We'll all miss this one--big of spirit! big of heart!   Craig touched us with humor, loyalty and friendship. He convinced me to "abandon" Wednesday nights at St Bernard's to rally with his unruly crowd (Dave Manoogian, Nick Mager...) because he promised it would be better. He was right.One summer when my job fell through he found me a better job where he worked. I needed the $. He was looking  out for me...no surprise there...that was his essence.   Somehow I believe we'll have his spirit with us for a long time. Craig, you are not gone to us, just repurposed. Rest in peace Friend.

     I am saddened to hear of Craig Cameron’s passing.  Craig had been in my life since 1957 when we were both assigned to Mr. McDermott’s Mellon Junior high homeroom and later in May Kay Sneary’s homeroom all during high school.  He was a close friend in high school often double dating with Bonnie Dean, Janet Geist and I.  After high school we drifted apart only to be reunited when Craig began dating my sister Carol and later marrying Carol in 1966.  They had two children, Cheryl and Corey.  Carol and Craig had many dogs over the years, each with names such as Chap, Champ, Chance, etc.  Long before marrying Carol, Craig had developed a love affair with Cars. My first Craig/Car experience came when I visited his house in 1959 and there before me in the drive was a brand new 1959 Cadillac El Dorado Convertible, ermine white with a red leather interior.  It was one of the most beautiful cars I had ever seen.  During those years, Craig’s dad Jim, a car lover himself, took Craig out of school each year to go to the Indianapolis 500 Race in 1959, 1960, and 1962, to see the race and the development of the rear engine Ford’s by Colin Chapman, the English race manager and his famous English Formula 1 driver Jim Clark.  Craig was not bashful about his love for his cars, and in 1961 Craig bought and sold so many cars (12) in the same year, the State of Pennsylvania made him take out a dealer’s license.  Laying tire and burning out may have been the cause for some of the car turn over. After college Craig joined Vanadium Steel Company, and shortly thereafter he extended his love of cars professionally by joining Ford Motor Company, later with Motocraft, a division of Ford. When Craig and Carol married, they moved to Carnegie, PA and Janet and I often played cards with them until the wee hours of Saturday morning.  Craig was very skilled at cards, as the legend goes; he partially financed his college education and his 1957 Chevy Bel Air by hustling his classmates in a friendly $$$ game of cards. If you hadn’t noticed, the letter “C” has now become a prominent first letter in defining Craig’s life.  While still with Ford, Craig acquired a Ford Cobra KR500 Mustang, the fastest thing on the planet at the time.  So much engine, the batteries were in the trunk. Later while working for Modine, a primary manufacturer of car and truck radiator’s, Craig bought and sold many hot rod cars such as a highly modified Chevy II.  Never straying too far from Ford, Craig had a love affair with classic Mustangs, and he and Carol enjoyed entering their classics at car shows and meets around the mid-West and in Phoenix. Craig could be depicted by words and adjectives starting with the letter “C”.  Craig was Canny when it came to card games and the buying, selling, and trading cars.  Craig was comedic and colorful (remember the pink tuxedo), competitive (his homeroom basketball play), and his positions as sales manager and Vice President. A short golf story about Craig and his son Corey exemplifying his pride he had for his children.  Craig, Carol and Corey came over to San Diego to visit Janet and I, and Craig, Corey and I were going to play a round of golf at the famous Torrey Pines Golf Course, the site of the PGA Buick Open.  After checking in at the South Course First Tee, we were approached by a single golfer asking if he could join us, making it a foursome.  Craig and I were average golfers (duffers if you will) while Corey was an accomplished golfer at the age of 18. We must have looked like easy marks given that we were not dressed in traditional golf togs, and me, a left handed golfer with only irons in my bag.  So moments before Corey tees up his ball, the guest asks if we would like to begin wagering on each hole.  I found out later, he was an attorney, playing the course at least twice a week, and had a reputation of hustling unsuspecting duffers like us.  Before answering the wager question, Corey drives his tee shot.  We were driving directly into the wind off the ocean about 1,500 yards above the beach and sea.  The fairway rises so that you can’t see the green below, and then falls off for a 450 yard Par 4.  Corey hit the ball so hard and so far, you would have thought it was going in the ocean.  Not noticeable to our guest, Craig turned and gave me a wry smile of pride, and the attorney guest never said another word for the rest of the afternoon. Corey finished the day not far off the pace from the famous pro golfers who come there annually. Craig was always so proud of the accomplishments of his children, Corey in the golfing world and his physician daughter Dr. Cheryl Cameron.  I will miss tinkering with Craig’s classic cars, or riding shotgun in the dead of winter with the convertible top down, heater blasting and the radio belting out Rock and Roll tunes on the way to another car show, and the reverb of the throaty rumble of the classic V-8.  I wish you God speed, always with the top down, wind in your face and the road rising up to meet the horizon.       

George,   Thanks for posting the remembrance.  Carol called me yesterday to let me know of Craig’s passing.  Very sad.    Craig was an absolute original.  His dad had been a professional toastmaster and, as a result, Craig was the only person I knew who owned a shocking pink, high quality tuxedo.  Craig, Dave Manoogian, Nick Mager and I were the unholy quartet in the Beverly Heights UP Church youth group, and the tuxedo got some use several times in the various skits we put together for youth nights, summer camps, etc.  I can’t believe that Dave and Craig are now both gone.    The film the four of us put together (The Sculptor’s Daughter, or A Day in the Life of a Chiseler) was originally for the BHUP youth group, but we had it blown up to 16mm so that it could be projected in the Mt. Lebo auditorium for the Senior Variety Show.   Craig wrote the lion's share of the script with me, and played the part of Little Nell Burnit, daughter of Dad Burnit, in a dress with a mop on his head as a wig (Little Nell, right!).  When we were filming the scene where Black Jack O'Diamonds (Manoogian) ties Little Nell to the railroad tracks (film location was the Castle Shannon streetcar tracks), Craig was all tied down on the tracks when the streetcar decided to come along.  We had to scramble to get him off the tracks!    Craig and I were crazy about cars (so was Manoogian, but that’s another story).  One memorable (read stupid) stunt one afternoon was a backwards drag race down Crestvue Manor Drive from Beverly Heights to my house with each of us sitting on the driver’s window sills of our respective cars, racing in reverse.  Someone else must have been in each car working the accelerators and brakes, but I can’t remember that detail.  I do remember that one of the fathers on our street (might have been Frank Concilus’ dad) ran out and yelled to his kids to get inside because there were “crazy people” out there.  Surprisingly, my parents never heard about it.    Craig loved to lay tire.  His favorite technique was to back up pretty fast, drop the transmission into Neutral, floor the accelerator, and then drop it into Drive while still going backwards.  This was pretty spectacular.  For some reason his dad never did figure out why he was getting such poor life out of his rear tires.  He also had to get his transmission rebuilt surprisingly frequently.  Craig did this one night in front of Nick Mager’s house on the bricks that were the pavement on Park Entrance.  Left a world record patch, but Nick’s dad heard it and was so mad that Nick nearly got grounded, and all he did was stand outside and wave goodbye!     Craig and I had managed to stay in touch over the years, and I still consider him one of my best friends.  I am sure he will be missed by everyone who knew him.  As I said above, he was one of a kind.  A true original.  Godspeed, Craig.    Bob    

I knew Craig well in our early years as he and I were in the same homeroom, Miss Sneary's 7s for 4 years.  We played on our homeroom basketball team together and Craig was one of the "big guys" underneath who literally crashed the boards and everyone else in the way to get rebounds.  In homeroom he mostly flew under the radar relative to contributing to Miss Sneary's daily discipline challenges as they were dominated by other homeroom mates.  However, Craig was never shy about throwing a little gasoline on the fire once it started.  I also remember he and Bob Chilcoat made a spoof of a silent movie for our senior talent show.  When we learned that we were both going to Grove City College, we decided to room together and did so for the first 2 years - until I transferred.  Grove City, in it's infinite orderly wisdom, thought it made sense to house all the freshmen men in the same hall, which was somewhat isolated from the main campus.  Although I would not classify Craig as a ringleader, in our quad room with Stu, Whit and I, his H.S. apprenticeship with gasoline and fire, in support of Miss Sneary's greatest challenges, served him well in college as Craig was an eager participant in regular hall shaving cream and water balloon fights.  And, he soon graduated to more sophisticated hijinks like the time we and a few of the other hall "leaders" had just enough of one of the freshman problem children and with Craig's help, rolled him up in a rug and taped it closed, just before dinner, and left him there until the dining hall closed, or, the time Craig, who always loved cars, neutralized a couple of the cylinders on Bruce's (our RA) ancient 6 cylinder Plymouth before Bruce took off on the weekend to visit his girlfriend in Meadville and caused the car to sputter, lurch and jolt all the way to Meadville and back, or, the best one was when we decided to convert Bruce's room to a small zoo and Craig was the key figure in momentarily putting his foot in Bruce's door, and quickly unlocking and closing it as Bruce tried to pull it closed as he raced out of his room Easter weekend to drive to Meadville.  After Bruce left, Craig helped stock the room with chicks and ducks with plenty of water and feed to last the weekend until Bruce returned to find his new friends had made themselves at home in his room for a few days.  Best part was Bruce never found out who did it so we didn't have to clean the disastrous room - a major "clean" getaway!  Between good deeds, Craig and I spent time pining to each other over special girlfriends lost, falling to sleep to Johnny Mathis records and me acting as a sounding board for his jokes for his standup comedy routine (his secret passion).  His favorite one, with an accent that would make Sylvester Stallone proud, was when he played a punch drunk boxer and said, "ah was a fightuh once and one night ah climb inta da ring an took off mah robe an realize ah forgot mah trunks - dat was da night ah fought Max Baer!"  In the summers we cut lawns and painted house numbers on curbs to earn a few bucks.  After I transferred we lost contact with each other except at H.S. reunions and then communicated from time to time on the e-mail network.  I understand he had a successful career with Ford where he had a chance to put his love for cars to work.  He was a great and fun loving guy and will be missed by all who knew him.

Craig lived down the street from me. Arrowwood Dr. He would pick me up and take me to school in his 55 or 56 Buick. Craig would prepare to take off once i was in the car. That procedure included reving the engine with the shift in neutral and then ripping it into gear. It produced a great patch out which he loved. You could see it in his eyes. He loved cars. We had to field a home room basketball team and i told Craig he would be a big part of our potential success. Craig said i don't play basketball and i told him he would have only one job, big man under the basket. He said fine. Our homeroom dominated inter-mural basketball in 1960 and in 1962. He was without a doubt a big part of our winning. Craig only knew when he saw the ball he got it. Then he passed it back out to whomever at warp speed. I told him slow down on the kick out. He said i only know one way. Craig was a really good guy and as George and Cliff know we talked about what happened in 10th grade when we won our fifst championship. Every one is trying to remember how we won. Leave it at this, without Craig we would have lost. Great Guy.