I'm going to tell you a story and show you a picture. You probably do not know the people in the story. It makes no difference. You'll be able to easily relate to the story. And you'll end up feeling good about museum friends.
Larry and Tanya Rose have been members of the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum for decades. Tanya was the museum's Membership Director from 1975 to 2010. Larry, the Museum Facilities Director for just about as long, could be found on the shop roof fixing holes on the weekends and on Wednesdays doing intricate lettering on a box car. Larry's an architect. If you know the San Diego Trolley, he was project architect for the Trolley's large corporate office building just southeast of the downtown with the major trolley/bus interchange center on the ground floor. He's especially proud of his design of the old time trolley themed restaurant on the ground floor.
Tanya died recently after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Tanya was a wonderful local musician with an unbelievable voice. Larry played mandolin in her band, the Buffalo Chip Kickers. Larry was devastated. His life-long soul mate was gone.
Now for the good part. I am sure you have heard that PSRM recently acquired SP's SD&AE 70 tonner No. 5119 from Modesto (M&ET 613). Larry donated the purchase price. What you probably don't know is that the locomotive was immediately named for Tanya. Once folks heard that, $15,000 in donations came in in two weeks to get the loco moved 500 miles to PSRM. They have just brought the GE home to her home rails at Campo. From purchase to running her on PSRM's home rails, the old SD&A main line through the mountains, took exactly one month. Yes, she will have a brass plaque in the cab dedicating her to Tanya.
On the day the big critter, built in 1955, rolled itself off a truck trailer at the Museum, everybody insisted my good friend Larry be the first one to run her. Now for the picture (taken by Dave DiGeorgio). I asked him if he thought he would never smile that big again. His response: "You got that right, Marty."
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