Where did you go to high school?
“I graduated from Wilmington Area High School in New Wilmington, which is about 30 miles north from here.”
What was your favorite thing to do with your friends?
“There was a group of us that generally got together at one buddy’s house, and they had a pool table in the basement and we would play pool and listen to albums.”
What activities were you involved in during your senior year?
“I played on the football team. I was on the track team. I threw shotput and discus. And I was also involved in building the sets for the plays.”
What classes did you take your senior year?
He took a history and english class, but for his math, he took a course called Advanced Math which was Analysis and Trigonometry. He also took Physics and a Mechanical Drawing Class. The Mechanical Drawing Class was before the use of technology, so they did everything with pencils, straight edges, paper and “lots of erasers.”
Were their AP Courses, College Courses?
“The high school I went to had very few AP Courses. In fact, we probably only had an AP English Course and I did not take that.”
Did you have a job? Where at?
“I occasionally worked catering for the food service department at Westminster College, which is in New Wilmington. So I would work some events for them.”
Did you have a car? How much was gas then?
“I had a 1976 Road Runner. It was bright orange and had a white interior, five speed transmission and a sunroof. A friend of mine, he was the youth group leader at our church, he gave me the car on the condition that I had it restored. So, I had the car restored and then I was allowed to keep it.”
$1.20 a gallon.
What was your decided major to pursue?
“Well, I knew where I was going to go to college because my dad taught at Grove City. My intention for when I was a senior was that I was going to study computer science. Computers were just really starting then, but by the time I graduated from high school and the summer before I actually started my freshman year, I changed my major to elementary education.”
What college did you choose to go to?
Grove City
What did you like to do in your free time?
“I was pretty busy but I had a 1968 Volkswagen Convertible that I was working on in addition to my road runner but, that one, I was doing the work on it myself. So I was restoring that, doing the bodywork, tearing the engine down and putting it back together and things like that. So, that is what I spent a lot of time doing.”
What is one of your best memories from senior year?
“My mother taught at the high school that I went to as well. But I actually really liked going to school on the senior skip day because there was nobody there so we didn’t do much in class. Actually, my physics teacher would give us the keys to his Cadillac and would give us money and we would go down to the ice cream stand and bring milkshakes back for everyone else who was in class.”
How would you describe yourself as a senior?
“I was relatively introverted. I was probably not a great student. I spent a lot of time sitting at the dining room table but ended up not doing a lot of work. I got by as a student. I did enough work to get by and you know, in retrospect, I realized that it was not the right choice to make.”
What kind of music did you listen to?
“Back then it would have been what is now considered classic rock. We listened to a lot of Queen. Some of the earlier heavy metal stuff that is pretty mild now but back then when I was younger 30 years ago, was pretty hard core.”
What advice would you did to your senior self?
“Study Harder. Work much more diligently.”