Subject: Some of My Memories
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2002 16:40:03 -0500
From: "Sharpe, Thomas R." [SharpeT@missouri.edu]
To: ALL

Time to check in with some of my memories of PHS and the times .

I remember the fear of going to get my drivers license and having Mr. Schmidt be the one who did the in-car test. He was a mean as sand rubbed on an open wound. Everyone prayed they would not get him as the tester. Somehow he didn't see my hands shaking, although he must have heard my voice quiver after he yelled at me the third time. But in the end, he smiled at me, said I did a good job, passed me and told me to drive carefully.

Then on the first night I could drive, I backed into a telephone pole at the drive-in. The damage was over $100, which was all the money in the world in those days.

And speaking of cars, my family had a black and white '57 Chevy stationwagon, and we would load it up on Buck Night at the Bel-Air Drive-in. As I recall, thirteen was the greatest number we loaded in the car, although it would have held many more. On other occasions, we would hide someone in the trunk, then open the trunk and let them out once we were safely parked in the drive-in (that was not on Buck Night, obviously).

I remember penny milk in the cafeteria. Or was it two cents?

Someone said this earlier, but I too, remember Craig Thiersch playing the organ from the balcony of the Assembly Hall. He had a great talent, and I hope he still plays. Do you, Craig? I also remember him taking Russian from my homeroom teacher, Miss Stepaitis. He would come in to school early in the mornings and she would tutor him; there was no Russian in the curriculum.

And speaking of Russia, I remember listening to Radio Moscow on Jim Lightfoot's shortwave radio and thinking that was something almost scary.

I remember a Christmas Assembly one year in which we sat on the main floor of the Assembly Hall and the choir sang "Little Drummer Boy" from the balcony. It still sends shivers down my spine when I think of it.

I remember Gary Duffy talking about getting a front row seat by getting through the fire department barricade, when the administration building at Bradley University caught fire in the dead of winter. I don't remember who he was with, but Gary put his head out the window and screamed a siren noise. When they got to the barricade, they yelled "West Peoria Volunteers!" And they let them through. What a hoot!

I was late to begin my growth spurt, and so I was almost always the shortest, or at least the second shortest, guy in the classroom during Freshman and Sophomore years. Certainly I was the skinniest. I remember walking to home room the first day of Junior year and meeting Margie Gallagher at the doorway. I realized, "Wow! I'm actually taller than Margie Gallagher! There IS hope in this world!"

I remember being painfully shy around girls. Thankfully, I have ruthlessly beaten that out of myself.

I remember the Pekin Chinks!

And I remember them stealing Dawdy Hawkins from us. I have never forgiven them for that!

I had a boss at the University of Mississippi who grew up in Pekin. We had been working together for over two years, and he was used to my pulling his leg about a wide variety of things. One day on a car trip to Jackson, MS he told me he grew up in Pekin. I said, "Really. I can't believe it. I grew up in Peoria. He wouldn't believe me no matter how much I tried to convince him I was not BSing him. Finally I said, "I can prove UNEQUIVOCABLY that I grew up in Peoria." "How?" he responded. I said, "I can tell you who your high school mascot was!" He laughed, and told me I had won. And we had a good talk about how nobody even knew what that meant at the time. Now, of course they are the Pekin Dragons.

Something nobody, at least that I remember, has brought up: I remember getting an EXCELLENT education at PHS. A couple of years before our 25th Reunion, I was visiting Peoria with my then-wife and took her through PHS. It was late in the day and I ran into Beverly Holmes who was one of my English teachers. She asked me about what I was doing and I told her that at the time I was the head of a pharmaceutical sciences research institute at the University of Mississippi. She oohed and ahhed appropriately, but I told her that whatever success I had achieved I attributed at least as much to my command of the English language as I did to my command of my science. She told me she wished I had been there earlier in the day so that I could have told her students that. I told her that perhaps I could do that on a future visit home. So, when plans for the 25th Reunion took shape, I called PHS and asked for her. They told me she had retired the previous May. I asked to talk to the chair of the English Department, and I told him about my meeting with Mrs. Holmes and volunteered to teach an English class or two about the importance of a strong command of the English language in a high tech world. Well, he fell all over himself about it and arranged for me to teach a regular class, and advanced class and a journalism class (to the latter I talked about the marketing concept of positioning and how one can use that in writing a story or communicating about anything to anyone about anything.) The long and the short of it is that this may just be the toughest day I have ever worked. I was exhausted at the end of the day, and I brought from that a real appreciation of how hard high school teachers work--and how underappreciated they are. One great benefit, though, was that I got to eat in the teachers lounge. What a trip! Do you remember the cabbage salad in vinegar with a little bit of sugar in it? When I put that in my mouth, it brought me instantly back to high school days. It was wierd how instantly and dramati happened!

It's been wonderful to hear from so many people I have't seen in years and years. I can't wait for August 17, and I look forward to continued reminiscences from everyone.

Tom