Memories from 1973-74

My dear high school classmates and friends!

I fear that this trip down memory lane might be a bit long. Then again, you can always choose to stop reading at any time…

I arrived in Newark Valley in June 1973 together with my still very, very good friend Dion Spencer, who had been a Rotary exchange student in my school in Sweden. This was my first trip to the US and it was a huge adventure for me. Dion took me to all the parties around his own graduation and I met wonderful people and had a great time. Amongst many others I met Linda Lewis who also still is one of my best friends and whom I still have contact with.

I was supposed to go back home at the end of the summer but Lady Fortune smiled at me and after questions and planning I was given the chance to be a senior in NVHS.

During the summer I had stayed in Flemingville with Dion's parents, but before school started I moved in to 77 Main St. with the Schmidts. Frank, Ginny, Brenda and Kira took me in as a real family member from day one. Many times since then and over the last 50 years I have told myself how lucky I have been to have had two such wonderful sets of parents/families. 

Let me right now say that this year, '73-74, in Newark Valley has meant so much for me and has formed me for the rest of my life in a very positive way, and I owe that to the students, the teachers and the people in Newark Valley. From the bottom off my heart: THANK YOU!!!

When I left my school in Sweden after my junior year I was very tired of school and didn’t have any grades to write home about. The spirit and the feeling in and around NVHS changed all that. All of a sudden school was fun and interesting again. 

During the year I did so many things that I hadn’t done before. Basketball was at that time not a very big sport in Sweden so I was a total beginner when Coach Gulick took me under his wings and enrolled me in the varsity team. I really wish I could have contributed more to the team than I did. But when I got back home I kept playing and in March 1978 I became a Swedish Champion with the team in my town; Södertälje Basketboll Klubb. That would never have happened if it wasn’t for NVHS. That was the first championship for the club and since then, up till today, they have been a top team in Sweden.

I was also on the tennis team, but I didn’t keep tennis up when I got home. Probably because I never played very well. I felt most sorry for David Mullen who had to play doubles with me…

Chorus, ”Lil Abner” the musical, stage band, drum major with Lori Tiffany, the barber shop quartet ”The Jewels” with Tom Young, Glen Sherman and Don Cornwell (who I still have contact with) and so many other fun and wonderful things and events and people. 

The year in NV taught me so much about myself and gave me a glimpse of another culture. Not totally different from the Swedish, but still different. I simply grew up. This is something that I would wish for everybody and anybody to experience. Then again, I have heard of many exchange students that have been placed in families that only looked for a baby sitter and a large school that didn’t care for making them a part of the class they went to. It can be a bad experience and I’m so glad that that was not the case for me.

I had so much fun in and around school. So many hours in the music room, playing music or just talking. So many pick up basketball games during breaks in the gym. Greaser day, different projects, lots of people in the bleachers during the ball games, cheerleaders (nothing I had seen in Sweden), all the support around the musical (especially from Jewel Griffith), all the planning and festivities around the graduation etc. All this was new to me.

I think what I am trying to say is that I’m so thankful for the way you all took me in and made me a ”member” of your school/community. Thank you to my class mates, thank you to all the teachers! 

I had a tough time going back to my school back home. Back to a boring school and to teachers that really didn’t care. Ok, maybe not all that bad but a huge difference from NVHS. But I graduated from there too and then the rest of my life began. I will write about that under ”Classmates”.

I want you to know that I return to that year in NVHS often. It was one the absolutely best years of my life and a year that made me a better person.

Thank you!

Erik

The Adults in the Room

1974 Graduation Party 

Mr. Distler made a morning announcement “The entire Senior Class is invited to a Graduation party at the Valentines’ on Woodhaven Drive in Owego”. I was hoping this would finally make me a celebrity in the class but in reality it meant I had a lot of work to do. In preparation for the evening and fortified with Beth Kerr’s mom’s recipe, my mom, dad and I made over 300 hot ham and cheese sandwiches. My mom made gallons of Sangria, we had plenty of sodas and a keg of beer. Nobody was drinking water in the seventies, so the only water represented at the party was our pond. I arranged for a rock band of NVHS graduates, including Dan Brandes and Crit Harmon along with NVHS alumni Don Lyons and Wayne Stoughton, to play on our back porch and Mom arranged for a posse of parents and teachers to chaperone the event.

In the included photo you see a few of the adults huddled in the family room, including Mr. Gray and Mr. Ferguson. Others in the room included Miss Bockes, Mrs. Steinkamp, Mr. Schmidt and a slew of additional parents. However most of the graduates were rockin' and rollin’ outside. Were they afraid of what we had become or exhausted from who we had been? At midnight, the police showed up in response to our music reverberating off the hills to ears many miles away. My Dad brokered a compromise with the officials and the band was allowed to continue to play at reduced decibels.

And in the end… All had a good time!

Here is a picture of Brad Mead and me after our graduation ceremony, out in the courtyard of the school! Brad and I have known each other our entire lives - our dads were amateur radio (ham) radio operators who knew each other from the Oneonta, NY area before Brad and I were born! Brad also gave me my first Jethro Tull album "Thick As A Brick" for my 16th birthday!!