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CLASS OF 1952

Reunion


Short notes and trivia from my years at Highline...your's, too. Send me any notes or incidents that you'd like to share (see "contacts on home page) ...I'll work them in when possible.
My wife, Valerie (Mt. Baker...class of 58), & I will be at the reunion...both functions. I wonder if my senior year "crush" will be there? No...I won't name her. Valerie knows, though. Guess you could watch her for a reaction. Speaking of Mt. Baker...our King County Prosecuting Attorney...Norm Maleng... was one of Valerie's classmates. Says he was into 4-H and that stuff.

How many of us realize that the school was named Highline because of the high powered lines that ran over the hill so many decades ago?

Remember when we all turned out in makeshift bleacher seats to welcome General McArthur home after President Truman fired him? Coming in from the airport his motorcade zipped through at 35 mph. The band didn't even have time to start playing. Got us out of classes for awhile, anyway.

Chucky Haynes partially falling through the auditorium ceiling at a celebration assembly for our basketball team winning 1951 state championship...hard to forget. Who were the boys up there who pulled her out?

Do the teachers still go to the boiler room, through the Beanery, to smoke?

Teaching me typing was no easy chore for Miss Gibson. She made it, though. Typing was the learned subject that I have used the most throughout the years. Sometimes doesn't look like it.

In our 1951 Homecoming assembly one of my many uncles, Bob Naff, stood when they saluted the Class of 1930. I couldn't comprehend anyone from a class twenty years ago still being around. Now we're removed more than twice that long. Sigh!

Remember Mr. Betz...our Spanish teacher. I still have my Spanish secondary text book. Lost El Camino Real, though. He had quite a display of artifacts in his classroom. Stuff he brought back from his yearly summer long stays with a family in Mexico. He used to stand outside his classroom at 3:30 and grab kids who ran for the bus. Got me once. Had to converse for five minutes in all Spanish before I could go. Que Passa, Senor Betz?

Who can forget a summons to the office? I made it once...dropped a package of cigarettes at the feet of Alf Hemstead. Wrong move, Roger. Mr. Johnson usually passed the heathens on to V. P. Lowell Wiggens. He kept my cigarettes. Lucky Strikes.

Remember the special assemblies put on by Sgt. Herb Freeman of the Wash. State Patrol? Big man...booming voice. Program was recordings and film clips of traffic stops. Mostly drunk drivers...they didn't dress it up with "driving impaired" or DUI...told it like it is. Drunk Drivers. This was part of a popular radio program called "Could This Be You?" hosted by Sgt. George Ammons. KVI...9:00 Sat. nite. Sgt. Freeman lived right across the street from me. He drove a WSP panel truck and always turned on the siren when he came into the neighborhood on his way home. Kids liked that. I rode in back of the "paddy wagon" once. No...wasn't busted. He gave some of us kids a ride home from a Halloween party at Southern Heights. He caught me driving once when I was fifteen. He knew my age. No ticket...just "GO HOME!... WALK!" I did...hurriedly.

Are any of you ladies from Mount View? Did you play catcher on your seventh grade girl's softball team? If so, apologies are offered. A bunch of other ruffians and I were hanging around behind the backstop at a game between Boulevard Park and Mount View girls teams...kept ribbing their catcher. Calling her "Airwick". She took it well...nice kid. Appology offered.

Enough for now. Our "mouser" Josef Jerome Tom Cat just brought a mouse (deceased) in my bedroom window and dropped it at my feet. "I have a mouse... AND IT'S FOR YOU!" Plop. Now he sits in the middle of my bed smiling. He loves me.


June 29

Thanks to Nick Yotz I now have a picture of my first lady love, Miss Kelly, my first grade teacher at Boulevard Park. I planned on marrying her later on but she wouldn't wait. Nick sent me class pictures of the first and second grades. Were we EVER so young?

All through my school years I was terribly shy...girls scared the daylights out of me. Now only one does... my wife. Nice woman, though... and dearly loved. She has one bad feature, though. Always knows when I'm up to something sneaky...just stares quietly at me until I crack and spill it.

Congratulations to all of you with fourty and more years of marriage in. That's a record to be proud of. My first marriage crashed and burned after five years...1956-1961. It took me 21 years to find the next one...Valerie...but she's a keeper. One month after the reunion, Sept. 16, well see our twentieth anniversary. I mention this because she monitors my web site and has been staring at me. Mt. Baker woman.

More later as the mood, memories and information become available.


I received an E from Dave Klein. Remember him? Class of 56...he was in the ninth grade when we were doing our "Senior thing". Impressing people... we thought. Dave is right on...he reminisces that "Mr. Johnson was a class act once you realized where he was coming from." Dave also remembers Jack Mackenroth as a football coach who made the team practice overtime "until they got it right." I didn't have him for a class but remember him as a person who reminded me of Hurley DeRoin. Same image. Quiet, forceful...determined. I doubt I would think him quiet if I had been on his football team.

This is the end of page one. While you dutifully go back to the Home Page and click Highline High School... Class of 52...page two... I'll scoot Josef Jerome "mouse breath" over and take a nap.