch of folks who did just that. We hope that these sketches will preserve a bit of the history of our hometown, that they’ll bring back good memories, and that they’ll be enjoyed by Pendleton natives and newcomers, young and old.

Tim Craig, December 2018

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