CLASS OF 1968 1
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C E L E B R AT I N G 5 0 Y E A R S
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Elder, Philip D. Faison, David R. Fanstone, William D. Freeze, John M. Garrett, E. Peter Goodlet Jr., R. Clifford Graham IV, Frank B. Haughton, Cory Henderson, John S. Heys II, Samuel R. Holderness, Russell B. Katz, David Y. Kendler, Guy J. Kent, Stephen D. Killian, Luther Kirk, Leslie L. Landgrebe III, Karl L. Langley Jr., R. Scott Lannom III, Edward H. Lasky, Paul M. Lawler III, Hilliard Lewis III, William A. J. Lothrop, James E. Marlin III, Charles B. Maxwell, Deborah M. McCall, Jeffrey G. McCallie, John D. McDonald Jr., Roy L. McGee, Jack T. Merritt Jr., H. Lee Mingea III, Robert M. Mitchell, Robert C. Moak, Thomas Edwin Montague, Carrington Muhlendorf, David M.
O’Herron, Ken C. O’Neal, John C. O’Rear, Michael A. Palmes, Wesley Paris Jr., David H. Payne Jr., William J. Pearce Jr., Henon W. Phillips, Stephen Pride, Charles W. Rodman, Robert E. Rowland Jr., Charles G. Rush, Robert H. Shults, Clifford W. Shults, William O. Smith II, Bryant B. Sokohl, John R. Stanley, Mary Hust Strang Jr., Thornton Stringer III, W. Kenneth Sykes Jr., Charles L. Tillery, Craig J. Trotter Jr., Andrew H. Tull, C. Christopher Turcot, Andy Underwood, Douglas B. Waters III, Benjamin B. Webb Jr., Charles W. Whitaker III, Lawson Wilkinson II, William M. Williams, Alden A. Williamson, DeCarol Williams R.N., Lee K. Wood, John Beecher Wood, John H. Woodford Jr., James E.
I N T R OCDEUL CE IBNRGA TT IHNEG C5L0A SY S E AORFS 1 9 6 8
Abele Jr., James A. Adams, Dennis S. Alexander, Paula Allen, Sidney P. Alper, P. McChesney Armstrong, Richard D. Asbury, William S. Autin, Daniel C. Bailey, Stephen J. Banks III, Rafe Barnett, Warren M. Barr, Robert R. Barr III, E. Wallace Beckmann III, George Belk, Thomas E. Bobo III, Robert E. Branton, William C. Brinson, Robert A. Brock, Stanley M. Browder, William R. Brown, Robert D. Brown, William R. Buttermore Jr., Rodney E. Campbell, Michael R. Carr, Ronald E. Cobb III, H. Hammond Cofer, Joseph B. Corcoran, Stephen L. Dalton Jr., Rufus M. Davis Jr., B. Clay Davis Sr., Gary A. Donoho, Richard W. Drew, Thomas L. Edwards II, James G. Eichelberger, Jay
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In
Memorium D E C E AS E D C L AS S M AT E S
Fred “Stephen” Alexander High Point, North Carolina 2/2/1950 - 12/8/2011 Attended: 1964 - 1968
Tyler Calhoun, III Arlington, Virginia 2/17/1950 - 7/22/2012 Attended: 1966 - 1968
“John” William Cummings Chattanooga, Tennessee 5/27/1950 - 5/25/2013 Attended: 1962 - 1968
“David” Dowling Hamilton Dalton, Georgia 7/30/1950 - 12/11/2012 Attended: 1964 - 1968
Stephen Kent “Steve” Hill Huntsville, Alabama 9/9/1949 - 9/1/1995 Attended: 1964 – 1968
William Parrott “Bill” Hust Knoxville, Tennessee 1/9/1950 - 11/25/1988 Attended: 1965 - 1968
William McRee “Will” Maxwell Quincy, Florida 7/7/1949 - 7/14/2017 Attended: 1966 - 1968
Harry “Hardin” Murdock Chattanooga, Tennessee 6/8/1949 - 8/4/2013 Attended: 1962 - 1968
Arthur Lanier “Lanny” Nichols Monroeville, Alabama 9/24/1949 - 6/6/1995 Attended: 1964 - 1968
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James Huff “Jim” Patton Chattanooga, Tennessee 3/21/1950 - 12/17/1992 Attended: 1962 - 1968
“Peter” Bard Riecks Cincinnati, Ohio 6/29/1949 - 12/7/2006 Attended: 1965 - 1968
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Clifford Walter “Cliff” Shults Newport, Tennessee 10/27/1950 - 2/6/2007 Attended: 1962 - 1968
“Gray” Dean Latimore Smith Chattanooga, Tennessee 7/30/1950 - 6/7/1989 Attended: 1962 - 1968
“Mark” Wofford Smitherman Shreveport, Louisiana 12/27/1949 - 1/1/1993 Attended: 1964 - 1964
Richard “Terry” Taunton Fairfax, Alabama 7/17/1949 - 5/30/2003 Attended: 1964 - 1968
“George” Richard Wilkinson Greenville, South Carolina 7/12/1950 - 8/20/2013 Attended: 1964 - 1968
“Fenton” DeVaney Winstead Roxboro, North Carolina 4/20/1949 - 9/21/2010 Attended: 1964 - 1968
C E L E B R AT I N G 5 0 Y E A R S
James Warren “Jim” Nichols Chattanooga, Tennessee Unknown - 10/20/1991 Attended: 1962 - 1964
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OCALA, FLORIDA
Scott “Dennis” Adams
I have a BA in Psychology from the University of Virginia, an accounting major from Florida State University, and an MBA from the University of Connecticut. I must say all of the study halls at McCallie gave me discipline for these later years. Since college, I have worked in a retail paint store, sold insurance and dictation equipment, worked construction, delivered newspapers, was an auditor/CPA at Price Waterhouse, worked for a boutique foreign currency risk management firm, and was a treasury manager/executive at four Fortune 500 companies, most recently Black & Decker. I have been fortunate to retire at age 55.
“I have to say after all these years I feel vindicated graduating McCallie as a four-year private. The School and I have withstood the test of time.”
I have lived in Florida, Tennessee, Virginia, New York, Connecticut, and Maryland. I currently live in Sarasota Florida, a beautiful place on the Gulf coast, with my first last wife and a 16-year-old cat. I am not religious in the traditional sense but have been attracted to and influenced by Eastern thought and practices for years, particularly Zen and yoga. I tend to be solitary in my pastimes which include meditation, walking, swinging a kettlebell, and stock trading. I do however enjoy eating, drinking, and conversing with family and friends. Lately, I have been drawn to reading works that challenge my thinking and beliefs, most recently Homo Deus by Yuval Harari. There are seven billion people on the planet. By any reckoning, I have had a wonderful and blessed life. I am healthy, retired, have a great marriage partner and friend in Mimi, live in a city where I feel on vacation every day, and can do as I please within reason. That said, I still wonder about all those roads not traveled. Finally, I have to say after all these years I feel vindicated graduating McCallie as a four-year private. The School and I have withstood the test of time. The military program did not. God bless Sarge wherever he is. I found him very likeable.
CLASS OF 1968
At 68, I have come to realize we have less control over our lives than we think. I have been down many roads I never expected to take.
Through the corporate world I got involved with a not-for-profit, the Children’s Guild, which serves severely disadvantaged and disabled children. Later, I became the president of a charter school start-up, grades one through eight. These were both unexpected and eye-opening experiences. I have been married three times. Each one obviously impacted my life. After 20 years, I like to call Mimi my first last wife. Although we met in Baltimore, we were both born in Miami in the same hospital. I have two children, a boy and a girl from my second marriage, and two grandchildren from my daughter, also a boy and girl.
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infectious personality. He was always the life of the party and made people laugh.
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It’s never “work” if you do what you love and love what you do.
After 8 years of private school, he decided to take a break and headed to Cheyenne, Wyoming with Paula and Christine where he spent a year as a counselor in the Adult Education Program at Laramie County Community College. All spare times were spent exploring the areas of Wyoming, South Dakota and Colorado. He returned to Virginia where he spent a year as a Special Education teacher, then to North Carolina where he spent two years as a District Executive and Summer Camp Aquatics Director with the Boy Scouts of America. One of his proudest accomplishments was his induction into the Order of the Arrow. His training and experiences with the Boy Scouts gave him a passion for camping and canoeing throughout the remainder of his life. In December of 197 4 he had his second daughter, Rachel.
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If you can conceive it, believe it; believing it makes it so.
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Assume nothing.
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Be prepared.
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Never lie, cheat or steal.
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Always leave things better than you found them; be a good steward of the earth.
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Follow the Golden Rule: Always treat others the way you want to be treated.
In 1976 he returned to Virginia, specifically Charlottesville. He took a position with the Charlottesville City Schools as a counselor in an Alternative Education Program for troubled youth and decided to further his education. He attended The University of Virginia and received his Masters and Ph.D. in Counseling, graduating in 1981. He was licensed by the State as a Professional Counselor and opened a private counseling practice in 1982 which thrived until his passing in 2011. He served on many professional boards and was in high demand as a public speaker. He built his dream cabin in the woods on the banks of the James River and moved there in February 1993. He had three grandchildren, Jacob, Carson and Zachary. Some of his hobbies were music, camping and canoeing on the James River and the study of anything history. He loved spending time with his children and grandchildren, with lots of cookouts and overnight visits, teaching them archery, four-wheeling, fishing and swimming in the James, and other outdoor activities at his “Sittin’ Rock Farm”. Stephen’s sense of humor was a huge part of his
A few of what he referred to as his “truisms” and lived his life by were:
Some of the memories I can recall of his time spent at McCallie: •
The smell of Moon Pies wafting out of the windows of The Chattanooga Bakery.
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Exploring the hills and hollers around Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain.
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Caving/Spelunking.
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“The Times They Are a Changing” blasting from the bell tower over Missionary Ridge ... I was told no one ever ratted out the guilty party.
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Brussel Sprouts served at every lunch and dinner which became flying projectiles in protest.
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Demerits, demerits, and more demerits which he was walking off up until the morning of graduation.
CLASS OF 1968
H I G H P O I N T, N O R T H C A R O L I N A
Fred “Steven” Alexander
After graduating from McCallie Stephen attended Hampden-Sydney College receiving his Bachelors degree with a major in Psychology. While at Hampden-Sydney he was the Chaplain of Sigma Nu Fraternity and fondly referred to as “Sugar Bear”. He married his childhood sweetheart, Paula, in February of 1969 and promptly had his first daughter, Christine, in December of 1969.
McCallie gave Stephen a life-long love of learning and instilled discipline without breaking his spirit. Submitted by Paula Alexander
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CLASS OF 1968
INDIANOLA, MISSISSIPPI
Perry “Sidney” Allen
Spouse: Deborah Children: Sidney Allen, Jr. (Kristin) and Rachel W. Allen Grandkids: Sidney “Perry” Allen, III and William J. Allen Occupation: CFO Southern Timber Venture, LLC
Sidney, 36 and Rachel, 33; enjoying my grandchildren Perry, 7 and William, 3. •
Being blessed with a career in the Real Estate Development Industry and the Timber and Forest Products Industry with the same partners for almost 40 years.
Favorite McCallie memory and/or greatest impact:
Hobbies: Hunting and Golf Highlights of life since McCallie: •
Marriage to Deborah Wood Allen now for 39 years.
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Watching the success of my children,
My coaches (and occasional admonishers/ encouragers) Yo, Spence III, and Jim Morgan. And of course, encouragement from Maj while snapping his pencil as he “encouraged” me!! Who could forget arriving on campus one morning our senior year and seeing a vehicle parked on the roof !!
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seventh grader.
It’s June 1962, and I had just graduated from the sixth grade at Bright School when I received a letter from McCallie. I tore open the envelope only to find a letter explaining that I was expected to read two or three books over the summer and to be prepared to write a report or take a test on each one the first week of school. “What? “Read books over the summer and write a report the first week of school?” That was my first inkling that I was in for a wild ride for the next six years! That letter also explained what was to be an annual summer event. The pre-owned, pre-worn uniform sale in Davenport Gymnasium. You see, Mr. Chapman, who owned Brainerd Cleaners, would bring hundreds of trousers, dress uniforms, Ike jackets and such to Davenport Gym during July or August. All of the mothers would bring their sons and search for good deals on the uniforms. It was hot in that gym and was the last place any of us wanted to be. Seventh grade was an eye-opening experience with military requirements, different teacher for each subject and going to class without girls! Here are just a few of my memories from the eventful first year: •
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1st day at morning assembly in the chapel: unaware of the “preordained” seating arrangements within my assigned row, I sat down on the end of the row on the center aisle. It wasn’t long before I was confronted with, “Seventh graders don’t sit on the end of the row, seniors sit on the ends of the rows and seventh graders sit in the middle.” And then I felt my first senior ring “bonk” on the back of my head, moved to the center of the row, and quickly learned my place in the pecking order. The Cuban Missile Crisis: There was a special, called assembly in the Chapel on the morning the Cuban blockade by the U.S. was to begin. The world was tense, waiting to see if the USSR was going to run the blockade and force the U.S. to take action. The potential for nuclear war was real. Dr. Park led the gathering in prayer, and I remember turning around afterwards to look at the clock at the back of the Chapel. It read, “10:00”, the time for the start of the blockade. This was a chilling time for all, including this
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“Yo” Strang: He was one of the kindest, most gentle souls I have ever met. His was my favorite class in 7th grade. (Remember his famous “extra credit” question; “Who was on the road to Damascus and where was Paul going?” The first week of 7th grade, Dr. Spence came into Yo’s class to welcome all of us. I was sitting directly in front of Yo’s desk, and Dr. Spence was standing behind it. As he was talking, he slowly moved the chair away from the desk and while still talking, he suddenly jumped up on top of the desk from a standstill! I thought he was going to come off the front of the desk and into my lap but didn’t! There he was on top of the desk with that big grin of his on his face. I had never seen anything like that before from a teacher, much less from a Headmaster.
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Paddles: I had never seen so many paddles in my life! Seems all of my teachers that year had them: Capt. Tate, Coach Day and Dr. Spence. And they all had holes in them to increase the effect! And, yes, I got to know them all intimately at one time or another that first year.
From the rest of my time at McCallie, here are a few more memories (in no particular order): •
Mr. Gass’ Barber Shop: who had ever heard of a barber shop at school?
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Armed Forces Day Parades
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The “Orchids and Onions” section of The Tornado
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Mr. Schmidt: He was probably the most enthusiastic, full-of-life teacher I ever had. And, who could ever forget his booming greeting and welcoming “pat” and “gentle” squeeze on top of your shoulders?
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Lonnie Brock in the Gym who supplies socks, jocks and towels, along with a laugh or two. We both loved baseball, and he was a huge Dodger fan. Snowball fights at lunchtime: McCallie never closed when it snowed, so we would have big time snowball fights at lunchtime.
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CLASS OF 1968
C H AT TA N O O G A , T E N N E S S E E
Philip McChesney “Ches” Alper
A Walk Down Memory Lane
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The Amphitheater that was behind the football stands near the Jr. School practice field was a great setting for different ceremonies.
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Sitting in an empty classroom in Middle Hall during lunch with BB Branton, bull “about a variety of issues of the day.” We thought we had it all figured out.
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Boarding students: I can’t imagine was it was like to leave your families, friends and girlfriends to attend a military boarding school. I admire and respect all of you who stuck it out. Don’t know if I could have done that.
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second largest city of a million people in March 1974 to begin four and half months of intensive Spanish classes. In order to begin medical school, all foreigners were required to have a certain level of proficiency in the language. You see, all of your lectures and exams were in Spanish. And, I only knew 3 words in that language when I arrived there: “si”, “no” and “gracias!” As it turned out, this medical school had more American students than any other in the world (approximately 3,000). I was fortunate to become friends with, not only many Americans from around the U.S., but also with students from all over the world. And, each semester our training included spending a week away from the city in a small town or village providing free medical care to the townspeople. It gave me an understanding of the challenges of living in a “third world” and a greater empathy for the people. While it wasn’t always easy living in a foreign country for most of four and a half years, I had many wonderful experiences and gained a greater appreciation for the little things we take for granted here at home, like being able to drink water from a tap without getting “Montezuma’s Revenge.”
“But while my life journey has taken me down many different paths, I have always enjoyed reflecting back on my days at McCallie and the friendships that have endured over time.”
Teachers: While I enjoyed all of my teachers (well, some maybe more than others), there are three who stand out for me not just as classroom teachers. I was fortunate to be a football manager for 3 years under, first, “Sack Milligan”, and then for John Day, as well as for 2 years with the varsity basketball team under Bill Eskridge. When it came time for athletics, they each interacted with me not as teacher/student but person/person. They trusted me with certain responsibilities and taught me many valuable life lessons I never forgot!
CLASS OF 1968
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Following graduation and completion of foreign medical graduate requirements in order to begin internship in the U.S., I realized that a lifetime of private medical practice was not the life I wanted. This brought me to my first “fork in the road.” A friend, who knew I was searching for something new, told me of an interesting position with Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), “Energy Education Specialist.” The position consisted of visiting elementary, middle and high schools in order to share information on current and future energy resources so they will make smart energy decisions in the future. I accomplished this by doing a school-wide, fun and entertaining program in an auditorium or gymnasium, followed by visits to science classes throughout the day. This was 1982 during the energy crisis when dependence on oil was high – so we discussed topics related to nuclear and solar energy,
The Long and Winding Road While many of my classmates probably knew the career paths they wanted to follow, I was not one of them. For many like me, the road ahead would take a circuitous and often exciting route. Upon graduation, I headed to Bulldog Country in Athens, GA without a clue as what to expect over the next four years. While at UGA I decided to pursue a medical career but upon graduation was not able to gain admittance to an American medical school. A friend who was attending med school in Guadalajara, Mexico encouraged me to consider that option. Next thing I knew, I was on a plane to Mexico’s
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REUNION RECAP biomass fuel and other alternative energy sources. For 3 school years, I drove a van loaded with energy equipment through Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas and Colorado. It was a fun and exciting job and the ORAU helped me to conquer the number one fear of most people the fear of public speaking. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those 3 years gave me skills that I was to use when I took the next fork in my “road”.
and surgery centers to identify and address their loss prevention issues, as well as planning meetings, conducting new risk manager orientations and serving as editor of the company-wide risk management newsletter. In 2009, amidst a company-wide reorganization, I left HCA after 23 years with the company. And, as often happens, when one door closes, another one opens, but I had no idea it would lead in the direction it did. With some time on my hands, I volunteered with The First Tee program in Nashville. This program uses golf as a vehicle to develop in young people the positive values of the game such as honesty, integrity, sportsmanship and confidence. During the next 5 year I became a level I coach and worked with young people (ages 7-16) from all socio-economic backgrounds. Since moving back to the Chattanooga area I have continued to work the program in Nashville and Athens, TN. Since retiring several years ago, The First Tee program has been my “work”. In 1986, I was lucky to be introduced to Carol, the woman I would fall in love with and eventually marry. In fact, we were introduced by a fellow McCallie alum, Steve Parker. For 28 years she has been not just my wife, but also my best friend. As we were about to move to Nashville, her parents became ill and needed her help with their care. So for the next 15+ years she essentially lived with them in Oneida, TN managing their affairs and directing their medical care with the help of her team of caregivers. I have told her many times during those years that she was earning her angel wings. She has “taught” me many lessons just by watching how she interacts with people. I definitely “outkicked my coverage”.
During my third summer off with the energy position in 1985, I was contacted by the Administrator at HCA Parkridge Medical Center in Chattanooga to offer me the opportunity to lead a new program that HCA was starting in healthcare facilities it managed around the country. It turned out to be what we know now as “Wellness”, but at that time was called “Health Promotion”. I accepted the position since I saw it as a way to utilize my medical education but from the frontend, i.e. helping people to stay healthy (or get healthy) rather than trying to help them once they become ill. So, for the next five years, we (my team and I) conducted smoking cessation, stress management, weight management and computerized personal health profiles. We offered these programs to our employees, businesses on-site and the general public. We also held the first city-wide cholesterol screening at two area shopping malls where we screened over 30,000 people over a four weekend period. Eventually, we referred hundreds of people with high cholesterol levels and/or high blood pressure to physicians for treatment. Being Director of the Health Promotion Program was very rewarding to me as I saw many people change their lifestyle habits with the help of our programs. But a new fork in the road was just up ahead.
So, that brings me to 2018. I can’t believe it’s been 50 years since our McCallie years. But while my life journey has taken me down many different paths, I have always enjoyed reflecting back on my days at McCallie and the friendships that have endured over time. My life has been a richer one thanks to McCallie.
In 1990, the new administrator at the hospital decided to change directions and asked me to assume responsibility for the risk management functions for the hospital. This included loss prevention activities, reviews of patient and employee occurrences, and identification of solutions to prevent their reoccurrence. I also was responsible for managing any legal claims related to those occurrences. It was the type of job where just when you think you’ve seen everything, something new happens. After seven years in the risk management role, I was invited to join HCA’s Risk Management Department in its Nashville headquarters, so it was off to the Music City for a 12-year stint as a Risk Management Consultant and Director of Risk Management Education. This included helping risk managers in HCA hospitals
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My recollections of the school precede my actual attendance because I signed up for McCallie’s summer camp programs prior to enrolling as a student. It was then that I was introduced to the campus, to the Slater Food system, to wrestling (the preferred sport for those of us under 6’7”) and to some men who would become the oldest and best friends of my life. It was also there that I began to realize there were civilizations beyond that of Lookout Mtn. There were strange countries like East Ridge, Redbank, Signal Mountain and even Soddy Daisy. The world was rapidly getting bigger. McCallie School could be described as a collection of teachers who loved teaching and loved boys. Strangely though, there were teachers who wanted us to write sentences on straight and parallel lines (Capt. Tate); teachers with names like Magoo and Yo who remain vivid characters even today; teachers who applied wooden paddles with quarter-inch holes to the backsides of inattentive students (Coach Day); teachers who asked us penetrating questions like “Who was on the road to Damascus and where was Saul going?” (Mr. Lyle); teachers who could teach us words like “agricola” while tying knots in the cord to the blinds which, at the end of the lecture, would magically disappear with a single pull (!) (Mr. Eckhart); teachers who could relate stories of bombing runs over Germany (coach Spencer) and teachers who could make us see the value of unfulfilled desire while contemplating Keats’ Grecian urn. There were teachers who could show us the magic of mathematics by plotting lines and curves on a piece of paper (Mr. Bondurant) and teachers who played guitars while opening the door to a future career by showing me why ice expanded upon freezing (Mr. Lewis). In short, McCallie imbued us with the means to learn and the love of it which lasts to this day. McCallie was also a place that provided great days
still in our memories - days that were spent in the sun marching to the sounds of Souza’s ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ and graduating to Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance’; beating Baylor at anything; waiting for the alarms to sound the changing of class but knowing that we had stolen the bells; seeing a Volkswagen on top of the dining hall and a moose head on the chapel spire; sitting in chapel and hearing a resounding Keo-Kio ‘thud’ on the shoulder of a classmate; the thrill of Friday night football; dances in McClellan Gym and seeing a very pretty girl across the gym at a Baylor wrestling match (more on that later). I can still feel the humidity of a sweaty wrestling room and remember watching guys play soccer in freezing mud for reasons I still don’t understand. Then there was the day the commotion in the hallway told us someone important had been shot in Dallas. Graduation came and went in a flash and having a father and uncle who attended Georgia Tech provided every reason (not to mention being accepted there, surprisingly!) to head to Atlanta for the next four years. It was there that I followed the suggestion of Ed Lewis that chemists will starve but chemical engineers could make a living. Made sense to me. It was also there that I began to ask more serious questions about the things I had been taught as a child. A thousand discussions and scores of books led to four years as a campus minister at Michigan State and three years of seminary in Chicago, much to my father’s chagrin no doubt. However, a failing marriage and the realization that church ministry involves skills perhaps beyond those I possessed, led to another change of career but one made possible by my years at Georgia Tech. It was 1979 and the effects of the ‘oil shocks’ were still reverberating. Oil companies were hiring anyone who could ‘fog a mirror’ and I qualified for at least that. This opportunity took me to the great state of Texas and a 32-year career in the oil and gas industry. It was there my two beautiful daughters were born and where I was able to practice the skills suggested by Ed Lewis and developed at Tech. I was fortunate enough to work on some fascinating projects involving enhanced oil recovery, gas processing and equipment manufacturing. I received a P.E. license and was awarded a U.S. patent for a modification to separation equipment. Somehow though, my feckless company did not recognize the magnificence of the device and failed to put it in production, much to their loss
CLASS OF 1968
LO O KO U T M O U N TA I N , T E N N E S S E E
William Simpson “Bill” Asbury
In preparing to write this bio, I made the mistake of reading the examples provided by the Class of ’67 and realizing what an array of fantastic achievements these men have made. Having little doubt that the Class of ’68 will do the same, one is forced to consider that silence might be the best option when writing his own story. This would probably be the better option for the present writer but McCallie did teach us something about ‘duty’, if I remember correctly.
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REUNION RECAP and to humanity in general, I’m certain. Texas had certainly become my home and, in the 1980’s, Houston in particular. It was during that time that my nine-year marriage came to an end and I spent the next two decades as a long distance dad. In the late nineties and much to my surprise, I stumbled across that ‘pretty girl in the gym’ after a hiatus of some twenty years. Elenora Wilson, the sister of the Baylor boy I wrestled in 1968, was living in Dallas, Texas and we connected again. Elenora and I were married in 1991 and she has been my ‘Friend1’ for the last twentyseven years. We have resided in Dallas since then. Though my parents died within the first year of our marriage, we were able to enjoy the warmness of the Shields and Frances Wilson family until 2014 when they passed away. Their proximity to Chattanooga provided a reason and a way to stay in touch with many McCallie friends as we came home yearly for Christmas. Elenora and I have traveled to some wonderful places in the world, made some great friends and watched nieces and daughters grow to maturity. I retired in 2011 and have found much enjoyment tutoring and teaching math and chemistry in several high schools (one very much like McCallie); reading; riding my bike; engaging in carpentry projects; playing the guitar; participating in the life of our church and for some two decades, growing in the fellowship of a group we call the Lewis Tolkien society. Perhaps a crowning event will be the fiftieth reunion of my McCallie classmates, in the fall of 2018! Hope to see you all then!
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So now, fifty years after the fact, we are to come together again as a class for our reunion. It will be a time to learn about others and learn about ourselves. Time and circumstance can be a great equalizer and an insightful teacher. Our commencement speaker, the Rev. Ben Haden, in 1968 spoke of how we were now old enough to be shipped away in ships and planes and brought back in boxes. While the war in Vietnam for the most part would wind down by the time we graduated from college, earlier classes did fight in Vietnam, and some suffered the fate Ben Haden described. We had known them and were impacted by that, to say nothing of the deaths of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the riots in Chicago and other things that came to a head the year of our graduation. The context of our time in 1968 was one of great change.
Warren’s book, All the Kings Men, which we read in sophomore English. In it Warren wrote, “But if there is one thing that is certain, it is that no story is ever over. For the story that we think is over is only a chapter in the story that will not be over. And it isn’t the game that is over, it is only an inning, and this game has a lot more than nine innings. When it is called it will be on account of darkness. But it is a long day.” Reunions also lead to subsequent impressions. In our time, McCallie was an academic powerhouse, as it is no doubt today. I believe I passed so many advance placement tests I was a sophomore in college by my second quarter. What many of our classmates were deficient in were social skills. Not the etiquette so much as the opposite sex. Same-sex high school classes have a way of doing that. The local girls’ school, GPS, was where institutionally our attention was directed. However, at that time Baylor was also all male, so GPS students were, to put it diplomatically, the focus of attention of at least two men for each of them.
“So we will gather in October to see who we were, who we are and perhaps what our future holds for us, as exhibited by those with whom we were thrown together at McCallie.”
Reunions spark reminiscences. What we took away from McCallie varies with each person, based on his experiences. For me, as someone who was not an athlete, scholar, or otherwise student leader, my strongest impression was a Chapel talk by Spencer III close to our graduation. In that address, he spoke mainly to the graduation class of the need to play a long game. He said that there will be in the future people who will be recognized who were not standouts in school, and some who were decorated in graduation will fall by the wayside. In this he was alluding to a passage from Robert Penn
CLASS OF 1968
C H AT TA N O O G A , T E N N E S S E E
“Warren” McGill Barnett
Fifty years is a long time if you are a human being. Less so if you are a California Redwood tree, more so if you are a mayfly. Time, as we measure it, is uniform. Sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour, and so on. The impact of time depends on who and what we are, the choices we make and what fate gives us, and takes away.
When we went on to college, the combination of lack of structure (no study halls, living at home, etc.) combined with the choice of what to do and with whom to do it, left many classmates cruising through freshmen classes, while attending all night poker games, drinking parties, and the like. For many in our class, women were not so much from another planet as another galaxy. The end result ranged from material for television quality situation comedies to fodder for divorce court. Times have changed, perhaps. But not in time for us.
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REUNION RECAP We are asked to write something about ourselves. I will do my best here. I went on from McCallie to UT Knoxville. From there, I went on to Vanderbilt to get my MBA and then was a trainee for a brokerage firm in Washington, DC. I left to work for an investment advisory firm. During this time my father passed away. I returned to Chattanooga to help my mother settle my father’s estate. I went to work for a local bank trust department. Three months later it was acquired another bank, while yet another bank acquired the combination a year later. Being tired of moving, I decided to start my own investment advisory firm. It will be 35 years old this year. Ten employees, $320 million under management. I am still working full time. If 70 is the new 50, then I will be working until I am 80 or 90. I have never been married. I have no children that I know of. I run a low overhead operation, at least in that sense. I enjoy my work. Investing is a chess game that never ends. It gives me the wherewithal to practice philanthropy. I enjoy supporting the arts, assuming that the local government will not in the near future be able to do the same. If you want people to hope and pray that you will live forever, become a benefactor. So we will gather in October to see who we were, who we are and perhaps what our future holds for us, as exhibited by those with whom we were thrown together at McCallie. At a minimum, it should be entertaining. At most, it should be enlightening. I look forward to seeing you there.
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CLASS OF 1968
LO O KO U T M O U N TA I N , T N N E S S E E
George Edmund “Skipper” Beckman, III
Spouse: Geri 2 sons: Bryce Beckmann (28) and Taylor Beckmann (26) Occupation: Realtor-Associate Broker Hobbies: Keeping Geri happy! Highlights of life since McCallie: 25+ years in Restaurant Business and 7 years in Real Estate Favorite McCallie memory and/or greatest impact: First year at UT was almost a repeat of Senior Year at McCallie.
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only once and constantly make A’s. I would write three drafts of mine and come away with a B- or C. •
Playing B-team football my junior year was a blast. I thought we had a great team, but we finished 1 -3-2. Tessman and Sarge were the coaches. They were like Mutt and Jeff. All Sarge did was holler all the time at everyone on the team.
•
I played on the tennis team under the leadership of Coach John “Yo” Strang. I never was much good, but watching Turner Howard of McCallie and Zan Guerry of Baylor play each other was amazing. Baylor also had Roscoe Tanner and Bryan Gottfried on that team.
•
Funny and embarrassing moments: Walking to breakfast one morning and seeing Mr. Gibson’s car on the roof of the cafeteria. Walking into school one morning and seeing Mr. Gibson’s car (maybe it was Col. Armstrong’s) parked neatly in the hall inside of Middle Hall.
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Hearing Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” playing on the Chapel chimes.
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All my buddies from Belk Hall were going swimming in the lake late at night my senior year. The first night I joined them, just happened to be the night Spence III decided to check on any possible trespassers; he shows up with his flashlight and everybody scattered. I was hiding under a boat in my underwear and was the only person caught. It earned me two weeks of D hall. Everyone really thought it was funny except me.
•
Another great memory was being picked to sit at Mr. Humphrey’s table in the dining room my second year. Most of his table was made up of his favorite Latin students or students who had to have some deep southern heritage “roots”. I was not one of his Latin students, but I definitely had southern roots. He called me Robert and was one of my favorite teachers even though he never taught me.
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By far my favorite day of the year (and most everyone else’s) was the day Maj taught us how to sing the Alma Mater. I didn’t realize
Here are some of my best memories: •
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Sitting in the back of the language lab in German with Robert Mingea who sang Beatles songs in the microphone; Pierre would go crazy and holler at Robert the entire time. We had six or seven in that German class and I loved it when Pierre taught us beer drinking songs in German as well as Christmas Carols. His love of Switzerland and the Alps was amazing. He was a great man and teacher. My roommate Steve Phillips was one of the smartest guys I ever knew. He would study my notes for tests and always make a better grade than I would make. He never wrote a rough draft of a paper. He would write the paper
CLASS OF 1968
BOBO, MISSISSIPPI
Robert Eager “Bob” Bobo III
When my parents dropped me off at McCallie in the fall of 1963 and drove off it dawned on me that I was in trouble. I was 13 years old (late birthday), didn’t know one person at this place, and the first time I could go home would be Thanksgiving. That first night I was there they had all boarders meet in the study hall and these huge guys (seniors) were beating on their desks and shouting loudly “rats again”, rats again, rats again.” I didn’t know what a rat was, but I had a bad feeling it had something to do with me and the other freshmen boarders. I stayed homesick for most of the first semester. Going from a rural Miss. town of 200 citizens to an all-boys school with 500 guys was quite a culture shock. I remembered being befriended by a senior named Joe Norton who roomed with a big guy named Bo Edwards. They were prefects in Founders Home and they kind of took me under their wings when I needed it badly. After that semester, I was never homesick again. McCallie became an extension of my real family. Saturdays were always fun because we would either go get a milkshake & burger from the canteen in Maclellan Hall and then play pick up ball in the afternoon or if I didn’t do that, a bunch of us would hitch a ride downtown to eat a great meal at the S& W Cafeteria and then go see a movie at the Martin Theater. I remember getting behind John Hannah (Baylor student who became all pro tackle every year he played pro ball.) in the cafeteria line on one Saturday. I believe he was mid-south heavyweight wrestling champion, Mid-South shot putt, discus, and javelin champion when he was in in the 8th grade. I saw him put 7 sirloin steaks on his plate in that cafeteria line one Saturday and will never forget it.
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REUNION RECAP until years later that Maj wrote the song in 1930. Maj really didn’t sing the song to us. He was somewhere between talking the words and chanting the words. Maj encouraged us to sing the last “hail all hail” a little louder than the rest of the song. We blew the roof off on that. Learning that song brought two undisputable facts: that song would be etched in my memory for a long, long time, and I also discovered why I never saw Maj in the Centenary Methodist Choir.
then and hope both come to the reunion. I graduated from UVA in May of 1972 and came home to work for the Bobo Insurance Agency in Clarksdale. My grandad and my dad were my bosses, so that was pretty neat. I was furnished a car, living at home, and taking home $99 a week. I was living like a king. In December of 1972, my 15-year-old sister was killed in a horrible wreck. Four kids hit a concrete bridge without guard rails and it killed three of the four. It was a terrible tragedy for our family and for our community.
After graduation from McCallie, I met Bill Hust and a lot of guys and girls at Myrtle Beach and had a great time. Although a lot of the week there was a little foggy, I do remember the Drifters and the Four Tops were playing at the Beach Club Bar. I thought I had died and gone to Heaven. That trip was the last time I saw Bill. We talked a lot on the phone over the years, but his death was a tragic loss for so many people. He died way too soon.
In late 1972, I became involved in our youth athletic league in Clarksdale that mainly was for boys and girls 9-13 years of age. I always believed in it because I figured it kept kids just busy enough to stay out of trouble in their spare time. I coached a boys’ team (I was the assistant) for the remainder of the 70’s and had a ball. Two of my players were acolytes in my wedding. In November of 1973, a buddie of mine and myself were trying to round up some dates for the weekend. I called a former classmate of mine (who I dated in the 6th and 7th grade) to see if she could go out. Her cute younger sister answered the phone and told me she was out of town but that she was available. I said “great” and we had our first date that weekend. Candy and I got engaged four months later and were married in July of 1974. I wrote Maj and told him my news. He wrote back and said July was a good month to get married since he and Mrs. Bums were married July 31, 1928, almost 46 years earlier. He wanted to know her name, knew she was a fine girl and he would like to see us one day soon. I never saw Maj again after that, and I regret that I never did make that last trip. He probably would have given me one more hug (as he did all the boarders), and he would tell me to be a good boy. I think about Maj a lot and what a profound effect he had on the lives of so many boys who became men. He treated everyone the same, and we all thought we were one of his favorites.
“By far my favorite day of the year (and most everyone else’s) was the day Maj taught us how to sing the Alma Mater.”
After that summer, I entered the University of Virginia in the fall of ‘68 and roomed with Dennis Adams. We were introduced to a whole new way of life and freedom. To make matters worse, (or better) he, Charlie Webb and I joined the SAE Fraternity which reminded me of Animal House. We never had a Toga Party and no dean’s wife would set foot in our house, (unlike Dean Wormer’s wife in the movie). Everything else was pretty much the same as the movie. Our education at McCallie made our freshman year fairly easy. Thanks to Pierre Wagner, Dennis and I made easy B’s in German 5 & 6 our freshman year. Likewise, with most of our freshman courses. After our freshman year things changed and our study discipline from McCallie really helped. We realized if you studied during the week, you could party on weekends. Although that doesn’t seem like rocket science, many of our friends didn’t adhere to that policy. I remember hitchhiking down to UNC for the UVACarolina football game my freshman year and seeing John Freeze and some other friends from McCallie. Ken Stringer would come down from Princeton to visit us at UVA on party weekends all four years, and it was always great seeing him. I haven’t seen Freeze or Stringer since
My wife Candy and I celebrated our 44th anniversary this July and I don’t know where the years have gone. There have been some bumps along the way but I have truly been blessed. We had our first of two daughters
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(Lacy) in 1976 and the second (Beth) in 1979. After going to an all-boys school and having three brothers, raising two girls was truly some unchartered waters. I traded in my hunting gear and started to get ready for Brownie banquets, crazy hormones, damaged feelings, broken hearts (over boyfriends), slumber parties and cheerleading tryouts. I also coached girls’ basketball and softball (always the assistant) which was totally different from coaching boy’s teams.
in Memphis which is really nice and convenient. I totally agree with Lou Hotz’s saying that if he knew grandchildren were so great, he would have had them before he had his kids. McCallie taught me more than I could ever write down on paper. It taught me self-discipline and how to be independent and get along with others. The honor system was amazing and something we took very seriously. I am proud today in a world that seems so out of control, immoral, unpatriotic, and selfish that McCallie continues to be a Christian-based school that will still pray to a Great God and respect our Flag and all the people who have fought and died for it.
My daughters graduated from Lee Academy in Clarksdale in 1994 and 1997. My oldest daughter went to Ole Miss and graduated in 1998. My youngest graduated from Delta State University in 2001. They both married good men who have been a blessing to my family. We put on two nice Delta weddings. I remortgaged my house for both weddings. I remember I paid $400 for an ice sculptured swan that melted halfway before one reception even started. I continued selling insurance and enjoyed watching these girls grow up. My grandfather died in 1979 and my dad retired in 1989. I was the boss until I merged with a larger agency in 2005 and continue to work there today. My dad passed away five years ago at 89. We took him to the Country Club for his 89th birthday. We ate big steaks and had big drinks and Daddy told us all that he had had a great ride and if he died tomorrow he’d have no regrets. Strangely enough, he had a stroke three days later and was dead within three weeks. When Daddy was 82 my brothers and I were fortunate enough to have tickets that year for the Masters. The four boys took Daddy to Augusta and spent three glorious days at the Masters. We could not have had a more special and fun time. I think it might have topped· all the years we used to duck and deer hunt together as Daddy’s all-time favorite memory. He talked about that trip until he died. My mom still lives in their house in Clarksdale. She is 91 and housebound with sitters, battling COPD and heart failure. I’m thankful my brother Jack and I live here so we can oversee her care. She has taken care of so many for so long. Now it is time for us to take care of her.
CLASS OF 1968
This will be my first reunion in 50 years and I am really looking forward to it.
My wife and I have lived in the same house for 33 years and it has been great. She has put up with me for many years and has really kept me in line for the most part. She loves animals, rescues dogs and works tirelessly at Clarksdale’s animal shelter. We have a rescue dog named Luvie who I would like to become in my second life. This dog is spoiled, has certain preferred TV shows, and is too good to board at a regular vet clinic. Our greatest joy by far is our four grandchildren. Lacy has three girls 8, 10, and 12 and Beth has an 8- yearold son. The girls live four blocks from each other
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CLASS OF 1968
C H AT TA N O O G A , T E N N E S S E E
William Crews “B.B.” Branton
I believe I was born with “blue” running through my veins since my dad and uncle and later my brother attended McCallie and my mother attended GPS (the black and blue Bruisers). My dad took me to a few McCallie football and basketball games while I was in elementary school so I was well versed in school cheers such as “beat ‘em, bust’em that’s our custom, Yea Tornado Fight” before I enrolled in the seventh grade in September 1962.
– but seemed to make it through unscathed. As wrestlers, food – any food - was our drug – anything whether it be a hamburger, cookies or steak and baked potato or even a few crackers. We starved and sweated off ounces and pounds all week down in “The Pit” in Davenport Gym in preparation for weekend matches, then ate more than we should only to have to lose it all the following week. My mother made the best chocolate sauce in the world and with pound cake and ice cream and her sauce that was heaven!!
I played football for one year then switched to the lesser contact sport of cross country and played basketball for Jim Lyle and John Day before switching to wrestling at the end of the eight grade season.
But in the long run, it was all worth it as we beat what the students today describe the school across the river as “the school behind Wal-Mart” – i.e. Baylor - in six dual meets and three Mid-South championships, 1966-68.
On Drugs: A few classmates and I were on drugs during the winter months – it’s a joke
I loved wearing a uniform so much I decided to take a seventh year – as did Gary Davis, Clay
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1968 Mid-South Champion wrestling team: (L-R seated) Whitaker, Dethro, Branton, Asbury; (kneeling) Cotter, Trotter, Killian, Mitchell; (standing) McCall, Whitaker, Bailey, and Hust.
Davis, Jeff McCall and Thorny Strang – and then enrolled at Ole Miss in the fall of 1969. After McCallie: Ole Miss was a wonderful place for me as I grew up following Ole Miss football (my dad was from Leland, Miss.) in the late 1950s and 60s and with the great Archie Manning leading the Rebel football fortunes (1968-70) many of us lived for Saturday college football.
league champs). I moved back to Chattanooga in the winter of 1990 and worked with my dad and brother in textile sales, followed by two years with the Greater Chattanooga Sports Committee, four years with the Chattanooga Free Press as a sports writer, seven years as media relations dir. at the Univ. of the South, 10 years as a writer for chattanoogan.com, an internet newspaper, and currently write for the Lookout Mountain Mirror monthly newspaper.
I graduated with a recreation degree and worked the next seven years with Athletes in Action in southern California in media relations.
Cancer, But Doing Better: I was diagnosed with basil cell skin cancer last July and currently live at Alexian Village on Signal Mountain. My oncologist is 1966 McCallie grad John McCravey and I have taken a chemo pill each day for the past several months and it has done wonders for my health.
The AIA basketball and wrestling teams won national AAU championships during that time and garnered national media attention. After AIA, I was the media relations director at Seattle Pacific Univ. (national champs in men’s soccer), then back to southern California at Chapman College (national champs in men’s tennis) and also for the L.A. Starlites of the women’s pro indoor volleyball league (2x
I plan to wear my dress blouse one more time and look forward to seeing many of you at our 50th reunion in October.
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CLASS OF 1968
“I believe I was born with “blue” running through my veins...” 37
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CLASS OF 1968
H I G H P O I N T, N O R T H C A R O L I N A
Robert Akin “Bob” Brinson
As our 50th high school reunion arrives we simply do not have as many “opening days” as we once had. Let us spend them wisely. I’m spending as much time as I can underwater in foreign countries, fly fishing in Labrador or working dogs over birds. Afterwards I am practicing law in a serious way. Reflecting back over the years since graduating McCallie the five decades divide in a fairly uniform way.
didn’t compare swords.
In the first ten years after 1968 I didn’t drift very far from McCallie. I met and married Ann Williams while at Wofford College in 1972. Her dad Pat graduated in the class of 1938. I well remember when I first met him. He asked me what rank I had at McCallie. I told him I was the unofficial squad for leader of the “senior privates”. The former regimental major didn’t quite get it. He also had trouble with the subtle differences between Riffo Raffo and Keo Kio. Of course, we
The third decade found me attempting to make enough money trying plaintiffs’ cases before juries to pay the boys’ tuitions at McCallie. During this time Mike Campbell and I trailered our horses up near Waynesville and rode every trail in the Smokies where horses were allowed and some where they weren’t allowed. The park rangers always marveled to find us at 6000 feet in the winter.
In the second decade Ann and I had Will (‘99) and Charlie (‘02) and spent 10 years coaching baseball and soccer while also teaching the boys to ride, hunt, fish and dive. Sandwiched in between raising kids and building Habitat Houses I spent a good deal of time running road races, doing triathlons and watching Pink Panther reruns.
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REUNION RECAP In the fourth decade Ann entered the inaugural class of the new Wake Forest University School of Divinity while I took on riparian rights and condemnation cases to scrounge up money for tuition. Apparently she was seeking a wider and far more receptive audience for her ministry than me and Campbell. During that time Will went to NCSU and Charlie to ECU. Both are in Raleigh. Charlie is with Citrix in cloud based tech and Will is with CBS as a senior NFL analyst. After Divinity School Ann pastored a local church and then found a calling as the solo pastor of a Presbyterian church in Pink Hill NC. We went looking for a place like Southport circa 1968 and found Oriental. We bought a second home on the river outside Oriental, added a sail boat and fishing boat and set up camp. The boys remarked that we are always choosing dirt road addresses. The kayaking and fishing has been fantastic! Ann has now retired to be with our grandson Robbie, although the boys’ friends are keeping her busy doing their weddings. I’m still practicing law, trying cases as the older partner in a firm of twelve lawyers, and still teaching diving courses.
Don Obrecht (wonderful McCallie teacher) and I took several diving trips to the Caymans and Honduras with boys from McCallie. This will explain my loss of hair and inestimable sense of survival. Consummate fun for sure.
If for some reason I don’t make it back to the reunion it will be the airlines’ fault for a missed connection as we will be returning from a diving trip to Indonesia. However, I send greetings to each and every one of you.
Somewhere along the way we bought a farm and started raising black labs, keeping cows and growing hay. Today we are living on 55 acres called Black Dog Farm. Our table is always set for guests. Please drop by and see us. Time is not of the essence as I hope to be planted there. The current Labs in residence are Cash and Law. Their full names are Black Dog Farm’s Man in Black or “Cash” and Black Dog Farm’s Texas Outlaw or “Law.” Both love retrieving a fallen Widgeon out of Currituck Sound on an icy cold winter morning.
I hope that the sixth decade finds Robbie Brinson at McCallie representing the Fourth Generation and meeting your grandsons. Pura Vida. Ciao.
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Ever since I graduated, McCallie has remained part of my life. Over the years, I stayed in touch or perhaps more accurately, the Development Office stayed in touch with me. Eventually, Kirk Walker convinced me to join the Board of Trustees (How many of you who knew me at McCallie would have seen THAT coming?). I now am completing my second term, having participated in the leadership transition from one great headmaster to another. I remain involved, first, because McCallie gave me a chance to reinvent myself and, second, because through all the social and political turmoil of the past fifty years, McCallie’s leadership has shown the conviction and courage to stay true to its most fundamental principles. On the domestic front, Brenda and I have been married for thirty-six years. We got started a little late in creating a family, but we managed to produce two children, Ann and Skip, Jr. Both live here in Birmingham. Ann is married. Skip, Jr. is not. As yet, no grandchildren have appeared. As for my professional life, I run a private venture capital firm, having left the practice of law after a twenty-year stint. I am co-founder and chairman of ServisFirst Bancshares (NASDAQ: SFBS), a publicly traded commercial bank holding company headquartered in Birmingham with offices in five states. I have bought, founded, sold, or shuttered several other businesses over the years, but the bank has been the most successful by far. One of the things my law practice taught me was the value of time, and a major reason I left the practice was my frustration of being tied to a clock, selling my time in fifteen-minute increments. By becoming a capitalist, I was able to spend a little time analyzing opportunities, and then let my investments work for me while I spent the rest of my time enjoying other aspects of life. What other aspects, you may ask. Well, there’s always riding motorcycles. I have a Harley chopper which I have been building and
rebuilding for the past twenty-five years. I also ride dirt bikes. My main dirt-biking buddy is my son-in-law, Ken McEwen. We are mutual bad influences, daring each other to attack the most imposing obstacles. Rocks, roots, ruts, mud bogs, the gnarlier the better. Then there’s the car racing. It’s a relatively new hobby I picked up shortly before turning sixty. Well, come to think of it, racing was something I had done since I was a teen, albeit illegally on public roads. In later years, I had attended a couple of so-called “performance driving schools”, where I got to mercilessly thrash somebody else’s car mile after mile on a race track. No worries about cops or oncoming traffic, both of which had given me trouble in the past. What could be more fun? Well, I soon discovered that, due to my “schooling”, I was qualified for a license to drive an actual race car in an actual race against other actual fools such as I. That’s what could be more fun. All I needed was a race car. No problem. As it turns out, a fool such as I can RENT a race car. As the old saying goes, “A fool and his money…”. So, after becoming firmly hooked after my very first race, now I own a car and race it all over the country in events sanctioned by the SCCA. My car is a 1999 Mazda Miata. I compete in a class restricted to Miatas with a tight ruleset designed to ensure maximum parity and intense competition. My car number is 61, which was my age when I won the class championship for the seven-state Southeast Region. I was the oldest driver ever to win, a record which still stands. Today I compete primarily on the national level, although I run the occasional regional race when Skip, Jr. can race with me. In our most recent race we placed first and second. I won by a car length. Whew!
CLASS OF 1968
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
Stanley Macfarlane “Skip” Brock
So, it’s fifty years. Who’da thunk? Looking over the list of my former classmates, I saw several I didn’t recognize, especially among the day dogs. Did I know them once? Did I forget them? After all, I have seen very few of them since graduation day. Memory is perishable, and fallible. With that in mind, I will write this sketch in reverse chronological order, beginning with where I am now and ending with some admittedly vague memories of McCallie which some of you may share.
Now let’s hop into the Way-Back Machine. Who among you got to hear Dr. Spence’s special inoffice lecture beginning with “Your parents love you, boy…” and ending with something about resisting the temptations of sin? I did, more than once. Who remembers when certain members of the Class of 66 (two of whom were my prefects in North Hutch) rigged the chapel chimes to play “Satisfaction” and “The Eve of Destruction”? What about the time certain enterprising miscreants put Colonel Armstrong’s tiny little foreign car (Renault? Fiat?) on the cafeteria roof ? I may have been involved. Or my Existentialist devotional in morning assembly? Of course, you don’t recall my devotional, but it got me
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REUNION RECAP one of my several personal visits with Dr. Spence, who expressed a sincere concern for the fate of my soul. And who remembers The Snakes? Those of us on the crosscountry team rode many a mile in those weird superstretch Checker Marathons, trapped with Coach Pataky and his lame jokes.
be complete, must be accompanied by a shared vice, be it alcohol, tobacco or weapons. We were feeling the pull of the collective unconscious. Hence it was psychologically imperative that I present my tobacco theory to the group, and that interest would be expressed. As luck would have it, Charlie had some experience with smokeless tobacco. He proposed a solution to the cheek bulge problem: dipping snuff. And so our little group acquired its necessary vice. Before long, we had obtained our own collective spittoon. It was nothing fancy. In fact, it was Army surplus, olive drab in color. It consisted of a shallow pot with a removable cover shaped like a funnel. We put newspaper on the floor around it and held spitting contests. We tried various brands of snuff and eventually ventured into “chaw”, as Charlie called it. Following in my grandfather’s footsteps, I even tried Penn’s. Strong stuff. It knocked me on my butt. To be fair, as I recall, Rusty was a somewhat reluctant participant in these activities, and the fastidious Steve chose to participate only vicariously. But Charlie and I were all-in. In fact, if memory serves, Charlie even found snuff to be useful as a study aid. And though we differed in our degree of enthusiasm for this specific vice, we all agreed on one thing: Holden would approve.
Finally, let’s bring in the memory focus a little tighter, to a sequence of events that may well have been the beginning of my legal career. As all of you recall, smoking was a big no-no. For some of us this very taboo inspired an unhealthy fascination with the forbidden subject. As it happens, I had personally observed my grandfather deriving great enjoyment from cigars without once lighting up. He just chewed them down to a nub. Occasionally, he would pull out a box of Penn’s Natural Leaf chewing tobacco and bite off a plug. By my senior year, I had heard plenty about the punishments for smoking and had seen plenty of my classmates experience them. There was also the promise I had made to my father when I was twelve. So, smoking was out. But what about chewing? I studied the rules. They were all about smoking. No mention of chewing. Besides, without the smoke, how would the teachers know you were using tobacco? Well, maybe from that bulge in your cheek. Hmm.
“It’s just that, as the old Steve Miller song goes, time keeps slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. I’m determined to chase it all the way there.”
Of course, nothing lasts forever. One night during one of our spitting competitions, things got a little out of hand. I believe it was Mr. Adamson a/k/a Shag who came to investigate. As was his habit, he strode through the door without knocking, fully prepared to dress us down for making too much noise. Instead, he stood silent, apparently in shock. I filled the silence with a description of my theory of smoke vs. smokeless. He didn’t seem to hear me. He was transfixed by the image which met his eyes: slimy globs of disgusting brown spit and splatter concentrated in the target area, with wayward expectorations corrupting its immediate surroundings to a radius of two or three feet. In the spittoon itself, shiny semi-liquid slugs slid slowly down the funnel toward the pool of grossness which was their intended destination. Clearly, this was a violation of several dorm rules regarding neatness,
At this point, a brief digression is in order. On the second floor at the south end of Belk Hall, there dwelt a cabal. Its sacred text “The Catcher in the Rye”. Its hero and source of inspiration was Holden Caulfield, and its credo was “Don’t be a Phony.” Now that the Statute of Limitations has run, I can reveal that its members were Steve Alexander, Rusty Holderness, Charlie Sykes, and myself. Steve and Charlie were roommates, as were Rusty and I. Our rooms were just across the hall. We would often meet in one or the other room to discuss the problems of our little world, whether or not various people were phonies, and why Holden fantasized about protecting young children playing in a field of rye. It was good camaraderie, yet something was missing. It seems that, for some mysterious reason obscured by the mists of ancient evolutionary history, male companionship, to
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hygiene, sanitation and, well, just common decency. Once he recovered his composure he gave us all enough demerits to put us on bull ring and announced that I could explain my tobacco theory to Major Burns. At the ensuing inquisition, with his ash tray overflowing as always, and his clothing reeking of smoke, I thought I saw Maj suppressing a laugh as I presented my theory of the smokeless tobacco loophole. When I was done, he put his arm on my shoulder. I braced myself, for this usually meant he was about to mete out, in his uniquely reluctant and compassionate way, an especially painful punishment. Instead, he said something to this effect: “You may have a point there, but let’s be clear. From now on, tobacco is tobacco, smoke or no smoke. Now don’t mess up. It’s your senior year.” Holden would agree: Maj was a great man.
CLASS OF 1968
So…enough of the Way-Back Machine - now for the future. As I write this, my calendar reveals a conflict between our reunion weekend and one of the biggest races of the year. Barring the unforeseen, I will opt for racing. It’s not that I wouldn’t love to see you guys. It’s just that, as the old Steve Miller song goes, time keeps slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. I’m determined to chase it all the way there. Cheers! Skip
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Spouse: Suzanne Children: James, Micah, Samuel
Occupation: Pharmacist Hobbies: Kentucky Basketball and Tennessee Titans Football Highlights of life since McCallie: •
Married on August 15, 1970
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Graduated UK College of Pharmacy in May, 1973
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Birth of my three sons
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Became owner of Gibson’s Pharmacy, Mayfield, KY on February 1, 1984
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Birth of my six grandchildren.
Favorite McCallie memory and/or greatest impact: Winning the James Park McCallie Bible Award.
CLASS OF 1968
CLINTON, KENTUCKY
William Ronald “Billy” Brown
Grandkids: Noah, Isaac, Ellie Mitchell, Izzie, Jonah and Jack
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Spouse: Shelia Children: Daniel Brown ‘95
Robert Donald “Bobby” Brown
Occupation: Funeral Director Favorite hobbies/pastime: Boating Highlights of life since McCallie: Getting married and having 2 great kids that have given me 4 fantastic great-grandkids.
CLASS OF 1968
CLINTON, KENTUCKY
Favorite McCallie memory and/or greatest McCallie impact: Belk Hall and standing on McCallie Avenue waiting for a ride.
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Spencer McCallie had given a great motivation talk several weeks before the end of school encouraging disappointed students not to give up, continue to study and develop good study habits. This helped my attitude and I became comfortable studying 3-4 hours before lunch and 3-4 hours after lunch and 3-4 hours after supper, maybe I could avoid summer school. When I took the exam, it was far easier that the first one. Spencer McCallie graded it. He said it deserved a 97 but since it was a repeat, he lowered it to 90. By completed my excellent exam I would have said he must have felt sorry for me, but he always told things as they were. But a 90 was the highest grade I ever made on a final exam in English. By the way my freshman year in English at Alabama, I had read every book at McCallie. Yes, I read them again since the books weren’t even colored yet, joke for all you Vanderbilt and grass at the largest cemetery in the Southeast and home for the greatest football coach in college football- The Bear. For the first few days I was reciting in my head, not by choice, but by excess studying that lingered in my mind, all those poems I read 25-50 times for my last test exam. My Bio must start with my childhood in one areaMy early passion to play golf. My mother played a little golf and took me to the course. We played
two holes and I wanted to play every chance I had from then on. Since I could not drive a car at 8 years old I was constancy asking my mother or a friend to ask his mother to take us to the golf course. I improved slowly, and practiced regularly. Our Country Club held tournaments in the summer for the youth 7-12 and for 13+ year olds. The first year I managed to score well enough to make the championship flight for the 7-12 year olds, but I never won a match. The next few years I continued to play in the tournament, making the top flight for those under 13 year old. On the last day a golfer my age and I played for the Winner of the championship flight. My competition lived on my street. Most of his family played golf and were very athletic. He beat me with two holes up and one hole to play, but no need to play it since he was already two holes up. His name was John O’Neal. He and I played for the championship flight the next year and he won again with two holes up and me one to play. The third year we were the oldest players in the 7-12 year olds. My game had improved and so had his. After nine holes we were tied. We had to play extra holes until someone won, we tied the next hole. We played the second extra hole, we both had good drives and both hit the green on our second shot. He was 30 feet from the cup and I was about 15 feet from the cup. He putted first and sank his long putt. My shot was half as long but no easy putt. I missed, he won. John O’Neal started McCallie School in the ninth grade, I started McCallie in the tenth. He probably played golf several years at McCallie and was the Captain of the team our senior year. I went out for the team, but did not earn the right to play in the matches. James Abele and I enjoyed being able to practice with the team.
CLASS OF 1968
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
Henry “Hammond” Cobb III
McCallie influenced me in several ways, the seriousness of life and education. The honor code was real and important. I was required to attend Summer School at McCallie before I started the 10th grade. I struggled with English all three years. My senior year I did not score well enough to be eligible to graduate. I was recommended to attend Summer School. Spencer MCallie said I did score well enough to take the test over. I did. There were two exams given, when we all took the exams, I was given the one I did not take. Spencer McCallie graded my exam. He graded it and said this was the best exam and paper I had ever written; he was my Junior English teacher. Miles McNiff was my Senior English Teacher. The test I took the second time was much easier. But I was depressed about Summer School again without attending Graduation with my class, if I did not do well on the exam. My plan was to wake up at 6:30, go to class rooms and study until breakfast, return until lunch and study until supper. I was alone since exams were over for seniors and they left Campus. I read the poems over and over and the books over as much as possible.
After McCallie my golf game was important and I played regularly. I attended the University of Alabama, who had a rough golf course students could play. The golf team played at the Country Club in Tuscaloosa. I did not know the fraternities played against each other in intermural competition until my senior year. I found a friend at our fraternity and we signed up. We won our first match. Our second match we were down two holes after two. Their confidence soared they had an ice chest full of beer. After 5 holes we were tied as they consumed the beer. We just laughed and enjoyed the day. After five more holes we were several holes
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REUNION RECAP ahead. We won our second match. That left us playing the final match. They were as good as anybody I ever played against. Our team lost, but it was fun to come in second! We made the Crimson and White Student Paper as the second place team. I may have been the only one to see the article, but it left me with contentment that my long hours of playing golf did allow me to have a good memories of my thousands of hours practicing and playing golf. If I see John O’Neal at our Reunion, I will tell him I enjoyed dancing classes with his younger sister far more than playing golf against him. I bet he is still a Great golfer! My game has aged like the typical 67 year old, but I will probably never quit until nobody will play with me.
pharmacist and I asked people for pledges. I knew my most effective sales were accomplished by showing my insurance policies to my leads showing my benefits to my wife and children. The bold target was a $1,250 pledge to be paid over five years. I decided if I did that before we asked others for pledges we would be more successful. Our club has been extremely active in helping children and other charities in Montgomery. This would be for charities all over the world. My partner Phil would describe the pain and suffering the children experienced as tetanus slowly killed them, even to breaking their bones. The vaccine to give them immunizations often had to be delivered on donkeys in foreign countries in Asia and Africa. Some babies were drowned as their mothers could not stand to see them suffering. Phil and I also started visiting other Kiwanis clubs in our district and eventually we were invited to our district meetings to reach other clubs. We learned what motivated people to pledge and soon the clubs were appointing Eliminate coordinators in their club. As the funds grew in club reports that were sent out monthly clubs bean competing. We also were sent movies showing the crying babies as they were suffering and dying while their parents and siblings cried in agony with no help available. Because of UNICEFF Countries all over the world pitched in- many movie stars and governments also became active. Many governments also joined to rid their country of tetanus.
I would like to say something about friendships at McCallie. Steve Corcoran and Will Maxwell were my best friends at McCallie. My freshman year at Alabama I invited them to come to a party weekend at our fraternity, they both came to my surprise. We had band parties Friday and Saturday nights. On Saturday afternoon we had a small group playing instruments and singing at on our patio. Steve Will and I were sitting together with our dates, who did not know us until this weekend. We started telling stories from McCallie, we laughed so hard for so long- even our dates were laughing hard and the people around us were asking us to speak quieter, but we were unable to stop. Finally they started laughing and listening to us. Saturday night Will and Steve went back to Clemson and Georgia Tech. The next day was a dreary rainy morning. I went back to the fraternity house and observed the mess. It was depressing because I had enjoyed our time together and didn’t want it to end. I saw Steve that summer at Georgia Tech and attended Will’s wedding the next summer. I also saw Will in Quincy my senior year. I was very hurt and sad when Will was reported to have died last summer. The loss of Tyler Calhoun several years ago also hurt. He and I were scheduled to be roommates at Alabama, but he decided to attend Sewanee at the end of the summer.
This was a great project for our club. There was little enthusiasm until Phil and I spoke and eventually our club participated and our district eventually joined in. What a great experience! Some interesting Statistics about the Eliminate Project: 45 countries eliminated Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus – 32 in Africa and 3 in the Middle East
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Haiti in the Americas
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Bengalese, Cambodia, Chine, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Vietnam
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Kiwanis International raised $110,000,000 in cash and pledges
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Only 14 countries remaining with Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus
ELIMINATE
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I recruited a Client of mine who was a good friend to join our club. He was a pharmacist and had taught pharmacy at Auburn University. When the Kiwanis International started the Eliminate Tetanus Committee they recruited members to lead the effort at all the Kiwanis Clubs in America and around the world. Our club asked myself and Phil to lead our club. We took on the task, I was already recruiting money at New York Life and wasn’t sure I wanted this assignment too, but I did. Phil handled the technical questions as a
When Eliminate was able to vaccinate the mothers, the unborn children were automatically immunized against Tetanus. People our age and younger n America and
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developing countries never dealt with Tetanus as most of us received the Tetanus shot as children.
my senior science teacher who taught gymnastics and turned about 20 of us into gymnasts, who were all nonathletes.
THE KIWANIS ELIMINATE PROJECT
I brought my oldest son to McCallie while in early high school, but he had just started a new private school and wanted to stay. He would have enjoyed McCallie, but he was doing well in Montgomery wrestling and academically. My grandson is Henry Hammond Cobb VI, a redhead with a temper to match. He will probably need a school like McCallie! If he is really difficult we will make him go to Baylor. (joke!!)
Tetanus was a deadly disease, killing 34,000 babies a year in the world. In 2010 Kiwanis International and UNICEE joined forces to eliminate maternal and neonatal tetanus all over the world. The goal was to raise $110 million in cash and pledges; this was accomplished by 2016 with some pledges still being paid. The cost for the vaccine was small but personnel to go into the jungles and poverty stricken countries required much time and personnel. I initially joined Kiwanis when a McCallie friend called me over 30 years ago and invited me to his Kiwanis club when we both lived in Birmingham. One of our well known and liked class mates of 1968 David Muhlendorf. He unfortunately moved back to Florence/Sheffield area three weeks after I joined. But I learned to enjoy the club and Kiwanis International. Several years later I moved to Montgomery and immediately found a Kiwanis member there to invite me to their club. He said I will pick you up Tuesday and 11:30 and I went and joined. Our club in Montgomery is one of the largest clubs in America, Birmingham is the largest. I was active especially in recruiting members while on the membership committee. Finally I would like to thank McCallie for the great teachers and the Christian influence. The year at Bible and required Church and Sunday School, the devotionals and best of all Ben Haden, whose Baccalaureate sermon helped change my life with his final statement- “Accept Christ honestly or Reject Christ Honestly”. Shortly after college I accepted Christ honestly and life took on new challenges, new outlook and new meaning, still with problems, but with help from our maker and Savior. His word in scripture is faithful, warning us to be obedient and promising a place in his kingdom for eternity, not because of our obedience, but His Son’s obedience and sacrifice.
CLASS OF 1968
Looking forward to October!
McCallie has become an even better school since the class of 1968, not because we are no longer there, even though I am sure it helped, but McCallie is more aggressive in many areas. We appreciate the fundraising efforts knowing McCallie motives will enrich students for many years. The memories are strong. Regrets of not listening as I should have and immaturity still haunt me for all the advantages I had at McCallie without the effort I should have put into it. I wish I could remember
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After graduating from McCallie, I attended Georgia Tech. I majored in Fraternity life perhaps in reaction formation to 6 years at an all-male Military school. I joined Theta Chi fraternity and loved the life. I was Vice-president of the fraternity my senior year. My grades suffered but I did graduate in December 1972 after 13 quarters. Actually, 13 quarters was more the norm than unusual. At that time at Georgia Tech the attrition rate was about 70 % and to graduate at all was a victory. I obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering in December 1972. My overall GPA was 2.3. I had done my job interview process and was offered a job with Texas Instruments (TI) in Dallas Texas starting in January. I moved back to Chattanooga for a
couple of weeks preparing to pack up and move to Dallas. When home, I had an epiphany and decided I wanted to go to medical school. I called TI, told them I wasn’t coming and went down to UTC and enrolled as a post-baccalaureate student taking pre-med courses in Jan 1973. I was going to school full time during the day and working as a bartender at the Brass Register at night for about the first year and a half and then as a dialysis technician in the early morning and late afternoon and going to school during the day for the second year and a half. But I was happy, as I had finally decided what I wanted to do. I started applying to medical schools and was turned down repeatedly. Finally, I had amassed 72 semester hours at UTC with a GPA of 3.9 and did pretty well on the MCAT and was eventually accepted (after being denied the first time) at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) in Memphis Tennessee. At that Time UT medical school took two classes a year, one in January and one in July. It was 3 years, 12 straight quarters, no summers off. I was accepted into the January 1976 class.
CLASS OF 1968
C H AT TA N O O G A , T E N N E S S E E
Joseph Broaddus “Joe” Cofer
“Honor, Truth, Duty.” Those words define what the 6 years I spent at McCallie did for me. I started in the 7th grade in 1962 and graduated in 1968, and those principles came to define what living means for me. Most of the time it has served me well, but occasionally when I have had to speak truth to power, not so well. Nonetheless I am truly at peace with how those principles have defined how I have lived my life.
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REUNION RECAP at Portsmouth Naval Hospital from 1/1979-12/1979. I was a Lieutenant in the Medical corp. At that time, continuing your training really wasn’t an option. I owed the navy 3 more years on active duty, and they expected service in the fleet somewhere practicing medicine. I decided to become a flight surgeon and we moved to Pensacola FL in January 1980. I attended the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute (NAMI) and learned to fly a plane. I soloed one time but had many other training flights. It was the philosophy of the navy that if you were going to be a doctor to pilots and air crew, you would be more effective if you learned to fly and flew with your pilots. Actually, this theory was brilliant. I graduated from NAMI in October 1980 and was given orders to Carrier Air Wing 15 (CVW-15) stationed on the USS Kitty Hawk, home ported in San Diego. My wife and I lived in Lemoore CA, the naval air station for all west coast light attack aircraft. They flew the A-7 at that time, and later the FA-18. I practiced primary care for the squadron’s personnel and families when not flying in naval aircraft. The Kitty Hawk went to sea in March 1981, for a West-Pac cruise. And I turned 30 at sea in the pacific on 8 April 1981. There is not enough time to tell all the sea stories but suffice it to say I had a blast traveling around the pacific. We had Liberty in Hawaii, the Philippines and Singapore, and then headed for a 60-day line period off of the coast of Iran waiting for something to happen. We took a break in Perth Australia, then back for 60 more days on the line. I spent the days in sick bay seeing patients and flying off the carrier all I could. I had about 50 Traps (landing on a carrier in a jet) after the 9 months we spent at sea. (see picture) When our time off Iran was up we went by Singapore again, the Philippines and then to Hong Kong, then back to Pearl Harbor and home to San Diego. Truly a life changing experience. Flying in (and sometimes driving) a US naval tactical aircraft is way cool. Glad I got to do it. And proud of Veteran’s status. We had our first daughter Jessica Ann born on 9/28/1882 in Lemoore Naval hospital. I detached from the US navy about March 1983 and we moved back to Chattanooga where I was planning to do a surgery residency.
When I had turned down the Texas Instruments job in 1972, I was emancipated by my parents, and had done OK working full time and going to school full time, but I didn’t think that would work for medical school. So, I applied for an Armed Forces Health Professions scholarship and was awarded that and joined the US Navy. My Dad, a retired Navy Captain, swore me in in December 1975, and I headed to Memphis. I really enjoyed Medical school. I had finally found my true calling. I thought it was easier than Ga Tech. I was class Vice-president the first term and then served two terms as class president until finally resigning over some issues I had with the way the administration was treating students. Speaking truth to power bit me. I met my future wife, Juanita Wurtz Cofer the first week in Memphis at a party. She was a nurse at Methodist. We were later married in November 1978 and I graduated in December 1978. The US Navy required me to do my PGY-1 year in the service, so we moved to Portsmouth VA and I spent a year as a surgery resident
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(GS) program director, or the individual who is mainly responsible for training surgery residents. I accepted that job and the family moved back to Chattanooga in July of 1995. I began my career as a GS program director and loved it. I did general, hepatobiliary surgery, and Kidney transplants. I was an associate professor of surgery at UTHSC-Chattanooga. Over the next 20 years I became heavily involved in organized medicine and surgical education. In 1997 I bought a small 145-acre farm in Bledsoe county TN located on the Sequatchie River. This became my away from work hobby. In December 1998 I was inducted as a fellow of the Southern Surgical Association. I was elected President of the Chattanooga Hamilton County Medical Society (CHCMS) for calendar year 2002. And was able to lead the formation of Project Access in the county. In October 2003 I was appointed to the advisory Council for General Surgery of the American College of Surgeons and served through 2007. In 2005 I was elected President of the Association of Program Directors in General Surgery (APDS) and served from 2/2005 through 2/2006. In 2007 I was elected to the position of a Director of the American Board of Surgery (ABS) for a six-year term. In April 2007 I was awarded the distinguished service award of the Tennessee Medical Association for my
CLASS OF 1968
I began my general surgery residency in July of 1983 and completed it in June of 1988. We then moved to Dallas, TX where I completed a two-year fellowship in liver and kidney transplantation at Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC) from July 1988 to June 1990. Our second daughter, Allison Jane, was born at BUMC on 20 December, 1988. I became board Certified in surgery in 1990 and accepted a job as an assistant professor of surgery and director of the liver transplant program at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, SC. I was hired to start the liver transplant program in South Carolina. We moved to Mount Pleasant SC in July 1990 and I went to work. I was 39 years old. I performed the first Liver Transplant in the state in September 1990. The program was successful and we achieved Medicare certification in three years. We started pediatric liver transplants in July 1992. (see picture) I was there for five years and did liver and kidney transplants, and general surgery on the transplant patients. But the life style of a liver transplant surgeon in a small program is very harsh. The call requirements are extreme, and I came to feel I needed a change for the good of my family. I became board certified in surgical critical care in 1994. I was offered a job as a general surgeon and kidney transplant surgeon at home at Erlanger hospital in Chattanooga TN. I was also offered the chance to become a general surgery
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efforts in initiating Project Access. In 2008 I was able to lead the formation of the Tennessee Surgical Quality Collaborative (TSQC), a consortium of originally 10 hospitals and growing to 22 hospitals in the state as a partner with the Tennessee Chapter of the American College of Surgeons (TNACS) and the Blue Cross/ Blue Shield Foundation. The TSQC combined efforts to reduce surgical mortality and morbidity in member hospitals. And over the next ten years we achieved remarkable results. I was inducted into the American Surgical Association in April 2010. My first grandchild Henry James LaFoy was born on 23 February in Knoxville TN. On 14 July 2011 I was elected by the directors of the ABS to serve as Vice-Chair elect from 2011-2012 and served as ViceChairman of the ABS from 2012-2013 and Chairman of the ABS from 2013-2014. This was perhaps the Pinnacle of my Surgical Career. I was inducted into The Halsted Society in 2013. Fraternal twins, Millie and Hayes LaFoy were born in August of 2014, grandkids # 2 and # 3. I served as President of the TNACS from 2013-2014. And in October 2013 I was awarded the McCallie Alumni Achievement Award.
Throughout my career I have received multiple teaching awards from Surgery residents and medical students, culminating in being awarded the national Palmer Parker courage to teach award from the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education as a surgical program director in the spring of 2014, and was inducted into the Arnold P. Gold foundation in 2014. This is an organization that celebrates humanism in Medicine. And in 2015 I was awarded the Baroness Erlanger Distinguished Physician Award, for my career of service at Erlanger Hospital. Through a series of events that were upsetting and disappointing, I decided to leave my surgical group. A superb young surgeon I had trained was given the job of Program Director and I retired from UTHSCChattanooga in 8/2015 and assumed the role of Chief Quality Officer of the Erlanger health system, a fivehospital organization. I turned 65 in April 2016 and my contract was terminated on 31 December 2016. Getting old can bite you. I worked from 1/2017-3/2017 as a primary care physician in Sumner county TN, NE of Nashville, I was
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driving up on Sunday and back on Wednesday. This worked for a while, and then in 3/2017 I was offered a job as a physician reviewer for a Qualified Independent contractor reviewing Medicare claims. This has been a lot of fun and I am able to work from home as a telecommuter. That is what I am doing at this time. But I plan to actually retire, period, 31 August, 2018 and see how that goes. I will see if I can handle not working every day, we will see.
impact in our county and continues today. Finally, in the 20 years I was a residency Program Director, I trained 74 General Surgeons, and am proud to say that 6 of those are now surgery program directors themselves. One in Vascular surgery and 5 General surgery program directors (see picture) around the SE, and the impact these women and men are having on our society is much greater than I could have had on my own.
And that is my life over the last 50 years. Before I wrap up, there are three accomplishments I am particularly proud of. First is my great wife, kids, and grandkids. (see picture) All have turned out well, healthy, educated, and serve as productive members of society. And in November 2018 we will have been married 40 years. My younger daughter has two BS college degrees, the second one a BS in nutrition. She is expecting grandchild #4, a baby girl, in August 2018. My older daughter has a BS in special education, and recently graduated Summa Cum Laude with a MS in school counseling and works for the Maryville school system. She is married to Brad LaFoy who is a spectacular husband and father. Henry is a very bright 7 year old starting second grade, and Millie and Hayes are precocious 4-year old’s, fraternal twins, in Pre-K.
And that is a synopsis of the last 50 years. “Honor, Truth Duty” still works for me.
CLASS OF 1968
– Joe
I am also proud of Project Access, an organization I started in 2002 as President of the CHCMS. This is a partnership between the CHCMS and the three big hospitals in town. We provide free medical care to citizens of Hamilton County Tennessee that have been a resident for 6 months, have a family income below 150% of the federal poverty level, and no other access to health insurance. We started with about 300 volunteer physicians and started seeing patients in 2004. From April 2004-April 30 2018 we have provided $169,262,907.00 in free medical care to 18,813 patients. We now have 1,042 volunteer physicians. This program has made an
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Occupation and Owner: Stephen L. Corcoran, CPA, P.A. Favorite hobbies/pastime: Tennis, fishing, travel, family time Favorite McCallie memory or greatest impact: Graduating! Highlights of life since McCallie: B.A. and M.A. accounting University of South Florida. Employed by Ryder systems at Ernst & Young before starting firm.
CLASS OF 1968
TA M PA , F LO R I D A
Stephen Lawrence “Steve� Corcoran
Daughter: Lauren attending Ohio Wesleyan University
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the “Antichrist’ and that the end of the world was imminent. I remember Dr. Park expressing similar views to us during Chapel. Beverly and I raised three boys (we still refer to them as “our boys”) - James, Scott and Matt. James graduated from UGA and lives in Atlanta with his wife Emily and has two children Davis and Jack. He is in a Senior Vice President/ Managing Director with SunTrust Private Wealth Management. Scott passed away - we miss him greatly. Matt graduated from UVA and received a masters degree from Georgia Tech in systems engineering and works for Capital One. He lives in Richmond, VA, with his wife Megan and they have one daughter Erin. Erin is the first girl in the Edwards family in 5 generations. I graduated from Emory law school in 1975 with classmates Rafe Banks and Gray Dean Smith. Fred Orr and I formed Orr and Edwards in 1976 and practiced together for more than 35 years. Fred passed away in 2010.
“Dean James was unquestionably my favorite teacher and played a most important role in my life.”
Beverly White of Charlotte, NC, and I celebrated our 47th wedding anniversary this year. Classmates Tom Drew, John Freeze and John O’Neal were groomsmen at our wedding. Most people assume that Beverly and I met in Chapel Hill while attending UNC. In fact, we met during the Labor Day weekend before my sophomore year at UNC at Myrtle Beach (actually Cherry Grove) to the never ending sounds of InA-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly - played over and over and over by classmate Steve Kent.
Beverly’s dad, William Elliott White, Jr., graduated from McCallie in 1940. Beverly recently found his McCallie graduation announcement/invitation. It is remarkably similar to ours. He loved telling stories about his one year at McCallie - back when there were only 11 grades in the public high school in Graham, NC. McCallie’s yearly fee was $980.00, which included tuition, room, board, uniforms, and activities. His room was in Founders Home. He had Dr. Park for New Testament Bible. Dr. Park firmly believed that Benito Mussolini was
I have thoroughly enjoyed the practice of law, particularly getting to know people from all walks of life and handling many types of cases. For example:
CLASS OF 1968
BLUEFIELD, WEST VIRGINIA
James Garland “Smokey” Edwards, II
I grew up in Bluefield, West Virginia, being called Garland and continued to be called Garland from the time I arrived at McCallie in the 9th grade until my Junior year when people began calling me Smokey (based on Smokey the Bear) - something to do with smoking cigarettes and being a sprinter in track. I vividly remember folks pointing at my name tag while we paraded in through downtown Chattanooga which read “Bear, S.” The nickname followed me to UNC where I roomed with John Freeze and spent a lot of time with Tommy Drew who was at Duke. It was around that time that I noticed my parents called me Smokey as well. When I began practicing law with two older lawyers in Decatur, Georgia, they put “James G. Edwards II” on the letterhead and on the sign on the front door. My wife Beverly can instantly tell when a person knew me in life based on whether they call me Garland, Smokey, James, Jim, or worse, Jimmy.
• John Abbey who owned a national record company located in Atlanta - purchase of large parcel of land for its headquarters general management of company’s legal issues - copyright infringement - music and entertainment law. The Platinum Album “Whoot, There It Is” presented to Orr and Edwards still hangs on my wall.
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Ralph Morrow who owned an Atlanta railroad construction and metal fabrication company for over 30 years - general management of company’s legal issues general corporate work including mergers and acquisitions - purchase and sale of numerous properties and businesses.
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John Howard - Jury verdict of $750,000 in compensatory damages and $8,500,000
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in punitive damages in a case against an erectile dysfunction clinic - on appeal, remanded for a retrial and, thereafter, settled on a confidential basis.
Mayor Andrew Young. Shaun Jenkins - Shaun was a healthy baby boy when he was born on the morning of April 18, 1990. However, before he was a week old Shaun sustained severe and permanent brain damage because of an excessive amount of bilirubin in his blood system - negligent failure by defendant doctors to provide proper medical care of a new born baby at hospital following normal birth settled on a confidential basis.
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Although semi-retired, I continue to represent clients such as Shaun Jenkins - the young man who suffered a totally disabling massive brain injury as a newborn. He is now over 25 years old.
Maryland Deposit Insurance Fund - represented an agency of the State of Maryland - jury verdict of $2.25 million in the United States District Court Northern District of Georgia that also set aside as a fraudulent conveyance a deed conveying title to an Atlanta shopping center - where, as famed Georgia trial lawyer Bobby Lee Cook later said, we gave some good ol’ American justice to some folks from Switzerland.
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Medical Malpractice - Wrongful death of a 45-yearold father of two teenage children - negligent failure by defendant doctor to treat diagnosed heart problem resulting in otherwise avoidable fatal heart attack - settled on a confidential basis.
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Medical Malpractice - Cervical cancer, requiring total hysterectomy of an expectant mother negligent failure by defendant medical laboratory to correctly diagnose and report on a pap smear which showed precancerous cells, resulting in development of otherwise avoidable cervical cancer, leading to loss of plaintiff’s expectant child and depriving patient of ability to have other children - settled on a confidential basis
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Medical Malpractice - Wrongful death, a retired grandmother - negligent failure of a defendant doctor to react to blood accumulating in a patient’s lungs during dialysis treatment - jury verdict upheld on appeal.
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Presidential Parkway Case - The Georgia Department of Transportation was attempting to construct an 8-lane, limited access highway through much of the historic Druid Hills community. The highway would have destroyed numerous parks, churches, the Fernbank Science Center, a virgin forest, and would have eliminated hundreds of historic homes in DeKalb County. After a non-jury trial, we were successful in obtaining a permanent injunction halting forever the construction of the infamous road. The trial court’s ruling was upheld on appeal by the Georgia Supreme Court. The opposition included The City of Atlanta Law Department, the Attorney General of Georgia, and State Law Department, several major Atlanta law firms, and the combined political forces of former President Jimmy Carter, the Georgia DOT, and
Dean James was unquestionably my favorite teacher and played a most important role in my life. In addition to his love of literature, which he enthusiastically and infectiously shared with me (and countless others), I most remember and appreciate Dean James for his love of and devotion to the University of North Carolina. It seems like only yesterday when the most momentous meeting of my life took place in the fall of 1967 in Dr. Spence’s office in the then recently constructed Caldwell Hall. The subject - where I would attend college. The choices - the University of North Carolina or the University of Virginia. The attendees - Dr. Spence and my mother and father (who have all since passed away) - all strongly in favor of my attending the University of Virginia - and Dean James (who had agreed to support and defend my desire to attend the University of North Carolina) and me. Dean James and I sat together on Dr. Spence’s couch at one end of the room while Dr. Spence and my parents sat together at Dr. Spence’s desk at the other end of the room. To make a long story short, following Dean James’ eloquent and impassioned endorsement and recommendation of the University of North Carolina, my mother announced to a stunned Dr. Spence and to my shocked father that I would be attending the University of North Carolina (if that is what I truly wanted to do). I did attend (and graduate from) the University of North Carolina. But more important, it was at the University of North Carolina where I dated and later married Beverly White Edwards - my wife of 47 years, the mother of our three boys and the grandmother of our three grandchildren - who has on various occasions explained to me that if I had attended the University of Virginia rather than the University of North Carolina, the time apart and distance would have inevitably doomed our budding romance. It was primarily for this reason, that on my first trip back to the McCallie campus after my marriage
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CLASS OF 1968
to Beverly, the first person I sought out was Dean James - so that I could introduce Dean James and Beverly to each other. After Dean James graciously welcomed us into his home, I vividly remember his pleased look as Beverly enthusiastically thanked him for his role in my having attended the University of North Carolina, our resulting marriage.
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Finally, I found my path and started providing financial security for families. I love meeting new people and hearing their stories. At the end of the process, I asked plenty of people to buy something and found plenty of rejection. That rejection brought me to my knees and I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ.
we married (39 years ago) after a short, longdistance courtship. I had been single for 28 years and the transition was very difficult. Later God used that difficulty to help us develop a ministry to newlyweds.
CLASS OF 1968
CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA
“David” Rule Faison
Fifty years ago, I left McCallie for Davidson College to pursue medicine like my grandfather and to also play competitive tennis. Neither pursuit went well. I was in the half of the class that made the top half possible. After six rejections from some name-brand medical schools, I went a different direction. Since my father had been a banker, I moved to Atlanta and pursued banking. Social life was much better after McCallie (no women) and Davidson (no women). What was I thinking? I loved the people aspect of both careers but needed to find my own path. I hitchhiked around Western Europe for six months while deciding.
Later we were blessed with 3 kids who are now 36, 34, and 32. They spread from the west coast to Peru. Our grandkids are 4, 2, and 0 and they live north of Portland, Oregon. They call us Opa and Oma. Work life is slowing down and ministry is picking up. Although I was not interested in spiritual things in high School, McCallie planted a seed that has grown wildly in this phase of life. I can’t wait to hear your story in October at our reunion.
After one year in sales, I made the best sale of my life. On a blind date, I met Kim and
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ANAPOLIS, GOIAS, BRAZIL
William Downing “Billy” Fanstone
Some McCallie students in our class had to travel long distances to school. None traveled as far as Billy Fanstone, who still lives in Anapolis, Brazil. The town is almost due west of the nation’s capital, Brasilia, in the central western part of the country. Even in the dawn of the jet age. Flying from Chattanooga to Brazil on a Boeing 707 or DC-8 must have been a real trip. Billy’s international exposure has made him fluent in three languages: English, Portuguese and French. After graduating from McCallie, Billy returned to Brazil to complete his studies, becoming an anesthesiologist in 1976. He practices in a local hospital founded by his grandparents in 1927. His son and daughter are the fourth generation of Fanstones in medicine as doctors. Billy’s fondest memories of McCallie revolve around Major Burns, Mr. McCallie, Dean James
and Coach Pataky. Billy leads a very active life in Brazil, flying ultralights and small airplanes, running marathons and playing tennis. Recently he has started competitive swimming in the Master Class. Billy sings in his Presbyterian Church’s choir and does charity work for the hospital. In addition to his two children, Glenda and Jay, he and Jussara also have two grandchildren, Maria Thereza and Philippe William. And if all this activity is not enough, Billy has become an accomplished bicyclist, traveling on trips of over 2,000 miles with friends. When he makes it to the reunion, it will be interesting to see if anyone can keep up with him. Given his plethora of activities, he should be voted the most likely to be able to fit into his McCallie uniform.
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A strange and scary transition was to take place with academics, honor, spirituality and competitiveness being introduced at the next level. I came my sophomore year, which put me somewhat behind you guys. Many students came as freshmen and many more were there thru middle school. It was overwhelming to say the least. It was not my desire to be there, but McCallie, the teachers, mentors, good older students and a great roommate helped me adjust quickly.
am so grateful for the many gifts McCallie and my friends and God gave me! After McCallie, I received a B.S. in Business at UNC Chapel Hill. I loved Carolina, but I loved Ellen more. We were married in February of 1971, between semesters, honeymooning at the North South Basketball Tournament. Those last two years were so much fun with Ellen and our continued relationship with Fraternity, school and friends, McCallie and Baylor. After graduation I worked with NCNB, Nations Bank and Bank of America in Raleigh, moving to High Point as City Administrator. I Left NCNB in 1979, becoming Secretary/Treasurer of my 3rd generation family business; Commonwealth Hosiery Mills, Inc. I had the wonderful experience of working for my father for two years before his death in 1981. I then became President/CEO of Commonwealth which has been in operation now for 102 years!
“I thank McCallie for those wonderful short three years and the foundation it gave me during that period of my life.”
Bill Hust became my roommate and best friend (now deceased). He was twice the athlete, and I quickly learned there was an upgraded level of competition in athletics, academics and social skills. We were molded and shaped by the older classmates before us, who were so willing to mentor me, creating the qualities of hard work, efficient use of time and perseverance in all aspects of McCallie life. These older guys, particularly in the class of 1967, along with faculty and dorm teachers, provided the foundation for guidance in those years! There were bumps and bruises, but those that watched over Hust and Freeze were critical during these formative years!
I did not deserve the few accolades I received, including being a captain in three sports. There were many more talented athletic guys than me. The gift of leadership was not warranted, as there were many more gifted. I certainly didn’t deserve a Battalion Major as I don’t think I ever assembled an M-16 correctly. I benefitted from the patience, kindness and friendship so many of you gave me. I
Ellen and I have a son, Wilson Freeze, McCallie ‘95, married to Lindsey. They have a son named Emmet, 3 years old. They live in Raleigh, and he works for SECU. Our daughter, Virginia Murray and husband Luke, who is a builder, also live in Raleigh with two daughters, Adeline age 9, and Lillian age 7. How fortunate we are to have them so close and happy!
CLASS OF 1968
H I G H P O I N T, N O R T H C A R O L I N A
“John” Mann Freeze
Growing up in Randleman, NC, I had the most wonderful early years. I had the best of all worlds giving me an active sports world, baseball and senior little league World Series, varsity football as a freshman and all sorts of sports games. That was combined with all the fun of rural NC, with hunting, fishing and the great outdoors. Little did I know that I was to go to an all-boys military school in Chattanooga.
I am so blessed in so many ways! We have our health, a great marriage and terrific family. I thank McCallie for those wonderful short three years and the foundation it gave me during that period of my life. Thanks to all of you who helped shape me!
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As the destroyer design was being completed I transferred to yet another surface ship program, large deck amphibious ships, or the “Gator Navy” as it is called. An interesting aspect of the design criteria of these ships is that they are the largest ship that can traverse the Panama Canal. Additionally we began work on the program to design and build guided missile cruisers which incorporated the advanced Aegis radar system, which has remained the “Shield of the Fleet” even today. This was also the time period that Ingalls was selected to re-activate and modernize the Iowa class battleships. We began to experiment with Computer Aided Design and I was assigned to the development team for that effort. After a few projects for “proof of concept” we began work on the first all CAD design ship design, a corvette for the Israeli defense forces. These were interesting times and we were all quite aware of being involved with historic events, especially when some of the first shots initiating “Desert Storm” were fired from the USS Wisconsin. October 12, 2000, was a reality check when the USS Cole was bombed and asymmetrical warfare became a reality when she was returned to Pascagoula for repair and upgrading. Little did we know then of what lay ahead. September 11 caused shock, surprise and anger and sent waves throughout the defense industry. It was especially poignant for our family because our son had just joined the Navy and volunteered for overseas deployment. He was a “Religious Program Specialist” which meant that among other duties, he was the Chaplin’s assistant and bodyguard in a combat zone. This led to his deployment with the Marine Expeditionary Force out of Camp Pendleton, and meant that he was a driver on the
night of the initial invasion of Iraq. To say that we were concerned is an understatement. Ironically the ship that transported him from Camp Pendleton to Iraq was the USS Duquesne, which was built at Ingalls the year I started McCallie. He was to deploy with the Marines once again to Fallujah and Ramadi which was a really nerve wracking deployment for those at home as well. Upon his return from that deployment he volunteered for assignment to the USS New York, a large deck amphib which was to be built in New Orleans by a subsidiary of Ingalls. The New York was built as a tribute for 9-11 and her motto is “Never Forget”. As an additional tribute her prow is cast from 7 ½ tons of steel salvaged from the World Trade Center. He is quite proud to be a plank owner of this ship. Since that assignment he has had two more deployments, once to Afghanistan, and once to Bahrain, but I think the thing we are most proud of is that during this whole time, he engaged in on-line studies to earn his degree from Liberty University, graduating Magna Cum Laude and going on to earn his Masters in Business Administration. While our son was flying around the world and keeping us up at night I was working on CAD Development for the Navy’s DDX program. This is quite a radical departure from any ship ever to see the light of day. We were developing software and a new ship design simultaneously which led to quite a few growing pains. Just about the time we were wrapping up the design on what was now named DDG 1000, USS Zumwalt, Hurricane Katrina paid us a visit. Any production capacity the shipyard had was pretty much destroyed so the build part of the contract was moved to another yard while we rebuilt facilities.
CLASS OF 1968
MOORESVILLE, ALABAMA
Edmond Peter “Pete” Garret
Upon finishing McCallie I attended Auburn University studying Architecture and Engineering. A short four years later I found myself presented with an opportunity that I had never even considered in my formative years; shipbuilding. I was hired by Ingalls Nuclear Shipbuilding and moved to Pascagoula, Mississippi to begin work on a design team for nuclear powered fast attack submarines. A year and a half later as the design work was winding down, I was transferred to the surface ship program to design new Spruance class destroyers. In one week’s time I went from designing submarines, whose mission it is to avoid detection, to designing destroyers, whose mission is to detect submarines; an interesting juxtaposition to say the least.
My wife had said that she had always wanted a house near the water. I reminded her that I had given her a house that had the Gulf of Mexico IN THE LIVING ROOM; you can’t get closer than that, but she still didn’t seem to be too happy about it. We eventually dug out like everyone else, I had put in enough time to qualify for early retirement, and we moved a few miles further inland. Now I am comfortably retired, my wife substitutes for the occasional absent teacher and we are enjoying costal living, participating in living history events, and I study, design and build flintlock rifles, or time machines as I prefer to think of them.
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CLASS OF 1968
C H AT TA N O O G A , T E N N E S S E E
Samuel Robert “Sam” Heys, II
A half-century later, it’s interesting what you see as the most important part of your high school education. For me, it seems to have evolved over the years. I now see that going to chapel every morning five days a week may have had more influence on my life than any class. Chapel didn’t seem that big of a deal then. Only 10 minutes – a hymn, a few remarks, and a prayer – and we were on our way, into whatever success, failure, or frustration the day would bring. But I now believe daily chapel built a subconscious and substantive spiritual base that is still with me 50 years later. The McCallie motto – “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever” – comes to mind more frequently than it used to. I used to sit in North Hall study hall during exams and glance up at it hanging from the ceiling at the front of the room and not fully understand what it meant. But I get it now. Like chapel, it stuck.
Also in recent years, I have often thought about how many of our teachers served America in World War II. Their service was driven home one day in 2010 at the Chattanooga National Cemetery, while walking to my father’s grave and glancing at headstones as I went. I saw the graves of both Ed Lundien and A.L. Garth. They would be folks I’d love to interview now, but then I was hardly interested in WWII or their role. Things change, fortunately. Which teachers do I remember? Pretty much all of them, but three really impacted me. The first was Russell Tate, first teacher at McCallie – first period, seventh grade, September 1962. He could act out any novel we read that year – Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, Call of the Wild – but his great gift and love was teaching grammar. He even created his own spiral-bound, light green textbook/workbook (Brief Usable Grammar), which I must have really liked because I still
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public high school in our community.
As a junior, after the start of the second semester, I was moved into Spencer McCallie III’s English class. My previous teacher didn’t think he was getting through to me, but Spence III got through. He didn’t always talk about literature but, boy, was he interesting. He’d talk about the South, race, and a lot of the ongoing social change we were sheltered from at McCallie. He quoted the New Republic and other magazines I had never heard of and generally made me start thinking. He was a much-needed change agent for me and, I guess, McCallie.
At age 50 – with an interest in helping others and probably as part of a midlife crisis as well – I enrolled at Georgia State University to earn a master’s in mental health counseling. Those years were a time of much personal growth and enabled me to start a private practice in the evenings, which I still operate.
In 12 years of school, I never went to class with an African American. But when the Chamber of Commerce put together an interracial group of 30 high school and college communicators in the summer of 1968 – to improve black-white dialogue following the local riots two months earlier after Dr. King’s murder – Spence III fortunately nominated me. He also sent another guy to “Project Straight Talk” – Kirk Walker.
I did daily newspaper journalism for 16 years, including a decade in Atlanta, first as a sports writer and then as a features writer. In 1988, I moved to Southern Company, the utility holding company, eventually becoming a speech writer and historian before retiring in 2015.
“A half-century later, it’s interesting what you see as the most important part of your high school education. For me, it seems to have evolved over the years.”
My counseling license also opened an unexpected door in 2005, leading me into a metro Atlanta jail to teach classes in addiction recovery. There, I found plenty of people seeking help, and I have gone to jail one day a week ever since. And it’s still the best day of the week.
Between 1990 and 2013, I was fortunate to write three nonfiction books related to 20th century history, and I have spent most of my time in “retirement” on a manuscript on Henry Harris, who was the first black scholarship athlete at Auburn, as well as the first at any of the SEC’s Deep South schools. He graduated from high school in1968 also – from Greene County Training School in Alabama’s Black Belt. Two years after being elected Auburn’s team captain, he killed himself by jumping from a 17th-story dormitory window in Milwaukee. (I hope to have the book – ‘Send Me’: Searching for Henry Harris, Lost Icon of a Revolution – published by next fall.)
When I was a senior, Miles McNiff, then a young Yalie, allowed me a free reign with the The Tornado, which helped me develop responsibility and confidence and gave me a leg-up in college journalism when I entered the University of Georgia. The best thing that happened to me at Georgia was meeting Pat Finley of Rome. We have been married 46 years and have been blessed with three children, all of whom live in Atlanta, and six grandchildren, the most recent two being 18-month-old identical twin girls. Pat and I have lived in the same home in Atlanta for 40 years, and Pat continues to work as a teacher, just as her parents did, teaching English Language Learners at a
What are some other things I remember about McCallie? Talking sports with Lonnie Brock or Sarge, McCallie-Baylor wrestling matches on Friday afternoons, Tornado-burgers on Tuesdays, the hot doughnuts they made in Canteen, and our grades being posted every other week for all our competitive world to see. (I wonder how that would go over in today’s era of
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academic-record privacy.)
CLASS OF 1968
I also remember a great group of friends who entered McCallie with me as pint-sized seventh-graders and who still stay in touch at least monthly, often weekly. B.B. Branton, Clay Davis, Gary Davis, Ronnie Carr, and Ches Alper were all sports junkies like me long before it was cool. We would start arguing the merits of our favorite teams on the walk from chapel to our lockers. Then during lunch, we’d take over an empty Middle Hall classroom and hold court. We once used the blackboard to fill out the brackets for all 12 weight classes of the upcoming Mid-South wrestling tournament, projecting the winners of 84 matches. And we took our work very seriously – we left it on the board for the guys in fifth-period American history to study.
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“I am a part of all that I have met.” THE UPDATE After graduating from McCallie in ’68, I went to Auburn where I attended most of my classes, received a moderate degree of success in wrestling, and participated in a service fraternity. Transferring to UTC, I graduated with a degree in Secondary Education and later received my Masters in Counseling from Georgia State University. Including a stint at McCallie in the 70’s, I worked in several traditional private schools in Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Nashville and taught math and science in the adolescent unit of a psychiatric and drug treatment hospital. In addition, I served as a live-in counselor at a residential youth center for teen boys and assist director at a camp for diabetic children. In 2000, I returned to Chattanooga as a teacher and coach for my “third tour of duty” at McCallie. Behind teaching and enjoying family, a significant part of my life has revolved around coaching and promoting wrestling. I created and continue to codirect the Southern Champions Wrestling Camp. In the recent past, I served as board member of the Tennessee Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, created and ran the Tennessee High School Wrestling Coach’s Poll, and served as the state reporter for WrestlingUSA magazine, and directed the McCallie Invitational Wrestling Tournament. I refereed on the high school and collegiate level, trained referees, and served as the state liaison between referees and coaches with the TSSAA. Now in my 47th year of education, I spend downtime working on easy crossword puzzles,
Abbie and I have been happily married almost every day of the past 35 years. Both are incredibly proud of our genetically gifted children Amy, Emily, and Matthew ’08 who are enjoying the wanderlust of young adulthood. Amy and her husband, Benny, work for the Department of State. With previous posts in India and Liberia, they are now half-way through their assignment in Vietnam where they also experience the joys of parenthood with Noah, my 18-month old grandson. Emily and her husband, Gabe, live in Los Angeles where she pursues her acting career, having appeared in commercials, TV spots, internet shorts, and movies. Matthew ’08 rose to assistant director of the Rollins College admission office before joining the Air Force. He is currently stationed in Arizona where he works in Federal Contracting and will soon pursue a career in private business. THE MEMORIES Few 12-year old boys pine to be a high school history teacher while still in elementary school. Destiny, serendipity, and a few individuals have led me to a fantastic and rewarding career dominated by classrooms and wrestling mats.
CLASS OF 1968
C H AT TA N O O G A , T E N N E S S E E
Marvin “Luther” Killian
trying to be a handyman around the house and in the yard, studying genealogy, and faking it at woodworking.
Little did I know the life-altering results of picking a sport for the winter season of my 7th grade year. I could barely dribble a basketball while standing still, and in a pool, I could excel only at splashing a lot of water with limited forward progress. Therefore, I eliminated basketball and swimming and narrowed my choices to soccer or wrestling. Practically speaking, I would rather sweat than shiver so wrestling was much more appealing than winter soccer. The clincher was that Jack, my older brother, wrestled and I needed some professional guidance to minimize my pain and suffering he inflicted on the living room rug. McCallie Onions and Orchids: Cuban Missile Crisis, assassination of JFK and MLK, Vietnam, death of Dr. Bob, Religious Emphasis Week, military, “Who rolled the crane”, Coach Day’s “Japs”, Sack/Go-Go/Yo/Bo/WOEAH/Goo/ Maj/Sarge, SPIRITUALS, Keo-Kio Christmas assembly, unfinal dance.
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THE IMPACT Classroom stalwarts Gordon Bondurant, John Pataky, and Houston Patterson had such a dramatic influence that I adapted my plan away from teaching history to teaching mathematics. Henry Henagar and Miles McNiff inspired and reinforced my ambition to teach. They may have thought they shared only subject matter and enthusiasm for learning. Doubtful they were aware of also sharing teaching techniques and inspiration. Mere classmates at the beginning, BB Branton, Bill Asbury, Drew Trotter, Jeff McCall, and Lawson Whitaker became close teammates and friends. We shared success and camaraderie that more than compensated for the physical and mental challenges of practice in addition to our histrionic suffering related to “making weight.” With the addition of a few underclassmen and the later addition of the successful, athletic, and entertaining trio Bob Mitchell, Bill Hust, and Steve (Root) Bailey, we were a formidable team.
“As we approach our 50th reunion, we reflect on what our McCallie education really meant to us. “Honor, Truth, Duty” is not merely a motto but what we strive for as our lifestyle.”
Without my teammates and the inspiring gifts shared by COL. Spencer, Jim Morgan, Paul Tessmann, and Fred Wunderlich, I would not have developed the love and expertise of wrestling; nor would I have realized the passion and life lessons that I try to apply every day. Earning grades, marching, and playing sports were part of our McCallie experience but irrelevant to our McCallie education. Without realizing the significance, our McCallie education came from growth, ideas, and feelings developed with our friends as we molded our character and integrity. We learned compassion and wisdom from our mentors and role models. In May of 1968, we had no idea of what just happened in the shared events of our McCallie days. As we approach our 50th reunion, we reflect on what our McCallie education really meant to us. “Honor, Truth, Duty” is not merely a motto but what we strive for as our lifestyle.
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Occupations over the years: Family business, graphic design, art teacher/department head, commission artist, museum owner Hobbies: Model Railroads – a love which developed when I was allowed to build one in the McCallie art studio. I am currently working with the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum on a model train. Highlights of life since McCallie: •
Obtained a fine arts degree from UGA followed by study at the Pratt Institute in NYC.
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Spent 10 years as a graphic designer, selling paintings and commission works (which I continue to do).
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Served as the Head of the Art Department at Dyersburg State.
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Built the Nashville Toy Museum which houses a world-class collection of antique toys. The museum’s centerpieces are two custom-built 50-foot-long train layouts that took me nearly 20 years to complete.
CLASS OF 1968
DYERSBURG, TENNESSEE
Edward Hicks “Ted” Lannom, III
Children: Son - Edward Lannom IV ‘12 (designer in a Nashville, architecture firm Daughter - Revel Lannom in law school
Favorite McCallie memory and/or greatest impact: Serving as drum major for the McCallie band and my rock-n-roll band, the Mandrakes.
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William Andrew Jackson “Billy” Lewis, III
MY TIME AT MCCALLIE My most significant feat at McCallie was actually graduating. Most faculty members and many classmates were betting against me. Passing grades were not the problem!
RUSTON, LOUISIANA
Spence III taught me my most valuable life lesson. The lesson was simply that other persons besides privileged Caucasians should have exposure to a good education, decent job opportunities, and equal protection under the law. CURRENT LIFE No complaints. I have a loving, beautiful wife, two grown successful daughters and a fantastic 15 year-old son who plays competitive tennis. I retired from work at age 58 and spend much of my time sailing the Caribbean.
CLASS OF 1968
I’m probably most remembered for exploding an M-80 in nighttime study hall with Mr. Lundien presiding. It seems like it was much louder than I had expected. I regretted this prank immediately even though it resulted in my being awarded an extra week of vacation.
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I grew up in St. Elmo, a community in Chattanooga. I attended St. Elmo Elementary School when it was a terrific public school with a visionary principal and many talented teachers. My parents encouraged me to look beyond the default local junior high school, and I considered McCallie because my first cousin, Sam Robertson, had been a star football player there, captain of the team and high school All-American. My football career topped out in the ninth grade. Although I was a starter that year, I was also “a sorry excuse for a center” in the words of the line coach. McCallie stretched me in many ways. It challenged me to do things I did not think I could do. It led to amazing opportunities, made possible through years of sacrifice, primarily by my parents, but also by the faculty and leaders at McCallie. We students sacrificed, too. I think all of us felt social isolation at times. There was much more emphasis on competitive striving than on brotherly compassion. But human nature will prevail, and many of us formed brotherly bonds. Nonetheless, we were jostled, pushed aside, beat up, humiliated, trampled, and battered – in metaphorical, emotional, and at times physical ways. Although some were permanently damaged, I think most emerged stronger. I certainly got coarser, more numb to other people, but I needed that toughening. I gained insight into bullies and blusterers, and some skill in deflating them. I learned to respect compassion that comes from a position of strength. Happily, I don’t recall losing my sense of humor for more than a few days at a stretch. And I got a great academic foundation. After graduation I spent the summer days working for my father. He owned a furniture store on East Main Street in Chattanooga. There were seven employees including me. I spent a lot of time day-dreaming about my girlfriend, and he often reminded me that I was not focusing on work. I learned some helpful work attitudes. The older I get, the more impressed I am with my father. Some of you may remember that I was admitted to Harvard College. I went, and I graduated in
four years with a degree in pure mathematics. That short sentence provides a summary of sorts, but the four years as lived are beyond my ability to describe. The transition from being a day student in Chattanooga to living in a dorm at Harvard with thirty other freshmen was like blasting off in a rocket ship to a distant galaxy. Most of those thirty guys saw my background as foreign and bizarre. One guy actually stopped me in the hallway and said, “I can’t believe you really talk like that.” Other guys came to respect me and thought I provided an interesting perspective. According to the stereotype, Harvard is filled with rich prep school guys. There were plenty of those. But over half of my freshman class attended public schools and over a third received some sort of financial aid. The father of one of my roommates was an immigrant from Greece who worked in a factory in Norwalk, Connecticut. A guy from an aristocratic family in Mexico City lived two floors down. Two of the guys across the hall had been in kibbutz in Israel over the summer. They carried automatic weapons while there. One guy was from Jamaica. He suffered more than most of us during the winter, quit, and went back to Jamaica. One guy’s father was an editor at Time Magazine. Three of the guys on the bottom floor went to high school in New York City. They looked sort of strange to me. As freshmen, they were taking a math course designed for first-year graduate students: “Real Analysis”, sort of a fourth year calculus with extra weirdness. I never took that class, and my aspiration of becoming a research mathematician was bruised when I saw the competition.
CLASS OF 1968
C H AT TA N O O G A , T E N N E S S E E
Charles Benton “Charlie” Marlin, III
Working on this 50th reunion has brought back a lot of memories. More importantly, it has given new life to friendships formed long ago, and I hope they continue.
At times I was taken aback, but overall the experience was healthy and sobering. It punctured illusions. I noticed that one part of me wanted to cling to those illusions and their familiar comfort, even while a greater part could not ignore new discoveries. I also learned that people could think and act quite differently but still be human and moral and ethical and kind and follow the example of Jesus better than I did, even though they might not claim Christianity. The last two years I lived in a co-ed dorm. Eleven men and thirteen women. An “experiment in co-educational living” it was called by the school. Instead of being on the dormitory food plan, we had a well-equipped kitchen; and each of us prepared dinner for all the others on a fourweek rotation. After each dinner, a team of two
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months. Civilization had its consolations. I spent a couple more years as hippie gardener near Chattanooga. I fell into a cushy position: three days a week, three dollars an hour, year around, working at the same place. I could walk to work. Most days, I ate oatmeal for breakfast, a peanut butter sandwich with a carrot for lunch, and chopped cabbage with some cottage cheese for dinner, often with a bit of onion or pickle. Not much money, but plenty of time to read, wonder, watch the trees and shrubs, visit friends, and begin sorting through the jungle of ideas I had encountered during the previous several years. As an attempt at cheap entertainment for a party, I built a maze out of cardboard boxes. It was an unexpected hit, and I built about a dozen more over the next several years, mostly in Chattanooga, one in Nashville, and one in Albuquerque.
“McCallie stretched me in many ways. It challenged me to do things I did not think I could do. It led to amazing opportunities, made possible through years of sacrifice, primarily by my parents, but also by the faculty and leaders at McCallie.”
I worked with Amos Clark, a 70-year-old black guy who had been working there for 9 years, which seemed to me an incomprehensible length of time. He taught me a lot about how to use hand tools. Also, how to start a fire in a bucket to keep your hands and feet warm in the winter. We could be clearing brush along a fence during 30 degree weather in total comfort. I pulled up tons of honeysuckle and privet hedge by the root. Amos and I made piles higher than our heads each year and burned them in bonfires on cold drippy-wet autumn days. He told me stories.
After fulfilling alternate service as a conscientious objector, mostly in West Virginia coal country, I was a hippie gardener for a couple of years, then tried a subsistence farming adventure in middle Tennessee. No electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing. On Easter Sunday morning in 1976, I rode a mule that had run off the night before back to our farm. We plowed with mules, cooked on a wood stove, and washed our clothes and ourselves in the creek. We milked a cow and a couple of goats. We planted a garden. I lasted three
Eventually, Amos quit; the job became less engaging; and I quit. After a few really interesting short-term jobs, I rejoined the regular 40-hour-a-week world teaching math for vocations at a local community college. That was great for a year or so, then became discouraging. I could help the bright, motivated students learn enough
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math to be successful electricians, tool and die makers, drafters, or HVAC technicians; but there were many unmotivated students that I could not get over the hump. After months of struggle they remained innumerate.
My political and social views are not in sync with many of the people around me, but it’s also true that most people, regardless of political preference, prefer honesty and plain dealing over lies and deceit. I know many people of good will whose interpretation of events differs from mine, and I have many opportunities to show that a person with my views is not a demon from beyond. In fact, I enjoy talking with a person I respect but who does not completely share my views. Both of us can learn.
I got an offer from Intergraph, in Huntsville, Alabama, one of several technology companies developing computer assisted mapping, drafting, design, and manufacturing systems. A great place at a great time for a single guy who had recovered his self-motivation. I traveled almost every week, lived for several years in McLean, VA, Bellevue, WA, and Irvine, CA; and eventually returned to Huntsville. I did many different things for Intergraph over 18 years, some primarily technical, many with a social/political component. I jousted with Con Ed and stayed on my horse. After one of those visits, I climbed the scaffolding surrounding the Statue of Liberty and kissed her chin. Her lips were too high to kiss, but I touched the lower one with my hand. We climbed further and looked down on the torch. The yellow glass panes between strips of metal had not yet been replaced by the gold flame.
Let me close by describing some conclusions I’ve reached over the last 50 years. We are more than our minds. We extend well beyond our ideas, even though we tend to restrict our horizon to them. Yoga is wonderful for keeping joints supple, improving balance, preventing injury; and I believe it does a lot more. Weight lifting can help slow down the decline of strength with age and make daily life more enjoyable. I believe it, too, does more. Movement that is vigorous enough to stir the blood will improve the mood. Meditation helps to steady the mind and has other benefits. Old friends are a joy; laughter comes easily with them, and some sort of wonderful ineffable warmth. Finding the right woman is transforming; it’s glorious to be in a constructive relationship. I suspected all these things when I was twenty, but now I know they are true. I invite you to join me in these interpretations and activities. I am willing to listen to yours, too. My fellow classmates, along with your families and friends, I earnestly wish you all the best.
I worked for several years with a five-person software and services company, all of us former Intergraph people. Almost ten years ago I joined the local utility company where I work with geographical information systems (GIS), mostly by writing mobile applications and providing data analysis. I enjoy writing applications that will be used in production more than writing apps for demonstrations or proof of concept. It is tremendously rewarding to help people with scant computer experience overcome their apprehension and see how they can use a mobile computer to work more effectively. Looking back over the last few decades, a major theme of my working life has been to extend the reach of technology and help people work more productively. A theme of daily life has been to bring the human element into everyday social interaction. One widespread social critique holds that modern life transforms all relationships into commercial transactions, so that the supermarket customer doesn’t care about the life of the checkout person, only how quickly and accurately the exchange of goods for money is completed. Sadly, I’ve spent plenty of time in that pit, and I still fall in from time to time. But I aspire to do better. To make eye contact. To smile. To acknowledge other people’s fundamental dignity and worth, based merely on their status as human beings. It only takes a small amount of personal energy, and the occasional response makes for an outsized reward. When a person who looked tired and miserable smiles back, what’s the price of that? What’s the value?
CLASS OF 1968
Overall, I consider myself the luckiest person I know. My wife and I are in love with each other and we laugh a lot together. We help each other over rough spots. My son and daughter are wonderful sources of energy, and they refresh me culturally. My work is enjoyable and stimulating. I live near a lot of trees. I survived decades of youthful folly with remarkably little damage to me or to others. My health is good. I sing sometimes in the shower and in the car. Occasionally, when I’m fortunate, I provoke someone to laughter.
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I am married to Shelby White, and we have a son, Will ‘04, and a daughter, Shelby, GPS Class of 2008. McCallie misspelled my name on my diploma, but got it right by the time he graduated. Both married to wonderful people. I am a 25-year veteran of the Boys Scouts, former Scoutmaster, Council Board Chair, Silver Beaver Award, but no longer involved. Girls? East Tennessee Historical Society in Knoxville, founded in 1834, made me a Lifetime Honorary Board Member. It does an outstanding job teaching history in schools and runs a fascinating museum in downtown Knoxville.
Every visit to Spears Stadium on the McCallie campus gives me reason to gloat over the 17-0 lacrosse thrashing the Big Blue put on the rivals across the river a couple of years ago.
History has always been important to me. I have pursued history my adult life. My BA degree from Virginia is history, and I spend much time with organizations promoting and preserving history, architecture, and battlefields. This is my 10th year chairing the Salvation Army Command in Chattanooga. It never falls into a routine and keeps introducing me to interesting people from all walks of life. I spent over twenty years assembling a portion of the Missionary Ridge battlefield, about 17 acres, which the state of Tennessee now preserves. I received the Ragland Award in 2014 from the Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association for that project. Now I am helping protect Brown’s landing where the 1863 siege of Chattanooga was broken by Union troops floating down the river.
I am proud to have been in the group that started lacrosse at McCallie in 1989. Lacrosse is played all over Chattanooga today from grade school on up. McCallie has won eight state championships and beaten teams from Maryland to Texas. Over 70 McCallie graduates went on to play collegiate lax, some with full scholarships.
CLASS OF 1968
C H AT TA N O O G A , T E N N E S S E E
Carrington Montague
As vice-chair of the Tennessee Preservation Trust, I am deeply involved with preserving the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle which folks around here still refer to as, “the communist training school.” Look it up. It was the crucible of the civil rights movement in the 1940’s and 1950’s before the state shut it down in 1961 and auctioned off the property for the crime of selling beer ... no joke.
Most importantly: •
Big Blue always whips the living hell out of the team across the river.
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Habitat Chattanooga started the first high school chapter in America at McCallie when I was Vice-President. McCallie continues to build homes here and overseas every year.
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I spent time on the Alumni Council and see several athletic matches a year, but I refuse to attend the McCallie-Baylor football game until they come to their senses and return the game downtown to a stadium that can accommodate the community.
Go Blue!
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The easiest way for me to reminisce is to break down the past half century into a highlight reel encapsulating snippets in each decade since graduation. Here goes1968-1978 The rite of passage graduating from McCallie for me was in some aspects a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. I was not particularly good at anything at McCallie. I was neither a bright student nor an athlete of note although I made attempts at both. I never got into any serious trouble (actually weren’t caught) but did come close. I think I was reasonably good as sports editor of the Tornado (under Sam Heys tutelage) and at one time even entertained the prospect of making the newspaper business a career path. All my roommates at McCallie journeyed off to prestigious capstones of higher education while I chose the liberating path of a well-respected party school with a reputation for outstanding football, drinking and sexy women. The University of Alabama was everything I expected except the football program was at its worse (even though Bear Bryant was the coach) and the sexy woman didn’t know I existed. I continued my hand at writing about sports and became a columnist for the school’s paper and the sports editor of the yearbook my sophomore year. It was during this period that I discovered I was not a very good writer (apologies to Henry Henegar and Spence 3rd who probably knew it) and abandoned that as a career path. At McCallie I had failed Algebra II (squeaked by in public summer school) and barely made it through geometry our junior year. Having
given up on journalism at Alabama I had to take an accounting course while in the business school and bingo, numbers suddenly made sense. More on that later. As a result of being in a fraternity I became involved in campus politics and with the fraternity’s clout on campus became a student government elected official. Unfortunately these were the years that the conflict in Vietnam Nam reached its apex and being part of an establishment system wasn’t cool. I was however inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa honorary and was one of 12 men in my junior year to be inducted into Jason’s, an exclusive group along the lines of skull and bones at Yale. I was named by the school for inclusion in the National publication, “Who’s Who in American colleges and Universities”. I entertained thoughts of becoming a great lawyer but the “big 8 “ accounting firms came recruiting students my senior year and they were talking big money so I put law school plans on hold, sold out to the highest taker of my services, and joined the prestigious accounting firm of Price Waterhouse. Remember I was previously a poor math student. Life at PW was interesting, different and difficult. Travel was extensive and a stable social life virtually impossible due to the constant travel. I did manage to pass the CPA exam and figured I was on my way to the partnership, riches and happy ever after. WRONG. I also found out I was not a very good accountant and was pretty miserable. It was during this period that I did meet who was to become my wife (another story another reunion). Liz Levy was a Natalie Wood look alike and this was the summer of the Watergate hearings. I had become ill and was unable to work that summer and she became my nurse and companion. We are celebrating 44 years this November so surprise, I must have gotten smitten and hooked. Even though I wasn’t particularly happy at PW I did become a senior manager (level below partner) and was being transferred to another office with the opportunity to start a new program which I was told would put me on the path to partnership. Liz had become pregnant with our first child and my parents were concerned about the stress I was incurring at work so they asked me to come into the family business. Did I mention I was not a good accountant? I had already given up on journalism. Could I actually
CLASS OF 1968
SHEFIELD, ALABAMA
“David” Milton Muhlendorf
Reflecting on the past fifty years since McCallie is rather difficult since I have a hard time remembering what I had for breakfast yesterday and yes I did eat. My four years spent at McCallie as a boarding student are now mostly a blur but without a doubt were very impactful in shaping the directions and choices I ultimately made. My biggest and happiest memory was being exempted from finals our senior year to spend time helping on the yearbook (Pennant). Had I not been exempted I would still be trying to pass finals and graduate. I continuously have had nightmares of getting called to come back and take them. Sure there are several other really good and cool memories and moments but they are better being told over a cold one at the reunion.
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award from Easter Seal for my work with crippled children. I impressed somebody with my obvious good looks and charm as for two years I was featured on Regional television and in regional print issues of Time, Newsweek etc. as a spokesperson for BlueCross Blue Shield insurance of Alabama (paid gig) but no Hollywood offers followed and my acting career ended. 2000-2009 A lot of stuff happened during the first decade of the new century – some good and some not so good. Business was excellent and we were able to acquire some competitors, construct a brand new distribution facility and start to really enjoy quality family time ( translated as part time beach living). Adam had graduated both McCallie and Alabama and had begun work as a congressional aide for a congressman in D.C. Julie was an outstanding gymnast and we followed her around the country for her various competitions. I got involved on the state level with Leadership Alabama, an incredible leadership and networking program, and the Business Council of Alabama (state’s leading business lobby). I was named Shoals citizen of the year, which was very meaningful as my grandfather had been the very first recipient when the award was established in 1936. I was honored to become chairman of the Business Council of Alabama which allowed me to direct the business lobby and be the spokesperson for business in the state. Somebody thought I was doing something right and I got elected to the United States Chamber of Commerce board in Washington D.C. and rubbed elbows with some really impressive business executives from the largest companies in the U.S. (I haven’t figured out where I fit in with that group). I served six years on the U.S. chamber board and it was a great experience.
As Long as I have a memory, McCallie will occupy a prominent spot.
The business was growing and so was the stress of running it. I’ve got to admit I played hard, worked hard and generally was invincible at least until April 14, 1988, 12:15 p.m. “HEART ATTACK”. I obviously survived (thanks to angioplasty and a darn good cardiologist) and decided to slow down after my recovery. Something else transpired during my recovery as Liz became pregnant with our daughter Julie, who was born February 11, 1989. (Side note: In the fall of 1988, I was honored to be named the first recipient of the distinguished alumnus for our class at our 20th reunion. Whoever determined that thank you.)
I gave up cigarettes and scotch, took up wine, cigars and exercise and turned the day-to-day stress of running the business to others and got more involved in the community.
1990-1999 The last decade of the century and millennium was a time of growth both for the business and in my community ventures. I became chairman of our local chamber of commerce, chairman of the local private school where my children attended, chairman of our local Easter Seal facility, President of my Kiwanis club and LT. Governor of our Kiwanis district. I was a founding member of our local entrepreneurial center and served as chairman (still a board member). I received the Sam Walton business award and the Gold
2010The financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent period of slow recovery were not kind to my business. We were a good size company but being in a rural area we were fair game for competitors with deep pockets and more critical mass etc. and who hailed from larger markets. I had served on the board of directors of Network Associates in Chicago and as a result were friends with principals from larger entities who helped me shape an exit strategy. I sold the company at the end of 2015 the
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65th anniversary of the company’s founding. Bittersweet. I guess you could say the play we call life continues on. I am still actively involved in several boards (University of Alabama president’s council, University of North Alabama foundation and chairman of the northwest Alabama community college foundation). I still serve on the executive committee of the Business Council of Alabama and was honored recently to serve as chairman of leadership Alabama. I currently serve as chairman of the Florence Lauderdale convention and visitor Bureau Board. The bureau promotes the rich cultural and historical heritage of the Muscle area which is highlighted in the documentary “Muscle Shoals” a must see video documentary (available on Netflix).
Most of us were 18 in 68 and now 50 years later most of us are 68 from the class year of 68. See Math is no problem now (lol). As Long as I have a memory, McCallie will occupy a prominent spot. As the game of life slowly (real slow I hope) concludes I don’t expect any trophies but I think I am entitled to a participation certificate. Don’t you? David Muhlendorf June 1968 PS - Coming soon to a bookstore near you are my memoirs: Even Short, Fat People Have a Life or Tall Tales and Short Fallings.
CLASS OF 1968
I do try to play a little golf from time to time. Our classmate Tyler Calhoun and I had a weekly links game for years until his passing from cancer a few years ago. My golf game now gets better the less I play even though my golf wardrobe drips with style. Not to bore anyone with details but I am still into wine, cigars and good times. I took up yoga and meditation and have started playing guitar (no talent there), and have grown a beard as the rest of my hair falls out. I am enjoying life (mostly at the beach). Liz and I are becoming grandparents for the first time (June 2018) and are anxiously waiting that new chapter. Adam and his wife live in Montgomery, Alabama where Adam has his own media strategy and lobbying firm and his wife Alison is the state’s main advocate for Pre-k education. My daughter Julie is still involved in athletics (and single) having obtained a master’s degree in sports management and is working in the athletic department at the University of Alabama Birmingham. We have been fortunate to attend six national championship Alabama football games as a family so football is still pretty important and yea the sexy girls have finally began to notice me -- as a weird old man. Liz and I have been fortunate and blessed to good health and to have traveled over the years throughout Europe, China, Russia, etc. There are classmates who I am sure have obtained more status, money and standing than I and count among their friends the rich and famous. I am rich in many ways with an amazing family, a comfortable life and the knowledge with apologies to the group U2 “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”. I haven’t saved the world but do hope that along the path that I have traveled that somebody is better off because at some point we met and I did make a difference for them.
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Morocco). Upon returning home to Birmingham, Alabama, I taught French part-time in a private school and started working on my teacher’s certification. At the end of that year, I enrolled in Middlebury’s program. My college mentor had told me that if I wanted to teach at the undergraduate level I’d need a Ph.D. I found the prospect of many more years of education daunting but finally decided to take the leap. After my M.A., I went to UCLA. Nancy’s family lived in La Jolla, which is part of the city of San Diego, so I knew if I wanted to stay with her I had better apply to a graduate school not far from her. Long and arduous, graduate school tested my patience in more ways than one, but I finally made it through in 5 years while very few of my classmates had. There were not many good, tenure-track jobs at the time, and many of my classmates understandably preferred the comfort of their teaching assistant positions to the uncertainty of the job market. I was willing to go anywhere and, thankfully, landed my first job in the Midwest at Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana. Four years later, I went back on the job market and found a job at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where I taught for 32 years and enjoyed the company of another McCallie graduate Dan Chambliss from Chattanooga.
CLASS OF 1968
SHEFIELD, ALABAMA
“John” Coffee O’Neal
As I suspect it has for most of us, life has had its ups and downs since graduating from McCallie. The best thing that happened to me was my marriage in 1976 to Nancy Vaughan, whom I met at Middlebury College’s graduate program in French in the summer of 1974 in Vermont and with whom I spent the following academic year in Paris working on my Masters degree. Deciding to get married, as it turned out, was a lot easier than trying to figure out what I wanted to do professionally. Making a lifetime decision for us who went through the turbulent, conscious-raising late 1960s and early 1970s did not come easily. I had majored in French at Washington and Lee University (W&L) after a fraternity brother told me he majored in German because 1) he liked it and 2) he did well in it. That made sense to me. After graduation from W&L, practically no one in my class knew what he wanted to do. As I would later tell my students as their advisor, if you don’t know what you want to do, go where you want to be. For me, that meant one kind of place. I took a year off after college and worked odd jobs (barman, grape harvester, wood sawyer for a furniture maker, and ski slope maintenance worker) in France and Switzerland, finishing the year with a trip through the French-speaking countries of North Africa (Tunisia, Algeria, and
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REUNION RECAP The job entailed directing the College’s Junior Year in France program every four years, and I did 6 rotations in it. Consequently, our daughter, Kate, and our son, Vaughan, now 38 and 36 years old respectively, learned to speak French and can still do so. In 2001, just as Vaughan was graduating from high school, Kate was diagnosed with schizophrenia, later specified as schizoaffective disorder. This devastating illness, which very few people understand, affects one’s ability to think clearly. It’s not at all about multiple personalities, as most people mistakenly believe; it’s about paranoia, hallucinations, and delusions, ironically called “positive” symptoms. She leads a life governed by constant fear and anxiety. Our daughter has been hospitalized many, many times, some of them lasting as much as 4 or 5 weeks at a time. This disease can absolutely destroy someone’s life and tear asunder the bonds in a family. Fortunately, our family has remained united in our support of Kate, who is just barely managing to live on her own with a medical clinic just blocks from her apartment and day programs for the mentally ill nearby. Our experience with Kate has taught us that literally anything can happen in one’s life. When we pick up the phone, we never quite know what to expect. She can be up and excited about her day, or she can be down and have ended up back in the hospital. The medications do a relatively good job of keeping her stable for varying periods of time, and she takes them responsibly. But the illness remains elusive, sometimes brutal, presenting an ever-changing kaleidoscope of symptoms. We can only hope for some miraculous cure to come while weathering the storm as a family, as we have been. Vaughan has helped us immensely in this team effort.
stepmother was a full professor at the time. While on vacation out here, we met for dinner one night at Nancy’s father’s and stepmother’s home shortly after Cliff arrived in town with his wife. I was looking forward to spending more time with Cliff, as we later bought our condo here for retirement. Unfortunately, Cliff passed away four years later. I was also looking forward to spending time with my brother Monty, who graduated from McCallie three years before I did and who had decided to move to San Diego before we retired out here. Two years before we moved out and just days after he arrived in town to settle here permanently, Monty dropped dead while jogging in the area of Balboa Park. His diabetes had finally caught up with him. In my career, I guess I was very lucky. Having sat in on many a hiring session, I’ve learned just how fickle hiring can be. It’s a wonder I ever got a job in the first place. It seems as if the stars have to be perfectly aligned. In retrospect, I’m not sure now, knowing what I do, if I would still risk pursuing the same career. I greatly enjoyed my career, however. Teaching and mentoring bright young people is not only a pleasure; it’s a privilege. Research also provided me with many stimulating hours at home or in the library, where I did most of my writing on 18thcentury French literature and thought (Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, et al.). The French government recognized me on three occasions for my work with its Napoleonic Order of the French Academic Palms, promoting me ultimately to its highest rank of commandeur right before my retirement. My thanks go to Pierre Wagner for having confidence in me early on.
“As I suspect it has for most of us, life has had its ups and downs since graduating from McCallie.”
Over the years, I’ve been in touch with some classmates, especially Smokey Edwards, and I’ve seen others in their homes or in the area they’ve moved to. Nancy has a brother who lives with his family in Denver. On one of our trips there, we looked up Charlie Pride and his wife, Kathy, whom I knew from my W&L days with them. We spent a day admiring the red rocks of Colorado. Cliff Shults, it turns out, took a job in 1985 with the department of Neurology and Ophthalmology at UCSD (the University of California, San Diego), where Nancy’s
We moved to the San Diego area after I retired to be close to family for the first time since my graduate school days. (Nancy’s mother, stepmother, her sister, Margaret, and her family are in town.) The transition has been fairly smooth. I keep myself busy reading, writing, singing in our church choir, serving as a lector at Mass on Sundays, trying to improve my Spanish, golfing, and practicing yoga twice a week at the YMCA in the village, to which Nancy and I walk. I volunteer on a part-time basis, as does Nancy, with the local Rotary Club in a program started by her late father to teach English (usually by Skype, sometimes in person) to promising Tijuana youth. I’ll probably move to full-time (i.e.,
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every Saturday) when Nancy’s stepmother, for whom I’m occasionally substituting, decides to step down. This coming year I hope to become involved in the mentoring program for first-generation freshmen at UCSD. The La Jolla Newcomers’ Club, which we joined, has an active agenda, including films and hikes, among other activities, that also keeps us on the move and helps us meet other new people in town. So far, so good…
CLASS OF 1968
I am interested in reading about the different directions the lives of my fellow classmates have taken. This is a worthy project.
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In 1973, my parents bought a mom and pop restaurant in their hometown, Bridgeport, Alabama, so I came back to the area to help them start a business that lasted for over twenty years. It did not take long for me to realize that restaurant work wasn’t my favorite thing in the world. About that time, a cousin of mine in the local laborers’ union and led me into a career in ironworking on high-rise buildings. Meanwhile I met and married a fine, upstanding, old-fashioned schoolteacher from Florida. We bought a 100-acre farm near Bridgeport and raised three wonderful daughters. For the next twenty years, I rotated back and forth between ironwork and restaurant work, in addition to running my farm, making a decent living as best I could, putting all three girls through college, and watching them marry decent young men who have turned out to be good husbands and even better fathers to our five grandchildren.
McCallie gave a working class kid from a tiny Alabama town the chance to become something more.
I left the protective bubble of McCallie life and world views that summer and spent a month touring Europe with Carrington Montague, Laney Nichols, and a dozen other Chattanooga recent high school graduates on a tour led by Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Vieth. My four years of German under Pierre Wagner paid off as I was adopted by our German bus driver, Herr Staulbaum. Each night after the 10 pm bed check, Staulbaum would peck on the door and take me out on the town to visit his favorite haunts. Each night I would meet new groups of young Europeans and exchange opinions on the state of the world. We discussed Vietnam, the threat of communism, and the rebellious state of countries around the world – things we weren’t taught at McCallie.
I returned to Chattanooga filled with cognitive dissonance concerning my own weltanschauung and headed off to Chapel Hill to begin my studies in math and chemistry. My second semester there I found my true love, the sport of rugby. For the next four years, my academics took second place to the rugby club. We traveled up and down the east coast, playing other university and city clubs, and I fell in love with the lifestyle, the camaraderie, and the parties. Somehow I managed to complete my lackluster college career graduating with a double major in English and history. I had no plan, no ambition, “no motivation or DEE-sire,” as Major Burns used to say.
CLASS OF 1968
C H AT TA N O O G A , T E N N E S S E E
“David” Hodge Paris, Jr.
I can hardly believe that it has been fifty years since that May afternoon that we all marched out of the McCallie Chapel, diplomas in hand, restless to get started on the next phase of our lives. Each of us carried the memories of our time at McCallie, but more importantly, we carried a solid foundation of values that would follow us throughout our lives: Truth, Honor, Duty. These words were instilled in me by my peers and my dear friend and mentor, Mr. Warren James. Of all the gifts McCallie gave me, I think these were the most important. I worked hard to instill these same tenets in my three daughters, and for the past twenty years I have tried to impress the importance of character and integrity upon my high school students.
By the mid ‘90s, ironwork had dried up with the closing of TVA’s nuclear program, and the opening of a new highway to Huntsville isolated Bridgeport and severely diminished our restaurant business. Fortunately, with help from one of my oldest friends from my rugby days, I was able to go back to school to get a teaching license. Two heart attacks later and a diagnosis of diabetes, I finally changed my lifestyle and diet; I also changed my attitude toward life in general. I began to appreciate the temerity of life. I grew to appreciate each day as a bonus for me. Carpe diem became not just a phrase but a mantra for my decision making. I tried to take advantage of any and all opportunities that presented themselves. One such opportunity that arose was travel. Out of the blue, a professor from UTC sent out a flyer advertising a graduate course on East Asia sponsored by the Freeman Foundation of New York. That led to numerous sponsored trips
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REUNION RECAP over the next decade, allowing me to spend four to six weeks at a time in Japan, Korea, and China meeting fellow teachers while visiting their secondary schools, universities, museums, and temples. For years and years I also traveled throughout the U.S. for two- to four-week institutes and seminars studying a variety of East Asian topics -- all courtesy of the Freeman Foundation. The most recent change in my life has been to start over again with a new partner. I have spent the last several years enjoying life with a delightful young woman whom I met through teaching. We live in Hixson now with our three canine companions, traveling when we can, and planning for my retirement soon, during which we want to make like Jack Kerouac and go On the Road. I cannot wait to get started on our long adventure-filled drive exploring the most interesting and off-beat places, eateries, and oddities across North America. Looking back over the past five decades, I realize that I have led a charmed life with a loving family, a few incredible friends, and a miraculous extension of my life. I have grown to realize that this incredible journey was a direct result of my time at McCallie. Without McCallie, I would never have gotten to UNC. Without going to UNC, I would never have met my dearest friend who helped me to go back to UTC to get my teaching certification. And had I not gotten the chance to teach, I never would have seen places in the world that previously were just a dream of mine. McCallie gave a working class kid from a tiny Alabama town the chance to become something more. Thanks to the school, the teachers, and my peers for all you did.
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But I’m only almost retired, not quite, and have to teach this Fall semester. It takes all my effort, and has taken it all for now thirty-six years, not to get fired as a professor of philosophy and Asian studies at the University of Texas at Austin, appointed 1982. To fill in the gaps between 1968 and 1982, the most important for me was spending a couple of years at a yoga ashram school in South India where they began teaching me Sanskrit (thankfully Mr. W.O.E.A Humphreys taught us how to recognize cases and the meaning of the ablative absolute; the locative absolute is commonly used in Sanskrit). If anyone is interested in my intermediate years until the time I left graduate school, maybe Jack Sokohl or John McCallie will divulge something (at their discretion, orally only).
CLASS OF 1968
SHELBYVILLE, TENNESSEE
Stephen Hall “Steve” Phillips
Thinking about seeing everyone and walking around campus makes me sorry that I have to miss the reunion. Having spent a fair amount of time in “E class” (“E” does not stand for excellence!), I am pretty familiar with that hill, at least the McCallie side. Definitely would I have some strong memories and associations.
particular the Nyāya school of classical Indian philosophy has provided a career in academia. I was a visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Hawaii, Manoa (1995), and Jadavpur University, Kolkata (2008). My job very much has depended on writing: author or co-author of eight books, including Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth: A Brief History and Philosophy (Columbia 2009) named by Choice an “Outstanding Academic Title,” and more recently Classical Indian Epistemology: The Knowledge Sources of the Nyāya School (Routledge 2012), which presents classical Indian views in terminology suited for philosophy professionals, and, with Matthew Dasti, The Nyāya-sūtra: Selections with Early Commentaries (Hackett 2017). I teamed with N. S. Ramanuja Tatacharya to translate and explain in 750 pages the perception chapter of the monumental fourteenthcentury Tattva-cintā-maṇi, “(Wish-fulfilling) Jewel of Reflection on the Truth (about Epistemology),” by Gaṅgeśa (American Institute of Buddhist Studies 2004 and Motilal Banarsidass 2008); a translation of the entire text, in three volumes, is under contract with Bloomsbury (London), and is scheduled to appear in 2020. This is taking all my time, and I hope I’ve haven’t forgotten my standard jokes when I have to face a bunch of twenty-year-olds again come late August. All the best, Steve
Translating Sanskrit texts and interpreting in
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Spouse: Anne Rodman Children: Daughter Randall Wells and son Bradley (deceased)
Robert Earl “Bob” Rodman
Grandson: Preston Occupation: President North State Sales Company
Highlights of life since McCallie: Married to Anne for 46 years; captained a pleasure tugboat for 10 years; survived some life threatening situations (jumped out of a flaming building, shot at point blank range with bullet still in me, and amoebic colitis with loss of 40 pounds). Favorite McCallie memory and/or greatest McCallie impact: McCallie motto – “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”
CLASS OF 1968
GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA
Favorite hobbies/pastime: Golfing, boating, traveling, doing magic shows with grandson
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my brother had the other end and my dad had everything in middle.”
Avid about hiking and snow skiing, Bob has a goal of visiting all of the 58 national parks in the lower 48 states. If you show up for the reunion, you can ask him how his quest is going. Bob is a member of his local Rotary Club. He is on the board of his local YMCA and is Vice Chairman of the Franklin (Kentucky) County Board of Health and Legislative Chairman of the Bluegrass Dental Society.
Bob Rush went on from McCallie to become a dentist in his hometown of Frankfort, Kentucky, attending Vanderbilt and the University of Kentucky School of Dentistry. For a time, he practiced in an office building with his father, Dr. W.H. Rush, Sr., who was a general practitioner, and with brother Bill Rush (’62), a urologist. Bob said in a 2018 January article in The State Journal, “The saying was that I had one end,
Coach Pataky is the teacher Bob remembers most. His favorite dorm was Maclellan. If he tours the campus, he will see where the bookstore is now located where the snack bar was in our day. The old dining hall has been torn down, replaced with a facility that resembles a food court. Students today have more varied food choices than we had in a month. Bob and his wife Linda have two children: Robert Jr. and Cynthia, along with grandchildren.
CLASS OF 1968
F R A N K F O R T, K E N T U C K Y
Robert Hawkins “Bob” Rush
For the past decade, Bob has been practicing with his daughter, Dr. Cynthia Rush Yeiser. However, in January of this year Bob retired from dentistry altogether, turning over his practice to his daughter.
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A physician, teacher and researcher, Shults was widely recognized for his studies of movement disorders and especially for his contributions to understanding the causes of Parkinson’s disease (PD). In a study published in 2002, he was the first to show a successful method to slow progressive impairment in patients with earlystage Parkinson’s disease using the antioxidant Q-10, an over-the-counter supplement.
said Evelyn Tecoma, M.D., Ph.D., UCSD professor of neurosciences and neurologist at the VA San Diego Medical Center. “He studied what goes wrong at the cellular level in Parkinson’s, and then used those findings to design clinical trials aimed at finding ways to protect the patients’ nervous system from the disease.” Tecoma added, “He really loved seeing patients in the clinic and teaching residents.” Shults was instrumental in establishing the Veterans Affairs San Diego Medical Center as part of the national network of Parkinson’s Disease Research, Education and Clinical Centers (PADRECC), dedicated to caring for veterans with the disease.
“A physician, teacher and researcher, Shults was widely recognized for his studies of movement disorders and especially for his contributions to understanding the causes of Parkinson’s disease (PD).”
“Dr. Shults always conducted his research with the utmost scientific integrity,” said David D. Song, M.D., Ph.D., co-director of UCSD’s Parkinson’s Disease Research Center. “His groundbreaking approaches to the study of Parkinson’s disease gave thousands of patients hope. He was extremely hardworking, but always generous with his time to me and other colleagues in the department, and we will miss his leadership.”
He also coordinated a study by researchers at 12 sites around the country as part of a five-year, $7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study Multiple Systems Atrophy, a progressive, fatal neurological disorder.
Among his professional appointments, Shults was a member of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson Research. He was awarded the Junior Faculty Award by the Parkinson Disease Foundation and the Victory Award at the Unity Walk in New York City in 2003. He has been listed in America’s Top Doctors, a listing of top medical specialists in the nation.
CLASS OF 1968
N E W P O R T, T E N N E S S E E
Clifford Walter “Cliff” Shults
Cliff was born in Newport, Tennessee, a small town in the Smoky Mountains. He followed brother Bill ‘67 to McCallie and was followed by Glen ‘73. After McCallie, he received his A.B. degree from Brown University, and M.D. degree from the University of Tennessee. He trained in Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and in Neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, followed by a fellowship at the NIH. It was there that he began his research in movement disorders and the roles of neuropeptides in the brain. He came to UCSD and the VA San Diego Medical Center in 1985. At the VA Medical Center he served as chief of the neurology service for nine years.
Shults was dedicated to his family. He enjoyed kayaking, hiking and digging for clams with his family at their cabin on Whidbey Island in Washington’s Puget Sound. He died of complications of cancer on February 7 at the age of 56 and is survived by his wife, Ellen Koutsky Shults, and daughter, Sarah, and son, Andrew.
“He was truly a bench-to-bedside researcher,”
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I was not a stand out or the best student at McCallie, but I received an education in all things life with my friends, and left with the knowledge that I was capable of success at whatever I really wanted.
Deptartment and soon had both my EMT and Paramedic certifications. I rode on a rescue vehicle for 17 years until promotion moved me on. I did return to Miami Dade Community college and completed my degree in Fire Science. Amazing what you can do when you want to! I retired from the Fire service after 25 years as a District Chief. I also retired my farrier’s tools at that same time. I was fortunate enough to have one son, Bryant B Smith III ’94. Many friends asked me why I sent my son away to McCallie from Miami. They wanted to know what McCallie could do that the schools at home could not. My answer was easy. It is not what McCallie gives you, it is what it takes away. You can never again say, “It is too hard, I cannot do it”.
It is not what McCallie gives you, it is what it takes away. You can never again say, “It is too hard, I cannot do it”.
After graduation I returned to Miami FL. And started to Attend Miami Dade Community College. It only took one semester to realize that College was not for me at that moment. I began working at Ford dealerships in the parts department and learned after two years that I was not meant to work at anything inside. Since coming home I had become involved in horse ownership. A farrier that I was using told me of a horse shoeing school in Martinsville, VA. Three months later I drove up to that school having never been under a horse to shoe. I loved it and worked as a farrier from West Palm Beach to the Florida Keys for 30 years.
I retired in 1999 after a cardiac blockage. I have stayed busy with travel and hobbies. My wife Connie and I now reside on the Florida west coast city of Hudson, just above Tarpon Springs. We are on the water, boat on the lift, and ready for new outdoor adventures every day
CLASS OF 1968
So when I began my introduction to McCallie by attending Academic Sports Camp under Houston Patterson I had no idea what it would mean to me. Those camp years may be the best of my life as it set the tone for my yearning for outdoors all the time.
MIAMI SPRINGS, FLORIDA
“Bryant” Bayless Smith, II
My association with McCallie actually started with my father, Bryant B Smith 1927. His history included Maj as a teacher and Sac Milligan as his best friend then, and Spencer McCallie as a classmate.
I was aware that I was not working at a job that included retirement or medical insurance. I now had a family, and with that came responsibility. One of my horse customers told me of a job opening with the Hialeah Florida Fire Department. All I needed to do was pass the civil service exam and physical assessment. Funny, with the education I had from McCallie, I tested in November 1973 and was hired January 13, 1974. Now I was fortunate to have two careers that I truly loved. I was immediately attracted to the new idea of medical rescue in the Fire
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Spouse: Dana Children: John ‘95 (Katie) and children Maggie, Cami and Laura; Chris ‘97; Alex (Meg) and children Jack, Ben and Noah
Favorite hobbies/pastime: Grandchildren, gardening and motorcycling Favorite McCallie memory and/or greatest McCallie impact: •
Early on in the 7th grade, we were all exposed to the unique sensibilities of McCallie’s junior school faculty, teachers like Goo, Yo, Captain Tate, Coach Day, Mr. Lyle, BonBon and everyone else. We were called by our last names all the time which was new, sometimes politely, sometimes in ways that made me think through the list of things I did wrong before answering. They had your number, which was obvious from the first week. Didn’t necessarily show it at the time, but those leaders/teachers/coaches were and always will be appreciated to the max.
•
In 9th or 10th grade football practice, Steve Kent put a hard-hat hit on me which put me in the hospital for ankle ligament repair surgery. Missed the season, but there was a silver lining – no military participation require! During that period, I often made my way to the basement pool table in Belk Hall. One of my heroes, John Tugman ‘67, hung out there, too, thanks to a doctor’s exemption due to allergies. John was able to play soccer somehow. How did he do it?
CLASS OF 1968
LO O KO U T M O U N TA I N , T E N N E S S E E
John Roberts “Jack” Sokohl
Occupation: Recruiter for a search firm
So many little things I experienced at McCallie became much more significant over the years. Looking forward to seeing everyone soon.
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Since that time, we have been enjoying serving on short-term medical mission trips. Here in Boone I often visit my former patients, as many of them are elderly and nearing the end of their lives. I also enjoy tending sheep and flower gardening. Dottie and I have two daughters, Adelaide and Meredith, and five grandchildren. When it comes to McCallie impact, one thing that stands out was attending Spencer McCallie’s English class and reading books like Catcher in the Rye (probably because it had cuss words!). I still remember when he stood on his desk during a poetry class to make a point. He had such a positive influence on my life and exemplified the value of Honor, Truth and Duty. Another memorable teacher was Pierre Wagner who encouraged me to find the one area where I could
excel, stressing the importance of not comparing myself to others but being the best I could be in my chosen field. I have many good memories of listening to music of the 1960s with my roommate Steve Alexander and of going down to the boathouse to build small campfires, chew tobacco and dip snuff (sounds crazy now!). One of the highlights of my time at McCallie was being on the soccer team as goalie and winning the Mid-South Soccer Championship. The fellowship of the team members was special. I went on to become the goalie at Brevard and ASU.
CLASS OF 1968
M O U N T A I R Y, N O R T H C A R O L I N A
Charles Louis “Charlie” Sykes, Jr.
After McCallie I graduated from Brevard College and Appalachian State University. I was a National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) instructor and summited Denali in the summer of 1973 before beginning medical school at Wake Forest. My wife Dottie, whom I was dating at McCallie, and I married in 1975, and I completed my residency in Wilmington, NC, in 1980. We moved to Boone, NC, where I practiced medicine as an internist for 35 years, retiring in 2016.
While at McCallie, I remember seeing each day at the back of the study hall the words MAN’S CHIEF END IS TO GLORIFY GOD AND TO ENJOY HIM FOREVER. At the time the motto did not have much meaning to me, but as years have passed, I have taken these words to heart and tried to live them out. My Christian faith is important to me, and I credit McCallie, along with my family, for laying that strong foundation. Especially at this time of our 50th reunion, I am reminded of the great impact McCallie has had on my life, and I look forward to reuniting with classmates in October.
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The most unsurprising life choice I ever made came after graduating from Brown when I attended law school at the University of North Carolina (my father, McCallie class of 1941, was an attorney in North Carolina). After three years in Chapel Hill (of which the last two included a lot of pick-up basketball – you kind of need to study that first year), I graduated and then clerked for a year for the North Carolina Supreme Court. The question was what to do next. I have always
enjoyed the outdoors and by this time I had spent two summers mountaineering in the Pacific Northwest and then in the Andes in Peru. (My first climbing experience came at McCallie when Bob Mitchell and I would go through the tunnel to Brainerd and rappeI down the clay cliffs.) I knew that I wanted to have more adventures before I “grew up” and settled into a law practice in North Carolina. I also had a strong sense of obligation to help others, something I trace directly to my time at McCallie. This led me to the decision to move to Alaska for two years as a VISTA volunteer, practicing poverty law with Alaska Legal Services and climbing, kayaking and skiing on the side.
CLASS OF 1968
WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA
“Craig” Johnson Tilery
It seems fair to say that my journey through life was substantially influenced by my experiences at McCallie. Not so much from the academics, though that excellent foundation certainly helped as I moved on to college and law school, nor from the military parades (I’m hard pressed to say that actually ever really helped on anything) but rather from the way it jolted me out of my small-town roots and opened my eyes to new opportunities. But for McCallie, and in particular Dean James, I doubt that I would have ended up at Brown University for my undergraduate degree, a place that reinforced the lessons I learned at McCallie about independent thinking, challenging assumptions and taking risks. But for McCallie I doubt that I would have ventured very far from my roots in North Carolina.
After a little over a year my wife Phyllis (whom I met in law school and would marry in 1985) moved up, sensing better than I that this Alaska thing was not going to end soon. I worked for Legal Services for six years in several jobs and locations and was fortunate to have an interesting practice with much of my time spent on Alaska Native land issues, OCS oil leasing, rural housing and employment discrimination. An example of the unique aspects of working in Alaska occurred while I was representing a Native village in an offshore oil leasing case at a hearing in Barrow, a
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REUNION RECAP larger predominately Native town located on the Arctic Ocean. While the hearing was unremarkable, it was spring and afterwards I was invited by my clients to go with them on snow machines to their whaling camp about three miles offshore on the Arctic ice. It was a spectacular blue-sky day as we worked our way through pressure ridges to the camp. We saw no whales but did find some excitement when a polar bear surfaced in a nearby lead. Showing finely tuned Arctic survival instincts, the bear disappeared quickly when my clients rushed for their guns.
with Ken O’Herron in his father’s plane. In 1984, after a very brief and half-hearted effort at private law practice, I began work for the Alaska Public Defender Agency where I worked for almost four years, mostly in Palmer, a small town about 50 miles north of Anchorage, but also notably for one cold and windy winter in Nome, located on the Bering Sea almost to the Arctic Circle. Following our stint in Nome, Phyllis and I embarked on what was to be our last real climbing adventure on a mountain called Peak of Communism in what was then the Soviet Union but is now Tajikistan. We made it to a few hundred feet below the 24,600’ summit and with that ended our climbing career that had begun for me many years before at McCallie. The end came in small part because we were getting older and smarter and in larger part because in 1988 our son David was born.
I was also fortunate that in a couple of my Legal Services jobs I had a “bush” practice where once every month or so I would visit small Native villages using a variety of transportation options, primarily small single engine planes, but also skiffs and snow machines and even hiking to travel between villages. The flying part of this job meant that you watched what often seemed to be an old, overweight wheezing pilot drop a plane into an impossibly short and rough strip all the while with the stall warning buzzer blaring. This experience, combined with the knowledge that you cannot escape flying in small planes in Alaska, convinced me that I needed to learn how to fly, if just to reduce my anxiety levels. Flying turned into much more than just passenger anxiety reduction as Phyllis and I both became pilots, owning a variety of aircraft and flying for almost forty years on wheels, skis and floats all over Alaska. Oh, and my first experience in a small plane that laid the foundation: returning to North Carolina from McCallie
After David’s birth, I changed jobs again, this time to the Alaska Attorney General’s office. The change occurred partly to work at a job that had shorter and less stressful hours and partly because Phyllis suggested that she was going to have increasing difficulty with me representing clients accused of child abuse. She was correct about the latter, but we woefully misjudged the former. My new job was oil tax litigation against North Slope oil producers in Alaska and involved millions of documents, hundreds of millions of dollars and a whole lot of travel. The travel in particular cut into the idea that I was scaling back work to spend more time with my family, though it did result in a lot of frequent flier miles which would play a large role in our later life. However, this job would last only a year and a half at which point my situation got . . . worse. In March of 1989 the Exxon Valdez grounded on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound spilling eleven million gallons of crude oil, and our tax litigation group was tapped to litigate the inevitable legal case. Within a couple of weeks, I was in a helicopter landing on the
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This relatively steady work came to a halt in 2005 when I was asked to take the position of Deputy Attorney General. The Deputy AG position in Alaska can be a little vulnerable politically, particularly as you get older and are not always inclined to be quiet when you disagree with the politicians up the chain of command. However, since I would soon be eligible for full retirement and could thus speak out and walk away with impunity if asked to do a task I found unsavory, I accepted the position. In a little over five years I served under three governors and five attorneys general and somehow managed to bumble my way through, seriously annoying only a few legislators and one governor. In 2010, with our mortgage paid off and our son graduated from college and well situated in a job in New
York City, Phyllis and I began to seriously contemplate retirement. Although we both loved our jobs (she had been General Counsel for the Alaska Railroad for 20 years), we wanted to travel and our various aches and pains as well as the experiences of friends convinced us that the opportunity to do so may not be available forever. Heeding those insights, we both retired at the end of that year and have since been trying to see the world (which is where those frequent flier miles finally came into play). At the time we retired we had lived in Alaska for over thirty winters and decided that we had earned the right to leave when it gets cold and dark. With that justification we now tend to travel abroad for three months in the winter, visit the East Coast and Hawaii every so often, and live in Alaska the rest of the year brewing beer, playing golf and generally enjoying the outdoors (though a little more safely and sedately than in the past). We hope to continue to do so as long as health permits. All of this I blame on, or credit to, McCallie.
CLASS OF 1968
beaches to see first-hand the destruction caused by the oil. Ultimately the case would involve tens of millions of documents, a billion dollars and even more travel. I was not going in the right direction. Happily, the state’s legal case settled in a couple of years and I spent the next fifteen years in environmental law with a large portion of my time devoted to the aftermath of the oil spill, in particular spending the settlement money. Oddly it is not easy to spend a billion dollars when you are under legal constraints as to what you can do with the money and are dealing with a lot of loud and occasionally powerful people with bad ideas.
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LO O KO U T M O U N TA I N , T E N N E S S E E
Andrew Hugh “Drew” Trotter, Jr.
3 sons: Andrew, Christopher, Michael 4 grandsons: Hugh, Jack George and William; 2 granddaughters: Caroline and Eliza Hobbies: Golf, the Boston Red Sox, movies, Bob Dylan Highlights of life since McCallie: How does one answer that question? I went to UVA, a theological seminary on the north shore of Massachusetts called Gordon-Conwell, taught school at Westminster in Atlanta for three years, spent three years doing a Ph.D. in New Testament in Cambridge, England at the glorious university there, lived for six years in Milwaukee, Wisconsin working in a wonderful church where I started a graduate level theology program for the laity, moved to Charlottesville, where for 22 years I was the Executive Director of the Center for Christian Study, and then since 2009 have been the Executive Director of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers, which helps develop Christian Study Centers at colleges and universities all over the country.
Favorite McCallie memory and/or greatest McCallie impact: I am sure that many chapel services meant much to my later spiritual development, as did every classroom experience of every kind from failing the first semester of calculus my senior year to reveling in the English classes year in and year out. Without a doubt, the discipline, teamwork, coaching, and general camaraderie of the wrestling teams I was on were the strongest influence I took away from McCallie. The recollected stories are legion, even to this poor, old memory, and to this day I retain deep friendships with guys who went through everything Spencer, Morgan, Wunderlich, Tessman, and others could throw at us ... and we kept coming back for more.
CLASS OF 1968
Wife: Marie
Marie’s and my three sons have provided so much joy to us at every stage of their lives. Their wives and children have done little but add to that joy, and, when we get together, we have what I’d have to say are the most enjoyable times of my life. I think Marie would say the same. The deepest impact on me since I left McCallie was my experience of Jesus Christ, which has only deepened and broadened me in these intervening years. I care so much more for a world that seems full of lost, alienated, hurting people, whether they are wealthy or poor, empowered or defenseless, swimming in relationship or friendless. I have had the happiest of lives myself with stable family relationships, purposeful work, and plenty of blessing. I know we’ve all had difficulties; welcome to the human race. But I’ve had a lot fewer than many, and am so grateful for that.
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assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Tet Offensive, My Lai Massacre and nation-wide anti-Vietnam demonstrations, the violent Democratic convention and Nixon elected on a Law and Order platform. Almost too much for a young 18 year to comprehend.
After I graduated in the top 75% of my class, I headed for the beach and never looked back. Never thought of McCallie, never came back to any reunions until our 30th. I finally realized how fortunate I was to get such a great education, despite my best efforts to the contrary. McCallie’s emphasis on character is something I think of often, especially in these permissive times. So, much thanks to Spencer McCallie, John Pataky, Major Burns and many others who insisted that I give my best effort.
Eventually, I left college without graduating to bum around Europe. Didn’t have enough money, so I took a series of oddball jobs to keep me going. Worked on an Icelandic fishing boat for a month. Unbelievably hard work, dodging icebergs and storms off the coast of Greenland. This was during the famous Bobby Fischer/ Boris Spassky chess championships. On to Switzerland where I had a menial job with W. R. Grace and Company. Ended up in Munich in time for the 1972 Olympics where I worked at McDonald’s and got to see some Olympic events. Finally ran out of money and went back to Chapel Hill and
1968 was such a pivotal, eventful year; the
CLASS OF 1968
CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA
Charles Christopher “Chris” Tull
I remember being overwhelmed when I first came to McCallie in the 10th grade. I really hated McCallie because I had counted on going to my local high school, Myers Park. My friends thought I had been sent off to a reform school for peculiar children. They were partly right. I never studied and worked as hard as I did at McCallie. My brain hurt a lot of the time. Spent a lot of time in Friday night study hall and Eclass. My father told me, “Of course you hate McCallie; it requires discipline and hard work.” I was pretty unfamiliar with those words until I came to McCallie.
After McCallie, I went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Had a great time and studied very little. Dropped out of a fraternity and took an ill-advised turn to ‘Hippiedom’. Wanted to be more relevant.
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subdivisions ranging from starter homes to McMansions. Also, bought and invested in shopping centers and medical offices. Spent a lot of time chasing the ‘Almighty Dollar’. Real Estate has been very challenging and rewarding to me. Later, a young man named Michael Brown, came into my life. Son of a single Mom. I spent time mentoring Michael and tried to be a substitute Dad. Not having any children of my own, this time was very special. With much hard effort on his part and a little help from me, Michael graduated from Winston Salem State University. He is the first person in his family to ever graduate from college. Now I’m proud to say, Michael is an executive with Wells Fargo bank and the father of two twin girls. I got married late in life for a second time. Molly and I were married in NYC in the same church where Donald Trump got married, twice. Molly is beautiful, smart, fun and has very strong morals. We are very fortunate to have found each other. About nine months ago, I lost my younger brother David, McCallie class of ’70. We had many great times hunting and fishing together. I miss him a lot. Despite some wild vicissitudes over the last fifty years, I am very happy and very lucky. I have a nice house, a great wife and a good life. Most of all, I’m grateful.
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After McCallie, I went to the University of the South. While there, I was four-time conference wrestling champion and officer of Phi Delta Theta. I also spent some time at UC Berkeley, where I had a chance to meet Jerry Garcia a few times. Back at Sewanee, I was persuaded to take a camera to a rock concert by a friend who told me they would let us sit up front. I also took a lot of landscape shots and developed a fondness for darkroom work. Nowadays, of course, photography is developed in Photoshop. After college, I photographed a few weddings, and then got a Real Job with Hamilton National Bank. Next stop was a position with Commerce Union in its Real Estate Department. While working at the bank I started building homes and left to become a general contractor and broker. Among other activities, I bought and ran for about five years the oldest restaurant in Chattanooga: the Home Plate Cafeteria. It was sixty years old at the time. Some of you may remember it.
Special thanks to Lawson for the cover photo and current campus shots.
CLASS OF 1968
LO O KO U T M O U N TA I N , T E N N E S S E E
“Lawson” Spires Whitaker, III
A lot can happen in fifty years. My most important life event was on September 6, 1996. My daughter Grace Anne Whitaker was born. That led to my becoming a proud Baylor dad. A few days after her high school graduation, she hiked the most difficult 1,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail from the rocky trails of Maine down by herself. Grace is now an environmental conservation major at the University of Montana.
While running the Home Plate, I put on Chattanooga’s first bicycle road race and bicycle criterium. I also directed the five sports events of running, rowing, climbing, and bicycling race that took place as part of the Walnut Street Bridgefest, when the bridge was officially opened. Around the turn of the century, I went into photography full time. I am a portrait, landscape, and commercial photographer. I am also a licensed drone operator. Best wishes to all my classmates!
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After leaving Columbus, I ended up flying some awesome fighter jets (F-4, F-5, F-16) around the world and having a blast. We lived in the Philippines, Japan, Korea and many stateside assignments and I went on deployments to a lot of other areas (got to do some high speed passes on the Pyramids). While overseas, I got a Masters from a foreign university and learned about how/why other cultures view Americans plus experience how other societies function. While flying the F-16, we went to Edwards AFB, CA while I did test work on the LANTIRN system, which involved low altitude night flying. Flying at 100ft and 500k plus in the dark will get your attention and makes you a believer in technology. Besides flying with and against the best fighter pilots in the world, I got to work for several men who became Chief of Staff of the Air Force. So being in the military was a great learning experience. Every day seemed different,
After 13 years we moved over to Tellico Village, on beautiful Tellico Lake just outside Knoxville, TN to be near our first grandchild. After 17 moves I figured real estate might be a good fit. The Air Force taught me to think outside of the box and it turned out to help me break out quickly and get ahead. So for the last 12 years we have lived on the lake. We get beautiful sun and moon rises over the water and life is peaceful and full. Lots of friends stop by on trips (we’re about 15 min from where 1-75 joins 1-40). Besides the work I get to play a lot of golf and pickle ball and be on the lake.
CLASS OF 1968
CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA
“Alden” Avery Williams
The last 50 years have been full of great experiences. Went to UNC after leaving McCallie and got a lousy lottery draft number my freshman year. So after 4 years, I decided to avoid the Army and passed the pilot exam for the USAF. After going thru Officer Training School, I went thru pilot training at Columbus AFB, MS and fell in love with flying jets. I came back as an instructor in the advanced jet. While there, I was lucky enough to convince a terrific girl I met at the college there to marry me and 43 years later Jane and I are still going strong (she has me on a one year renewable contract).
challenging and flying always involved having to make changes to make the mission work. Several people helped me along the way who didn’t have to and I’ve always tried to pass it on. My last job was as Targeting Officer for Central Air Forces for SW Asia (a lot of time in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia). So I was gone all the time and that got old fast with my children growing up so I decided to hang it up. So after 2750 takes offs and landings (some of which weren’t assured), we “retired” from the Air Force. The airlines weren’t hiring so I became an AFJROTC instructor in a new unit opening in Brownsville, TN. Most people think the program is to recruit for the military but it’s really to teach citizenship and life lessons. The job was an eye opener for changes in public schools that had occurred since I had attended. McCallie students certainly have so many advantages that don’t exist in most public school systems. The program wasn’t what I expected. Seventy percent of the students were female and we became one of the largest units in the South, with several hundred cadets every year. I was lucky to have an outstanding Major and MSgt. work with me. We ended up helping a lot of students change the direction their lives were going, which was a very rewarding experience.
So life ended up well. I was sick with a heart lining infection and missed a good part of my McCallie senior year in the hospital and school infirmary. I probably was one of 2 students in our class to have a career in the military and the only one to fly, which I certainly didn’t see that coming while there. We have been blessed with 2 great girls and 2 grandchildren. We still get out and travel the world. Life has thrown us a few curve balls (like having to beat cancer) but has allowed us to enjoy some unusual experiences that have made it so interesting. The Lord has certainly been good and kind to us.
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My McCallie memories are mixed emotions. Attending a military school, during the Vietnam War with the social changes occurring in the USA often led to conflicted feelings. Generally as an introverted personality, I preferred books and academic challenges to social interaction. As a teenager, I disliked the authoritarian religious atmosphere. My personal religious denomination was Episcopalian with less rigid theology. I remember when I was forced to run around the track in formation and later sit in the chapel just because Spence McCallie was upset, and witnessed the administrative outrage when the French teacher failed to offer a prayer at the close of his chapel address. I remember being repeatedly ‘encouraged’ to donate to Shikoku Christian College (it’s still there in Kagawa, Japan). Fortunately, maintaining a low profile and not being very vocal, I did not get called to Major Burns’ office very often. After the MLK assassination, there was a proposal that our senior gift would be a scholarship to the first black student at McCallie. If I recall correctly, our faculty advisor told us “If we did that, there would be no graduation ceremony”. I learned the front line of social change is a risky place. On the other hand, the school put me in academically challenging classes. I had to really work in some of my studies just to get a B, but that was a good thing. I also have fond memories of Goo, Winnie the Pooh, and the lake. Sarge taught me to shoot on the rifle team. McCallie developed me physically as a member of the swim team, and later I lettered on Duke University’s swim team like Scott Langley. Miles McNiff was able to develop some of my literary talents. At Duke, I experienced the culture shock of living in a less rigid, diverse, socially active environment. There women were present (which is why I had
declined to go to UVA). I felt released from a cage. I made friends with a member of a successful rock group, Moby Grape, who taught me many of the social skills omitted from my curriculum at McCallie. I also used the battlefield first aid knowledge learned at McCallie to save a life in a bad accident. But with a draft lottery number of 53, I decided to essentially major in Naval ROTC and minor in psychology. My Duke classmates assumed I would be a Marine, based on what McCallie taught me, and my comfort in a uniform. It might also have been because I wrote a paper on mine and booby-trap warfare, using Marine Corps manuals. Caused a stir when ROTC officials realized I had the manuals and inert models in my dorm room. Do you remember the SDS? Upon graduation, I chose to become a Surface Warfare Officer. I was initially based out of San Diego and deployed to Southeast Asia and visited a few ‘cheap and shoddy’ places in various ports including Hong Kong, Singapore, Okinawa and the Philippines. I developed a working vocabulary in Tagalog. Along the way, I also earned minor awards during the evacuations of Cambodia and Saigon. I transferred to Naples, Italy for several years’ duty with NATO, and traveled Europe; visited Moscow and Leningrad before the wall fell, walked the ruined streets in Ephesus. Visited Istanbul and Spanish ports several times. Best of all, I met my future wife in Naples, where she was also serving in the Navy.
CLASS OF 1968
C H AT TA N O O G A , T E N N E S S E E
“Lee” Kearsley Williams
I have done well and ‘done good’ in the years since leaving McCallie. I celebrate my 40th anniversary with my wife, Vicki, this summer. She has supported me in three different careers: Naval officer, nurse, and paralegal. We moved to Fort Mill SC two years ago, about 15 minutes from my brother Mark (class of 72). We have two dogs, a great garden backyard, and are enjoying retirement.
After 8 years, I made a career decision to leave the Navy and needed a career which was portable. Vicki continued on in the Navy stationed in Norfolk, VA, so I completed nursing school at Old Dominion University, then we moved to the Washington D.C. area. Vicki worked in the Pentagon and other commands in the area. I initially worked at the National Institutes of Health in psychiatric research with unmedicated schizophrenics. An unusual group of people who I sometimes took to tourist sites in D.C. At one point I met John Hinckley in his mental health ward. I also later met G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate fame, through his daughter, a work colleague.
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He founded and appointed himself CEO of DWEnterprises and soon after received his Doctorate of Humanities from the University of St Francis in Chicago, IL. As Jan and DeCarol’s businesses became more profitable, they used that income to found and build Fore Christ Ministries, INC and Family Christian Network. This network was used to carry the gospel to over 80 million homes around the globe.
CLASS OF 1968
SHALLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA
Odell “DeCarol” Williamson
Dr. DeCarol Williamson graduated from McCallie High School with the class of 1968. After serving in the army during Vietnam, he returned home and set to work establishing himself as a noted developer in Brunswick County, NC and an international minister. It was during this time that he found and married the love of his life, Jan Williamson.
As his zeal for God continues to grow even to this day, he labors intently to carry the good news of Jesus Christ to any and all who have never called on His name. Of all of the accomplishments attached to his story, he claims that his greatest joy and legacy comes in the form of his family. With seven children, their seven spouses, and his fourteen grandchildren, he is most grateful to God to be the head of a very blessed household.
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CLASS OF 1968
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
“John” Halsey Wood
So I got the same mail you all did about submitting some kind of a life bio that doesn’t sound like a resume’. I looked at the examples in the packet mailed to me and realized that I would have to fabricate a good bit of stuff to come up with half as many accomplishments as the guys did in the 1967 class. Then it occurred to me that they probably fabricated most of theirs anyway and so I decided to not regale my classmates with my acceptance of the “Saddam Hussein Humanitarian Award” or anything like that. After graduating McCallie, I attended the University of Alabama (and yes, Alabama will celebrate our 18th national NCAA football championship this year!). It was there that I found my dream girl and future wife, Melissa. After my
short and undistinguished stint in the Army, we married. Upon the birth of our second child, the Lord put all that Bible teaching that Bo Smith gave us into perspective and I understood finally what Christ did for me and what it means to follow Him. In the following years, Melissa and I were blessed with three more children. We live in the town where I was raised, Birmingham. Both of my brothers, Bill `63 and Dave `66 live here also. Brother Bill got a lot more out of McCallie and retired years ago from his law practice. Dave and I worked together in a family food business until December last when we retired. As Providence would have it, the business has finally thrived since we left it to our children to run.
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I think I bought eleven college degrees for our five children. All of them are married, and each family has four children of their own except for one which has three. One of my sons has two sets of identical twin girls! As of this writing, all our nineteen grandchildren are under fifteen years old. I am happy to report that each family is now on the East side of the Mississippi River and no one (repeat NO ONE) has served hard time – yet. We celebrated Christmas together last year and in the words of my eldest son, it was deemed to be a success as “no lives were lost or conceived”. As I am sure many of you have found, grandchildren are the best. I regret not having them first. Melissa and I are delighted that each family is raising their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. As to McCallie, I have the fondest of memories for Spence the Third and of course Jurgen Veith. Spencer taught me the beauty of the English language and an appreciation for literature that I treasure to this day. Mr. Vieth put up with all of my juvenile antics and gave me my first insight into a culture other than my own. I don’t think I learned anything academically at the University of Alabama that I had not learned already at McCallie. That was ok because you don’t need to know much to run a grocery store. What I did learn since McCallie
My McCallie experience was wonderful. It was not only the academics, but the friendships and memories we all made together that I fondly recall. I remember vividly the three licks that I and many of you received from Dr. Spence for being part of a water balloon battle one Friday night at the Bo show in North Hall. As I recall, Dracula was about to take his first bite when we predetermined to let loose a volley of water balloons across study hall. Bo Smith promptly turned off the projector, turned on the lights and said, “I know what you boys have in those desks. Let me have them.” I think at that point the poor man almost drowned from the onslaught of the rest of our missiles. In retrospect, I wonder if that is what precipitated the future demolition of North Hall. My wife and I have enjoyed being together in my retirement more than I expected. We spend most of our time with our children and theirs. We are blessed so far with good health and although I can’t see or hear very well, I am happy to report I can still drive, so I have every intention of coming up for this reunion.
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CLASS OF 1968
M O N T E R E Y, T E N N E S S E E
James Elmer “Jim” Woodford, Jr.
Every journey has a beginning, and my attending McCallie began in the winter of 1958. My sister was asked to attend a dance by a boy from Monterey. While in Chattanooga with my mother and sister, I was able to visit the campus. When we returned home, I told my parents that I wanted to go to McCallie. I was 8 years old. Fast forward to the summer of 1963, I attended the summer camp at McCallie, and experienced my first extended stay away from home and dormitory life. It was here that I began to sense the competition and the activities at McCallie were at a much higher level that I had experienced in Monterey. Within a year I was taking the entrance exams to attend McCallie as a boarding student. I had to endure my first major failure. I wasn’t accepted to McCallie, but I was to Baylor. I refused to go
there. I studied and worked harder the following year to get another chance, including attending summer school at McCallie to gain admission in the fall of 1965. Now my life as a McCallie student began, and although the distance on the map was small, the difference would be huge from my life at home to my new home in Chattanooga. I was soon to loose what confidence I had brought with me. In academics I was immediately behind my classmates. Part of this was due to my ability as a student, but the majority of my problem was due to the gap between a rural Tennessee public education compared to an urban public or private education curriculum. It was brutal going from an A student to a C, D, or even an F student. Soon I
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which might not make our history accurate. While I could go on with my experiences at McCallie, I don’t want to paint McCallie in dark shades of color. In the end, I did graduate and I did get a better education because I did attend McCallie. I learned to survive and overcome independently of my parents. This alone was as valuable as what I learned in the classrooms. I don’t harbor any ill will to the school. People and instructors change overtime, and I believe McCallie has adapted over the decades to improve the quality of life, particularly for the boarding student. If I had felt otherwise, I wouldn’t have sent my son to McCallie. Jay graduated in 1998 and his grades and experiences were much better than mine. I thank you for that.
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C E L E B R A T I N GC E3L0E B Y ER AA R T ISN G 5 0 Y E A R S
C E L E B R AT I N G 2 5 Y E A R S
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In
Recognition MCCALLIE ALUMNI RECOGNITION
Fred “Stephen” Alexander High Point, North Carolina 2/2/1950 - 12/8/2011 Attended: 1964 - 1968
Tyler Calhoun, III Arlington, Virginia 2/17/1950 - 7/22/2012 Attended: 1966 - 1968
“John” William Cummings Chattanooga, Tennessee 5/27/1950 - 5/25/2013 Attended: 1962 - 1968
“David” Dowling Hamilton Dalton, Georgia 7/30/1950 - 12/11/2012 Attended: 1964 - 1968
Stephen Kent “Steve” Hill Huntsville, Alabama 9/9/1949 - 9/1/1995 Attended: 1964 – 1968
William Parrott “Bill” Hust Knoxville, Tennessee 1/9/1950 - 11/25/1988 Attended: 1965 - 1968
William McRee “Will” Maxwell Quincy, Florida 7/7/1949 - 7/14/2017 Attended: 1966 - 1968
Harry “Hardin” Murdock Chattanooga, Tennessee 6/8/1949 - 8/4/2013 Attended: 1962 - 1968
Arthur Lanier “Lanny” Nichols Monroeville, Alabama 9/24/1949 - 6/6/1995 Attended: 1964 - 1968
James Warren “Jim” Nichols Chattanooga, Tennessee Unknown - 10/20/1991 Attended: 1962 - 1964
James Huff “Jim” Patton Chattanooga, Tennessee 3/21/1950 - 12/17/1992 Attended: 1962 - 1968
“Peter” Bard Riecks Cincinnati, Ohio 6/29/1949 - 12/7/2006 Attended: 1965 - 1968
Clifford Walter “Cliff” Shults Newport, Tennessee 10/27/1950 - 2/6/2007 Attended: 1962 - 1968
“Gray” Dean Latimore Smith Chattanooga, Tennessee 7/30/1950 - 6/7/1989 Attended: 1962 - 1968
“Mark” Wofford Smitherman Shreveport, Louisiana 12/27/1949 - 1/1/1993 Attended: 1964 - 1964
Richard “Terry” Taunton Fairfax, Alabama 7/17/1949 - 5/30/2003 Attended: 1964 - 1968
“George” Richard Wilkinson Greenville, South Carolina 7/12/1950 - 8/20/2013 Attended: 1964 - 1968
“Fenton” DeVaney Winstead Roxboro, North Carolina 4/20/1949 - 9/21/2010 Attended: 1964 - 1968
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THE DISTINGUISHED ALUMNUS AWARD Given each year to a graduate who has rendered outstanding service to McCallie, the Distinguished Alumnus Award also recognizes a graduate’s impact and influence in his profession and community. Stanley M. Brock (2018) By age 14, I had dug a large hole for myself in my local public school system. McCallie gave me a fresh start in a structured, principles-based environment where I was held accountable for my mistakes and given credit for my achievements. It was not my idea to come to McCallie, but I bought into the program and, during my three years here, changed the course of my life for the better. – Skip Brock - 2013
These awards are given to graduates who have distinguished themselves professionally and in their communities and are presented to individuals who are celebrating reunions. Warren M. Barnett (2018) Stanley M. Brock (2013) Dr. Joseph B. Cofer (2013) Luther Killian (2013) David M. Muhlendorf (1988) Clifford W. Shults (2003) Craig J. Tillery (2008) Dr. Andrew H. Trotter, Jr. (2013) Dr. DeCarol Williamson (2008)
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ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARD RECIPIENTS
McCallie gave me a body of knowledge which prepared me for college. It also provided me a number of experiences which prepared me for life. Through my experiences there, I learned how important it is to help those less fortunate. Not everyone can experience McCallie, but others can benefit from our achievements, personal attainments and consequent, generosity, financial and otherwise. Given how blessed we are to have been here, this is the least we can do. – Warren Barnett, 2018 McCallie began my process of accepting the importance of a life lived with purpose and provided me with the tools I needed to seek that purpose. – Craig Tillery, 2008 Principles of honor, truth and duty become ingrained in your being if you spend six years at McCallie School, and this passionate desire to serve with honor in all capacities, be truthful at every step, and do your duty whenever asked, drives your life. It makes you who you are. It defines what you do and how you comport yourself. And this is a good thing. – Joe Cofer 2013 My excitement for science was stimulated in Ed Lewis's chemistry classes. Ed and I "pioneered" the advanced placement chemistry course as an ad hoc seminar during my senior year. I believe that McCallie's emphasis on perseverance and integrity has served me well throughout my career. – Cliff Shults, 2003
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REUNION RECAP SPIRITUALS LEGACY 1967-2018 In the fall of 1967, four students passed the time in friendly and somewhat trivial conversation in the “Senior Lodge”, a small and intimate gathering place that, as the name implies, was for the senior class and looked like a small lodge complete with exposed beams and a moose head hanging over the stone fireplace. Four students passed the time in friendly and somewhat trivial conversation until a discussion about low school spirit and school pride came up. Over the next few days, a possible solution to address an apparent problem evolved into a new organization, SPIRITUALS. Article from the McCallie News of 2003-04: In the last issue of McCallie News, we asked for submissions from alumni as to the actual meaning of the S.P.I.R.I.T.U.A.L.S. acronym. The responses were, well, not exactly overwhelming, but interesting nonetheless. For those who did not respond to the request, shame on you. All 12,000-plus of you. Several alumni on McCallie’s faculty as well as others commented that they had no idea what it stood for. Among those who took a shot, the most amusing was sent in by 7th-grader Mike Czubakowski: “Senseless People In Rather Intriguing Tacky Uniforms Achieving Little Success.” The closest thing to an “informed” submission received was from Carter Wexler ’83, who wrote, “As a former member of S.P.I.R.I.T.U.A.L.S., I was shocked to read that the true meaning of S.P.I.R.I.T.U.A.L.S. has been lost. In the early ’80s, all members were forced to memorize it during the ‘blood initiation ceremony.’ Here it is, I hope this helps to steer the school in the right direction: “Schizophrenic Personalities Ignite Revelry In Tornado Uniforms As Loud S.O.B.’s.” You’d think that was the end of it, but think again. In an attempt to confirm Mr. Wexler’s confident submission, McCallie News researched the school newspaper’s historical archives and contacted two of the group’s original four founders, Luther Killian ’68 and Carrington Montague ’68. S.P.I.R.I.T.U.A.L.S. is mentioned only twice in The Tornado during the first three years of its inception (right, top article). Curiously, the club is first referenced in 1967 as SPIRITUAL – no “S,” and no periods between the letters. By 1970 (right, bottom article), the “S” had been added, but still no periods.
Mr. Montague’s response, in a recorded message, included the following: “You people do not deserve to know the true meaning of S.P.I.R.I.T.U.A.L.S. ... If anyone tells you they know the real definition, it is merely a part of our disinformation campaign.” Fortunately, Mr. Killian, in his fourth year as math teacher at McCallie, with the help of fellow founders Charlie Marlin ’68, Charlie Webb ’68, and brother Steve ’72, was able to piece together some essentials on the history of this mysterious organization: In the Fall of 1967, the McCallie student body was a lethargic group of military automatons shuffling to the cadence of some distant, unseen drummer. The athletic teams were working hard, but no one noticed. Attendance at games and enthusiasm for the crosscountry team were down as many students would prefer to stand in the car-line for a ride to the Roger’s theatre downtown or to the newly opened Eastgate Mall, the showcase shopping destination of the city. Athletes were bemoaning their plight that no one cared about them. In this environment, stale and mediocre performances were accepted. Esprit-de-corps was blacker than the trash chutes in Belk Hall. While sitting in the Senior Lodge, four students passed the time in friendly and somewhat trivial conversation until the topic of school spirit and school pride came up. The four members of the class of ’68, Carrington Montague, Charlie Marlin, Charlie Webb, and Luther Killian began to share observations until they realized that each had independently developed a genuine concern for the students and the lack of school spirit. They expressed disappointment in the performances of the football team to that date and felt their fellow students were missing an opportunity to invest their energy and enthusiasm in support of the teams and in the proud traditions of those that had come before them. As seniors, they could not accept the continued spiral to oblivion. Rather than simply complain and leave it to others to find a cure, they vowed to wake the community to McCallie Pride. In Locket Lodge on that day, S.P.I.R.I.T.U.A.L.S. was born. The four seniors set lofty goals and laid specific plans for organizing pep rallies, providing promotions, inducting deserving members, and elevating spirit awareness. They created a title for their organization that became an acronym symbolically capturing their purpose. After several more meetings, the four approached Warren James, the Dean of Students at that time, to ask permission to start this new organization and to hold an induction at assembly. Justifiably suspicious, Dean
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James reluctantly gave approval for the two requests only after being assured by the students that Mr. Fred Wunderlich would be the faculty advisor. After leaving the meeting with Dean James, the foursome continued to plot their plan of action: select other students to be inducted, determine the method of induction, organize a poster campaign for the next home football game, build a frame for banners that the team would run through, and ask Mr. Wunderlich if he would consider being their faculty sponsor.
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During the next assembly, Mr. James announced a new organization on campus. Confusion on the part of the student body and Dean James followed as the four seniors marched from back stage through the center chapel aisle and up the steps to the front row of the balcony. From that vantage point, they proclaimed “We are here because we Are Behind the School!” They announced the concept and the motivation to form the organization. Though most inductees were members from the junior and senior classes, each grade was represented by at least two students. As instructed, upon hearing his name, the new inductee would indicate his acceptance of the invitation to join by rising, yelling “Go Big Blue” and running up to the balcony where he has hardily congratulated. At that time, the symbol for S.P.I.R.I.T.U.A.L.S., a combination of the letter Z and the number 4 similar to the scientific symbol for the planet Jupiter, was drawn with chalk on the back of his shirt or “Ike” jacket. In later years, the symbol was applied to the face of the new inductees with ink and a rubber stamp. The first “Beat Baylor” promotional buttons were created and distributed by E. Y. Chapin for the 1963 Mid-South wrestling tournament. Using that idea, the S.P.I.R.I.T.U.A.L.S. financed the sale of their own buttons with the proceeds used to buy a 500-foot roll of Tarpon Meat Wrap, “Gator Hide”, used for the making of signs to spread down the hallways and on the buildings. Though some may say it has devolved, the organization has actually evolved. The current members’ methods and style are decidedly different from the original S.P.I.R.I.T.U.A.L.S., but their purposes of raising student awareness, organizing promotional activities, and elevating school spirit remains constant. To this day, the members continue to carry on the work of “The Society for the Preservation and Inspiration of Rituals Involving Traditions that Uphold All Levels of Spirit.”
SPIRITUAL INDUCTIONS 1967-1968 Fall of 1967 Bo Dalton Tommy Drew Garland Edwards Phillip Elder Martin Flack Tommy Howell Parker Ingalls
Luther Killian Phil Long Charlie Marlin Charlie Webb David McCallie Carrington Montague Ken O’Herron Marty Shoftner
Wes Shoftner Winter of 1968 Jay Bennett Gary Davis Charlie Pride David Faison Sam Heys
Wes Palmes Jay Payne Jim Todd Woody Sibold Chris Tull George Welborn
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