A Secret Have You Discovered!

Hello there my name is Gary LeClaire, and I am the proprietor of this fine website. It's been around for about 2 years now, just sort of chugging along with what little publicity I can get without spending a gazillion dollars. In late 1996 I came up with the idea for Obi-Wan of The Walrus People, at first it was nothing more than a nickname that combined two of my favorite interests[Star Wars and The Beatles]. In May 1997 I finally went online, and within a month had my own webpage. But Obi-Wan's Magical Mystery Webpage was still not to be. My webpage has from the beginning been at this URL, but my original webpage had an Anti-Boba Fett theme to it. It wasn't that I really hated the Fettster, it was that I wanted to stir things up and get some attention. That and the fact that I didn't have any graphics programs yet to make all of my nifty Obi-Walrus junk with. After about 7 months of very little attention for the anti-fett page I finally decided to go with what was in my heart and make an all out Obi-Wan Of The Walrus People webpage. I spent 12 hours online one day overhauling the whole thing to basically what you see now give or take a years worth of cleaning up the graphics and making the content a little more cohesive. Of course any of the stuff with Episode I related pictures in it is obviously new though. I'm not sure if I'll make any drastic changes from this point on, but I will definitely try to put up new things when my brainstorms occur. Now onward to the information about myself.Click Here If You Would Care For A Glance At My Old Frontpage

As I said before my name is Gary LeClaire, but what I didn't say before is that I am a 22 year old guy from Roanoke, Virginia. Life started on the other side of the country for me though. I was born in Sept. 1977 in Santa Anna California. My parents tell me that we lived only 30 minutes from Disneyland[even closer than that but you all know how L.A. traffic is]. Being born in 1977 makes me literally a Child Of Star Wars. Good god my parents could have been at the huge Chinese Theater Premiere of it, but they weren't. Why weren't they? I would venture to say that it was because a 5 month pregnant woman and her husband have enough to worry about, not to mention they were already busy caring for a 4 year old girl with Down's Syndrome[my beloved sister]. My parents DID go to see Star Wars while it was still pretty hot though. As a matter of fact they tell me that we first saw it in a drive through. Awesome I say, but alas I have no memory of it since I was only 4 months old at the time. That 1st viewing of Star Wars was an ominous one, as I cried throughout the whole movie[or so again I'm told]. The first time I actually remember seeing Star Wars was the infamous 1982 CBS showing of it[the showing in which people are always saying that they saw the deleted Biggs scenes], and I can positively say that it had no Biggs scenes in it because I along with the rest of the world remember every detail of the 1st time I saw Star Wars. The first time I can remember seeing The Empire Strikes Back was when it came on video. So for a period of about 4 years I had all these action figures that I had no idea who the hell they were, I kept wondering why Han Solo was wearing a winter coat. Return Of The Jedi came out right as I hit the perfect age for remembering things, it is therefore the only one of the three films that I have memories of seeing in the theater[until 1997's special editions]. I often wonder if this is a big reason why ROTJ is my favorite Star Wars movie. Like any fan my interest sort of died out for a while, but it was rekindled long before the Timothy Zahn books hit the shelves. I found myself buying old Star Wars toys at yard sales as early as 1988. Of course when the Zahn books came out, I also came out. . .as a proud Star Wars fan. Then I got into the Star Wars Insider magazine, and the new action figures, and everything else. I'm still going strong as a Star Wars fan, but enough of my Star Wars memories and on to my life.

As I said before, "I was born in Santa Anna, California", but the first place I can remember living in was Roanoke, Virginia. Roanoke is a jewel of a city located smack dab in the middle of an otherwise bleak Southwestern Virginia landscape. I have lived here ,other than 4 years spent in West Virginia, since I was 3 years old. I grew up in a nice middle class neighborhood, in a house within walking distance of my school, and with a pool in the backyard. I had a dog, a sister, and 2 loving parents. Unfortunately my father has since passed away. I grew up in this neighborhood and this town, I knew and loved it. Then in 1990 my dad bought his own franchise of Golden Corral[the restaurant chain he had been working for as long as I can remember.] One catch though, the store he bought was in Oak Hill, West Virginia. So we packed up and headed for the hills. Man was it a culture shock for me, but don't get me wrong, I made some of the best friends I'll ever have while living there. We lived there just long enough for me to finish High School, before my father got seriously ill. We immediately set up a temporary base in Roanoke until he could get better. That summer I went off to college as any self respecting fresh out of High School kid would. I was all set to attend Shepherd College in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. It was a small college with a nice homey feel to it, and it was located right on the Maryland border. It was a natural beauty to behold. The Potomac River ran right through town, and I could look out my dorm window at the legendary stream. I was only there a week however. My father was still rather ill, and I decided to come home and spend time with my family, just in case a worst case scenario happened. Well the worst case scenario did happen in December 1996 when my father passed away. So I am glad that I did not miss those last few months together because of college. We moved back to Roanoke for good after that. In the fall of 1997 one year after I had originally started college, I returned, but this time to a small community college located right down the street from where I now live. I've kept at it, even if at a slow pace[about 2 classes a semester] This upcoming Fall I reckon that I will go full time and get it over with, then head again to a four year school. Well there you go, that's the abridged story of my life.


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