Casey Verberkmoes:
CLASS OF 1974
Biloxi High SchoolClass of 1974
Biloxi, MS
Jefferson Davis Junior CollegeClass of 1984
Gulfport, MS
Jefferson Davis Junior CollegeClass of 1981
Gulfport, MS
Casey's Story
(Last updated November 11, 2008...The "now" photo of (my hair) was taken by my wife, Amanda, on October 2, 2008 at the approaches to the Arizona-side of the Hoover Dam...the "then" photo is of me while I was the Corpsman of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Sassafras, WLB-401) Hi, it's me, Casey VerBerkmoes, Jr. So, was the movie "Napoleon Dynamite" based on my early-life's story, or what? It just can't be that much of a coincidence that Napoleon's own high school years were so much like my own. The really big difference though between Napoleon's background and my own of course is, well, Napoleon lived in rural America, and I lived in a house on "Keesler Field's" A Street (5243 A Street), and in one of the "White Houses" on Keesler's South Court (5524 South Court). During the year my dad was in Vietnam I also lived in an off-base house on Vaughn Street located just east of Keesler's East Falcon Park (3002 Vaughn Street). There were kids aplenty in those neighborhoods too, especially in Wherry and in the White Houses. And, well, I absolutely made a whole lot of friends while I lived in those Keesler and Biloxi neighborhoods. A great many of my friends I made while I lived on Keesler and in Biloxi were life-long Biloxians. But a great many of my friends were Keesler Field Kids like me, most of whom though stuck around only for a couple or three years or so before they and their families then moved on to other states, countries, or even continents. And as small a base as Keesler was, well, all of Keesler Field's neighborhoods' kids, kids from places like Wherry (a.k.a., "The Brick Houses"), The White Houses, Bay Ridge, Oak Park, Harrison Court, East and West Falcon Parks, and the other clumps and clusters of Keesler's base housing whose official neighborhood names escape me at present, were really all just from one big giant neighborhood. I'd actually dare say that, because I lived at Keesler for so long, I've literally probably been inside 80% of every Keesler home at least once during Keesler's 60's, I played or otherwise hung out with that many kids (girls included) while I lived on Keesler. There were playgrounds in several places in each of those neighboring Keesler neighborhoods too, all being replete with at least on tetherball pole. So a game of teatherball, anyone? Courtesy of my Keesler years, Napoleon Dynamite isn't the only guy out there who can play a tough round of teatherball, afterall. Anyway, even though I am not a native of Biloxi, I can honestly say that I, a "Keesler Field Kid", am actually FROM Biloxi almost like life-long Biloxians are, because I'm a Keesler Field Kid *** who never moved away from Keesler *** during his public school years. Yep, I went 1st through 12th grade in the Biloxi School System, an extreme rarity for any Keesler Field Kid to have ever done, so I rather consider myself to be a Biloxian too. Or, perhaps better put, while my Air Force-brat, Keesler-brat contemporaries traveled the world-over, and then over again, with their moms and dads, going to multiples of schools and school systems in the process, sometimes Biloxi's schools more than once, I was instead receiving my own excellent education at Biloxi Municipal Separate School System's Jefferson Davis Elementary School (Mrs. Fornier, first-grade; Mrs. Ramsey, second-grade), Gorenflo Elementary School (Mrs. Drummond, third-grade (I was in Mrs. Drummond's classroom the day Kennedy was assisinated); Mrs. Yelverton, fourth-grade; Mrs. Bullock, fifth-grade; Miss Nixon, sixth-grade), Michel Jr. High School (Mrs. Gulledge; Coach Williams; Coach Dagget; Coach Bodron ("Jackleg!"), Mrs. Lucy Denton; Principle Mr. "Bulldog" Bullock ("Go sit in the snake-pit while I ponder how many licks I'm going to treat you to today."), Fernwood Jr. High School (Choir Director Mrs. Miller, Principal Mr. T.J. Smith (I've run into Mr. T.J. Smith alot in my life, to include receiving a dozen or more licks from him during my Fernwood years), back to Michel Jr. High School (same as before, with plenty of time spent by me in Michel's "snake-pit", but as a 9th-grader), and Biloxi High School (Miss Hilda Petty/Mrs. Hilda Barnes, the Choir Director; Mr. Brian Quave, Government Teacher; Mrs. Della McCaughn, Marine Sciences; Mrs. Duckworth, Biology; and Mr. T.J. Smith (again!!!...but this time, no licks...he delegated that duty out)) (*I've only listed my most-memorable Biloxi teachers, but I genuinely really liked them all, all of my Biloxi School System teachers and staffers...they were generally mostly kind to me, considering the severity of my attention deficit disorder and all). (Sidenote: I actually graduated from Biloxi High School rather later than I should ever have, in January of 1975, due to having had to make up a few (lots!!!) credits related to my own extensive juvenile history of not doing homework, skipping school to go surf in Florida, skipping school to go fishing, skipping school to go crabbing, skipping school to go driving, etc., but I hope my class of 1974 Biloxi High School classmates will consider me to be a fellow-1974 graduate anyway...I do have a Biloxi High School Diploma, which was signed by T.J. Smith (albeit it is dated January of 1975...my GPA upon graduation from Biloxi High School was actually a respectible 3.2 after I replaced all of those horrible F's with hard-earned A's courtesy of summer school or night school coursework) So I am a Biloxian. Oh, plus I was IN "The Biloxians", Biloxi High School's Concert Choir, my sophomore, junior, and senior years, so I am, I think, a Biloxian-squared? Partly because of my propensity for working after school for a minimum-wage paycheck from age 15-onwards, like at Hugo's Pizza on West Division Street at Porter Avenue as a busboy/pizza cook, or at Craft's Gulf gas station located at the base of Biloxi's Lighthouse, I wasn't very active in Biloxi High School's extracurricular pursuits (that is if you consider my having perpetually sought out girls to spend time with wherever and whenever possible back then as NOT having been a defacto extracurricular activity for me (one of the main reasons I found myself working after school so much back then in the first place was just so that I could make money for spending towards having a good time while out on dates...working for money met my own definition of extracurricular anyway, I think). But I was VERY active with Keesler's Protestant Youth of the Chapel (I met a lot of girls there at Keesler's Chapel 3, all of them the sweetest of the sweet), the Keesler Teen Club (girls, girls, girls!...and later, dates, dates, dates!), and Keesler's Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Explorer organizatons (friends, friends, friends!). In June of 1975, five months after I graduated from Biloxi High, I joined the United States Coast Guard, exiting from active-duty exactly four years later as a fairly-seasoned Hospital Corpsman Second Class (E-5) (I served as an Independent Duty and Medivac Hospital Corpsman while on active-duty with the Coast Guard, flying as an Aircrewman in HH-52A Seaguard helicopters out of Coast Guard Air Station Cape May, New Jersey, and in HH-3F Pelican helicopters out of Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans, while also serving afloat for awhile as an independent-duty Hospital Corpsman aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Sassafras (WLB-401), an ocean-going buoy-tender out of Cape May, New Jersey). In the summer of 1979, the very same summer I left active-duty with the Coast Guard, my father moved back to Biloxi right after he retired from his final Air Force job, which had been at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And so I moved back to Biloxi then when my dad and mom did too, to use Biloxi as my base of operations, so to speak, regarding my plan to go to college from there on the Vietnam-era G.I. Bill. I was a member of the Coast Guard Reserve Unit in Gulfport between the autumn of 1979 through until I decided to leave the Coast Guard behind forever in October of 1983 (while I was in the Coast Guard Reserve I became promoted one more time to Hospital Corpsman First Class (E-6)). My dad, Casey VerBerkmoes (I'm Casey VerBerkmoes, Jr.), upon his retirement from the Air Force in 1979, started his new career in the fall of 1979 working as a junior high school math and science teacher at Gulfport Central Junior High (my dad later found his own best niche as an instructor of Compute...Expand for more
r Science at U.S.M. Gulf Park, from which he is now retired from too). Between September, 1979, and May, 1984, I attended Jefferson Davis Junior College in Gulfport, where I eventually earned first a General Associate Degree (A.A., 1981), and later an Associate Degree of Applied Science ((1984, for Registered Nursing) (can you believe it, Mr. T.J. Smith, our former BHS and Fernwood Principal, was the Financial Resources Officer there at J.D. then...T.J. always got me the best education grants too...what a great guy!). While I went to Jefferson Davis Junior College, a.k.a. "Jaydee", I worked as a part-time Coast Guard Reservist mostly in the Keesler Medical Center's Emergency Department. During that time I also worked part-time for Amserv, Biloxi's publicly-supported ambulance service then, as an Emergency Medical Technician - Ambulance under the outstanding tutelege of Steve Delahousey, R.N., Mobile Intensive Care Nurse-extrordinaire (Steve Delahousey was, for awhile, also Harrison County's elected Coroner...Steve Delahousey is famous especially in Biloxi anyway). And I also worked at the Bicycle Centre at the corners of Irish Hill Drive and Porter Avenue in Biloxi, where I assembled and helped to sell some of the last Schwinns made in Chicago. And I also worked as a Nursing Assistant for awhile on a Medical Ward at Gulfport Memorial Hospital, on the night shift. After I was able to FINALLY earn my Registered Nurse credentials during the summer of 1984, courtesy of Jefferson Davis Junior College's Fantastic Opportunities Department almost exactly ten years to the day after the graduation of Biloxi High's Class of 1974, my first R.N. job became working as the sole Registered Nurse on duty on the night shift at Bay St. Louis, Mississippi's Hancock General Hospital's Emergency Department, where I worked from May of 1984 through to July of 1986 (Mr. T.J. Smith was the South Mississippi American Red Cross' Blood Bank blood-product transporter then...Mr. T.J. Smith personally delivered a lot of blood products to us then at Hancock General Hospital at times like around two in the morning...what a small world, seeing my old BHS principal so often in my life up to then...and the blood he brought to us at H.G.H. helped to save a lot of lives, I can absolutely attest to that...what a swell guy Mr. T.J. Smith was (and hopefully still is!)). In the summer of 1986 I moved to 518 Dauphine Street in the near very heart of the New Orleans French Quarter (or as the natives called the place, "Da Qwawtiz"), which was where I lived while I worked in the Emergency Department of Charity Hospital at New Orleans (1986-1989...for about a year during this time I was the Nursing Supervisor ("Head Nurse") of Charity Hospital's "Accident Room" (Trauma Center) (for those who may not have known this, sadly Hurricane Katrina's flooding of New Orleans caused the apparent complete and permanent closure of Charity Hospital at New Orleans, but "The Big Charity" might still become rebuilt yet, some say))). After having worked at Charity Hospital in New Orleans for just shy of three full years, in 1989 I returned to Biloxi where I then worked for about six months at the Biloxi Regional Medical Center in its Post-Anesthesia Care Unit ("Recovery Room"), where I also doubled as a Special-Procedures Nurse. It was during this time, in September of 1989, when I also was a performing castmember in the play "Hair", which was put on by Ocean Springs' Walter Anderson Players at Biloxi's Saenger Theater (yes, I can say I was actually once a castmember in the rock-musical, "Hair", albeit without nudity). Anyway, before long after returning to Biloxi I found myself yearning to get back to Emergency Department nursing again, so I left Biloxi Regional Medical Center in October of 1989 to take a job as a "Travel Nurse" in the Emergency Department of Boswell Memorial Hospital located in Sun City, Arizona, which is in the Phoenix, Arizona region. And I've been living in Phoenix ever since (the winters here are like I imagine they'd be in paradise...but it sure does get hellishly sizzling-hot here in the summer!). These days I continue to ply my craft as a Registered Nurse here in Phoenix. And, praise God, these days I'm married to another former Keesler Field Kid, my soulmate, Amanda, who I finally formally met in 2001 (Amanda graduated from High School in San Antonio, Texas in 1976, but she went to Biloxi's Jefferson Davis Elementary School from 1963 through to 1967, which was during the time she lived in Keesler's Bay Ridge neighborhood, on Fechet Drive...Amanda and I don't have any specific recollection of each other from back then, but we both used to go to the Keesler Teen Club regularly at the same time for awhile, so we think we probably danced together there while being chaperoned by the Keesler Teen Club's primary role-model and surrogate mom-in-chief, the most-lovely Mrs. Jewell Baldwin (the mother of Mark and Janice Baldwin)...I undoubtedly danced with Amanda at Keesler's Teen Club on several occasions, is my theory...I mean, I was a dancin' fool there in those days...I would dance every dance at the Keesler Teen Club there some Friday nights (the twist, the swim, the jerk, the pony, and the watusi, were some of the dances I learned there at the Keesler Teen Club), usually courtesy of the fact that the girls there who wanted to dance far outnumbered the guys who were available for dancing with...so I am positive that I most-probably danced with Amanda way back when she hung out there at the Keesler Teen Club at the same time I did, when she was 10 and I was 12...Amanda thinks the same thing too). I do not have any children, but Amanda has one child, a son. My little sister, Lisa, lives in Tucson, Arizona. And my other little sister, Holly, lives in Warner-Robins, Georgia. My parents still live in Biloxi, in a house that is located directly across the street from the very Jefferson Davis Elementary classrooms Amanda and I attended 1st grade in. Amanda currently works for a conservative Phoenix law firm. My own personal regrets are especially numerous, and are generally painful to become recalled by me. But had I done something differently in regards to all of those various regrets I've chalked-up for myself during my life, maybe anything differently, well, then I might not have ever met the love of my life, my wife and my soulmate, Amanda. My hobbies include my seemingly perpetually working on one or more of my numerous old beater-vehicles (synonym: jalopies), vehicles like my 1968 Volkswagen camper, my 1966 Volkswagen camper, my 1962 Volkswagen camper, my original-condition 1962 Ford F350 Class C motorhome (in the world of collectible RV's, it is among the rarest of the rare), or my 1972 Ford Galaxie (this Galaxie, the newest car I've ever owned in my life, my daily-driver, has been in my family since 1978...it was this very car that got me through registered nursing school and beyond...it's my most-favorite of all of my old beaters...I actually consider it to be family, and not merely a car...her name is "The Old Gal", as in old Galaxie). And I like to mechanically restore Chicago-made Schwinn coaster-brake bicycles (bicycles don't rust here in Phoenix, especially bullet-proof American-made Schwinns, but the summer sun here sure can quickly fade an old Schwinn's paint's glory). And I really enjoy exploring and camping here in Arizona (during summer here, I regularly camp at the Grand Canyon). My and Amanda's home is in Phoenix's "historic" F.Q. Story neighborhood (wiki it). I anticipate retirement coming to me around the year 2020 at about age 65 (currently I really like what I do, so why stop?). My hair is long, but it has apparently stopped growing longer (not so very long ago my hair was almost down to my belt in the back, but now it is significantly shorter than that and is apparently now creeping the other way...L'chai-im!). My hair is still relatively thick though (it still neatly parts in the middle all the way back to my still-present cowlick), and it's still mostly blonde (probably better said, the intermittances of the gray in it accentuates the remaining blonde in it). God bless the weak, the meek, the mild, and the innocent first. And God bless Biloxi High School's Class of 1974. Serving God through Jesus Christ, our saviour, since at least 1975, Casey VerBerkmoes, Jr., sends...
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