High-Flying Reunion of 'Brats'
- Community
- Aramco Brats
Author: Irma L. Bravo
Released 27 May 2003
TUCSON, AZ--(ARIZONA DAILY STAR)--May 26, 2003-- Learning to appreciate
different cultures is what Mike Simms remembers from living at an
Arabian-American Oil Co. camp in Saudi Arabia.
"It was interesting growing up with another culture," said Simms, who is the
vice president of AramcoBrats Inc., an association of people who were dependents
of those who worked for Aramco in the Middle Eastern nation.
For Russell M. Webb, living in Saudi Arabia from 1956 to 1966 was like living
in a "fishbowl."
Although the community was isolated from the rest of the country, he said
students often ventured into Saudi Arabian cities.
Simms and Webb attended the Brats reunion in Tucson along with about 600
other people during the Memorial Day weekend. Reunions are held every two years,
and this is the third time it has been held in Tucson, Simms said.
Aramco was an American-owned oil company in Saudi Arabia. Employees lived
with their families in "Westernized" districts also called camps. The districts
had American schools and were for the most part isolated from other cities in
Saudi Arabia.
Members at the reunion were students at three schools in the Abqaiq, Dhahran
and Ras Tanura districts in Saudi Arabia. There were people at the reunion who
lived in Saudi Arabia in the 1940s, as well as people who lived there in the
late 1990s.
Simms lived with his family in Saudi Arabia from about the mid-1970s to the
early 1980s. His father was a principal at one of the schools set up for the
American children.
The reunion started Thursday and ends today. Events included a reception, a
silent auction, a banquet and even sky diving in Marana.
Webb, 52, who lived in the Ras Tanura camp for 10 years, is a tandem
sky-diving instructor in Texas and decided to invite his former seventh-grade
English teacher, now 71, on a tandem sky-dive with others attending the
reunion.
"The joy of taking them on their first jump is exciting for me," said Webb,
who has made about 500 tandem jumps in 25 years.
His former teacher, Bob Klein, along with a dozen other people who came to
the reunion, spent Saturday morning at Marana Skydiving Center. It was Klein's
first sky-diving experience.
Klein taught English and literature for the first three years at Ras Tanura,
and then went on to teach music. He also was a baseball, flag football and
volleyball coach, and a Scoutmaster with the Boy Scouts. He taught in Saudi
Arabia for 28 years.
He remembers the view of the Persian Gulf about a block away from his house.
Klein retired from teaching in 1987 but returned to Saudi Arabia in 1994 as a
band director.
It was the first time Klein attended a Brats reunion, and it was an
opportunity to bond with old students.
Brad Johnson, 54, also sky-dived Saturday with former schoolmates. He said
most people who lived at the camps were exposed to many cultures through world
travel.
He lived in Saudi Arabia for about seven years and would go back to visit his
father, a mechanical engineer at a refinery, during summer vacations.
Aramco is no longer American-owned and is now called Saudi
Aramco.