Thomas Bender:
CLASS OF 1975
Center High SchoolClass of 1975
Kansas city, MO
Thomas's Story
Life
Married and working at Honeywell (the old Bendix plant down the hill from Center) for 27 plus years. Vicki and I got married the week I went to work. We have 3 young adults; Bill, Laura and Jackie. Living in Lee's Summit since 1984. Enjoy riding my bike, watching and going to any kind of racing (NASCAR, NHRA, Kansas speedway, Lakeside speedway, sports cars, car shows), watching football, TV, building model cars & trains. Some day I'll get a full size toy car!
School
Class of '74 - Claudia Flathman
Class of '75 - several (don't want to make anyone jealous!)
Mrs. Weintroub - she inspired me & she was one of my biggest crushes!
Mr. Wilcoxen & Mrs. Meachum - they inspired me to be an Engineer.
I think it would be cool to go back for a week, especially during football or basketball season.
All the crazy skits at assemblies in the gym. Hanging out at the pizza places or Dairy Queen after the games. Watching the '76 BBall team win state at Mizzou.
I see several of our classmates everyday at Honeywell.
I saw Mr. Musgrave (history) this fall in a bookstore.
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College
Went to University of Missouri-Rolla in the fall of 1975, along with several other Center Class of 75 classmates. Graduated as Mechanical Engineer in May 1980.
I met my wife Vicki there in the fall of 1978, just minutes after her parents left her first day. We got married in May 1980. She graduated from KU (go Jayhawks).
What can I say about UMR: the food sucked (the mashed potatos made great paste and spackling compound to fix the plaster in our dorm); there weren't many women there, but I married a great one from there; and now they are changing the name (Missouri Science & Technology), go figure. Our daughter Laura is about to graduate from there. And her new hubby is a graduate from there. All-in-all UMR was pretty cool!
My new son-in-law(Travis) and several of his buddies lived in the same dorm on the same floor (what a coincident). So now I have a second generation of Kelly B Hall buddies.
Workplace
Project Engineer at Honeywell in KC, just down the hill from Center. When I started in 1980 there were like 12 from our class of 75. A few of us still there.
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Reunions
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Photos
