School Story:
My little sister had been going to Loretto for a couple of years before I ever went. My mom wanted me to try it, but I resisted. Then one day I got back from a youth ski trip to Colorado where we rode back all night on a sleeper bus with a bunch of other kids. When I got home at 6:00AM without much sleep, I very much did not want to go to school. So I told my mom I would ride with her to check out Loretto as a way to get out of school. I got there and met Bill Haller who introduced me to David Vogel who was my guide for the day. I was completely blown away by Loretto, and enrolled the next day. Here are a few of the many memories I have.
In photography class with Pat Clothier, I remember we had a photography sleepover party at Pat's house. We brought a bunch of film to develop. Scott Tibbets took pictures at the old cemetery in the woods. We took some pictures of some of the sisters and then lightly exposed the photo paper Scott would use. When he developed his pictures of the cemetery, the ghost-like images of the nuns appeared. Freaky. Unlike most practical jokes, this one worked perfectly!
Cole Martin and I would always sneak over to the lower school where Maxine and Sr. Susan would let us use the Apple ][+ computer in the office. We would occasionally get run off, but they were usually cool about it.
Matt Swafford, Jason Stein, and I went out for a lunch one day at Godfather’s Pizza. Anyway, a belt broke on my Corvair while we were out and that caused us to miss Claudia’s Western Civilizations class. Being such good citizens, of course we called the office to say we would be late. We got to school when class was just over, and Claudia found us in the hall and thought we had ditched class. Thankfully we still had greasy hands so we got off the hook.
Matt, Jason, and I built a robot out of a radio control unit, gears, aluminum, a video camera, an RF modulator, a drill for a main drive motor, and whatever else we could find. It was kind of lame because we couldn’t get enough battery power on board the robot, so we ran an extension cord. Hot stuff in 1982.
I remember some of us got together and decided to have a class about Excalibur and King Arthur. Astrid agreed to teach it. We read a version or two of the story of King Arthur, watched the R rated movie (big deal because we were about 12), and organized a sword fighting tournament using PVC pipes we wrapped in foam as swords. We also wore helmets.
When we were freshmen, Matt Swafford and I were walking in locker hall one day when the new basketball coach, Joel Zitron, spotted us and talked us into joining the team. Despite the fact that neither of us had played ball before, we put in the practice and earned varsity Letters. We had a great time that year, and wound up going 0-23. Coach told us his job was not to win games, but to develop young men. I think he did that. And we even had some close games along the way.
STEPS, 8th grade wills, Jody playing ApplePanic in the computer room, making and igniting black powder in the science lab (Anne Goldkamp is probably still mad about that one). The more I sit here and think about this, the more stories pop into my head.
