Stephen Mitchell:
CLASS OF 1971
Anna-Jonesboro High SchoolClass of 1971
Anna, IL
DePaul University - Graduate SchoolClass of 1992
Chicago, IL
Olivet Nazarene CollegeClass of 1975
Kankakee, IL
Flora High SchoolClass of 1971
Flora, IL
Stephen's Story
I attended AJCHS my Junior and Senior years. My father pastored the Nazarene Church in Anna.
After graduation from AJ I attended and graduated from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais/Kankakee, Il.
I then earned a MS degree in Rehabilitation Administration from DePaul University in Chicago.
For the past 30 years I've been the President/CEO of the Kankakee County Training Center for the Disabled. KCTC is the same type of agency that RAVE there in AJ is.
I didn't marry until I was thirty. I have three children all three of whom were in college this year. Needless to say the word "retirement" isn't even in my dictionary yet, ie how do you spell "college bills".
My wife and I divorced last November after 24 years of marriage. We remain good friends so it's not a bad situation.
I live in Kankakee with three cats that I somehow inherited from my kids when they went off to college. The kids are all living relatively close by so I get to spend a lot of time with them. I attend the First Nazarene Church here in Kankakee, which is a great place to worship God.
I enjoy motorcycles and am currently riding my 25 or 26th bike, a Harley-Davidson Road King. I just returned from a trip to Sturgis S.D. where they have a huge bike week celebration. My 19 year old son, Zach, who I had just helped purchase his first bike, an H-D Sportster 1200 went also. It was kind of the fulfillment of a dream to be able to take him on a bike trip.
Zach is a sophmore at ISU in Normal, Il. He is a team manager on the ISU Football team and wants to coach at that level someday.
My oldest daughter, Megan, graduated from ISU with a degree in Interior Design and currently works here in K3.
Lauren, my younger daughter, just graduated from ONU with a degree in Public Relations/ Marketing and will be moving with a friend to the Wrigleyville area in Chicago on Sept. 1st. Now she has to find a job to pay for her part of the rent!
My former wife and now friend, Denise, is a Physical Therapyst (Terrorist as some patients say) who works for Riverside Medical Center Home Health Agency here in K3. When not working at her paying job she works taking care of the two Shitzu puppies that our daughters recently purchased. We have determined that this is probably the closest we'll ever get to having grand-children so that's what we call Rocco and Tucker!
I have awesome memories of living and attending high school in Anna/Jonesboro. As a ministe...Expand for more
r dad moved around a bit so I attended 3 different high schools in 4 years. I learned that where you live will be what you make it, and A/J was no different.
My "friends" that I still remember the most were: Kenny and Jack Treece, Daryl Stokes, Gary Grimm, Ronnie Tellor, Mike Isom, Doug Bridgeman, Bill Yates, Jil Walker and others whose faces I can see, but names I can't pull out of the air.
A favorite story would be driving Melvin Dallas's green Ford Maverick to DuQuoin (I think) for State Band Competition. I think there were four of us, we left A/J late, I had a reputation for driving "fast" so I was asked to drive. And drive I did. We got there a few minutes before our scheduled time to perform. As I started to walk from the car to the school I happened to look back and was horrified to see chords sticking through the tread (what there was left of it anyway) on both of the front tires on Melvin's car that I had just driven at high speeds, around corners, for 30 - 40 miles. I guess it's a wonder any of us lived through those days.
Now that I'm reminiscing about A/J a lot of "stories" are coming to mind.
Never being the sharpest knife in the drawer I once had some friends in my 69 Camaro Z-28. We were driving around the circle in Jonesboro and there were two police officers sitting on the hood of their squads talking. Yours truly stopped in front of them and proceeded to do a very nice burnout for their enjoyment, which they didn't enjoy to much. I thought the occupants of my vehicle were going to kill me. Fortunately the car was fast enough that I managed to outrun the officers. I didn't drive through Jonesboro for a long time after that.
Wow, I remember seeing the diamond back rattle snake that Daryl Stokes shot and killed. He had it in the trunk of his car. I still hate snakes.
This is already turning into a small book so I won't bore anyone any longer.
I guess the thing I appreciated about my friends at A/J was they didn't pressure me to do things that they liked to do that I didn't. I didn't drink and they did, but didn't make fun of me because I didn't. They just accepted me for what and who I was. I guess they didn't want to lose their designated driver.
While I've enjoyed living "up North" I still think about retiring in A/J someday. What a beautiful area to live in with a lot of friendly people. I just hope the Jonesboro Police Department has forgotten about that Brown 1969 Z-28 Camaro!!!
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