Richard Jorgensen:  

A distant cousin of mine once wrote: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" This cousin was Elizabeth Barrett Browning and from her I fear I have found a love for writing early which continues today. Being a child of middle class America, I attended Westshore School, Wilson Junior High and eventually four years at Plant. No, I did not fail, but the product of the only freshman class in those days. My four years at Plant left lasting friendships as I was not a football great like my best friend Bobby Burke or an accomplished businessman like another friend Sam Fonte but an ordinary young man living an extraordinary life. Angela Bryant honored me by being my date for the 1954 Turkey Day Game and later the Pantherilla Dance. She was chosen as 'Class Most Sincere' and friends, I promise, she was just that, a lovely person and she is sorely missed now. I go back to Ms. Browning's words, "Let me count the ways", for they are many. How Coach Lorenzo strived to make men out of us boys, even though we weighed less than a kilo of guts and fortitude, yet it took him but a few years to produce a championship team. That scrappy Mrs. Jimenez who threatened to jump from the first floor window of her classroom if we bungling students could not conjugate the verb of choice in Spanish. For those who may have forgotten, she did! Leaving Plant to take on the task of defender of our country and wearing the uniform of the United States Navy, along with Bobby Burke, David Bozeman and Charles Townsend of our ranks was at first a somewhat formable task. But the lessons we learned at Plant carried us through and led to various military adventures, for which each of us have tales to tell. R. A. Stroud, why didn't I take the summer job your Dad offered with the Gulf Oil bunch and not go off to foreign wars, life perhaps would have been much simpler? Such is life! After the military, I found a bride, a Pantherette herself and graduate of the class of 1959. The belle whom I married was Sandra Rawlings and she and I were honored to bear three children, two daughters and a son, which themselves have led to three lovely grand daughters, one a second generation BullDawg. One Daughter went on to represent Tallahassee in the Miss Florida USA contest. Ah...Expand for more