Touch Typing Pays Off, 60 Years Later
From January 2006
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To that end, Camerer let his curiosity for computers lead him down the path of a new vocation, graduating from simply web-curious to database dynamo. Now he’s cranking out rosters and stats for the marathon aid stations he voluntarily staffs and working as a teaching assistant for SeniorNet, a computer instruction program for his contemporaries.
But ?nding his new niche started with a desire to put to use some of Miss Sullivan’s instruction, which Camerer insists he had retained over most of the last century, in the form of ink-jet correspondence, “because my handwriting is not that great, and it’s so easy to edit, rather than lining out mistakes.”
Adding Machines to MS Access
Edwards lent Camerer a surplus (or so she told him) laptop computer from her business so he could compose his letters to his sister, friends and other family members with the ease that generations X and Y have always taken for granted. Then came the desktop PC from his wife’s daughter, Marg, and a computer geek of the adding-machine generation was born.
Enrolling in City College, he soon impressed his instructors, chief among them Kathy Camarena, who taught computer classes but now serves as distance education coordinator in addition to serving as Camerer’s chief booster. She recalls how the computer program’s young regulars also warmed up to the senior freshman. Drawing on his teaching experience, Camerer was a natural in peer-teaching exercises.
The transition was not easy, however. “I wanted to learn, but I was bashful, I guess, coming on campus with the younger set,” Camerer says. That feeling led him to SeniorNet, a computer-literacy program based in Santa Clara. Sacramento SeniorNet members meet of?ine in “a little converted mobile home in the back of Rio Americano High School, right up against the levee,” he explains.
Staying so involved hasn’t overtaken Camerer’s favorite activity, visiting his second wife, Helen, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. He regularly whisks her from her assisted-living facility for what some might call computer dates: “I just took her to lunch today at Taste of China Restaurant with the Palm Tree Computer Club,” another outlet for older computer a?cionados. “She calls them the ‘gigglers,’ they’re such a buoyant group.”
Asked what he thinks of the perception that the Greatest Generation will have no truck with the information age, Camerer is slightly indignant: “I challenge that concept that it’s just for kids. It’s for us. Age is just a number and it’s just a ?eld, computers ... If that’s your interest, go for it.”
But ?nding his new niche started with a desire to put to use some of Miss Sullivan’s instruction, which Camerer insists he had retained over most of the last century, in the form of ink-jet correspondence, “because my handwriting is not that great, and it’s so easy to edit, rather than lining out mistakes.”
Adding Machines to MS Access
Edwards lent Camerer a surplus (or so she told him) laptop computer from her business so he could compose his letters to his sister, friends and other family members with the ease that generations X and Y have always taken for granted. Then came the desktop PC from his wife’s daughter, Marg, and a computer geek of the adding-machine generation was born.
Enrolling in City College, he soon impressed his instructors, chief among them Kathy Camarena, who taught computer classes but now serves as distance education coordinator in addition to serving as Camerer’s chief booster. She recalls how the computer program’s young regulars also warmed up to the senior freshman. Drawing on his teaching experience, Camerer was a natural in peer-teaching exercises.
The transition was not easy, however. “I wanted to learn, but I was bashful, I guess, coming on campus with the younger set,” Camerer says. That feeling led him to SeniorNet, a computer-literacy program based in Santa Clara. Sacramento SeniorNet members meet of?ine in “a little converted mobile home in the back of Rio Americano High School, right up against the levee,” he explains.
Staying so involved hasn’t overtaken Camerer’s favorite activity, visiting his second wife, Helen, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. He regularly whisks her from her assisted-living facility for what some might call computer dates: “I just took her to lunch today at Taste of China Restaurant with the Palm Tree Computer Club,” another outlet for older computer a?cionados. “She calls them the ‘gigglers,’ they’re such a buoyant group.”
Asked what he thinks of the perception that the Greatest Generation will have no truck with the information age, Camerer is slightly indignant: “I challenge that concept that it’s just for kids. It’s for us. Age is just a number and it’s just a ?eld, computers ... If that’s your interest, go for it.”
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