Scooter Chronicles

My 20th year high school reunion is coming up soon. I won’t be attending. Given the lack of vacation time, and more importantly the cost of gas and just about everything else, it’s just not worth it. (Especially if it’s too expensive to go on vacation or visit my family.) I went to my 10th year reunion and it was pretty good. If there is a 25th, I will try a little harder to attend. But this year, it’s just not worth it. No offense to my former classmates. Heck, most probably won’t care that I’m not there anyway.

Between the reunion and a conversation that Marcia and I had a few days ago, it got me to thinking about my days in high school. The teachers I had. My fellow students. Just everything in general about high school. It’s still tough accepting it was 20 years ago. Time flies, and not just when you are having a good time.

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Mrs. Warren
She was my Freshman English teacher. She made a big impression on me. I was a lazy school kid in elementary school, especially fourth and fifth grade. I picked it up in middle school, but I could have done more and tried harder. But I wasn’t going to get away with “half-assing” my way through Mrs. Warren’s class. But the toughness didn’t go beyond the assignments. She had a very likable and very “with it” for someone 35-40 years our senior.

Mr. Crescent
I kid you not, the man’s first name was Paris. (I would have hated growing up with that name.) Regardless, Mr. Crescent was a very friendly, easy going, rather soft spoken individual, but full of encouragement. I had him three years straight for Architectural Drawing, Vocational Drafting I, and Vocational Drafting II. At times I think we got away with too much with him, being too easy going. But I learned so much from him that I still apply to my work today.

Mr. Chmelko (sha-mel-ko)
My freshman year for drafting. If I remember correctly he retired soon after. (And I saw on Classmates.Com that he recently passed away.) He was a very helpful and full of encouragement, too. Most though remember him as a great football coach (he was elected to some “hall of fame” for Michigan high school sports.)

Ms. Matthews
My Science Fiction teacher (junior year). She was a fan of sci-fi (especially Bradbury and Asimov) and it showed in her teaching. (She may have been the reason the course was offered.) She had us do some pretty cool assignments, one being an alternate history short story. She ended up reading three of them to the class, and mine was one of them. (I had a lot of fun writing it, but thinking back to it the story was kind of hokey.) Before the end of my junior year it was announced that Ms. Matthews was taking over the school newspaper. It was going to be a total overhaul, including the name. She asked me to be a part of the staff based on my writing.

Mr. DeFusco (duh-fuse-ko)
I never had Mr. D (as we called him) as a teacher. He was the coach of the cross country and track teams. Given his “camps” at his house and the continuous training and practices, as well as road races throughout the year (including summers), we got to know Mr. D very well. He had a great sense of humor, though the jokes he told us were always “groaners.” He was stern when he needed to be, and would scold us when needed, but the events that led to those scoldings (whether on or away from the race) were quickly set aside. He never held a grudge. He was just a great coach, and very analytical and thorough. Probably not surprising coming from a mathematics teacher.

Mr. Beck
I originally had him for Physical Education in middle school. He was also an assistant coach of the football team. I had him for American History in high school (after one of the two middle schools closed). He dressed like a phys. ed. teacher all the time, but was a great history teacher. He knew the subject well, and looked like he enjoyed teaching it. His class was never boring.

Mr. Strnad (stir-nad)
He was the first high school teacher I had. First hour, freshmen year, for Plane Geometry. Great teacher. But it was like being taught by a non-explicit version of Robin Williams. Really crazy at times.

Cross Country
With cross country, there were no divisions of teams like “the freshman team” or the “junior varsity team.” Your top seven runners were varsity, and changed from race to race, and everyone else was JV. From my sophomore year on, I seemed to always be stuck as the eighth or ninth man. Given that we usually had 20 or more out for the team, I certainly wasn’t the slowest. At times I struggled putting in the mileage. Heck, through the summers I just wouldn’t keep up with my training. But I did enjoy being a part of the team. There were seven of us that started as freshmen together and ran all four years (Rob, Rick, Jeff, Dave, Eric, George, and myself).

The team finished 9th in the state meet my freshmen year. Going into regionals (the week before the state meet) of my sophomore year, we were ranked number one in the state. Unfortunately we finished second to Cranbrook, then finished third at the state meet behind Cranbrook again, and the state champs Fremont (home of Gerber baby foods). Since Cranbrook’s seven runners were graduating, and with both us and Fremont only having one top runner graduating, most figured everyone would be running for third place my junior year, with us and Fremont battling for first and second. As it turned out though, they lost one more runner (exchange student that went back home), and we lost two (one to injury and one quit due to disinterest). We had a deep team, so we still finished sixth at the state meet (Fremont finished third). Ever analytical, Mr. D figured what the lost runners could have done, inserted their places into the scores, and found out that what everyone had said would have been true. Fremont would have repeated as champs with us a close second, and the real state champions, Okemos, would have been a distant third. The team didn’t qualify for the state meet my senior year.

Not that this really mattered. I never ran at the state meet. My big claim to fame was adding to the string of individuals from my school that were considered individual JV conference champion at the conference meet. I think I was the seventh or eighth in a row. It showed how deep our team was every year. Of course that doesn’t matter much anymore either, since the conference no longer exists either.

The camaraderie of the team was great and was the best thing about being a part of it. Especially having seven of us be together for four years. Having my brother Todd on the team only added to the experience the last two years.

There were two kind of cross country meets. Dual meets between two teams and big invitationals with 20 or more teams. Those invitationals were always on Saturday mornings. The Friday night before we would usually gather at one of the teammates’ house (usually Jeff’s), rent a movie or two, and order a few pizzas. We ended up hanging out together all the time, even putting together a softball team during the summer vacations.

The School Newspaper
I was excited about being a part of it, but quickly learned that I was probably in over my head. I made some bad mistakes in early non-print-actual-class-like assignments. Then my first newspaper assignment was doing an interview of a new teacher. It went horridly. The article I turned in was totally rewritten. However, I did much better on later assignments, especially those while covering the wrestling team. It was an enjoyable experience talking to the team coaches seeing that one of them was one of my favorite teachers back in middle school (Mr. Gretz), and he always seemed genuinely happy to see me when I would call on him. It was also a nice reward to have him and the other coach (Mr. Rutowski) compliment me on those articles afterwards.

The Five Musketeers
There were five of us that took Architectural Drawing, Voc. Drafting I and II together those three years running. Mr. Crescent coined the nickname for us. Three of us were from the cross country team (Rick and Jeff, along with me). The other two were Kathy and Chris. We were pretty close, and the best of the class (though not all that big). Kathy and I were the only ones to pursue the nature of those classes as a career. We both even interviewed for the same co-op job halfway through our senior year. The company interviewed 15 candidates, and brought two back for a second round of interviews and testing. Those two were Kathy and I. (Kathy was offered the job.) Years later I ran into Kathy at Chrysler’s Tech Center. I shocked the guy I was walking around with when he turned around thinking he has lost me only to see me and Kathy hugging.

Jeff is the only one of the five, and the only one from the cross country team that I am still in touch with. We don’t call/email as much as we like, but that happens (him and his wife Amber have three children, and live another three hours west of where we grew up).

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It’s been interesting thinking back about my high school days. I could say more, but I think I posted too much already.