Ron Gurr:  

WARNING: I maxed out to the 20K characters so go brew some tea.. Thanks for 529 visits and those who re-read this twice. Numbers decrease as some quit the website. I owe my Padua experience to Chuck Priefer who invited me to attend the school. In "holiness and learning," there were times we didn't think so. Many of us did learn a great deal, college prep was successfully received, and we were readied by the Frannies to go onto much bigger challenges for less than $400/yr. It was strict, but here are some of my memories of the "unusual" events. I parked in the middle of the F in the "script" at 7:45 a.m. on prom day, May 8, 1970. Benny walked over and told me I couldn't park there. So I moved not knowing what was going on. Saw Ben at the 50th and told him what I remembered. 'Still didn't come up with anything. Kent State shootings were just four days old. We were good, respectable guys, but LACKED SOMETHING to be remembered by. We even asked permission to take the morning of the 70th day in 1970 to go to Perkins Pancake House. Class of '69 started this brief tradition, didn't ask permission and all of them were suspended. Principal, Fr. Dan, called over fifty names on the intercom that morning. Same thing happened with license plates involved with the script. May 8, 1970 went into Padua infamy. One classmate arrived late and parked at the tail of the "U." He was suspended. When his ma told his dad, he went to the garage and took the wires out of his car. Later that night, his girl broke up with him. He described it as being the worst day of his life! Cause he was late? Regarding the class of '69, on their last day at Padua they formed a caravan around the school. Some cars had dry ice on the hoods. Out our class window we saw '69's Tony Varone jumping from car to car "in clouds" wearing a German war helmet. Today, the press would have had a bird over this, but no one cared what he wore. I also want to offer a brief note to John Simonetti of '69. John, you were an "operator" who visited Padua after your graduation to tell future Buckeyes to choose North Campus. A few of us took your advice. You also invited me to participate on your Championship Ohio State intramural teams, Simo-Sluggers and Parma White Sox. I remember everything from your junior-year intramural basketball team (and its logo poster) in '68 to the Pie-eating Contest where you taunted the late Coach Dick Schott and you were removed from the gym. 'Good that we were then an all-boys school. The BEST was later at OSU when you ran half-way across the field to slap a football opponent in the face while the rest of us were in the huddle (looking at each other when one guy chirped, "What in the hell is Simo doing?"). And to think we, all Padua alums, played in The Ohio State University 1972 Football Intramural Championship and WON it in Ohio Stadium. 'Course, I must mention our own senior-year intramural football game against Faculty. I received a vicious and flagrant clip from behind late on the first play from Mr. Hazer as Mr. Kohuth ran for a long TD. On the next play who is opposite me but Mr. Hazer. He is gloating. I am a lineman in a set-down position and I feel sticky mud on the edge of my fingers. I twirled around some and proceeded to stuff Hazer's nose with it as soon as we made contact. He began snorting and jumping up and down like a billy-goat trying to clear his sinuses. It was a surgical jam! He tried to "mud" me on the third play, but failed miserably. Then, I was taken out of the game. Banished! Perhaps that was a good thing. Nothing was ever said afterward. Speaking of football, I remember seeing Lois B., a tiny blond girl from Nazareth watching Padua's JV scrimmage game around Labor Day before freshman year started. She was one of the prettiest young ladies I had ever seen. I knew then I would really enjoy high school and meet some Nazareth girls (see page 70 in our yearbook). . As for great leaders, I would pick '68's Sam Hollo who was an exemplary Padua QB. I regret not having continued football after sophomore year. I got to play in a varsity game for three plays as a freshman. We played St Stan's and a player swore at me in Polish with a word my grandma never used. She gasped when I shared it with her and refused to tell me what it meant! I have read The Paduan cover to cover for years. Editors never noted our main fundraiser in either the fall of '66 or '67, "Shoot The Moon Sweepstakes." Imagine going door to door TODAY selling those tickets. There was much more innocence and respect in those days. Today this would stigmatize the school. People, like my mom, bought the tickets IN WONDERMENT. Padua hosted concerts for both Smokey Robinson and The Box Tops in 1969. They refused to accept mine at the door for the second of the two. There were some great priests there like Vice Principle, Fr. Clarence. He was kind enough to take me to Parma Hospital when I discovered I had blood poisoning from a football injury during seventh period Geometry. There was also Fr. Jim Lyke who taught Theology. He became the Archbishop of Atlanta in the early nineties. He passed away after only a couple of years into that assignment. I often went to mass during third-period Study Hall where Fr. Edgar, another kind priest old enough to be the thirteenth apostle at the Last Supper, heard confessions. Regular attendees wrongfully discussed their penance which was always five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys. This became common knowledge. So a couple guys tried to bend this by confessing some "whoppers" (which was DOUBLY wrong) to see if Edgar would change it. He didn't. Having captained the golf team in '69 and '70, we once went out to the parking lot after seventh period before a match at Ironwood. We were facing the house properties that led to the road down the back hill. I was a junior and crazy senior, the late Rich Ekey, challenged us to tee it up off the blacktop. I took out my driver and hit a low "streamer" at the treeline aside the edge of what is now the football field. But to my surprise, the late Coach Ray Verba had just turned the corner in his yellow Impala convertible with the top down. He was driving right at us! My golf ball barely cleared his windshield. And when I saw him leaning back, eyeing the ball as it went over, there I was stuck in the end of my golf-swing. He gave me a look, but had nothing to say. During senior year, junior Joe Skupski and I both drove the first green at Ironwood with wood clubs, the dogleg with a tree in the middle that faced Mt. St. Augustine Convent two miles away. We drove it over the 40' tree with a 20MPH trailing wind and started off our matches rimming out eagle putts on a 450yard par 4. Classmate Bob Stacko once launched a huge slice into the cow pasture on that hole and let out a burst, a word that he himself invented - "You freakin' SKAV!" (I may have toned this a bit.) St. Edwards coach, Brother Isaac (aka "The Dome"), proceeded to write down his clipboard from top to bottom before the tip of his pencil broke. Later, at the end of another St. Edward's match my opponent, Fitzwilliams, pulled a "Crown'd Conference move" and threw his putter at the Brother knocking off his Ben Hogan hat to reveal The Dome. Fitzy lost it after a tough round. But I would NEVER think to sling a club at a Brother or a coach. Maybe it had to do with Faculty referring to us as "gentlemen." (The Hazer incident, above, was different. It BECKONED a response. I also used mud.) Oh, and our Music Class teacher, Miss Bruski, was a cutie until she married Fr. Jim Bruel who taught Algebra II. Theology teacher, Fr. Cullen, left to marry after our freshman year. We weren't surprised since some of our mothers felt he looked like a blond-haired Paul Newman. But years later, I choked to hear that Principal, Fr. Dan O'Connell, left to marry in his seventies. Many of us will recall Fr. Victorian's Library and his famous window. Fr. V would say to us, "C'mon, lets go, stop talking or I'll tell your mother." A couple of our guys tied REAL fruit from their lunches onto his house plants turning portion of his library into "an orchard." This caused him to be LESS TRUSTING of our class. In sophomore year, I recall the late Fr. Justin driving ten of us on a Friday night in "The Checker Wagon" to Chanel for an academic event. On the way home we hit the McDonalds on Snow for fish sandwiches. I don't know what was in them, but from Byzantine HS to Padua there occurred some five "Chinese Fire-Drills." And who will forget how 'Justin taught us to dance in sophomore Music Class to "My Girl." It was in his junior year Theology class that he brought in a lawyer, Jack Masko, who taught us about goal-setting, visualization and positive thinking. He gave us a book by surgeon Maxwell Maltz called Psycho Cybernetics. He also spoke of how he thought he loved his wife when he first married her. He indicated he loved her so much more now. I didn't know THAT was possible! I was blessed to discover this later in my own marriage. I often mention to my congregations that I was on Cloud IX when I married my wife, but I am now on Cloud MMMM. (And I was "crush-worthy.") With God's blessing, marital love does get better and would be confirmed with the late classmate Stan Lipiec's famous saying, "This is true." I was pained to learn of Stan's passing in 2013. He was a good guy and a great person to share a laugh with. In the fall of junior year, Micky Cepik and I went back to school one evening for a committee meeting. It was the day before Halloween. We turned the radio on and heard an announcer screaming about a catastrophe in New Jersey. It was actually a rebroadcast of "War Of The Worlds" from 1938 with Orson Wells. We didn't know this, so once we got to the ...Expand for more