John (Chase) Bizzell:
CLASS OF 1966
Miami Coral Park High SchoolClass of 1966
Miami, FL
John's Story
If you remember me, it would be as John Chase, active in Drama and Journalism, and Chorus. Friends were hard to come by. As soon as some classmates got to know me, they found out I already knew I was gay and most moved on. Never really felt discriminated against, but loosing a friendship that was starting to mean something to me did leave a definite impression. But those that stuck with me anyway were individuals that I think of often. Thank god for teachers like Rosemary Morgan who later became Mrs Ferry (I think), Mrs Dowling, Miss Owens, Coach Parker, and Mr Fernandez who all took the time to let me know they knew I knew and in the long run it wouldn't make any difference. Now almost fifty years later, they were all right.
And a special thank god for Mis Suzie Hankins for flunking me in senior English with a B average to wake me up. She had a real hard time with Principal Newmire over it but stuck to her guns and I ended up taking Summer School in 67 with HER MOTHER as my teach before I could get my diploma. My senior year I kept running away from home because of an insane foster mother and missing more and more of classes. Didn't stick around for graduation and my final report card because ten minutes after the last bell in June 1966, I was on a Greyhound Bus with my first lover who was a male prostitute to live in Sarasota. And the story only gets more bizarre and in its own way interesting from there. I learned early that the goal is the journey.
I ended up in San Francisco for the Summer of Love and stayed there for Forty Ye...Expand for more
ars in the front line of human / gay rights. I was amazed how many alumnae I ran across in those years who ended up on Castro Street, members of the gay brotherhood. By the time I moved to the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs Ca area) five years ago with the man I ended up marrying, I had spent twenty five years in Community Development, a case of being in the right place at the right time as was the situation with most of my life. I worked with San Francisco city agencies, the SF Redevelopment Agency and The Port of San Francisco in transforming the South Waterfront from abandoned warehouses to a vibrant area of five distinct neighborhoods.
I changed my name back to my birth name in 1984 and have spent the last twenty five years trying to merge two identities into one. Like threads in a tapestry where a yellow thread and a blue thread intertwine to form a green thread, my quest has been successful, and gay now means happy, content and resolved, a very spiritual but non religious man, I find myself spending more and more time writing, as a way of remembering all the sums that make me know I am. Coral Park was and is a big part of that journey.
Drop me a line if you remember me and especially if you don't but have a story of that magical first graduating class that was lost in time, trying to find its way with out any upper classmates to set the path. We forged our own with the guidance of some very special teachers and ended up learning lessons that few students had the opportunity to experience. Well at least I did. How about you?
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