There was A Serious Side To Being A Senior

Even though it is great fun to write about all the fun and silly things we did in high school in the sixties there was a little more serious side to school.  My parents had always said that there was not just twelve years of school, but sixteen.  That meant they expected my two brothers and I to go to college.

Older brother, Paul, had gotten married his senior year and had no interest in going.  He was not a great lover of hitting the books and by the summer after his graduation he had not only a wife, but a child to support.  Little brother, Kenny, was not all enthralled with school even though Mother had visions of him going to M.I.T.  Dream on, Mother.
So, the dutiful daughter, the one who worked hard at keeping the Mother happy, started the wheels in motion towards going to college.

Back in the day it seems like we all took the S.A.T. and ACT tests without any big study sessions.  Did they even have special classes on taking the tests?  I don't remember any and I think we just signed up, paid the fee and showed up at the appointed place at the appointed time.  Guess we just relied on what we knew and moaned later when the scores arrived.  I remember doing well in everything except math, which was not surprising.

Of course I wanted to go to college where my friends were going.  I remember applying to Oklahoma University, Oklahoma State University and Arkansas.  Mother had other ideas.  She decided that an all-girls college would be the best idea.  Swell.  We comprised and I got to apply to the ones I wanted and then to the ones she picked out. Not being overly optimistic I figured that there was a good chance I would be rejected by Smith, Vassar and Stephens.  Then I could pick the one of the one I wanted to attend.

The college applications were sent off and then the lecture came about how I needed a summer job besides my paper route to save money for college or at least earn some money for clothes or whatever.  There was only one fast food restaurant in town and I am not sure they hired teenagers back then.  By chance I happened to think being a lifeguard might be fun so I asked the manager of Meadowbrook County Club where I played golf if he needed a lifeguard for the summer.  Since he and I had become pretty good friends he agreed that I could have the job as the lifeguard for the summer if I got my senior lifesaving card.

Luckily the YMCA offered a Lifesaving Course that spring.  I was not a real strong swimmer as it was always more fun to go to the pool at Honor Heights park and try to look cool in front of all the boys.  Gads - I can remember that we had to wear bathing caps back then.  They actually made them with flowers all over them so you did not look like a pin head. I really don't remember any boy being attracted to a girl who showed traits of being an Olympic swimmer so lounging by the side of the pool getting a tan was the "in" thing. The class at the YMCA was a test of will to keep from drowning myself several nights a week.

While I was trying very hard not to drown the college acceptance letters starting arriving.  There are so many insecure moments in a  teenage life that the neatly typed letters with a college seal can suddenly make a real difference in how you look at yourself.  It suddenly does not matter if you were popular, handsome, pretty smarter or could run faster than anyone else. Someone somewhere thought you had value just by the words written on a piece of paper.

By some real miracle I was accepted to every college I applied to.  I had a pretty good idea of where I wanted to go but I knew that my choice did not matter.  Mother chose Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.
Perhaps in reading the school catalogs she figured this one had the most stringent rules.  The real kicker in the final acceptance was the home visit by a Stephens representative.  

One would have thought that the President of the United States was coming to visit.  For the three weeks preceding "the visit" the already immaculate house was thoroughly cleaned several times.  Shopping trips to Tulsa for just the right clothing were frequent. For me to look wholesome my blonde hair had to be dyed back to something far from my natural color of brown. Then the unthinkable happened in that the date for the home visit was the same evening as my final test for the Senior Lifesaving Certificate.  Oh well.  There really was enough time for me to do both.

The last night of the swimming class was brutal, as I remember.  We had to swim thirty laps of the pool and then jump in with clothes on, remove the clothes down to the bathing suit and save the instructor.  Still not sure how I managed to do that but did.  My question is why don't the water rescue people on television news broadcasts show the people jumping into flood waters to save people removing all their clothes?  Must only be something they thought of in the sixties.  After getting my official lifesaving card I rushed out the door of the YMCA for a mad dash home.  Upon arrival I knew I was in trouble when I noticed a strange car in the driveway.  Nothing else to do but go into the house in my wet bathing suit, wet hair and clutching an arm load of school clothes and books.

 Mr. Wilkerson, from Stephens College, was chatting with my very distraught Mother and my smiling Father when I arrived.  What the conversation was about does not come to mind since all I could think about was the dress my Mother had picked out for me to wear was still hanging in my room.  Mr. Wilkerson smiled and laughed a lot during the interview but probably because my wet bathing suit made a huge water spot on the upholstered chair.  At the end of the interview he did announce, much to my Mother's relief, that I was accepted as an incoming Freshman at Stephens College.  Dad wrote out the deposit check and Mr. Wilkerson from Stephens winked at me as he went on his way to some other girl's home.  I can just imagine some of the family situations he viewed as he visited all the homes of high school girls.

Disaster avoided all in one evening.  I now had a job as a lifeguard for the summer along with the early morning paper route and I had been accepted into college.  The other good thing was that I did not have to put on the ugly dress Mother had thought would make me look the part of a sane, wholesome high school senior. Wonder what the outcome would have been if things had gone the way Mother wanted them too?

It is rather fun and interesting to look back on my senior year in high school and realize that a lot of lifetime patterns and behavior began to emerge.  Some good and some bad but you will learn about those as I keep writing.  There are still a lot more humorous stories from that crazy year - well - actually every year.  Stay tuned!

If you want to keep reading my silly saga through life there is a little box in my profile where you can add your email address.  Sending it out as a group email is not working well since gmail thinks it is spam.  It may add a little humor to your day and you may realize that the path through life may not always work out the way you want it to but it sure can be fun.

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - Senior Year

Class of 64 wondering what to do next

It is time to get back to the stories about the Muskogee High School Class of 64.  Considering that our class consisted of five hundred students that blended together in the tenth grade from two different junior high schools it was hard for me to know all the ornery things everyone did.  Remembering them is a another thing.

What has really been fun for me is that in the last few months fellow classmates have sent me comments on the stories I have written.  I fully realize that there are some for whom high school does not have a lot of happy memories.  Life gets very complicated, memories of good friends and good times fade but it is fun to look back and have a good laugh at the silly things we did.

Pat the Instigator

After a recent story I wrote I received a comment from a classmate about something that he was involved in the eight grade.  I was really surprised at the story coming from him.  He was a good student, all-conference football player, cute and very "popular". Here is Pat Ragsdale's story as he wrote it.  

"In May of 1959 Kurt Keidel and I were in the 4th hour shop class at West Jr. High.  Kurt said that at Central High and over at Abbott"s Reformatory (aka-AR, the other Jr. High) they were having "book drops".  Book drops were set at a certain time and everyone would drop a school book on the classroom floor.  It was not a protest or anything like that.  Sounded like a pretty good idea to us so we cut up some slips that simply said, "Book Drop at 2:15"  Surprisingly to us our high jenks took off like wildfire with other students enthusiastically passing the word. I knew this was a big mistake but we did not have any control of it. The next day over the intercom Principal Eliand Rainwater announced they knew who it was and they should immediately report to the Principal's office.  Both Kurt and I gritted our teeth but did not confess fearing that we would be thrown out of school or worse have a painful session with the "Board of Education".  It was a lark, we weren't protesting anything.

School was let out for summer vacation and we were not caught.  Some four years later Jim Little, our high school student body President, disclosed the conspiracy committed by Kurt and I at our Senior Class Diner. I suppose he figured that statue of limitations had finally run.  I guess I should have known better but am glad we did not get caught."

There were a lot of stories that came to light at the Senior dinner.  This one I did not remember especially since it came from Mr. Nice Guy, Pat Ragsdale.  However, seeing him at class reunions there is still that little twinkle in his eye showing he is still up for anything.

The other story came from a girl who was in speech class so anything from those students does not surprise me. I remember all the silly stuff that went on in those classes, but I had forgotten how much fun Virginia Shaver was.  She was always smiling and one of those people you just felt good being around.  She wrote:

"I think I needed some credit, probably to graduate, so a couple of us speech students had to do a little radio speech bit to advertise some businesses in town.  Good grief, what a silly disaster!  I could say anything right and then just giggle about it.  Stupid, stupid...not a good student in anything except art and maybe English.  Now at age 70, we are so much wiser.  I'm still kinda silly but by choice".

Silly Virginia

I can imagine the Radio Speech teacher, none other than Jack Gregory,
trying not to laugh and look stern but busting a gut to keep from laughing himself. Personally I would like someone to tell me the story of the "Secret Clubs" that occurred during our senior year.  All I can remember about them was that there were two separate ones consisting of boys.  There was something about rental houses, expose articles on the front page of the local paper and lots of senior boys coming to school for weeks in shirts and ties.  I think the shirts and ties kept them out of real trouble as they looked so respectable. Besides in the 1960's it was all just innocent fun.  Right guys? Then there were the gatherings at Honor Heights Park.  This is the site of the now famous Azalea Festival - no wonder they close the park at night!

I never drank beer or liquor in high school.  It just wasn't something I ever thought about doing.  Not many of my girl friends drank (that I knew of) and I think I knew my Mother would kill me if I ever did and got caught.  No doubt I would have been dead if I had ever been caught backing up to Ray and Nora's Bar on Friday afternoon to buy beer for some of the boys.  Seems like girls could buy beer at the age of eighteen. Hmm - I was only seventeen but Nora bought medicine from my Dad and thought he was a nice man.  If she ever told my Dad she sold beer to me he never mentioned it and probably got a good laugh about it.

One of these days I will run out of high school stories to tell and move on to college and the the silly life adventures that followed.  It is very interesting to me that the people I grew up with and some from college make it seem like the years have never passed.  My class had a reunion at the ten and twenty year mark, then we started having one every five years and at age fifty, sixty-five and in a few months, seventy, we have class birthday parties.  I have only missed a couple events since the twentieth.  At every reunion it is rather like a big family reunion.   You can hear a voice and instantly know who it is even if they look a little different after fifty years. It takes at least three days for every reunion and then there is still so much more to say and do.

We may all be a little wiser like Virginia said but we are all still just as silly.  Most important of all, friends, and maybe better friends than we were in high school.

70 Would Be A Great Birthday

Today is my seventieth Birthday.  WOW!  

When I started writing this story I wasn't sure where it would lead. It began as a travel log in our electric car and proved to be fun.  Then covered two whacko old building restorations that Marshell and I turned into our homes.  Then it turned into a sort of life history of how much fun it is to have grown up as a slightly off-beat Baby Boomer. This was in protest to most Baby Boomer stories about the distressing elements of aging, lost of parents and friends, illnesses and ailments.

Last week's story was about my high school musical.  This week was going to be about some fun, silly stories that some of my friends have sent me about some of the things they remember. But as with life in general - things happen.  Perhaps this week things happened to me that will inspire my peers to enjoy their age and all my young friends to realize age is a number, not a way of life.

Living in a small, rural town in Oklahoma for the last eleven years has been interesting to say the least.  My love of performing that began in grade school has never left.  Did I really take ice skating lessons at the age of forty and skate in an ice show for five years without ever having finished the lessons?  Did I really play Wipe Out on the drums at the age of sixty while still taking drum lessons?  Did I really organize a bunch of kids to do the Thriller dance at the age of sixty-five with me out front so they could remember the steps?  Did Marshell at age sixty-nine and I at age sixty-five actually rent bear costumes and do a dance on stage?  You have to guess the answer on those.

So, we come to today.  I woke up at 12:06 this morning to do the old age thing of going to the bathroom. To see if it was time to get up I looked at my cell phone to check the time. Now, I don't usually sleep with my cell phone but since I fell off of the window sill while washing the windows nine weeks ago and broke my arm in the worst possible way I have had to sleep in a chair. The phone is my alarm clock or for something to do when I can't sleep. There was a message on the phone from a sweet gal in Ardmore who said  "CONGRATULATIONS!  You made the cast".  What a shock and at the same time - what a special birthday present.

Earlier this year Marshell and I had the great pleasure to meet a group of young people in Ardmore, Oklahoma while campaigning for someone.  We spent several weekends knocking on doors and enjoyed all the intelligent and fun young people we met.  Several could not help on certain days since they were in a play at the little theater in town.  I told them I thought that sounded like fun and they encouraged me to come to the auditions for the musical Mary Poppins. Could I ignore the encouragement?  Being overly optimistic I thought "No big deal" until 
I found out that the audition for the show consisted of about one minute of singing and then a dance audition. That was a couple of days before the time to perform.

To fill in the details of my sudden panic attack you have to realize that  my right arm has been in a sling for nine weeks with limited movement from non-use.  I do dance around the house but that isn't quite the same plus when you produce musical variety shows or festivals you can put yourself in doing anything you want to do.  Sweet Marshell is always encouraging even when I stink.  I spent two days digging thru file drawers full of music and rummaging through CD's, tapes and record albums to find a Disney song to audition with.  All I could come up with was the vinyl edition of the Mary Poppins sound track and a karaoke CD of Bye, Bye Birdie.  They did not mention using a vinyl record for music and of course those karaoke CD's do not play on all CD players - mine included.  

The trip to Ardmore went amazingly fast.  The radio was turned up full blast and I did get some singing practice in singing Billy Joel songs at the top of my lungs. There were a lot of people at the audition.  I found my one friend and told her I didn't have a song and she suggested just to get up and sing Happy Birthday. After listening to auditions for an hour and a half I had the brilliant idea to sing one of the Birdie songs Capella, at least that was better than nothing.  So with words in hand
I finally heard my name called. I think it turned into a comedy routine.
No doubt terribly off-key, didn't even manage to read all the words but I did manage to move around a little instead of standing like a stick.

Then I was sent off to the dance audition where at least I felt a little confident in my new leggings and knowing I had taken years of dance.  HA! The cute dance instructor taught us a very quick routine with lots of arm movements in front of a wall of mirrors. Never wanting to look stupid I forced the arm to move in ways it did not want to and realized how out of shape I had gotten nursing a painful broken arm for nine weeks.  Call backs would be the next night so I drove home without much hope.

I did not let Marshell go with me that night as I did not want to see the look of pity in his eyes when I auditioned.  I sort of told him how bad I was about the same time Paige, my friend who got me into this, texted me and said I had made the call backs. You cannot imagine my surprise!  
Maybe they just wanted to see if I was for real or a mirage they imagined.  Paige said call backs would consist of reading a part with a British accent and some singing to see if you could really carry a tune.
Swell.

I asked Marshell to go with me to the call backs.  Since he would probably never get a chance to see auditions again it might be fun for him. We sat there for a couple of hours while everyone else was called to read different parts of the script.  I did have to do a singing thing with several other girls which I felt I pretty well blew.  Then it was time to go home.  On the way home Marshell and I talked and he did enjoy watching all the events of the evening.  I told him it was a real learning experience for me.  I didn't feel bad that I blew the audition but took it as a learning experience as to what I needed to do for the next time.  I even rationalized that maybe this was not the time for me to do this since my arm as well as the rest of my body hurt.

So this is why the text message from Paige at 12:06 am on my birthday is so special. I made the cast with some small speaking part.  The next five weeks will be filled with rehearsals five nights a week and I am going to love every minute of it. Turning seventy has been a really special day.

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - All School Play

Since I started the story about the Jack Gregory and the Speech Department at Muskogee Central High School last week I guess it would be good to finish it.  Although all of Jack Gregory's years at Central were filled with accomplishments I think the first musical play production for the school was his biggest challenge.  It was a sheer miracle with what he had to work with and treading in totally unknown territory that it turned out so well.

The speech and drama department put on a Sophomore and Junior Play every year.  The last production of the year was called the All-School Play.  Some years it was a play, some years a series of skits and some years a combination of both.  In February of 1965 Jack Gregory announced that the All-School Play would be the musical comedy, Bye, Bye Birdie.

Bye, Bye Birdie is satire on American society set in 1958.  It was inspired by songs of Elvis and his draft notice into the army.  The original Broadway show opened in 1960 and the movie was produced in 1963.  It has won a Tony award for best musical, had many revivals in New York and is a popular choice for high school and college productions. The stage and the movie versions differ dramatically but both are light hearted and fun.

First order of business was to let all the prospective cast members get an idea of what the play was all about.  The film version was rented and one night after the local theater closed a screening of Bye, Bye Birdie was shown several times into the wee hours of the morning. Being a lover of musical productions I had already seen the movie - maybe a couple of times.  It was a great excuse to stay out half the night since Jack Gregory was pretty good at keeping people in line.  Bleary eyed we left the theater with a good idea of how all the characters and costumes should look.

The big surprise came when the actual play arrived and everyone realized the movie and play differed a great deal.  Not only the actual character parts themselves were different but there were five additional songs to be learned for a total of sixteen for both the cast and the Central High Ensemble to learn. I wonder how many times everyone really wondered if we could pull this off.  If Jack Gregory was ever in doubt, no one would have ever guessed.

Students in the play made up one of the largest groups for a production that Central had ever had before.  In total there were seventy-two cast and  Central High Ensemble members. There were a few roles with only one student playing them but most were double or triple cast so that every one had a chance to shine.  This meant that everyone need to be at every rehearsal whether they were in the afternoon or the evening.  The local dance instructor in town provided the choreography for six dance routines for people who had never danced before. The Stagecraft class built the sets and helped in the set changes.   

The twenty members of the Ensemble were pretty well behaved but can you imagine the other fifty-two students behaving when they were waiting for their turn to practice?  There was one time when the ornery seniors in the cast got a little out of hand at a practice and we got to witness Jack Gregory more than a little upset.  I think we were seriously threatened with cancelling the whole production.  That was enough to put every one on their best behavior.  No one wanted to see Jack Gregory mad again but no one also wanted to be a disappointment to him.  We all realized what experience and fun he was providing for us.

Lin Moore and I got to share the part of Rosie.  That part included six songs, three dance numbers and four costume changes.  I panicked and went back to dance class that I had quit in the ninth grade.  I bought the sound track albums and practiced singing to them at home when no one else was there.  My next door neighbor, Pat Mackey, had a wonderful Mom who made three of the dresses for me for the play and Mom took me to Tulsa to rent one dress.  Pat told me recently that after her Mom passed away she found a thank you note I had written to thank her for all she had done for me.  Wow!  I actually had some manners back then.

It would have been fun if the play had been filmed - no video stuff back then.  I just think it would be nice to see if it was the rousing success that everyone said it was.  I don't think any of the cast members were propelled onto Broadway, television or movies but I do know that many of them continued on in little theaters and other productions all over the country.  For me it led me on to some interesting projects, some I might just as soon forget but it also helped me in doing a lot of talent shows and plays with children through the years as well as a few other fun entertainment ventures I may tell about later.

From a Muskogee Phoenix newspaper article after the play:
"This is the hardest I've worked on something in my eleven years of teaching." reflected Jack Gregory, thinking over the hours he and his students have spent preparing for the All School Play, "Bye, Bye Birdie".
For the first time in Central's history, a play has been a complete sell out days prior to the opening performance.  The demand for tickets became so great that Mr. Gregory had to call New York to secure permission to do a matinee from the publishing company that handles "Birdie's" royalties.  Another first for "Bye, Bye Birdie is that it is the only play in Central's history that has a packed house for every performance with over 1600 tickets sold. "Bye, Bye Birdie has set a precedence that will be hard for plays and play casts to come".


I told my two boys when they complained about school being boring that school was a blast if you participated in the activities whether it was band, sports, theater or something else you found fun and interesting.  Later in life you may not remember the difference between Hawthorn's  heroines or the square route of some number but you will remember the things you participated in and had fun doing. You might not remember who sat next to you in Chemistry but you will remember some  silly event at a football game or a play and the friends you were with at that moment.

School is much more than just going to class and doing homework.  All that is important now and was perhaps more important to all of us baby boomers.  With all the fun and silliness I have written about high school so far there really was a serious side to it.  In our senior year we had to think about what came next.  If it was to be continuing on in school there was a lot to think about and to do. SAT's,  ACT's and college applications had to be squeezed in among everything else.

How Lucky I Am To B A Baby Boomer - Senior Year II

I sat at a table the other night of people relatively close in age to me.  They asked what Marshell and I had been up to lately and I mentioned I had been writing a blog. When I told them that it was about how lucky I felt we were to grow up in the era we did they all agreed.  Not only growing up as a baby boomer was lucky but attending Muskogee Central High added to that experience.

When you are in high school there is the normal tendency to know that your school is the best one in the country. School pride or school spirit is normal especially when your high school is the only white high school in town. Muskogee, at that time, was the third largest city in the state behind Oklahoma City and Tulsa with a population of 35,000 residents. My class, the Class of 64, with 500 students was the first year of the baby boom. All three classes, sophomores, juniors and seniors added up to 1800 students.  It has taken many years of being involved in a lot of schools all across the country to realize how lucky I was and that Central back then could have surpassed the vast majority of schools today.

                                                  B.L.Wertz

Under the guidance of Mr. B.L.Wertz, who became the principal in 1947, an unbelievable amount of classes and activities were added along with almost a total replacement of everything from desks to lights to band uniforms to specialty classrooms.  The school paper, The SCOUT, was the top ranked student paper in the state and the only one in the state to be totally done by the students.  The staff wrote the articles, the editorials and did the set-up.  The print shop students took, developed and printed the pictures along with printing the paper every Friday which sold for five cents.

                                       1963-1964 Speech Class

In Mr. Wertz's sixteen year stay at Central he added driving, drama, speech, radio speech class, advanced homemaking, future teacher's,
 radio-electricity, economics, college English for seniors, 3rd year french, swimming, golf, tennis, 2nd year chemistry, 2nd year biology, German, calculus, 4th year Spanish, girl's baseball and journalism. In addition to classes he also added memberships in the Oklahoma Honor Society, Future Homemakers of America, Future Farmers of America, National Forensic League, Little Hollywood Drama Club, Ham Radio Club, Health and Careers Club, Hi-Y, Tri-Hi-Y, Youth for Christ, Chess Club, Library Club and three more girl's Literary Clubs. He set up a diversified educational program where students could take a half day of school and work a half day downtown, there were college and careers days so students could explore future options and let the student council take over monitoring the cafeteria so the teachers did not have to do it.  I think a lot of my classmates never realized the amount of effort Mr. Wertz put into giving us everything we needed  to become successful, well rounded people.  Lucky us.

Naturally  he could not do this alone but was supported by a tremendous staff of teachers.  Everyone likes to tease or complain about their teachers. Interesting that the teaching staff of eighty was pretty well split between men and women. I do remember that every teacher I had was more than willing to spend time before or after school to help anyone lagging behind. My poor math teacher got to see me in the eleventh grade every morning before classes started.  There was something about the new SMSG math I never understood until college.  Better late than never.

Hopefully everyone has a teacher who made a real difference in their life. I have actually had three. One was a physics professor in a small community college in New Jersey many years after high school and one was an ice skating show director, set and costume designer and most talented person. The third was the speech teacher at Muskogee Central High School, Jack Gregory.

Jack Gregory

I think I was in every play in grade school.  My very first part in the second grade was to be a hollyhock in a play.  The thrill of standing on the stage looking like a flower set the pattern for a lifetime of "Where do I audition next?".  My brother, Kenny, and I used to do the Little Rascal's thing and put on plays in the garage for the neighborhood kids.  So it was speech class in junior high and more speech class in senior high. I loved the plays but tried my hand at debate, humorous and dramatic readings, radio speech and extemporaneous speaking.

Of course speech class was an elective and there were those students who signed up for it only to learn that it wasn't an easy A.  Mr. Gregory had a unique ability to bring out the best in people and to show them they could do something they thought they couldn't.  He had a way of making you want to be the best, never by yelling or putting people down. In the days when teachers wore coats and ties, I remember Jack (he was known as Jack among the students - always Mr. Gregory in class) in slacks and a dress shirt, collar open and sleeves rolled up. There was usually a smile and I only saw him mad once in three years. It is funny that after all these years that I can still remember how he moved his hands when he talked and brush his hair to the side with his hand.  Maybe I listened more in his class than any other because I wanted to learn.

Now, just because he was a good teacher doesn't mean that any of the usual ornery stuff didn't happen. You have to remember that Speech class attracted those less than dedicated students plus no one loved to laugh more than Jack Gregory. We worked hard but also had fun.  I can't remember anything my class did as far as funny stuff goes so I asked a classmate. Here's the story and if it isn't true you can blame Drew Edmondson.

The Great Debaters

Jack Gregory and Clu Gulager were classmates at Central.  If you don't know who Clu Gulager is - Google him - he was a Muskogee grad who went on the be in several TV Series, The Tall Man and The Virginian plus The Last Picture Show. Anyway he came to Muskogee for a visit and showed up in Jack's 5th hour class dressed in all his western garb. Mr. Wertz started to give an announcement over the intercom and Clu pulled out his six-shooter and shot the speaker box.  It was a blank of course but he was close enough to make a hole in it.  Drew said they were all impressed and I can see and hear Jack's laughter.

Every November the Speech Department had a huge tournament in Muskogee called the Little Nationals.  The year I was a senior twenty-four schools from Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri came for the sixteenth annual event.  It was a big three day event that took lots of work to pull together.  The Muskogee students were not eligible to win but it was good practise for future events we travelled to.  I don't think there were too many years that Jack Gregory did not have students eligible to go to the Nationals in Washington, D.C. and not come home with trophies.

I have always said that I am basically a shy person around people I don't know but Jack Gregory gave me the ability to stand up anywhere, anytime and rattle off a speech, introduce someone or narrate a show.  We all worked hard at being our best for him out of respect that he would work for and provide us with so many opportunities.  There was one thing he wanted to do that had never been done at Muskogee Central High School.  Somehow he looked at this class of ornery people and decided he would try with us.  You have to tune in later for that fantastic project.