I feel badly, almost irresponsible, not returning to the epicenter of adolescent dreams and disappointment, longing and rejection, but I just can't be there with you. Anne Laing once told me in an e-mail to "stay close". So, if you can pardon a lack of humility in thinking it important, here's an effort in that direction.

IF I WERE THERE WITH YOU:

I would enjoy going over to Dubs Dread just to see if I could find the place in the rough off a fairway where Gary Houmes and I used to go to drink beer we bought with a phony ID card (Gary Sewell, Airman 2nd, AF24633242). Gary was a forward on the b-ball team our senior year. He was a Junior. He died in 1999. I still miss him. We were the best of friends for decades.

It would "be a gas" standing again at the top of the stairs of the Youth Center, looking down on the main floor and casting furtive glances once more at the "girls" I had a crush on in school back in the middle of the last century. The web site provides evidence that they are still worthy of the aforesaid furtive glances of a once shy, too skinny boy.

I would enjoy 5 or 10 minute conversations with a handful of people. I would thank Dewey once more for letting me play the entire HI-Y-Faculty basketball game in 1961; providing my only chance to run around half naked in front of the girls. A couple of them said I did a good job. It's just a bit sad (hidden pun alert) to ask myself why I feel like that might have been the high point of my WPHS career.

Speaking of "high points", hey, Bobby Cross, I have a room filled with boxes of crap that await my retirement. In the bottom of a box at the bottom of the boxes is a little trophy that says: "Winter Park Youth Center Twist Contest 1961". It rightfully belongs to you. I told you 45 years ago that you deserved it. You graciously said that I won it fair and square. I didn't. I just had a partner with a tighter, cashmere sweater. You don't remember? That's because you didn't win the trophy! If I totter into a 50th reunion I promise to give it to its rightful owner.

I would tell Vic Vermillion again that I still fully understand why he asked to be let out of the car before I shot out the window of the Varsity Barber Shop; bad haircut, don't you know. I had a primitive sense of justice in those days. He doesn't remember the incident. I think I'd try to forget an evening like that, too. Perhaps less "forgivable" I would remind him again that his Lucent Technologies has edited my cabin cruiser retirement fantasy story down to something more like a used pontoon boat retirement story, or maybe just the tale of "a three-hour cruise" gone wrong.

I would reminisce with Frank Ferguson about the time he sent me to the hospital by stepping with cleats on my bare foot in Spring training and ending my football career before Coach Orr had the chance to cut me from tryouts. And about the time he bought me a Coke at that wonderful old, tiled soda shop/pharmacy (help me out here, guys) and tried to sell me insurance. Life insurance seemed like a good bet for someone voted "Most Likely to Die an Early and Violent Death". Actually, the closest I got to a "Senior Superlative" is Frank standing with Bonnie Boone next to my Austin Healey Sprite in the Yearbook picture. I think the other car in that picture might be Helen Whittington's MG. Maybe not, but in any event, I would enjoy talking with Helen for the full 10 minute allocation. It would seem like about 10 seconds for me. In my youth I met few people with whom I was really comfortable and I always underrated the experience/gift. For that, maybe an apology is in order, mostly to myself.

It would be nice again to talk with Stuart Smith and Tommy Bledsoe, and say Hi to Jackie Billingham (the Reds are our team up here and over the years I got to say once in a while, "I went to school with Jackie Billingham; yeah, his dad owned the gas station in our town" (I throw that in for authenticity). I would say, "Hi" to Sharon White who lived up the street from me on Lake Drive. The general manager of the Magic later bought her house. I'd try to let her know I didn't stay a jerk forever. Hey, at least I could "try". Hey Pud Mudd, thanks again for the cigarettes at the 30th. You would be safe now. I don't smoke anymore (even OP's).

It would be nice to spend a few minutes with Dexter Coffman and talk about what a horror (for me) Admiral Farragut in St. Pete was. (Yeah, they kicked me out of military school for "physical disrespect to a faculty officer"; that's how I got to go to WPHS and meet all you swell guys).

Larry Fennelly lived up the street from Gary Houmes. I'd like to ask him if he remembers the three of us spending time together in the summer of 1963 drinking beer, playing monopoly, and getting into some other mischief. Hey, Larry, do you remember Daytona and a couple of golden glove boxers, a state wrestling champ, and the "Fennelly Pick-a-Boo Stance"?

I would talk with Eric Firchow (who STILL LOOKS LIKE Eric Firchow, which is more than can be said for most of us) about "what its like" (not good) to attend a gazillion different schools; 27 for Eric, one every other year for me. Hey, RedKnight, what's with that e-mail the other day?

Where is my old pal Prudy Huber. What's up with Bob Parsons. Bob and I hung out a few times. He was DEEP into hot rods. He called me Sam Hanks (a race driver). I remember my mother saying, "Henry, there's someone at the door asking for a Sam Hanks; is that you"?

Thomas Morgan Turner IV and I would use up the whole 10 minutes talking together about our escapades with each other and Houmes. And about his father, who developed the subdivision I lived in "over on Lake Killarney many years ago". Did you know Tom's younger brother is named "Thomas Morgan Turner V" (kind of a "....try, try again" attitude). Tom and I would likely spend more time than we should trying to find just the right "short" word to describe his dad.

Guess I still owe John Cash an apology for (very) rudely not letting him into a party at my house (jealous of his "relationship" with Rosemarie). I owe him thanks, too, for not hurting me, I suppose. I'm sure he doesn't remember me or the incident.

Finally, I would thank in person Bill, Mary and Anne and others for holding us all close and for the website. I brag about it to people I know up here and tell them it is likely the best site in America.

MEMENTO MORI

2061 Reunion of WPHS Class of 1961 Sock Hop

Hey Bill, the message was garbled in transmission, I didn't go to New York and get killed, I went to New Orleans and made a killing (i.e., I got a great job at Tulane). It's always a pleasure to let Bill Ronay know I'm not dead yet, and to have him help me "remember" our trip to New Orleans in 1963. Let's just say I was never considered for the "designated driver" position on that trip. You know, "If you can remember the '60s you weren't there". I lived in the Big Easy for many years. My heart is broken. America has yet to learn "what it means to miss New Orleans".

Chuck Butler was one of the first of us to go. I have some vague memory of "cruising" one weekday night with him. I was being "bad" right off. My parents didn't let me out weeknights. That's why I joined Hi-Y. We were in the Stake and Shake parking lot in his car (maybe it was a Corvette). He pulled out from under the seat his new pistol to show me. I thought to myself, "this guy is much farther along with the "live hard, die young" philosophy than I am". Does anyone know what happened to him? I fear he was not one to "go gentle into that good night"!

I wanted to see Bobby Danforth once more. Forty-five years ago he graciously provided me with a "go ahead" to date a girl he had lost interest in, thus providing a bit of focus to my raging hormones, and also providing corollary economic and public safety benefits to the community through increased ticket purchases at the Ri-Mar, Prairie View, and our beloved Winter Park Drive-In, along with the increased safety of central Florida motorists that resulted from having my car off the roads and "parked" more often.

Finally, at the 30th reunion I joked with Bill Ronay that future reunions should begin with a "role call of the dead". My "gallows humor" then is even less funny now, as the list grows. Without being disrespectful through neglect to mention others who have passed, I have to say that the passing of Linda Schmidt this year is a real, sad, and brutal confrontation with our mortality. I always thought of Linda as a "matriarch" of our little clan. She represented so much of what was best in us and our class. Her passing is a harbinger of the day that will surely come when we are together only as a Google cache. So--- as the lady says,