Senior Year: Memories of the Class of 1983 of North Miami Senior High School

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1

Senior Year Begins

(August and September 1982)

2

"Miami’s for Me

(Homecoming, October 1982)

3

Turkey in the Turf

(The fTurkey BowV, November 1982)

4

Getting into the Holiday Spirit

(December 1982)

5

Back to the Grind, But Halfway

There

(January 1983)

6

Senioritis Begins

(February 1983)

7

Spring has Sprung

(March 1983)

8

Another Stage in Life

(April 1983)

9

One Night in the Magic Kingdom

(Grad Nite and the Senior Awards Assembly, May 1983)

10

The Last Days of the Class of

1983

(June 1983)

11

Pomp and Circumstance

(Graduation Day—June 14, 1983)

12

Those were the Days

(Final journal entry, June 15, 1983)

13

A Few Years Older, Not

Necessarily the Wiser

(July 1983 until the present day)

14

Reunited Again

(The 10-year class reunion, Miami Beach,1993)

15

Whatever Happened to…?

(Our classmates’ stories since graduation.)

Epilogue

About the Author

Appendix

The Graduates of the Class of 1983

Notes

END NOTES

This book is dedicated to the memory of our classmates in the Class of 1983 who

have passed away since our graduation from North Miami Senior High School.

You will never be forgotten, because you are always in our hearts:

Robert Back

Baron Czellar

Danny Deso

James Gibson

Brian Glendenning

Gary Harman

Robert New

Holly Rockerman

Robert Schwartz

Christopher Slaughter

Kenneth Van Doren

Lori Werda

The tide recedes but leaves behind bright seashells in the sand,

The sun goes down but gentle warmth still lingers on the land,

The music stops and yet it echoes on in sweet refrains….

For every joy that passes something beautiful remains.

M.D. Hughes

Foreword

This account of our senior year in high school first began as a writing assignment for Mrs. Madeleine Gibbs’ first period English class in the fall of 1982. The assignment, written in the form of a journal originally was supposed to last for maybe three months, but I continued to write long after the class requirements were fulfilled. Before long it grew into a nearly 300-page handwritten record of our senior year as I experienced it, a novella, as Mrs. Gibbs soon dubbed it.

The enthusiasm I had writing my journal during the year had its difficulties. There were days when I would write several pages of information, meticulously noting the smallest detail of an event; on other days I could barely find the motivation to put enough words for a paragraph or two. Some experiences during my senior year I fondly treasure to this day, and there are others I’d rather forget.

Ten years later, I thumbed again through the yellowing pages of my handwritten manuscript journal and began to select passages that would soon become the precursor to this book for presentation to selected classmates and friends at our ten-year class reunion in 1993. The passage of time obscured what I once fondly remembered; with the assistance of my copy of the Conestoga 1983 yearbook and my senior memories book, along with additional research from the online archive of Miami Herald articles on the Internet, I polished the many rough edges in my manuscript and made some sense of what I had originally written many years ago.

This ‘first edition’—if one could call it that—was originally written to fulfill a promise I made in my journal manuscript. At first I only printed ten copies and distributed them only to a few close friends from high school days, who I thought would appreciate my efforts in preparing a written account of our senior year. What surprised me though, was the unexpected interest by other fellow classmates. To accommodate their requests, I made additional copies when I returned from the reunion.

1983 may only be a year in the inexorable passage of time to the world at large; for the alumni of North Miami Senior High’s Class of 1983, it is a bond that unites us together as a whole. While my journal reflects many of the events that occurred during our senior year in 1983, they reflect only what occurred from my point of view. It’s not intended to be the authoritative history of our class, and it certainly isn’t going to make the bestseller lists at The New York Times.

It takes courage to share one’s personal feelings, especially in print. I can’t speak for my fellow classmates and their own personal experiences in high school; and I can only hope that what I’ve written may serve as a record of one of the best years of our lives.

Acknowledgements

There are several people and groups whom I’d like to acknowledge who were the guiding influence in the writing and publication of this book:

Mr. David Hudak, the one person who made my three years at North Miami Senior High, especially my senior year, a memorable time.

Mrs. Madeleine Bouley Wyckoff, (known when I was in high school as Mrs. Madeleine Gibbs), who sparked my writing talent and enabled me to begin writing the journal that became the basis for this book.

My parents, Joseph and Benilda Corway, who were instrumental in guiding my life. Even though they divorced long ago, they still continue to be close friends.

My literary agent, Christina Arneson, of Christina Arneson and Associates in New York City, who also is a fellow classmate of the Class of 1983. Her support in getting a first-time author published has been nothing short of stellar.

Lastly, I want to thank all of my fellow classmates: the graduates of the Class of 1983 of North Miami Senior High School in North Miami, Florida. Time may make friendships distant, but the one bond we all share as classmates can never be broken.

Introduction

Friday, September 10, 1993

American 608, cleared to land runway nine right.

After a relatively uneventful flight from Dallas-Fort Worth, the American Airlines Boeing 727-200 touched down onto Runway 9 Right at Miami International Airport. It was a humid late summer afternoon day in Miami, and thunderstorms approached from the west. I heard the muffled roar of the thrust reversers engaging and felt the aircraft slow down from its 150-mile-an-hour landing speed on the 13,000-foot long runway.

As we turned off the runway, the thunderstorm that was practically on our heels as we descended to make our approach to the airport caught up with us. Visibility decreased to almost nothing outside my passenger window as rain poured down in sheets and lightning and thunder struck nearby. It hardly mattered to the captain of the aircraft; skillfully steering the aircraft through the driving rain with the assistance of the ground controller. Within a few minutes, the aircraft taxied to its assigned gate on Concourse D of the vast terminal building. Well…almost.

We held short of the Jetway for about forty-five minutes until the storm moved eastward into the Atlantic. This was for the safety of the ramp crew that would service the aircraft on the ground. When given the all clear by ground control, the jet slowly moved the last hundred feet or so to dock with the Jetway, marking the end of the flight. As usual, it took a little while to leave the confines of the aircraft into the terminal, which looked entirely different from the last time I flew out of Miami International Airport. It was the first time I returned to Miami since June of 1985, when I left for Germany to serve my overseas tour in the U.S. Air Force.

After waiting what seemed to be forever and a day—no thanks to the storm—I finally collected my baggage and took the shuttle bus to the rental-car lot. Entering the office where the counters were, I was greeted by a sea of people also waiting in line to pick up their cars. (This was before preferred customer programs and dedicated counters existed in most rental car companies.)

It was also at this same time that a rash of car-jackings targeting tourists driving rental cars swept through Miami. At the time, rental cars registered in Florida could easily be spotted by the word ‘LEASE’ instead of the usual county of issue stamped on the bottom of the license plate. For a tourist unfamiliar with the way the streets were mapped in Miami, one could easily get lost and drive into the wrong section of town, inviting themselves to be a target for robbery. An unfortunate few attempted to resist, and were shot and killed, throwing the Greater Miami Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and the rental car industry into a panic. The news media didn’t help matters much either.

To keep tourists from wandering off the ‘straight-and-narrow’ path away from the airport, all rental car agencies at the airport issued maps to all their customers and highlighted the best route to take from the airport to their hotel or other destination. Being a former resident of Miami, I was already familiar with navigating the streets of the city, but instead obliged the counter person as he highlighted the direct route I should take to get to Miami Beach. Collecting my keys and rental agreement, I found my assigned car and exited onto LeJeune Road (NW 42nd Avenue) towards the Airport Expressway (State Highway 112).

I’d almost forgotten that the eastbound Airport Expressway was still a toll road; luckily I had the required quarter in my pocket to deposit in the tollbooth, as I’d failed to break a $20 bill into smaller change somewhere between Dallas and Miami. The afternoon storms had long ago traveled eastward into the Atlantic, and the sun’s late afternoon rays bathed the city in a bright golden light as I crossed Biscayne Bay over the Julia Tuttle Causeway until it ended at Collins Avenue and 41st Street in Miami Beach.

Turning north on Collins Avenue, I drove up past the enormous mural painted on the fa£ade of the old Sorrento building depicting the Fontainebleau Hilton hotel (the building and mural were demolished in 2002), and it wasn’t long before I arrived at the Doral Ocean Beach Resort, location of our ten-year class reunion. Leaving my car with the valet—free for hotel guests, but don’t forget to tip—I checked into my room and rested for a few hours before getting ready for the first event of our reunion weekend. Curious as to the refrigerator placed in my room, I took a closer look. Once I realized it was a mini-bar, with obscenely marked-up prices to match printed on a nearby card, I made sure to avoid it throughout my stay.

When the appointed hour—7:00 p.m.—for our first event of the reunion weekend arrived, I left my room and took the elevator up to the lounge on the top floor of the Doral for the informal evening social and get together for the Class of 1983.

It didn’t take long for people to recognize me, even though I had changed my hairstyle several times (and gotten a few gray hairs along the way), grown a mustache, lost (and later put on) weight along the course of ten years. There were some of my former classmates who at first I didn’t recognize until I looked at their nametag that was issued to all reunion guests.

And the memories of our days in high school returned.

1

Senior Year Begins

(August and September 1982)

August 31, 1982

Monday, August 31, 1982 dawned as usual in North Miami, Florida—sunny, hot and humid. For the students of the Dade County Public Schools, it marked the first day of the 1982-83 school year.

For the students beginning the twelfth and final year of the public education system in Dade County (now Miami-Dade County), Florida, it marked the final 180 school days before they would march to the strains of Sir Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance in some darkened auditorium and begin their adult lives.

And for the students beginning their senior year at North Miami Senior High School in North Miami, Florida, it was the beginning of what many recall as one of the best years of their lives.

The countdown clock for our senior year began to tick at 7:30 a.m. on the morning of Monday, August 31, 1982. For most of us, we began our day in homeroom, which was normally between first and second period but for the first day of school it was temporarily moved to the beginning of the school day. It was a routine we repeated for the third and final time while at North Miami, where attendance for the school day was officially taken and we received our class schedules for the fall semester of our senior year.

North Miami Senior High School’s property was a rectangular plot of land extending a little over a quarter mile from east to west, from NE 7th Avenue in the west to NE 9th Avenue in the east, and slightly less than an eighth of a mile from south to north, from NE 135th Street to NE 137th Street.¹ The portion of NE 137th Street extending between NE 6th Avenue and West Dixie Highway was officially named ‘Pioneer Boulevard’ after our school mascot; as far as the United

States Postal Service and most everyone else was concerned, it was still NE 137th Street. Monuments proclaiming ‘PIONEERS BLVD’ were erected at both the east and west end of the street. The eastbound and westbound travel lanes were separated by a grassy median where a few large shade trees were planted to break up what would otherwise be a monotonous strip of land between the two travel lanes.

At the intersection of NE 8th Avenue and NE 137th Street was the location of what once was a circular decorative fountain that also served somewhat as a traffic circle. The water was turned off long ago and what was once a fountain became a planter, though the City of North Miami long ago gave up trying to plant any flowers in it, since they were easily picked by students. Surrounding the outer quadrants of the circle were four sculpted concrete frogs, which gave rise to the nickname given by students—the ‘Frog Pond’.

The ‘Frog Pond’, at the time we were students, was a popular hangout for the smokers in the student body. It was not unusual for students to have a cigarette or two before class or at lunchtime, a practice frowned upon by the school administration, since smoking was prohibited on school grounds and the ‘Frog Pond’ was actually on the public right of way. The occasional group of students intent on skipping classes sometimes met there before going on their own separate ways, playing a cat-and-mouse game with school security and the North Miami Police, who regularly patrolled the area during the school day. In days of old, when the fountain was still operating, it was not unusual for rival high schools to pour soap into the fountain or steal the frogs from the foun-tain—when they were firmly cemented in place to prevent further thefts, it was not unusual to see the frogs painted in the rival school’s colors. Over time, the practice fell into disuse.

The school’s campus layout was quite spread out, but relatively easy to navigate once one got used to it. Students were allowed five minutes between periods to reach their assigned classrooms. There were two main corridors extending the length of the school campus, the north (or main) corridor which was completely enclosed and the south corridor, open to the elements except for an awning protecting the students from the elements. The north corridor housed the administration offices and classrooms, primarily for the Language Arts and foreign language departments. The cosmetology classroom—room 16—occupied the far western end of the main corridor.

On the second floor of the main corridor were housed the classrooms for the mathematics department, while the drama department occupied the ‘Little Theatre’ in Room 20 at its eastern end. The odd-numbered classrooms in the second floor were divided only by movable partitions.² All other buildings except for the auditorium had only one floor.

Connecting the north and south corridors were five classroom wings, numbered 100 through 500. Open air patios separated the wings, but no classroom (save for the ones on the main corridor) had any windows to look out of. Originally, the classrooms in the wings had windows, but they had long been removed when the school received air conditioning and became a designated hurricane shelter. A small fire exit was cut into the outer wall of each classroom to allow an alternate escape route, though it wasn’t unusual for some students to try using them as an escape hatch to sneak out of class—a practice that was strictly forbidden.

The ‘100 wing’ was home to the Social Studies department, and also the location for the school’s Center for Special Instruction (CSI) in room 100-South, where in-school suspensions were carried out. My homeroom in tenth grade—10-33—was also located there, though once attendance was recorded we were expected to report to the school library and quietly use the time to study for our afternoon classes. Most times, we raised hell and drove the librarian and her staff crazy, or sometimes used the time to roam around the halls—carefully dodging faculty, administration and school security personnel—until the end of third period at 10:40 a.m.

The school library occupied the southern area between the 100 and 200 wings, while the northern end was designated as the ‘Senior Patio’. In the early days of the school, this area was reserved only for the use of seniors, though it later fell into disuse and closed.³

The Language Arts department occupied the ‘200 wing’, and was the longest wing of the school, extending beyond the south corridor for a short distance. The extension of the 200 wing housed most of the special education and reading classes, as well as journalism and yearbook production.

In room 201, Mr. David Hudak taught one very popular and notable class; sophomore English. Mr. Hudak, who sometimes was nicknamed Dak or Mr. H. taught his classes in a rather unusual fashion compared to other teachers in the Language Arts department. He encouraged active participation from his students, and as the faculty sponsor of Student Government, was an enthusiastic booster of school spirit throughout the school.

Mr. Hudak lived in an apartment on Miami Beach and was famous for his