Paul Markey:  

Having been a military "brat" that moved quite a few times during my childhood between U.S. and European locations I was a student at Lithonia only for the last year and a half of my high school career - so many of you might not remember me that well. Before Lithonia most of my high school years were spent in Berlin, Germany at the Berlin American High School there. In between Berlin and Lithonia I attended Enterprise High School in Enterprise, Alabama for six months of my junior year. In Berlin I was involved as an intern with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) where I helped out as summer relief with master control and other support services at AFN Radio Berlin and was a jack-of-all-trades at AFN-TV. I played trumpet in the high school concert band and sang in the chorus where I also appeared on stage in various solo roles. I also acted as a lighting designer for the local community theater and ran video for the high school athletics department. Additionally, I rounded all that out with a couple of years on the high school newspaper and yearbook staffs. (It helped that I was really into phoography, and I processed all my own film.) I got the bug for entertainment and television back then when I acted as a voice translation talent in a German movie and worked as an extra in a German TV series. At LHS I joined both the regular band and the jazz band (with Alton Brown LHS '78- who went on to shoot and direct REM's first music video after graduating and later became a Food Network star). I also was heavy into the Science Department - Chemistry and Physics. Some highlights for me were: the photography class; the night-time star gazing using the Science Department's telescope; dee-jaying a school dance (I can't remember which dance, but it was in the cafeteria, and it was warm outside); meeting some really good people who I have since lost track of; watching the filming of the original "Smokey and the Bandit" and working my car into the driving scenes whenever possible; night football games in remote locations (backwoods of Macon anyone?). I found myself in senior year with most of my necessary credits to graduate already behind me, so I took over the A/V department of the library. I found out that I could rent movies in wide-screen if I got the library to acquire an anamorphic lens for the projectors. It was a blast to set up a classroom with movies in wide screen. Some of the not-so-highlights included not being part of the group that grew up together and coming from a different background with diff...Expand for more