The other day, I got news of the dates my high school class will celebrate our 50-year reunion. Sparked by a comment from a friend up in Pittsburgh, I came to the realization that February 1972 was a busy month for me as a high school senior. Between a college visit, a pending visit from the Governor of Ohio, presenting an act for our high school review, working part time at the local cable television station and being chosen as the title character for the senior play, I’m wondering how I had time for any classes. And that’s not even taking into account that I turned 18 and went to register with the local draft board.
The college visit, the visit from the Governor and my job at the local cable television station go together. Aside from my paid job running cameras after school, I produced a fifteen-minute segment every other week on behalf of the Chillicothe High School student council. News that the Governor was coming to town on statehood day wasn’t lost on me. It would happen on one of those evenings when I had the television show. I pulled out the portable typewriter (complete with a green ink ribbon) and pounded out a letter to Governor John Gilligan, inviting him to come in to be interviewed by a panel of students on my show.
Admittedly, it was a lark. I didn’t think anything about it until I was on the way to Annapolis Maryland with my father to visit Saint John’s College. We stopped at some point just outside of Washington D.C. when Dad phoned home and Mom relayed the news that my invitation had been accepted! When we got back three days later, I hit the ground running – assembling a panel and, well, producing a cable television show. He came, we taped the show, and I damn near broke my arm patting myself on the back. The station got a nice bit of publicity, as did Governor Gilligan.
Our picture made the yearbook, on the same page where Ed Yarborough was pictured shaking Richard Nixon’s hand.
The “Review” was the annual talent show. I did a combination Morey Amsterdam/Jack Benny monologue playing the cello and cracking what would today be considered “Dad Jokes.” For instance, “Mom and Dad asked me last night if I had put the cat out. I didn’t know that it was on fire!” What the hey. It got laughs, and I got the thrill of working an audience.
It had to have been sometime that month that I tried out for and got the title role in our senior class play – “Dracula.” That also hit the yearbook and it was also part of my job at the local cable TV station. As part of the publicity push for the play, I was asked to appear on-camera in costume. The fellow conducting the interview, Gene Minney, would always smile and say, “Of corpse,” every time he saw me, including the last time I saw him about thirteen years ago. The fellow who hired me later in the year to work part-time at one of the local radio stations always referred to me as “Drac,” something which amused him (and me) to no end.
And, of course, there was the occasion of my eighteenth birthday. At the time, there was a requirement for all young men to register for the Draft. The Draft office was literally around the corner from where we lived. I went upstairs, filled out the paperwork, had a short chat with Vivian Crowe (the secretary for the Board and a member of the church I attended) and got my draft card. The Draft was discontinued a year or two later, although I was still required to carry my draft card for nine or ten years. I remember pulling it out of my wallet and burning it for a small audience of my workmates while I was working offshore back in 1980.
Like inviting the Governor to appear on my TV show. On a lark.
I must have attended some of my high school classes despite everything else going on. It’s in the yearbook.
Be Seeing You!
bdharrellauthor 