David Owens:
CLASS OF 1975
Warsaw High SchoolClass of 1975
Warsaw, IN
Loos Elementary SchoolClass of 2001
Dayton, OH
Richmond High SchoolClass of 1999
Richmond, IN
Valley View High SchoolClass of 1997
Germantown, OH
Oolitic Junior High SchoolClass of 1995
Oolitic, IN
David's Story
Okay, it is classmates.com and we're supposed to reminisce about the halycon days of childhood, puberty, acne, and our stumbling attempts to define ourselves as an individual in a time that seemed to stumble through the civil rights movement, OPEC, and Watergate.
Chapter One: Camelot
I remember Silver Lake's Kindergarden class a lot like Kennedy's Camelot. While the President lived in a rather large White House and traveled in a long black limousine, when I left the farm for school I would board a long yellow bus that would take me to a little white house that served as the kindergarden class. We didn't have Secret Service Agents guarding the front lawn, but we did have milk and cookies. And let's face it, at six, milk and cookies trumps the Secret Service any old day. Mr. Kennedy's daughter Caroline was the darling of the nation and Mrs. Kerlin, our teacher, had her own little darling daughter Cindy in the class.
Okay, off with the analogies. One of my strongest memories of kindergarden was the music parade. Mrs. Kerlin would pick one student to lead a merry marching society of six year olds through the house in a celebration of music. On the day I was to lead, I got sick in class and puked. Someone else was given the role as leader of the band as I lay queezily on a floor mat. I'm not even sure queezily is a word, so forgive me my Vonnegut moment.
Mike Amiss, Kris Doub, Charlene Owens (my second cousin), Cindy Kerlin, and Brent McDonald are classmates I clearly remember. And Tony, can't forget Tony!
Okay, we move out of Camelot and into Warsaw where I was enrolled in McKinley Elementary. The old East Ward School on Scott Street, where McKinley Park now stands. Great name for the park, a very inspiring and original name. Cynicism aside, the school was a large brownstone brick building built in the wayback period of Henry Ford where education first took on the assembly line philosophy of instructing students, a departure from the single room classroom.
McKinley had a lot of history for the Haas side of our family. My grandmother Mary Holbook Biehl (Haas) and her brother Jack Haas (no jokes about his name please, despite the phonemic temptations) both attended East Ward as children AND (caps intended for emphasis) my mother Janice Holbrook and her brother's and sisters, all six ...Expand for more
of them, attended as well. So, it was a move rooted in family tradition. It's one of the reasons I'm still perturbed at the Warsaw Community Schools for failing to name any of the new constructs after McKinley, but the Tiger Community has always been a rather . . .socio-ecomonically segregated community, a very difficult community for the poor Appalachian families to gain acceptance.
(My sixteen year old daughter just got her license, it's the last day of school, trash collection day, and she short changed the turn out of the driveway and ran over our fifty-five gallon garbage can and recycle bins. . and guess who had to clean it?) Focus David, focus.
McKinley had a good core of teachers, solid people who influenced me well, and of course, the other side of the coin, the bad teachers who visibly reflected Warsaw's bigotry against the poorer Appalachian students. The term hillbilly and little Kentucky were used by some teachers, neighbors, and classmates as well. Bigots all.
First grade is that "Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated" moment. The principal came into the classroom and bent down toward Mrs. Joy's ear and whispered. Mrs. Joy's face changed. The principal announced the death of the president, and we went home to our family. While I was too young to make the connection, it was much later in life when I remembered that Mrs. Joy was a transplanted Texan from Dallas, and I have wondered since how much that hurt one of the finest teacher's I've ever known.
Good memories from McKinley. . . discovering the world through reading, comic books at Jeff Penn's house, intramural's at Lincoln and the sixth grade boys who discovered Playboys at the drug store across from Lincoln Elementary, the Monkees, real and McKinley's ersatz Monkees, and kickball.
Good childhood friends from McKinley include the aforementioned Jeff Penn, Jeff Small, Ronnie Schwartz, Mark Baker, Debbie Murphy, Becky Arford, Vicky "Mugger" McGlashon, David Belk and David Bumbaugh, and Bob Conrad.
Pam Dotsan, our fifth grade classmate who left life for the next stage of life beyond the physical much too early, will always be remembered as a sweet, quiet, and shy girl.
Good teachers include Mr. Hoffer, Mr. Hunter, and Mrs. Joy.
More later. What the heck. I've got a life to get back to living. LOL.
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