My Favorite Teacher -- John Miller

Foxy Miller helped coach wrestling.  He was a good coach, but every time I lifted him off the mat he would get excited and tell me to let him down.  In physical education, the first time we went outside in the spring, just as I stepped out the door, Foxy said, "Ronnie Myers, get up here and lead these calisthenics."  I did and it was a far cry from when Gauss was the physical education teacher.

When Paul Cook and I would not get tired, for punishment, Gauss would tell us to start running around the gym.  When we still didn't get tired, he got angry and gave us Fs on our report cards.  The only way I passed gym was because when a person made a varsity sport they didn't have to go to gym class, and they received an A on their report card.

Foxy put an end to that crap.  Sometimes he would drive Paul and me home from wrestling practice.  He had a 1957 Ford that had so many rust holes in it a person could just about walk through them.  A lot of good times.  Cheers!

Ron Myers, HHS Class of 1965

My Favorite Teacher -- Edgar Groves

My favorite teacher was Mr. Groves.  Clearly he loved and loves music.  He taught me to love and appreciate classical and church music.  He also taught me that a man was not just macho.  Mr. Groves showed me how a strong man acted and behaved, and was a role model for me.

Francis A. Beveridge III, HHS Class of 1965

My Favorite Teacher -- Robert Anderson

My favorite teacher I remember well was Mr. Anderson, Driver's Ed. teacher.  He taught me VERY WELL the rules of the road and how to be a good driver.

I remember the pea green 1963 Buick Skylark we used then, and was used to take the driver's test!  One day while out on the road, he said, "Jim, I think you're ready to take the test."  . . .  I passed.

Jim Petropulos, HHS Class of 1965

My Favorite Teacher -- Edna Swartz

Mrs. Swartz was a woman of integrity. She not only taught a Shorthand class, SHE was a Class Act!

I put a lot of trust in her.  She was a very thorough teacher and had her OWN style of teaching.  She was a low key type of person with confidence and compassion.  She taught me a language I still, somewhat, remember and use.  She gave me praise for my writing and made me feel special.  I'm sure Evvie Stydahar, Janet Polonus, Andrea Bohach, Sally Reeves, Donna Bonner and Nancy Wagner would all agree.

I adored her and think of all the fun and laughter in her classes.  I also remember those bright GREEN eyes . . . I believe they were contacts . . .  ;-)

Hickory High School had some wonderful teachers, but I thought Edna Swartz hung the moon.

Respectfully,

Joan L. Spangler,  HHS Class of 1965

Chinese Auction of Australian Treasures . . .

What???  Yes, at our 70th Birthday Bash in August you will have the opportunity to take your chances to win items ranging from ‘roos to ‘doos, ‘rangs to thangs, towels and bears, clips and sticks, socks and shirts, jewelry and wood, art and a platter, fur and that hat, and a few more, too!    Call it a Pick-a-Prize if you prefer, but these are just some hints as to what will be given away to lucky classmates on Friday night, unique and sought-after goodies from Ladonna and Vic Ellenberger's travels Down Under.

Purchase your chances Thursday and Friday evenings.  Our Class of '65 will match up to $500 of what is raised to help with the care and upkeep of the beautiful Steinway piano in our high school auditorium.  Our class will be included on the plaque of donors for the piano.

Good luck, mates!

Q & A - Bill Barlett

Bill Barlett, Woody Stone, Theresa Dzurinda Paul,
Cathleen Raley McKnight, Bob Barlett at Reunion 50

Q:  What was your "Aha!" moment at our 50th reunion?

Bill Barlett:  As i looked out at the many faces of my classmates of hickory hs 1965 my mind was overwhelmed that each face represented a life story of 50 years  -  those 50 years are full of many happy moments for each classmate but also i am sure of many sad moments  -  i wanted to ask each one about those 50 years  -  did they match the dreams they had in june 1965?  Two evenings were not enough time to accomplish even a small bit of this task  -  that is why getting together again is so important  -  i thank the committee for making this possible and for all their hard work  -  i hope there is a great turnout for the happy "70"  -  i invite anyone to buy me a beer and i will tell you all about my brother's life!

Q & A - Bob Gavala

Dick Wilcox and Bob Gavala at Reunion 50

Q:  What was your "Aha!" moment at our 50th Reunion?

Bob Gavala:  I enjoyed helping make this reunion possible and interacting with the local members of our class.  I missed this opportunity when we were in school, and I was determined to make up for lost time.  It was really great to see that any social barriers that might have been up at one time, were transparent at our greatest reunion . . .

Curtis, Mong & Paul at Camp

Here's a photo that Jim Banas posted on the Hickory High School Class of 1965 Community Facebook page that Gayle Yeager started a few years ago.  We will reach out to Greg, Pat & Guy to get some background information.

Local Gathering November 12, 2015

Another regional gathering of HHS Class of '65 members, this one on the home court, at Jess's Junction in Hermitage.  Great to see Larry Stefanick, who could not make the 50th reunion last August.  He's the first on the left.  Then we have Steve Laskey, Marcel and Shirley Hodge Ulrich, Fran Fragle DiNardo and Rich, Mary Sarver Amtmann and Ray, Gail Paxton Hogue, Dave and Louise Panin, Ladonna and Vic Ellenberger, Andrea Bohach Grega, Linda Mamone Thompson and Chuck Frankel.

There is talk of a biker bar next time?  And Vic was heard singing, "Won't you let me take you on a sea cruise?"

Click the photo for larger size.

My Life as a Rock and Roll Star

by Dennis Weldon

CASPER (1974)

Larry Bish, David Herr, Geoff Marenchin & Dennis Weldon

OK, so maybe I wasn’t a star, but I did play rock music in the early 70s.  My love of music started back in Junior High School, as I can distinctly remember music class with Mr. Groves.  In High School I sang in the choir and mixed ensemble, so I developed a love of vocal harmony. Then I saw my first live rock and roll band.  It was the band that I think both Jim and Bill Sparks were in, when they played at the American Legion on State Street. 

I got my first guitar our senior year and started to play a little.  My first instruction came from Linda Mamone’s brother, Nick, and we played together quite a bit.  When I went off to Penn State to study aerospace engineering, I continued playing with Nick and others.  Then in 1967 at a summer job, I met Larry Bish from Transfer.  He was an extremely good guitarist and singer and we started playing a lot of Simon and Garfunkel and similar songs.  

In the summer of 1968, I met a woman whose husband owned a small recording studio in the basement of a store downtown on State Street.  There Larry and I recorded Weldon and Bish’s first and only album, “Obiter Dictum” (i.e., “a passing remark” in Latin).  Recently someone posted the songs on the internet, so you can Google “Weldon and Bish” to hear them. The album was a bit crude and I was still a novice guitar player, but it was fun.  We made just 50 copies of the album for ourselves and our friends.

After a year of graduate school in the MBA program at Penn State, I dropped out because Larry and I decided to form a band and to try to make a living playing music.  It took a while to get things together, so during that time I worked on the railroad in Sharon as a brakeman and clerk.  We finally found a very good drummer/singer, Geoff Marenchin, from Sharpsville, and in 1973 we moved to State College.  There we met a bass player, David Herr, from the Philadelphia area, and our band was formed.  Against my strong objections, we named our band Casper! 

We played soft rock, and harmony was our specialty. We covered songs by groups like Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Neil Young, and Eagles, and we also performed some of our own material.  We got fairly popular in town, especially at our favorite bar called The Phyrst. But in the spring of ’74 Larry decided to quit the band and do something else.  By that time, I had spent almost three years trying to get this going and I wasn’t ready to invest more time, so I re-enrolled in grad school and finished my MBA in transportation and logistics.

And that was the end of my short-lived career as a rock and roll star!  It was challenging and frustrating but sometimes great fun, and I’m glad I tried it.

After that, my wife, Charlotte, and I moved to the Washington, DC area when I took a job as a management consultant with Ernst & Whinny (now Ernst & Young).  After seven years there, due to all the travel and having two young children, I found a job with a Fortune 500 electric utility company in Raleigh, NC.  I got into the IT world there and eventually found my way to IBM Global Services, where I was a project manager and eventually a senior manager, managing a number of our clients’ IT operations.  I retired in 2012 and now I do a lot of volunteer work, particularly with the Raleigh chapter of SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives), providing advice and counsel to small businesses.

Class of '65 "Regional Gatherings"

By Linda Mamone Thompson

Our 50th reunion was so great that some of us didn't want to wait for the next one.  Thus began the planning for a mini "Regional Gathering" of classmates.  I knew that there were four of us living in the Lehigh Valley in Eastern Pennsylvania.  Grace and Rick Sutherland and I briefly connected at the Avalon reunion, but really didn't have a chance to talk much, and Gary Webster wasn't able to attend the reunion at all.  We four shared a few emails and decided that the first HHS Class of '65 Regional Gathering would be held at my house on Thursday, September 17.  Gary and I checked the address database to be sure that we weren't missing anyone and found no other classmates within sixty miles.

Gary and I had recently discovered we had never known that we have been living only one mile from each other for the past twenty years!  He lives just down the road from the high school my younger daughter attended.  Grace and Rick and I had run into each other at a children's concert at Symphony Hall in Allentown in the mid 80s, so we knew we lived about ten miles from each other.  But I guess "life got in the way," and in all that time none of us attempted to get together.  This time we were going to make time to get together and get reacquainted.

Grace Watson Sutherland, Linda Mamone
Thompson,  Rick Sutherland.
Seated, Gary Webster.

It was a lovely, warm late September evening.  We had dinner outside, enjoyed a couple bottles of wine and talked and laughed, sharing stories about growing up in Hickory Township.  Gary told a wildly funny story from his memories of sixth grade, but it's unprintable!  Rick talked about playing baseball on my dad"s team from Little League in elementary school all the way through American Legion in high school.  He remembered me sitting on the bleachers, in the 8th grade, keeping score for my dad, and most of all remembered my dad offering him some chewing tobacco.  Having my dad as my classmates' coach was always challenging for me.  Yes, I got to see all of the cute boys at the games, but I also had to risk feeling mortified by my dad!

Our mini gathering was an enjoyable success, so I encourage all of you to set up your own HHS '65 Regional Gathering.  Check the class database for zip codes and contact classmates in your area.  It can be as simple as meeting for breakfast or a walk in a park.  Send pictures and information about your gathering to LMT at this blog so that we can all be a part of it.  Ours was lots of fun, and Grace baked a killer chocolate cake!

Tar Heel Home

We have noted before that quite a few of our classmates now live in North Carolina, indeed ten of us.  Intrigued, we asked Brian Hasenflu to comment on his adopted state.  Learning about his log home was a plus.

Brian:  I also find it interesting where our classmates ended up and how they got there.  My wife Marsha and I and our two kids had vacationed at North Carolina's Outer Banks for 28 years and decided that when we retired we would move close to the ocean.  The Outer Banks are too touristy so we chose 3.5 acres to build a log home in Richlands, NC, forty-five minutes northwest of Topsail Island, where Bill and Bob Bartlett each have homes.

After high school I attended YSU to escape the draft, but had had enough after two and a half years and joined the Air Force, for four years with one year in Viet Nam.  I was discharged from the Air Force on a Friday, drove straight home from upstate New York and applied for a job at GM Lordstown on Monday.  Apparently that impressed the HR department because I was hired on the spot.  I felt pretty damn lucky.  The GM jobs were hard to come by.  I retired in March, 2003.

Our fellow classmate Tom Warrender's parents had a log home, and after seeing it I knew we had to have one for our retirement home.  We had lived in two sub-divisions when the kids were growing up.  Marsha and I started planning our new home five years before I retired and did a lot of research into log homes.  "Log Home Living" magazine was a great help.

I was surprised to find out there are so many of our classmates living in North Carolina.  We love it here.  The weather can't be beat.  Two to three months of mild winter weather and some years maybe a little wet snow.  Looking in the class directory I saw the Barlett boys live nearby on the coast.  We chose to live back from the ocean a little ways for a buffer between us and hurricanes.  No regrets leaving PA.  The best move we ever made.

More Picnic Pics 8/15/15

Mary Jo Peters & Vic Ellenberger

Theresa "Sue" Paul, Bonnie Shaffer, Cathy McKnight, Nancy Titus

Ron Pethick & Delinda McCarrier

Sally & Tom Warrender, Bruce & Sue Dale

Leslie Yeoman, Carol & Ron Myers, Fred & Jackie Bulik

Richard & Carolyn Banjak

Click on photo to enlarge.
Thanks again to Bob Muszik for these photos!

Picnic Pics

Bob McClimans & Bob Gavala

Bob Muszik with Denise & Jim Detelich

Brian Hasenflu, Fran Fragle, Shirley Hodge & Andrea Bohach

Cheri Gealy, Bill McCoy & Terry Stefanick

Hickory High School

'65 Class Reunion Picnic

Farrell Lion's Den - August 15, 2015

Click on photo to enlarge.
Thanks to Bob Muszik for these photos!

HHS Class of 1965 Fifty-Year Reunion Photo 8/14/15

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Rolling Back the Years

One of many highlights at our 50-year reunion banquet was a poem read by Lynn Saternow.  Found on the internet by Nancy Titus and a friend, it seemed to strike a chord with the crowd.

Class Reunion

It was my class reunion, and all through the house,

I checked in each mirror and begged my poor spouse

To say I looked great, that my chin wasn't double,

And he lied through false teeth, just to stay out of trouble.

Said that 'neath my thick glasses, my eyes hadn't changed,

And I had the same figure.  It was just a mite rearranged.

He said my skin was still silky, although looser in drape,

Not so much like smooth satin, but more like silk crepe.

I swallowed his words, hook, sinker and line,

And entered the banquet feeling just fine.

Somehow I'd expected my classmates to stay

As young as they were that long-ago day

We'd hugged farewell hugs.  But like me, through the years,

They'd added gray to their hair, or pounds to their rears.

But as we shared a few memories and retold some class jokes,

We were eighteen in spirit, though we looked like our folks.

We turned up hearing aid volumes and dimmed down the light,

Rolled back the years, and were young for the night.

-- Donna Presnell

FIFTY YEARS

Copyright, The Herald, Sharon, PA

50 years isn't as long as you may think

Posted: Saturday, August 15, 2015 4:00 am

FIFTY YEARS is a long time, right? Don’t count on it.

I say that after attending the Hickory High Class of 1965 reunion festivities the last two nights. For my classmates and me, those 50 years went by awfully quickly. (Awfully being a key word here.)

It seems like only yesterday that we were walking the halls of the “new” Hickory High School in Hickory Township. Then again it seems like only yesterday, because at my age I can’t remember a lot of the years in between.

But that is a lesson that I gladly pass on to every young person. Enjoy everything about your life, because it will fly by quickly. 

That little boy or girl you are teaching to ride a bike will soon be headed off to college. And then, snap your fingers and you’ll soon be teaching your grandkids how to ride a bike. 

And 50 years later you’ll be trying to remember how to ride a bike. (Note to self: Don’t ever try that again.)

The class of 2015 at every local school is headed out into the world to make a name for itself, just as we did at Hickory 50 years ago. Those kids are headed out to seek their bright futures. 

But a word of advice: That future will be on you quickly. And that future will soon be your past.

Like us, in 50 years they will be saying how much things have changed since their graduation days. And they do. 

But what is the difference today compared to 1965? Long-time Greenville teacher Paul Miller, a 1965 graduate of Commodore Perry, compiled some interesting facts about that year for his reunion and shared them with me:

• A gallon of gas cost 31 cents. While we lament how much it has gone up, that 31 cents actually amounts to $2.30 in 2015 dollars. 

• A loaf of bread cost 21 cents. But that is about $1.56 in today’s figures, so we actually aren’t doing too badly if you buy the cheaper bread. Then again, I don’t remember having whole grain bread back in those days.

• The average income was $6,450, or $47,854 today. The average salary in Mercer County doesn’t come near that current value; then again many higher-paying industries are no longer here.

• On Aug. 6 that year, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. A couple of months earlier, Vivian Malone became the first black person to graduate from the University of Alabama.

• The Vietnam War was a serious bone of contention. On Nov. 13, the anti-war protest movement saw 35,000 people march on Washington, D.C., demanding an end to the war. The next day the United States sent 90,000 more troops to Vietnam.

• While today’s youngsters have no idea what a “record player” is, we used to spin our discs. The No. 1 song on the charts this weekend in ’65 was “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher. 

Fifty years from now, the classes of 2015 may be looking back the same way at their past at their reunions. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help them with some of the details. After all, I’ll only be 117 years old.

LYNN SATERNOW of The Herald writes this column each week for The Opinion Page. He can be reached at lsaternow@sharonherald.com.

Undercover Poet

By Greg Curtis

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

- Robert Frost

If someone had told me, in, say, 1980, that I would become an entrepreneur, I would have laughed in his face. I didn’t have an entrepreneurial bone in my body. What I liked was getting that steady paycheck at the end of the month. But then something very odd happened: my mother started her own business.

One doesn’t normally think of one’s mother becoming an entrepreneur, and that was especially the case with me. Mom had stayed home and raised four kids. Then, after we’d grown up and left the house, she stayed home as a housewife. But after that, when I was about forty, Mom and Dad split up and, worried about her economic wellbeing, Mom launched her company.

When your mother starts a business, it somehow seems easier to think about starting your own. What was formerly an impossible idea became not just possible, but maybe something you should think seriously about if you don’t want your mom looking down her nose at you.

So I started Greycourt [a wealth management firm]. And then my wife started her own company, the American Middle East Institute. And then my daughter and her husband started their own company, Legume Bistro, the best restaurant between Philadelphia and Chicago. We are now looking hard at the other five kids, wondering when they’re going to get off their duffs and start their own companies.

By the late 1980s I’d stopped thinking of myself as a poet who made his living in business and started thinking of myself as a businessman who wrote poetry.

There’s no real tradition of part-time poets in the West, but there is a long one in the East. In China in particular educated people are expected to write poetry and even to communicate with others in verse. Mao wrote poetry, of course, but so did Deng Xiaoping. Indeed, as Deng slid slowly into retirement in the 1990s, he published a series of “maxims” designed to guide the next generation of Chinese leaders, and these maxims were written in the classical Chinese poetic style.

It’s impossible to imagine such a thing happening in America, so business people who write poetry keep the fact tightly under wraps – otherwise, people would think we were slightly barmy.

– This is a selection taken from Greg’s book, Working for a Living: Selected Poems, published in 2014.

You Made a Difference in My Life

Susan Snyder Bowers

Thank you, Susie!  If you love Alaska, then we do, too!  We also are sorry you could not make this 50-Year Reunion, but we appreciate your greeting and the memories we share.

40th Class Reunion

Hickory VFW-Normandy Banquet Center  -  July 23, 2005

1st Row, L to R  - Jim Fryman, Keith Thompson, David Panin, 

Charles Frankel, Alfred "Butch" Meyers, Richard Sutherland, 

David Misko, Larry Stefanick, Frank Beveridge, Roman Namisnyk

2nd Row, L to R  -  Leslee Elder, Kathy Frost, Ann Marie Sicilian, 

Linda Merolillo, Diane Lutz, Bonnie Shaffer, Gayle Horseman, 

Carolyn Tota, Loretta Pleasant, Toni Kennedy, Carole Spetar

3rd Row, L to R  - Bob Gavala (standing), Evelyn Styduhar, 

Marilyn Thompson, Kathy Raley, Theresa “Sue” Dzurinda, 

Leslie Heasley, Nancy Malone, Cynthia Hirsch, Barbara Dresel, 

Andrea Bohach, Bonnie Likins, Grace Watson, Mary Jo Bobish

4th Row, L to R  -  Tim Titus (standing), Margie Grove, Lynn Saternow, Steve Laskey, Jim Downing, Vic Ellenberger, Mike Dunder, Ron Klingle, Richard Rutherford, Ray Zagger, Ken Darby, Bob McClimans, Tom Aaron, Gayle Yeager, Bob Miszik

                 

         

 49 Classmates attending    

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