| 
| Joanie and Jeanie were among the first headliners. Click
on their names to see their on-line memory pages. I also used their photos to experiment with an
image fader
script. |
| 
| Although I used their color photos, Denise and Joanne were
paired for their nicknames in high school, Frick and Frack. |
|
 |
Kate and Rob are going to be helping us with the
Picnic on Saturday afternoon. I'm also going to have to remember to
call them by their 'new' names. We always knew them as 'Kati' and
'Doc' in high school. |
|
 |
Rosann and Rick really wanted to come to the reunion, but
had a scheduling problem with their family vacation. I think this
problem could be solved with a biz jet that seats 6 people and a dog so we
could get them from the beach to the reunion on Saturday.
Update: It looks like we'll see both of them at the reunion!
|
|
 |
Diane and Joe are two of the people who have biographical information
in our biographies section. Both of them are having
a little scheduling difficulty and would really like to make it to the reunion. Looks
like another biz jet may be in order. Is there anyone not using the company jet that can afford
to spare one for them? Joe is in CA and Diane is in western PA, which is 'on the way' ;-).
Update: Diane will be making it to the reunion!
|
|
 |
Chuck and Mike are two of our hard-working and dedicated
reunion committee planning members. They also share the same
profession. Can you guess what it is?
A: They are corrections officers.
|
|
 |
Mary Pappas was responsible for putting together our 11th
year reunion in 1988 and Bee Harris was our senior class
president. I understand that Bee sacrificed her yearbook to make up
the 1988 memory book. They will both
be attending this reunion. |
|
 |
Ann Marie Tribendis and Kathleen
Blaum were both members of our field hockey team and both have entries in
the Biographies section. |
|
 |
Jack Kamus and Marisue Scharf were the first couple from our
class to get married. They are one of 4 couples that are
married from our class. Four married couples in a single class of
174 students...that's got to be come kind of school record! Can you
name them? |
|
 |
Slim Crofchick and Mary Ann Shampack are yet another married couple from our class.
They are one of 4 couples that are
married from our class. Four married couples in a single class of
174 students...that's got to be come kind of school record! I've only got one more set to go! |
|
|
I guess we can conclude 'married couples' week with Sandy and
Denise Scalzo. These two have known
each other since they attended grade school at Sacred Heart, which makes them the original married couple from our class.
Denise lived about a block from Sandy which virtually makes her the
'girl next door.' That's just so romantic
 ! |
|
 |
Two very funny guys, Rick Leandri and John Nardone |
|
 |
Rose Vnukowski and Jay Tobias are headlining this week. Jay sent me this
adorable photo of the 1975
sophomore party which includes
Vince Dennis, Marge Podskotch, Mary Therese Koval, and Jay. |
|
 |
John Parulski and Blaise Koval were two of my good friends from grade school, but after
we got to
BOR,
we never had any classes together so I didn't see too much of them after that.
My recollections from grade school were that both of them had very unique talents.
John's talents were in the areas of invention and building things. Does anyone remember
the miniature Kiss animatronic display he designed complete with spitting of fire and blood, just
like the real Kiss?
Blaise was very artistic and had built a complete reproduction of
Mr. Roger's Neighborhood when he was around 10 years old. This was before the days of VCR
tape and so he memorized the neighborhood layout and colors from the quick pan and scan that
took place at the beginning of the show. It was absolutely stunning. I haven't heard from either of them about the
reunion, but it would be great to see them again.
|
|
 |
Here we have Dave Serhan and Paul McAndrew. Paul sent in some nice pictures of himself and his family
which I have in a on-line memory page.
I
didn't really know Dave Serhan until college where we were in a lot of the same
engineering classes at Penn State's Lehman campus. Dave gave me a ride in a small airplane
at
Forty Fort airport and shares responsibility for my aviation
addiction. Later, we were
roommates at Penn State's main campus in State College.
Dave flies
supersonic F14 fighter jets. I visited him many years ago at Mirimar
in San Diego, home of the Top Gun school, where he teaches Tom Cruise
wannabees how it's done. He gave me a nice tour of
the base. I intercepted one of his emails today trying to sneak out
of the reunion and am going to try to convince him that he should attend.
His beautiful wife, Anita, is planning her high school reunion so I would expect
her to take an equally dim view of someone trying to wiggle out of a 25-year
reunion. When you have the keys to a ramp full of fighter jets to fly to
your reunion, there's really no excuse not to attend. ;
|
|
 |
The headliners are Debbie Cannon and Judy Steinkirchner.
The theme for these headliners is 'Testarossa' which is Italian for redhead. What are the
odds of having 3 ravishing redheads who all hung out together in a single
class? The other redhead I'm referring to is Mary
Pappas who was featured in a previous headline for recognition of the
spectacular job she did on the 11th reunion. |
|
 |
Here we have Bob Wanat and Joe Niznik. The theme for these headliners is
'friends in high places'. Dr. Wanat was responsible for getting me
my first 'real' job as a dishwasher at Elby's Big Boy. It was a
character building experience. Joe got me a job at the Robo car wash
in Larksville which was very nice. It was one of those jobs that had
a limited work schedule (I had previously worked at Perkins Restaurant
which never closed) and I learned a little bit about how to fix
complicated mechanical equipment at the car wash. If you look at the
guestbook, you'll notice Joe quotes from Todd Rundgren's song, Leroy boy,
(the song is We Gotta Get You a Woman). Pretty funny, Joe!
|
|
 |
Here are Rich Hometchko and Diane Bixby. The theme for these headliners is
'six degrees of Kevin Bacon'
(which is related to the concept of six
degrees of separation). Arlene had asked me to put out a
blast-o-gram to find Richard Hometchko but before I did, I decided that
the name 'hometchko' was unique enough that Google would find him if he
had any web presence at all. Sure enough, I found this
link, which hit pay dirt.
I sold Diane's dad an airplane a few years ago. I
forgot about this until Doc accused me of having two (or more!) airplanes
in the weblog. I still see Warren
Bixby on occasion when I visit the Forty Fort airport and I miss the
little Colt, which has subsequently gone on to
search for yet greener pastures.
|
|
 |
Today we have Laura Canfield and Patrick Salley, who was her date for one of the
high school proms. Laura put her bio in the biographies
section today and sent me these very
nice pictures that bring back some memories. If anyone else wants to
send me some photos, I'd be happy to put them on the web page.
|
|
 |
Here we have Michele Chakon Garen and Theresa Walsh, both of
whom submitted information recently to the biographies
section. They are both Registered Nurses. I haven't done a
count lately, but it seems like we have a lot of health care professionals
in our graduating class. We also seem to have a lot of people
in computer/technical/scientific fields. Perhaps it just looks that
way since there's a technical bias when collecting information via the
Internet.
|
|
 |
Today we have Lee Devlin and Joe
Petrasek. I figured I'd put my picture as a headliner in case I be
accused of taking it too easy on myself and somehow get singled out for
retribution.
Joe and I have been
exchanging email lately because our lives have some kind of strange
parallelism to them that started before either of us were born.
- Our
fathers grew up in the same town and our uncles hung out together.
- Our fathers worked at the same place.
- We spent 12 years in the same
Catholic schools.
- We liked to hunt and played
with BB guns as kids
We lost touch with each other after high school, but the coincidences
continued. For example:
- We both ride Harleys.
- We both studied engineering with a manufacturing emphasis.
- Our wives grew up in different towns and went to different
schools, but knew each other before we knew either of them.
- Our
fathers-in-law worked together.
- Our favorite rock group is Rush.
- We both like the Goo Goo Dolls and that's Terri's favorite group. This
Saturday, Terri and I will be at a Rush concert and Joe will be at a Goo Goo Dolls concert at exactly the same
time. Joe has seen the Rush concert we are about to attend twice
this summer.
|
| 
| Here we have Fred Merrill and Sebrina Baynes.
Fred submitted one of the most extensive biographies I've had the
pleasure to read for his memory page along
with some beautiful family photos but unfortunately will not be able to
join us for the reunion this time.
Sebrina also submitted her biography and is
planning on attending the reunion.
|
| 
| Ralph Marsh and Karen Fertal Cornell were among the
first from our class to submit their biographies.
Ralph was 'phat'
more than 25 years before anyone ever knew it was cool to be phat! 
Kids use phat today to describe something that is 'Pretty Hot and
Tempting', so if someone calls you phat, you should thank them for the
compliment. Karen owns and manages a place called Pikes Creek Park
which is a Family Style restaurant ,18 hole mini-golf course,1/4 mile
clover leaf go- cart track and arcades. They are open 7 days a week from
7am -10 pm and are on Route 118 in Hunlock's Creek. So if you are
looking for something to do with the kids while you're visiting the
valley, check it out.
|
| 
| Today we have Helen Savinski Neylon and Dorothy Semanek
Artim both of whom are frequent contributors to our Weblog. Helen
has an email address that starts with 'HOTC39' which all of us thought was
a pretty racy name for someone with a fine Catholic upbringing...until we
found out that it stood for 'Helen of the Church'. Both Helen
and Dorothy are bonafide 'church ladies' in that they work for their
respective churches. Rose Vnukowski
Garrity is also a church lady.
|
| 
| Finally, drum roll please, we have Karen Lanczak Leonardi
and Arlene Galanda Kuharchik, the heroes of the reunion! I
told Karen I wouldn't post her picture up in the headliner area, but I
figured it was OK now since the reunion is over and no one is checking in
any more :-). Besides, after Karen took my little joke on
myself and turned it into a full-fledged awards ceremony, I thought it
would be fitting. I was surprised Karen didn't book Mr. Rogers
himself to present my awards. To make a short
story shorter, I had been told by a few people that I 'reminded' them
of Mr. Rogers. I don't know if this is because of my appearance or
manner of speaking, or just because kids like me (or maybe it's my cool
toys?) but I thought it was pretty funny.
Arlene has great organizational skills and took on the tough job of
keeping track of who was coming to the reunion and handling the
money. She also did a lot of the early communication including
setting up the reunion on Classmates.com, and sending out periodic
email. I later assumed the email role since it was something I was
able to do from out in Colorado. But she had the hard part, and
continues to work on getting all the finances straightened out for those
who cancelled early enough to require refunds.
Many thanks to both of them!
|
| 
| Our headliners this week are Donna Reese and Sandy Mahalick.
These two were on our list of missing persons for quite some time and were
'discovered' a few days before the reunion. They live somewhere near
Downingtown just a few minutes from each other. I was exchanging email
between them just a day before the reunion. Thanks to Karen Fertal and
a friend of theirs who was helping them with the Internet so they could
get the details of the reunion plans so
they could make it.
|
| 
| Our headliners this week are John Jancuska and Tim Wallo. The
thing that both of these handsome guys have in common is that they both
attended the reunion and I don't have valid email addresses for either of
them. Actually, they have more in common than that. They live
south of the Mason-Dixon line and both are involved in the construction
industry. If anyone has their email addresses, please send them to me!
|
| 
| September 25, 2002-October 5, 2002
Our headliners this week are Sue Klecha McDonnell and Kevin Borton.
Sue is definitely a 'babe' and she lives in Rhode Island.
It's no wonder that her email address
begins with 'ribabe'.
Kevin Borton drove back and forth from Philly twice in a single day to
make it to the reunion and that's what makes him such a star.
|
| 
| October 5, 2002-November 3rd, 2002
Our headliners are Tom Crossin and Brian Judge. Tom's
house is fast becoming a contender for the next reunion venue.
Brian Judge helped out with the last reunion and we saw him at most of the
reunion events with his beautiful wife, Cathy. I will call these
headliners, 'one degree of separation', does anyone know why?
|
| 
| November 3, 2002-November 26, 2002
Our headliners now are John 'Goose' Usefara
and Bernie Solack.
I met up with these guys recently at Sid's on
Slocum Street and we spent the night reminiscing. Also present were
Bernie Derby and Dave Barilla, who, although not fellow class members
themselves, seemed to know most of the people from our class.
|
| 
| November 26, 2002-December 13, 2002
Headliners Janine Carey and Sharon Popson.
Janine won the award for having the youngest child (8 month old boy) and Sharon for arriving last at the
reunion.
|
| 
| December 13, 2002- December 30, 2002
Headliners Mike Kinney and Diane Sebolka.
|
| 
| December 30, 2002- February 1, 2003
Headliners Pier Carros and Jolayne Kalac Pinchak.
|
| 
| February 1, 2003 - April 7, 2003
Headliners Rob Crawford and Rich Crawford.
|
| 
| April 7, 2003 - June 2, 2003
Headliners Cathy Anderko and Theresa Zuba.
|
| 
| June 2, 2003 - July 4, 2003
Headliners Ann Marie Novak and Susan Zera.
|
| 
| June 2, 2003 - July 4, 2003
Headliners Frank Araya and Christine Zambito Galanda.
|
