COACH ART STOUT RETIRES -JOIN THE CELEBRATION

This just in a few moments ago:
Game * Set * Match
STOUT RETIRES AFTER 53 YEARS OF COACHING


Date:

May 16, 2010
2:30 -4:30 PM
Program at 3:30 p.m.
Location:

Des Peres Lodge
1050 Des Peres Road
Des Peres, MO 63131
Questions:

Email us at alumni@kirkwoodschools.org
Call us at (314) 213-6123
Register Online: www.khsalumni.org

or

Mail registration and/or contribution toward a gift for Coach Stout to:
KHS Pioneer Boosters, Inc.
11289 Manchester Road
Kirkwood, MO 63122

$15.00 registration includes refreshments and light appetizers
Share a Memory or Contribute to a Gift…
If you would like to send a picTure, a note for a scrapbook, or a contribution toward a gift for Art, please mail to:
Kirkwood School District
11289 Manchester Rd., Kirkwood MO 63122
or email to:
alumni@kirkwoodschools.org

Please visit our website at www.khsalumni.org
For questions please email alumni@kirkwoodschools.org

KHS Orchestra gets Standing O's at Carnegie Hall

From today's issue of Ladue News comes this report: To say that the Kirkwood High School Orchestra's trip to Carnegie Hall went well would be an understatement. More than 300 family and friends made the trip last week to see the students perform during the 2010 Instrumental Musical Festival. Kirkwood was one of only three music groups selected to perform, and we're told that orchestra members received a standing ovation after each of their four pieces. Longtime orchestra director PATRICK JACKSON was said to be 'walking on air' following the performance.

We shouldn't be surprised with the great tradition of excellent music education at Kirkwood High. Way to go Musical Pioneers!

I was at the 100th anniversary luncheon of a St. Louis area Daughters of the American Revolution chapter today and in chatting with our State Curator, who cares for our beautiful Victorian mansion statehouse in Boonville, it turns out she is a KHS alum! We are everywhere!!! Remember to nominate someone for Alumni Hall of Fame! See my post for all the information!

Anyone remember who owned Cyrano's?

I have no idea why I noticed this obituary earlier this week, but John B. Marshall, Jr. died in Sun City, AZ recently. He was a Marine Corps fighter pilot who served in WWII and Korea. After leaving service he founded and operated the High Fidelity Showroom, Cyrano's Restaurant and Restaurant de Bergerac. He was also active in the promotion of individual liberty and free market philosophy. In the 1960s he hosted a monthly lecture group on Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy and he was a long time board member of The Discussion Club of St. Louis. He has a son Joseph living here in Chesterfield, a daughter in Fairfax, VA and grand children. Whodda ever thunk that the fellow running one of our favorite haunts was also an intellectual???
For a picture of the Cyrano's menu, check out the photos on the website at http://www.khs65.com, it's a great shot! Thanks again to Rich Mills for sending me that onceuponatime when he moved and was cleaning out STUFF.

MODEL RAILROADING IN KIRKWOOD STARS ONE OF OUR OWN

Bob O'Neill has been a railroad buff for a long time. His own rail layout in his home is fantastic and he donates a good deal of his time to the trains at the National Museum of Transport right in Kirkwood. He's not KHS65's only train buff, Dave Beardsley figures in there too and I'm sure others. GO HERE to see the latest PR on the Kirkwood area group keeping training alive! Click on the photo to enlarge it, but beware, the caption is incorrect. Bob is the first smiling face on the left and they have mis-spelled his name... check it out. And if you need something fun and educational to do with your grandchildren, be sure to head out Barrett Station Road to the Museum of Transport, they have party facilities, and a great deal of interactive exhibits to delight young and old alike. The Museum's website is great, full of information and photos, check it out! Bob is another true KHS65 STAR - thanks for making us look good Bob!

MAYBE BEST 60s VIDEO YET!

Thanks to Chris Childress Maurer for forwarding this dynOmite video. Spend a few moments in sublime reminiscing!

GORGEOUS FLORIDA CONDO FOR SALE

Our devoted KHS65 member Karen Schurig Bass and her hubby have a yummy condo for sale in Destin, FL. They've decided to spend their fun time elsewhere and hope they can shed the Destin condo. Please check this link and this one, and yet one more
to see the details. She sent me one other spreadsheet but for some reason I couldn't get it to upload properly. I'm sure that Karen will be happy to send it to, and of course discuss the condo with, anyone interested. You will see contact info on the links. Best of luck Karen, see you in August!

RICH JONES VIEWS OUR KIRKWOOD PAST

Rich Jones sent me this wonderful essay about our Kirkwood roots when we were working on the 2005 Reunion and I'd like to share it here so you can all read it and think about just what it is that keeps us together. Thanks Rich! If your views have changed, send us an update!

Why Kirkwood?

I’m a sucker for nostalgia. In those quiet moments of reflection, which formerly occurred in front of a fireplace, now more often in front of a Dell CRT, my thoughts often drift from the here-and-now to the there-and-then.

I am one of the many from the Centennial Class of ’65 who lives miles and decades away from Kirkwood. We who are separated by distance and years experience from our home town differently from those of you who, when you need to touch your past, drive by Lyons Field, drop in to chat with that beloved biology teacher who retired 20 years ago but still lives out in the county, or drop in to the annual holiday bash. For us, Kirkwood is more a state of mind than a place.

I am no longer tied to Kirkwood by family or residence. My father’s ashes lie under a majestic pine grove in one of the most beautiful parks in Southwest England near where my parents chose to retire in 1980. My widowed mother returned to the US and sits happy but oblivious to the past in an assisted care facility overlooking Los Angeles Harbor, without a shred of memory of her childhood in Webster Groves, her adult life in Kirkwood, or her two decades of bliss in England. I myself have visited more foreign countries than I have states, and spent more than a quarter of my life since Kirkwood living abroad. Yet wherever I’ve traveled, wherever I’ve lived, wherever I have considered my home of the moment, Kirkwood has never been far from my mind. Whenever I read one of Leslie’s newsy accounts of our class news, I ask, What is it about those special years that still links us, whether near and far, together? Why do we cling to memories of that place, and to that time, where we emerged from childhood into some semblance of adulthood?

A writer at The New Yorker who left his own Midwest hometown forty years ago answered that question a few months ago.* For those of you closer to “home,” perhaps you will see in his account of a return home that Kirkwood is in many ways, more present in us than you might imagine, though we “exiles” may no longer reside there physically.

Recently I saw in a newspaper from Hudson, my hometown, that they were about to tear down the town’s water tower. In principle, I don’t care anymore how things I used to love about Hudson change or disappear. Each time a big change happens, though, I feel a moment of resistance before my lack of caring returns….

I lived in Hudson from when I was six until I was eighteen. Sometimes I try to describe, usually without success, what it was like to grow up in a small Midwestern town forty years ago. As I get into the details, corniness tinges my voice, and a proprietary sentimentality that puts people off. I say the names of my friends back then—Kent, Jimmy, Susie, Bitsy, Cathy, Charlie, Tim, Paul—they sound somehow wrong. They’re like the names of characters in nostalgic mid-American movies or Bruce Springsteen songs, and I start to think of us as that myself, and a blurring sometimes sets in, and the whole business defeats me. But then a friend from Hudson calls, or I run into somebody from there, or I hear a rattle of shopping-cart wheels in a supermarket parking lot, and for a second I remember how growing up in Hudson could be completely, even unfairly, sweet.

Most modern people don’t belong anyplace as intimately as we belonged to Hudson. Now the town has grown and merged into a Midwest exurbia, so it’s hardly recognizable for what it was. Some of the old sense of belonging, though, remains.…

Why did Hudson enchant me? Why was life, there and then, so sweet? I think a million reasons happened to come together, none of which we grasped at the time. We had plenty of leisure. We had cars to drive. Gasoline was still so cheap it was practically free. Our parents, to whom the cars we drove belonged, had leisure too. In their case, they were inclined to take long vacations, and indulge us kids. Fathers (and a few mothers) had steady jobs, pensions, health insurance. The economic difficulties that would later take a lot of those away…had not yet visibly begun. Vietnam was in the future. Life was good.… Hudson was the place where I was spun and spun throughout my childhood in order to have maximum velocity when it finally let me go.

To all you Pioneers still near “home,” thanks. Your presence keeps the flame alive.--Rich Jones
* Ian Fraser “How the Midwest Made Me", The New Yorker, January 10th 2005. Edited excerpts from that article follow, without permission from the author or anyone else. (So don’t tell anyone I did this!)

BILL POTTGEN CHECKS IN

Thanks Bill for staying in touch! Congrats on the new baby and our prayers for his continued progress!
Hi Leslie
Just checkin’ in. All’s well in sunny AZ. Guess some have been having a nasty winter. Come on Spring. Cindy and I have a new grandson in Springfield IL. He came way too early but is doing OK. We’ll be flying back a lot and usually go thru St Louis so we will make some time to try and join you as the committee plans the reunion. Looking forward to it. By the way we got a chance to see Bobby Vinton in person this weekend. Great show, lots of memories of high school years. If anyone gets a chance to see him it’s worth it. Also I bought the book about Turkey Day Football, it’s neat. Keep the news coming on the blog. Thanks. Bill

TIDBITS FROM OUR PAST at KHS

Thanks to Pat Corpening Hoag we still have access to a KHS Handbook, herewith a couple of entries:

SCHOOL DRESS & GROOMING
One of the things that has a definite effect on the quality of your schoolwork and behavior is the manner in which you dress. The well-dressed student is encouraged toward better schoolwork and behavior. The carelessly dressed student tends to do the opposite. You should be neat, clean and well-groomed at all times. You should use standards of good taste in usual school dress. Shirts must be buttoned up at all times, and the tail of dress shirts must be worn inside the trousers. Students who wear costumes which are abbreviated, suggestive, or otherwise improper, or who wear unusual haircuts will be dismissed until correction is made. GIRLS: Dresses, skirts, and casual shoes. No divided skirts. BOYS: Long pants with shirts or sweaters. Gee, divided skirts made so much sense, wonder who determined this policy?

I don't know about you all, but living with the minute by minute Bell Schedule must have been more annoying than I remember. In my elder years, not sure I could do this again!

8:23 First Bell
8:30 Tardy Bell & begin 1st period
9:30 End of 1st period
9:37 Bell begins 2nd period
10:32 Bell ends 2nd period
10:39 Bell begins 3rd period
11:34 Bell ends 3rd period
11:41 Bell begins 4th period
Lunch, in shifts according to 4th period classroom numbers
1:11 Bell ends 4th period
1:18 Bell begins 5th period
2:13 Bell ends 5th period
2:20 Bell begins 6th period
3:15 School's out!

IT IS WITH GREAT SADNESS THAT I POST THIS............

KNOTT Gregory Alan Gregory Alan Knott, 62, died suddenly on Sunday morning, January 10, 2010, at his home in the Old West End. Born in Massillon, Ohio, in 1947, Greg attended high school in Kirkwood, Missouri and continued his education at Ohio Northern University. He went on to work for the Norfolk & Western Railroad and became the youngest engineer with his own crew in the history of the company. He retired from the railroad after 10 years. Greg then sold real estate in Toledo's Old West End, at that time a declining neighborhood. He was instrumental in changing that area into the show place that it is today, with the entire community listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. Around 1980, he served on Mayor Donna Owens' Save Our City committee. In 1981, with a friend, he designed, built and operated the original Toledo Recycling Station, the first theme-oriented buy-back recycling center in the World. In 1987, he converted a bare, concrete warehouse into bretz; an elegant night club welcoming the Gay community and serving all persons of good will. bretz remained a premier night spot for over twenty years. In 2007, Greg sold bretz which remains in business today. Greg was a close friend of Laurel G. Blair, an avid collector of lithophanes, which are three-dimensional porcelain castings designed to be lit from behind. He was deeply involved in the establishment of the Blair Museum of Lithophanes, located at the Toledo Botanical Gardens. Over the past 10 years, Greg spent summers taking his 23 foot boat, the Dollar Dance, through numerous Canadian waterways. His adventures carried him and his friends from Toledo throughout the Great Lakes, ranging from Duluth, MN to the salt waters of the St. Lawrence for whale watching. Greg was also a member of the Masonic Lodge. Greg is survived by Riba (his loyal and devoted four-legged friend), the Dollar Dance, and a large family of loving friends. Visitation will be at the Maison-Dardenne Funeral Home located at 501 Conant St, Maumee, OH. Visitation hours will be Friday, January 15, from 6pm-9pm and Saturday, January 16th, from 10am-1pm. At 5pm, a memorial service will be held at St. Mark's Episcopal Church located at 2272 Collingwood Blvd. A celebration of Greg's life will follow at the church hall. Donations may be made to the Gregory A. Knott Acquisitions Fund of the Blair Museum of Lithophanes: 5403 Elmer Dr, Toledo, OH 43615 or the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum: 400 Portage Ave, Sault Ste. Marie, MI 49783.

Published in Toledo Blade from January 14 to January 15, 2010