A while ago, I recieved a picture in the mail of Janis but the sender knew nothing about it, so I posted it on the web page and I got a response from Dave Eichblatt who took the picture. Here is the story as he told it in his message to me. "It was taken in the living room of my parents house on 8th Street in Port Arthur, Texas in the summer of 1959. Some of my friends, including her, were over. She, as you may have noticed, was dressed in leotards, which was unusual evening wear in the late 1950's. She had a cat in the basket and the album under her arm was the Dave Brubeck Quartet. She did things in high school that set her apart from the mainstream. I was two years ahead of her in high school (class of '58, Thomas Jefferson High), and have her sophomore picture in my year book. This was the summer following her sophomore year. We met at what were called poster parties in those days. We were both better than average at drawing the posters for people running for class offices at school. She and I went to many of the same ones and lots of those people were the ones who didn't get elected, but had the best campaign posters. I once instigated a campaign for a candidate as a write in for vice president of the student body. I was told by the facualty that you couldn't have such a thing (I guess they only wanted us to know their form of democracy). Every since then, when I vote, I always write myself in for some office on the ballot. After she graduated from high school, I never heard from her again. One Sunday, I think it was the first Superbowl game, I was watching the pre-game stuff and they showed some singing group that was playing in a local club near the Superbowl site. I just got a brief glimpse of her, and it wasn't too long after that that she began to become better known on the national scene. I was wondering how you or your friends got the picture. It was originally put on my T-38 airplane page at NASA-JSC by a friend of mine who was a Janis fan. Needless to say, some people in upper management did not have an appreciation of our page. First, the photo had to be removed and then public access to the page was denied (a rather sore subject with me because of the great work we did on the T-38)." I read a few years ago about a high school classmate of mine, John Palmer, opening a museum in PA for her and had a statue of her built. It seems sort of ironic, because he and Janis were not really on the same social class as she and I were. In fact, I recall that John and his class of friends probably wouldn't have associated with her then or while she was alive. I believe she was shunned by her classmates when she went back for the 10 year reunion. I think the attention by the old hometown is a little hypocritical. _