50ish HPHS Reunion by Chuck Peterson

The Charles A. Peterson Experience

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50ish HPHS Reunion August 14, 2011

Charles A. Peterson 10/06/2011

Introduction Our Highland Park High School reunion is over and life is well back into our regular routine. I have now had time to digest the events building up to the event and well as the whirlwind weekend in Detroit over the weekend of August 14. From well over a year before the reunion I had hoped that we would have a reunion.

Since my retirement in October 2008 I have been recording writing my family stories to pass on to our daughters. During the reunion time I have been recording some of my old high school thoughts, had many contacts with classmates, done a lot of thinking back to the high school days and perusing my old year books. I have found a few former classmates and filled in information holes. This being the first reunion I had attended, I didn’t know what to expect..

This writing is primarily a collection of writings over the reunion planning and execution period of time. Early in the process Judy Longley Blackwell took the lead and with a great core team did a fantastic job on the whole project. Below is a compilation of my writing with some after thoughts. “Those High School Days”, the first writing below was written to record my thoughts shortly after an early contact with Judy. I sent it off to her in addition of to my girls.

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© 2011 by Charles A. Peterson All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be produced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the express written consent of the author.


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Table of Contents Introduction .............................................................................................. 1

Those High School Days ............................................................................ 4

Upcoming HPHS Reunion .......................................................................... 7

French Class ............................................................................................ 11

My WHPR Years ...................................................................................... 13

Stealing a Car .......................................................................................... 20

The Reunion ............................................................................................ 23

Highland Park Revisited ...................................................................... 23

Saturday Night .................................................................................... 30

Pictures ................................................................................................ 30

Sunday Morning .................................................................................. 30

Faculty ................................................................................................. 31

Conclusion ............................................................................................... 31

About the Author .................................................................................... 32


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Those High School Days

Charles A. Peterson Springdale, Arkansas 6/23/2011

I am sitting here this morning looking over a couple of new E-mail responses I received from E-mails I sent last night. One I sent after making another pass through the old yearbooks last night. At least a year ago I joined Classmates.com because I fully expected there to be a fiftieth reunion sometime in the coming summer. I had lost contact with all of my classmates, never attended any of my class reunions, was curious about the people from those relationships that were at the time “Obviously going to last a lifetime”, and down somewhere inside thought it would be a good time to possibly renew for a moment some of the good old days.

My assumption was Classmates would be good starting base and other lost classmates would do the same. Some probably were much more diligent about retaining contacts than me, but it could be a fun adventure.

In my mind I perceived writing my bio for Classmates as going to the principal’s office to be readmitted after skipping school for fifty years. How should I present myself? Should I present my best side and be boastful exaggerating everything? Should I be humble and beg for forgiveness? Should it be an elaborate and long drawn out scholarly masterpiece? Should I present anything or leave it an empty field? I put together a brief factual friendly bio to fill in others of my basics and hopefully to encourage them to contact me. It seems to have worked and started what has been a growing list of contacts of classmates with an open exchange of ideas and thoughts.


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Looking back I have found a few things. First I don’t know if I really knew any of these people really well, and if they knew me really well. Our hormones seemed to be running in every direction. Our activities, interests, and everything were so varied. I assume our home lives ran a full range of wonderful to pretty rough and destructive. I look back and realize that I knew mostly only the surface of my friends and about things they were willing to share in this risky world of our fragile developing minds, as we traversed toward becoming adults.

Thinking back to Mrs. Murphy or any one of the experienced faculty at that time that were tuned more objectively into our class and then later on to the next class behind us. How would she write our yearbook based on her experiences and history of knowing so many students over her teaching history? That is definitely a rhetorical question because I don’t know if I really want to know what she would say about my behavior and my non-focused direction. I have a few perceptions.

My wife Becki has substituted almost daily at a local junior high school for the last eight or so years and loves it. She often comes home with the craziest stories about the students and their world. They are just in another world oblivious of reality. Each year the next class goes through the same basic “Coming of Age” stuff. I guess that is why I so much enjoyed the movie “American Graffiti”, because I think we were so much alike while claiming to be different. I certainly in my high school career didn’t come close to doing all the things that occurred in that one night snapshot of the fifties and sixties, but I did see most of it somewhere or heard about in the high school rumor world.

We all had dating concerns, Acme, concerns about how we looked, our clothes, Etc. Much less being seen on the street with Mom and Dad or a little brother or sister. Crazy like most of us didn’t have a younger brother or sister much less parents. Some items were never discussed and laid beneath the surface eating at us and maybe causing great distress. Now standing back and looking back, they really don’t make much sense. I chuckle inside when I think of daring to let Mrs. Murphy


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write our yearbook. As I was looking through my old yearbooks, I had to stop and read all of the little notes others had written on the pages. Some were concise with a personal message revealing something from the author and others were passing nothingness because obviously there was nothing for them to say at that particular moment fifty years ago. I wonder if I could retrieve everything I wrote in everyone else’s’ yearbook, what it would look like. I doubt if I would be willing to show them to someone like Mrs. Walker or Mr. Hixson from the English department and certainly not to Mrs. Murphy.

I think we subconsciously think that our grade classmates were the only ones that had particular teachers. I was going through Classmates, reading Bio’s and just surfing. I read Linda Miles comments enjoying Mr. Coykendall’s physics class. My immediate reaction was “No he was our teacher and we had all of the fun”. Her older sister, Julie and I enjoyed his class so much. Then I smiled and thought how crazy, of course Linda and hundreds, maybe thousands of others would have enjoyed his teaching and experiments over his career.

I have had E-mail communications with classmates from different grade levels, that I think I know better now than from the past. Some lived on the same street where I grew up. Many looking back and reading their E-mails makes me think that they may have known my doctor dad better than I did. He spent a great amount of time serving the needs his patients. If I were able to net out all of time he spent caring for and working with young people in the neighborhood, I am sure he spent much more time giving fathering attention to that group than he did at our house. Years after I grew up I came to realize that the network of adults in the community worked with my classmates and me directing and guiding as much as we permitted to become productive citizens. We were just typical teens like every other generation. For me they were good years with more fun than studies. Mrs. Murphy would agree as she told me on several occasions. Now as we get together, after going through our real life experiences I will be re-meeting a group with many real life experiences to share.


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Upcoming HPHS Reunion


Judy Longley Blackwell asked me to write something for the reunion. I remember Mrs. Walker asking me to write back fifty years ago. I think, I had her for three semesters of English and my writing experiences were far from successful. I didn’t like English, never did, and it was a real struggle for me right up through my engineering career. The math, physics, and hands on Vo-Tech side were much preferred and enjoyed.

Judy’s request seemed like one more assignment from Mrs. Walker. Don’t miss-understand, Mrs. Walker seemed like a good teacher. We personally just didn’t communicate very well. After I retired I started to record from memory my life experiences to pass down to our daughters. This process forced my mind to go back and rethink many things and events. It was during that time, that Mrs. Walker came to mind. I concluded that we were just totally of different mind sets. She understood English well and I just couldn’t understand all of the relationships and rules. I was trying to write like I was solving math problems and I just couldn’t put it together. It didn’t help that English was not fun for me.

When I ran into Mrs. Paulsen as a senior; I met my soul mate. She thought or could relate to my developing engineering thinking process. She would rip apart my themes and later when I reviewed them with her, she could explain and direct me in words and actions I could understood. I remember going in to see Miss Grant for my last semester scheduling.


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I specifically requested to have Paulsen again this time for Literature II. She just looked at me and asked if I was serious, no one had ever requested Paulsen. I said yes and she signed me up. My friends said I was crazy. It was a good decision for my future. She was at least partially responsible for me passing college Freshman English.

In my professional career I have written a few technical papers. Many instruction books, test specifications, and the like, but had not written for fun. I have been truly blessed with a very good healthy life and have a very good memory of trivial events that have occurred over the years. After I retired in October 2008, I started writing for fun and have enjoyed it immensely. The spelling and grammar check and the personal computer have made this possible and very reasonable.

Now I pull ideas from my past and anything new is a potential topic. My mission is to simply pass on my thoughts and history to my girls and future generations while enjoying reliving the experience. It has been wonderful in connecting and arguing or negotiating with my girls about what really happened. Often their and my memories are in conflict. At this stage of my life, I frequently define my version to be correct and challenge them to write their own book. It has been a lot of fun. I suggest everyone spend some time and record their thoughts. The grammar and spelling do not have to be correct.

Reflecting back to HPHS I don’t know what I remember and what I may have created in my mind. These are my stories as well. Those years were special with friends that were for life and I was so much smarter than I am now. The dreams and plans were without bounds.

What has happened between then and now was life. For me it has been good and certainly different but consistent with the values established in the family home and the lessons learned in the neighborhood, at Liberty Elementary and Highland Park High School. Those were special times with milk shakes from Browns or Sanders. Pickup basketball games on the Liberty school play ground, behind the garage in the alleys


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or riding bikes through the piles of dirt in the woods at Palmer Park. I remember the buggy rides and ice skating at Palmer Park. The Saturday morning Parks and Recreation basketball games at Hackett Field House. The dream, but never successful of beating the Willard School team. Those guys were good and I suspect that they practiced a lot more and a lot harder than we did. Especially Bobby Joe. I concede that they had an edge in raw talent.

Looking back at the names of my classmates, I see many names that I don’t recognize. Then I think back of the opportunities available at high school as I paged through the year books and realized the number of activities and classes; I am astounded at the variety. I dabbled in the Vo-Tec with drafting and electricity, was a football manager for one fall, did a lot of sports casting for WHPR, French Club, emptied and refilled the paper vending machines for the Student Senate, a little chess club and the Key Club. I took social dancing lessons. With all of these activities it is easy to see that the contact with many classmates was limited or non-existent. We were just busy in different directions.

Academically most classmates in a given classroom were of the same grade. Exceptions of course were the athletic teams that had classmates across the years. The same was true of students taking a second language and mixing those taking a first language. Some of this also occurred in the Vo-Tec classes and the wonderful school plays.

Again looking back, I have to write about Mrs. Murphy. She was one of my favorites. She was such a feisty good dedicated lady. I never knew what she was going to do next. I remember the first day I was in her geometry class and she wrote “goooooooooesinta” on the board. She probably spelled it differently, but I thought to myself, where is this lady going with this? She followed with “There is no such word as goooooooooesinta”. I still didn’t understand. For example, she said “6 does not “go in to” 12 two times”. 12 “divided by” 6 equals 2. She said the words are “divided by”. I assume she used that same starting gig for over forty years. It covered an obvious personal peeve and established


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her control over us in the classroom. A technically beautiful presentation. All through my engineering career I would occasionally start to make some mathematical presentation and then I would hear Mrs. Murphy in my ear correcting my words. Thank you Mrs. Murphy for continuing to guide me.

Mr. Hixson taught Radio Speech, English and was the director of the radio station. I learned a lot from him about broadcasting doing the sports casting for WHPR through high school. I also got to broadcast from Calihan Field house at the University of Detroit three times and Jennison Field House at Michigan State University following the basketball team in the tournaments. It was great to be there in the broadcast booths first with my older brother, Ron and later with Greg Byndrian playing the role and providing the service to the community. I remember one football broadcast from Hamtramck in cold rain in their heated enclosed fifty yard line booth. It poured and the players were sliding everywhere in the mud. Greg and I were two of a few that remained high and dry above the stands throughout the game.

Mr. Coykendall’s Physics class was like watching Mr. Wizard on Saturday morning, but better because we got to do the experiments. He definitely fueled my engineering fire. I followed in my engineering career after engineering college graduation from the DIT designing electrical components at Westinghouse for use on the National Electric Power Grid and did my share of blowing things up in laboratories and a few in the field, as well as developing many successful products.

Of course there were many other good teachers that positively impacted me during those years. Those were good days. Of course there were pep rallies, dating, hayrides, and field trips. I look forward to our fiftieth reunion. This will be my first reunion. I am looking forward to re-meeting many old friends and some that I missed on the first time around. I hope Judy Longley Blackwell will have name tags, because I don’t expect to be able to recognize many nor to have them recognize me. It should be a good time.


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I am sure that I will have many other thoughts as we get closer to the reunion time and many memories will be triggered. Hope to see you all in Detroit August 12-14. It also will be Becki and my fortieth wedding anniversary weekend. Life is good.

French Class


Mrs. Roy was our French teacher. She was near retirement and I hope that our class didn’t drive her into retirement. I always thought of her with a certain aristocratic air about her. Sometimes she would role play and float around the room speaking elegant French. The French sounding syllables would roll out of her lips; she would change her gait, and perform. My mind imagined her performing on the stage of an opera house in Paris. Not that I had any perception of what an opera house in Paris was really like or often knew what she was saying. I never did learn to move my mouth and tongue to pronounce the French syllables correctly.

Other times she could be a very demanding teacher with a strong personality and a sharp tongue and body language to back it up. I do have to admit that we only saw this side of her when we deserved it. English had always been difficult for me and was one my most un-favorite classes. Needless to say building my French expertise on my English foundation was at best tentative. I rarely enjoyed French class.

When we as a class in her observation had not done our homework or were just not working up to her standard the classroom could feel like my perception of a Spanish inquisition trial. She would sit behind her desk, speaking in French with words at a high velocity, complete with


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negative body language. I would only pick out a few words and from my point of view it might as well have been in Spanish and hope she would call on someone else to respond.

It was during one of these motivational presentations that she focused on Bob sitting next to me. In French she demanded that Robert construct a complete sentence in French. Robert was about as not ready to respond as I was. I sat there trying to pull together any words I could to be ready to be next.

Bob stood up as required and all he could think of was “Ferme la Bouche” which even I knew was the French equivalent in a complete sentence format of “Shut up”. There was no place to hide under our little desks with the side arm writing surface. I grimaced awaiting the fire storm to hit the room. After a few panicked hours, probably only a few seconds Mrs. Roy grabbed that response and teaching moment to explain that although that was grammatically correct, it was considered improper and the correct phrase was “Taissez vous” (spelling?) which loosely translated was “Please be quiet”. I was shocked at her response and the whole class relaxed. That phase has been planted in my mind to this day.

On a later similar occasion, Bob was called on again with a similar request. His response this time was “Je suis une rouge crayon”. This one I picked up and had a terrible time keeping a straight face. Mrs. Roy just exploded with laughter. She said the structure was correct. Bob’s sentence translated into “I am a red Pencil”. In a situation like that with a limited number of known words, you do your best to find a few that will go together correctly without concerns of the real meaning.

As a semester project Bron and I built a Papier Mache medieval castle. I preferred the engineering structural part of France to the language part.

French was not one my better classes and I don’t know whether Bob or I was happier when our two year language requirement was completed.


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I do know that Mrs. Roy retired after that year and that she worked hard to expose us to all the French language and culture we could absorb.

My WHPR Years

Charles A. Peterson Springdale, Arkansas 07/30/2011 WHPR was the Highland Park High School, Highland Park, Michigan educational radio station at 88.1 Megacycles on the FM dial. Hence the call letters W (Highland) (Park) (Radio). We were a whopping 10 Watts of transmitting power from the top of the tower on the high school building. This reached the entire city of approximately one by one and a half miles surrounded by Detroit proper. I am not sure of the actual official startup date for the station. It is my belief that it started in the early-mid 1950’s.

My older brother Ron graduated from HPHS in 1956 and was one of the early members of the WHPR family. We were four and half years in age apart and five years in school. This is only relevant because I followed him into the radio station family. After high school Ron spent his first two college years at the Highland Park Junior College in the same building as the high school and continued his radio station sports broadcasting work throughout those years.

At the time we were at very different maturity levels and didn’t have a great deal in common. Ron I recalled was the radio sportscasting expert. I vaguely remember Mom and Dad buying a FM radio and reel to reel tape recorder to record his broadcasts to review. The idea was for Ron to listen to his broadcast tapes and work on areas to improve. I thought it was pretty neat. One Friday night after a game, he came


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home with Phil Pixley another sports caster, and they took me out for a hamburger. It was the big time. He also insisted that I pay for my own hamburger. I was really growing up.

My freshman year I decided to try out for the football radio station sportscasting team. I think there were three or four of us who tried out. Ron was the lead and did the play by play for the first and fourth quarters, Phil did most of the color and I think the third quarter. Each rookie got a shot for one game to start the second quarter. If it went well you got to finish the quarter. Another sports caster would be selected after each rookie had his chance.

I remember one of the rookies was very excitable. Our football team was not very successful. I remember hearing his tape later. There was a long touchdown run and he came unglued. He started off fine and had the ball carrier running to the 30, the 40, the 50, and the 60 followed by look at him go. Since football field yard lines peak out at fifty and start back down and he got too excited this potential sports caster did not make the cut. A few weeks into the football season I was on the broadcasting team doing the second quarter. It was a very enjoyable season for me. I was getting my broadcasting minutes, transportation to and from games, and running around with upperclassmen. The great thing about upperclassman was really that they could drive. It opened up my un-driving yet social life. That football season I listened later to each game and Mom pointed out my improper use of the English language. She wasn’t the only one. The station engineers recorded each game. They tagged the screw ups and they were later played at the spring banquet for everyone to enjoy. Appropriate awards were given for outstanding bloopers. It was our job to get the names right, be an objective unbiased observer, report the action, and not get excited.

Basketball season was a totally different environment. We each year had very good teams. During my high school years we were conference champions or co-champions each year. The gym was known as “The


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cracker box” by its small size and limited seating very close to the floor. The second floor balcony extended almost out to the floor. The floor was shorter than a standard court. To compensate for the short court length, there were two lines across the floor behind the center court line for each play direction that were used to determine an over and back violation. I don’t remember the gym capacity, but 500-600 sticks in my mind. It was always packed. It was hot and noisy. Some nonleague teams refused to play there. I had always dreamed of playing basketball on the varsity. I had made the freshman squad and had a very secure position right next to the water bucket. I think I only left the water bucket once or twice and for a very short time.

That varsity year was wonderful. We had a good team and it was exciting. The first semester we easily beat everyone. We had two outstanding players in John Bradley and Eugene Lawson and a good core of others. John Graduated in January and the team struggled for a while. John went on to play college ball at Lawrence Tech in the Detroit area and was the highest scoring point guard in the country one of those years. We won the last few games and got into the State Class A tournament. We continued to win and lost in the quarterfinal game to Detroit Austin Catholic. Dave DeBusschere was on that team and had a very good professional NBA career. The game was played in the Calihan Hall on the University of Detroit campus. We got to broadcast from a professional radio booth high above center court. The arena held about 8000. It was quite a thrill as a freshman to pretend to be with the big guys.

At the radio station banquet I received an award for my blooper of the year. Sportscasting is different than reading a script. It is spontaneous and you don’t know what you said until your mind catches up with your mouth. I remember making the statement. We were playing basketball against Wyandotte on their home court. They had a player with the last name of Skinner. Someone passed him the ball in the corner. I said “----- passed the ball to skinner in the scorner”. I just couldn’t get the word out of my mouth. I got home that night and Mom just had to play that


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part of the recording for me while she was laughing. I knew then that an award was coming at the banquet.

My sophomore year the school system had financial problems and the sport casting budget was removed. I had made the reserve basketball team and failed the physical. I remember going home and telling my Dr. Dad I had a heart murmur. Mom was upset. He told Mom and me that I had the murmur from birth and it was nothing to worry about. She was not aware until then of my heart murmur. We went down to see one of his heart specialist’s, got examined, took some non-invasive tests, and I finally understood and agreed that my dream was over and left playing serious basketball behind. My year was looking a little bleak. No football broadcasting and no playing basketball. I had wanted to earn an athletic letter. I talked to our football Coach Raymond and became a football manager that fall. That kept me busy and took my mind off of playing basketball. It was good for me and I learned a lot about football from the locker room out to the field. I enjoyed working with the team. It was a good hard working group. I learned to appreciate their effort, mutual support, the injuries, and the trials of their choice to play football. There were only two victories that football season. I did get my manager’s letter. It was nice, just not as important as I had thought. John Brady the former high school basketball star was working part time as the locker room building manager for the football team. He was a pretty neat guy and I enjoyed being around him.

About the time basketball season came around Mr. Hixson approached me about sportscasting just the home games. Somehow they had found a way. The real issues with the cost of doing the away games was the transportation and cost of the phone lines to bring the signal back to the station.

The phone company had to be contracted to install a line for the evening. The line had to be rented and activated for the time window and then later removed. We were also billed for the long distance


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minutes used. At that time long distance was much more expensive than now. In addition, the quality of the line had to be above a certain level or we sounded like we were broadcasting in a tunnel. Today we probably would just use a cell phone. For home basketball games, the radio station was on the third floor of the school within a hundred yards of the gym. The radio station had run its own wiring years before and it was ready to use again this year.

I agreed. Mr. Mulally was new to the high school English faculty and was now working with our station. He had previous radio announcing experience. I did the home basketball sportscasting and he did the color and fill in time during the games. For halftime we sent the control back to the station for music or something. It worked pretty well. When the state basketball tournament time came, it was important enough locally that the money was found, so we broadcasted the tournament games. We lost in the last game regional; one step before quarter finals. Looking back it was a good year.

The next year, my junior year, the sportscasting budget was re-established. I was introduced to Greg Byndrian a freshman who I later learned was a sports information fanatic and had shown an interest joining our sportscasting team. It was a great idea to me. Doing a game by your self is a real challenge and he seemed like a good person to add. The first game was an away game at Roseville. When you go to a different stadium, you never know what you are going to find. At this time a high school with a radio station was a rarity much less with a sportscasting team. There should be a good place to view the field from an elevated position with a 110 volt power outlet connection for our portable amplifier and a phone terminal block to connect to the amplifier, as a minimum. Roseville provided the very minimum.

It was a cold windy night, the first game of the year and we did not broadcast football last year, so it was a new game along with a new partner. We were lead to about the ten yard line. There next to one of the field lighting poles was a twenty or twenty five foot tall scaffolding


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tower chained to the field lighting pole. I think it was put there by their maintenance department at the last minute and at the ten yard line so it didn’t block the bleacher view. Up top was a decking wooden platform with a phone box and an extension cord. As an excitement adder the chain had a small amount of play and the top and the tower could move back and forth what looked like feet. Probably an inch or so, but after fifty years who remembers. I am certain that this would by today’s safety standards would not be an acceptable place to send two high school student announcers and one student engineer up on a cold windy Friday night with all of the electrical gear.

We worked our way up to the top with the amplifier and equipment and did our job. The engineer and I stayed up there for the entire game. I have a faint recollection of Greg going up and down that scaffolding many times. I also seem to remember him making a comment about being exhausted on the ride back to Highland Park. I knew then he was a real positive addition to the team.

Mr. Mulally was a big man. I would guess about 250 pounds. He lived someplace near Wyandotte and had a long forty mile drive to HPHS each day. He had two vehicles. One was an older black limousine and the other was a tiny black Renault sedan. I think he did some limousine service driving as a second income on weekends. He made many comments about the fantastic gas mileage in the Renault. My assumption was that the Renault was very inexpensive to drive on his long daily commutes to school. He drove us to most of the games and we didn’t know which vehicle we would be traveling to the remote site until he picked us up. It was a mixed bag. If we went in the Limo, we had all kinds of room and luxury, but we sure got funny looks as we unloaded our equipment to do a broadcast. HPHS was a mixed blue collar middle class city, not known for limousines. On the surface I thoroughly enjoyed the grand entrance, but it was not a proper image and we didn’t need taxpayers starting to phone school board members and complaining about wasting their tax dollars.


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On the other hand if he brought the Renault it was like traveling in a sardine can. I had long legs and generally sat in the front seat, Greg and the engineer would be packed in the back seat. Some of the electrical gear went in the front trunk. The engine was in the back. What was left was piled on laps. Just for a time reference, this was before transistors and the amplifier and microphones were a pretty good weight and volume. Today the function could be done with a cell phone at each end. When we exited this vehicle, it was like watching the clowns get out of the mini-car at the circus.

After we returned from games Greg and I generally stopped and had a pizza at Lido’s, my favorite place at the corner of Six Mile and Woodward before dropping Greg off at his house. I had started going there with my brother Ron in my freshman year after games.

I remember one particular football broadcast from Hamtramck with cold rain outside and in their excessively heated enclosed fifty yard line booth. It poured and the players were sliding everywhere in the slop and mud. Greg and I were two of maybe twenty that remained high and dry above the stands throughout the game. The booth was ancient with an old creaking hot water boiling heating system, clanking pipe noise, and the elbow to elbow crowded seating space. It seemed a minor inconvenience to being outside. It didn’t seem right that we were sweating and wiping the steam off of the windows to see the field while the fans and players were freezing wet in the cold. The Hamtramck hospitality was great.

My senior year working with Greg was again a joy. The working conditions at all of the sites were just what they were, however different and with surprises, we always had a good time. Greg carried on for the next two years after I left, went off to college and later returned to HPHS to teach, and later become the public relations officer for the school system. He retired a couple of years back. During those professional years he continued to sportscast until the station was


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shutdown and then he moved over and did the PA work during the games.

I certainly benefited from my radio station experiences. Mr. Hixson both as my radio speech teacher and radio station director, Mr. Stevens, and Mr. Mulally, as mentors supported my growth. The school system and taxpayers also supported by providing the financial backing for equipment and operation of WHPR at 88.1 megacycles on the FM dial.

Stealing a Car


Becki’s side of the family had an annual reunion over the week of Thanksgiving in Oglebay Park in Wheeling, West Virginia. People dropped in from all over the country. The focal point was to be there for Thanksgiving dinner. When our girls were young and there was an abundance of cousins each year a different family unit was responsible for some entertainment after Thanksgiving dinner.

This particular year the entertainment was a check list for each family member to fill out. This was a bizarre list of crazy things that each member had done somewhere in his or her life. We were told that we had to honestly answer all of the questions. I had never told the kids that I was an angel. Of course there were things that I had done over my younger years that I had not bragged about. As parents we tried to ride that fine line of avoiding certain things we had foolishly done in our youth, so our girls could not throw them back in our face when they were trying to justify their foolish maturing behavior.

One of the questions on this check list was “Have you ever stolen a car”? I wrestled with my response, since I had technically stolen a car


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with some Boy Scout friends, actually pushed it to the Southfield Police station, and happily surrendered it to the police officer inside the station.

I thought through the process and decided that I should be honest as I was charged in the instruction and this could be a teaching moment about a youthful stupid behavior to avoid.

I checked yes and waited for my action to be discovered by my daughters and to tell my story. The questions were read one by one and a show of hands revealed who had performed each dastardly deed. Needless to say, I was the only one who raised a hand for stealing a car. My girls were in their teens and their eyes just exploded with awe and wonderment.

Becki and I had always pushed honesty and values. We pretty well walked the talk. Our values were overtly and strongly transported to the girls. The girls knew where we stood and why. Becki and I were both raised in the Church and so were our girls.

After the smoke cleared I told the following story. I was sixteen and had my driver’s license. We were members of the North Congregational Church located in Southfield on ten and a half mile road near the Lodge freeway. One night during a scout meeting we found this 1949 Ford Coup abandon in the Church parking lot. We were pretty close to the Church maintenance man. He had an apartment at the back end of the church building. We went back to his apartment and asked him about this abandon car. He said he had called the police and reported it. After a few weeks of watching nothing happen, we decided that the car should be delivered to the police station and we could easily do that.

Nick Larsen and I both had driver’s licenses and we decided to push the Junker and deliver it to the police station. The Ford was a stick shift. I got into Dad’s 1953 Packard. Nick got in the Ford and we pushed the Ford down ten and half mile road across the Lodge Bridge and into the


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police station parking lot. We joyfully walked into the police station and explained the wonderful service we had supplied to the City of Southfield. The face on the officer of the day went blank he excused himself, and went into a back office with the other officers in the station.

Shortly he returned. He said “You two just stole a car”, he shook his head, “brought it to a police station, and confessed in front of several police witnesses”. Needless to say, Nick and I looked at each other and realized that this was not the congratulations that we expected. This was a little like John Wilkes Booth expecting the South to support his assassination of President Lincoln.

The officer asked for our licenses. Both were current with no tickets. That was a positive thing. The officer stated that if any damage was done to the car, that we were financially responsible for the damage. We basically had no recourse for any damage that he might claim. This was a lot scary. Off the record he understood that our thoughts were good and positive, but in the future we have to think ahead to avoid possible negative unintended consequences and follow reasonable legal procedures.

He suggested the following: That he call the owner and tell him that his car is at the precinct and to come and get it. He would not unless pressed explain how it got there. Hopefully he would come and get it without raising questions, and the issue would resolve itself. We hopefully and probably would not hear anything further about this event.

He added one more thing. He strongly suggested that we talk to our parents about the evening, so if it comes up again, your parents are not surprised.


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I don’t know what Nick did, but I went home that night and discussed it with my parents. I made a commitment to try to think through the possible consequences before taking some radical action.

It was over. I never heard another word about this event, but I often thought of this event when I was making other decisions. That was the message I was trying to pass on to my daughters and their cousins at the reunion. I like every other time don’t know if it made a difference, but they turned out pretty good and I truly believe that building on these teachable moments adds up over their formulative years.

The Reunion The reunion was wonderful. The Embassy Suite in Lavonia and our reunion planning group did a great job. The Friday night mixer was great. Each classmate received a packet of gifts including an elaborate commemorative book with all the classmate bios, name tags with pictures, and trinkets. The noise level in the atrium was loud; everyone had to get their words heard over the others. Saturday breakfast was more interacting with classmates moving from table to table. Saturday afternoon was open; a group of eleven of us took a driving tour back to Highland Park. Below is “Highland Park Revisited”; my story of that trip.

Highland Park Revisited


Three hundred and fifty of us were gathered at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Livonia, Michigan for our 50ish Highland Park high School reunion covering five class years. Saturday after breakfast was setup as


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an open time. One of the suggestions was to informally get a group together and take a little adventure trip back to Highland Park, Michigan. A much different place now as part of the much deteriorated Detroit area. Back in the 1950’s and early 1960’s Highland Park truly a city encompassed by Detroit proper was a great place to grow up. Henry Ford had basically built the town when he built the first continuously moving production factory for his Model T product. The city thrived. The school system, faculty, and facilities were excellent. The Ford complex drew a wide mix of races, cultures, white and blue collar skilled workers, as well as many small business people. It was a safe enjoyable place to spend our high school years.

Since that time the city has and continues to struggle with the loss of the Ford Plant, the Chrysler World Headquarters, and other industries. The population is down from 40,000 in 1960 to about 11,000. The average family income is very low. A good portion of the hundred year old homes and infrastructure are worn, torn down or abandon. Many shops are closed, abandoned, or not in very good shape. Crime and drugs have been a problem. Bob Whitney decided to try and get a carload or two together to check out the old favorite places first hand. The following is a chronology of our visit.

We assembled two car loads of graduates and proceeded in bound through Detroit on I-96 to the short Davison Expressway and popped up the Woodward Avenue ramp. There we were in the middle of it. Davison is historic as the first paved cross city expressway in the country. The first comment was “That was where Sander’s was”. Sanders made chocolates, cakes, and had a fantastic soda fountain. I was rarely in the store. This was not my part of town.

It was about this time that I realized the diversity of the population of temporary residents in my Explorer SUV. We had folded up the far back seat and were carrying a total of seven high school graduates. Quite a mixture of questioning minds and particular needs to see specific parts of town. I attended Liberty Elementary; some had attended Ferris,


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Barber, and Ford elementary schools. Each elementary school had its own set of places of interest. I was about to learn of places totally unknown to me in my first 68 years.

We had prearranged to meet the other car at the McGregor Public Library site. This was a beautiful building and a center of activity. It was closed about 2004. We gathered in the parking lot next door. A steel black fence with vertical slats now surrounds the building grounds. It had lost its wonderful openness. Looking through the slants it was hard to visualize the grounds. Then we noticed one member of our group inside of the fence taking pictures. We walked counterclockwise around the fence to follow our leader through an open gate. We kidded each other about being arrested for trespassing and ending up in jail. The grounds were still beautiful, but we had to use a little imagination to remove the weeds and move back in time. We took some pictures in front of the building and climbed up on the window ledges to peek inside through the small cracks in the shades. Inside it looked like they just locked the doors one day and left. The books remained on the shelves. The furniture was all in place. It was like l would imagine looking into a time capsule. There are plans to repair and re-open it with some grant money in a few years.

We started to return to our cars when the two police cars arrived. We looked at each other and the thoughts of jail returned. Either one of the police had spotted us inside the fence or someone called them. We spent the next half an hour standing in the street around the two police cars talking to the officers. It turned out that the gate was originally locked and someone had broken the lock shortly after installation. It was not replaced. The police were just checking our intentions.

I asked the female officer about the filming of “Grand Torino”. We were standing on Rhode Island, the street where the outside neighborhood scenes were shot. We loaded up the cars, tried to find the specific houses per the officer’s instructions and failed. We pressed on checking out some residential homes with meaning and I heard a lot of names of


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neighbors and such totally foreign to me. We stopped at one home of interest and Bob went up to ask permission of the couple sitting on the porch to take a picture of the house. The couple agreed. It turned out that the couple had purchased the house from the family remembered thirty years ago and remembered the original residents.

Next we cruised a few more streets and made a pass by the old high school. This was the building we all attended for our four years. As we pulled up in front of the building we noticed the female police officer parked on the corner of Glendale and Second. Some pictures were taken of the building. A fence totally surrounds the building. The building appears to be in reasonable shape. The old windows had been replaced at sometime. The houses across Glendale from the school were mostly removed. A couple of overgrown badly deteriorating abandon homes remained. At about this point the second police officer showed up around the overgrowth and we quickly concluded that we were close to a police interaction and decided it was time to move on. We left and begin to circle the high school block. Turning left onto Third Street passing by the Detroit Osteopathic Hospital ruins. This brought back strong memories of my dad as he was on the medical staff there from the early 1930’s until his death in 1987. Some place in the yard now full of brambles and weeds is or was a tree planted in his honor.

Circling the block exposed the Voc-Tech building bringing back memories of the drafting, electricity, welding, and auto shop rooms where I attended my classes.

The main building complex contained:

A boys’ and girls’ physical education sections, each with a swimming pool, running track, a gymnasium, and locker room.

Two libraries (one for lower and one for upper classmates). An auditorium complete with stage to support assemblies and school plays.

A cafeteria and a second one called Parker Hall.


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A business area for typing, shorthand, and adding machines.

A complete art area.

Facilities for preparing the school student newspaper and yearbook.

Physics, biology, and chemistry laboratories.

The WHPR 10 Watt FM radio station where the radio signals from Greg Byndrian and my sportcasting of football and basketball games entered the airways to the community.

Language labs for French, Spanish, Latin, and German.

A multitude of classrooms

An audio visual library and bookstore

The far west end of the building contained the Junior college.

A very spectacular facility at its time staffed with a good faculty. I may have missed some of the facilities. A true blessing.

Next I was directed to streets I don’t believe I had traveled before. We passed and stopped at many homes to take a picture of two. I was directed to Barber Elementary School. I never really knew where it was. Then we just had to have lunch at the “Victor’s”. I had no knowledge of Victor’s. It was purported to be the best Coney Dog place in the world. I was game and it was still open after fifty plus years. We found it on Victor Avenue just east of Woodward. It was good, but for me it didn’t have the good taste of any personal history. At our end of town we had “Pinky’s” hamburgers. Much better because of my personal history. I can still smell the hot grease in that little long gone store front on Hamilton. They were good, but Dad didn’t encourage us to partake of the heavy greasy burgers.

We traveled north on Woodward passed the old Ford Plant property and turned east into the “New high school” (about 1978) property. We simply drove across the property to Oakland. The building is basically a white building without windows. I was in the building years ago with Greg Byndrian for a basketball game. The gym is a full size gym, but based on my personal experience it just didn’t sense the excitement of


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the old “cracker box”. Since that time a football field has been added near the Oakland end of the property. This property was the old Ford Park. The tennis courts are still there. The football field and parking lot are where I remember the field being flooded to make the ice skating pond each winter.

We traveled down Moss and were surprised at the beauty of two or three blocks. Obviously a few families had decided to make their yards as perfect as they could. The flowers were multicolored and arranged beautifully. The grass was cut and well trimmed. It looked like an oasis. Eason also looked nice.

We continued to move to the north end of town where I grew up. As we moved north I couldn’t turn left on Six Mile, so I extended out Woodward Avenue. This is an historic road. This was the first paved mile of highway in the country. Turning off of Woodward the memories of the park, where I rode bikes with my friends, feed the ducks in the pond, played tennis, skated on the pond in the winter, and went on horse drawn buggy rides. We turned on Hamilton and headed back into town passing the old now defunct “Palmer Theater”, abandon Fran’s Shell Service where many high school students worked part time complete with a liar’s group of old timers, and my Dad’s doctor office site on Grove and Hamilton. Dad’s office building burned down in the 1970’s. His office was in the upstairs front flat.

We turned right down Geneva. This was a trip I had reservations about. One block down was the Liberty Elementary School. The school structure appears in fair condition. The front yard was a thing of great beauty during my years of attendance. We were not allowed to be on the grass or even on the interior sidewalks. This entrance was reserved for adult visitors only or very special occasions. The only time I remember being there was after our elementary graduation ceremony. Now the front yard is overgrown and just looks disrespectful of the majesty of the three story large brick school building.


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The total school population of the city is now about 1100 and includes the “New high school” built in the late 1970’s and two elementary schools. I believe that the two open elementary schools are Ford and Ferris. A good portion of the students are now from Detroit and use the schools similar to charter school.

It is amazing to me what my mind remembers. It makes no sense to me, but it is what it is. As I was passing Liberty and heading back to Hamilton I realized that “Betty and Bob’s” was gone and now just an empty field. I don’t know why I remember Betty and Bob’s. It was a little mom and pop store. I don’t think I ever knew who Betty and Bob were. Being next to the school, it carried a broad selection of candy and soda pop. The soda pop was a brand called “Sweet Sixteen” because it came in sixteen ounce glass bottles. We kids liked the big size. At that time eight or ten once bottles was the norm. Mom and Dad discouraged us going into Betty and Bob’s, I am now sure to limit our sugar intake. I remember sneaking in there once before a school party unknown to my folks to buy one of those sixteen ounce forbidden fruits.

As we got to Hamilton, I looked across the street and saw the remains of the boarded up Brown’s Creamery building. This was our place for milk shakes and chocolate sundaes. Liberty school had Friday night socials during the winter. The socials were for fifth through eighth graders. About the most grown up things we could do after a social was to walk a girl the block up to Brown’s, buy her a soda, sit there, consume it for a few minutes, and walk her home. This was mostly the older kids.

We turned left on Hamilton and right two streets down on Grove passed Dad’s office site and checked out the house I lived in during those growing years through college. It still stands and looks pretty good.

The tour was over. I sensed that some neighborhoods are taking real pride in their property and working hard to make a difference. We headed west on Six Mile through town to Livonia returning to the reunion site for the banquet dinner later that day. It was a good tour


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and I was amazed at what I had learned about my hometown fifty years back from my classmates from different parts of town. Obviously I thought I knew a lot more than I really did. But isn’t that true about all of us when we are young living in our own little fantasy teenage worlds?

Saturday Night Saturday night was the big event. We had 350 people for dinner covering graduating classes from 1959-1963. Our classmates had not slowed down from the night before. The noise level was very high. So many words from person to person to be spoken in such a short period of time. An open microphone was provided for a representative or two from each class to address the group. It went well. Di An Mitchell and I had been asked to speak for a few minutes addressing the group as a whole with some prepared common class memories. I went first and Di An followed. The room noise level was intense. I later E-mailed Di An that I felt like I was making my presentation in a steel barrel. She felt about the same. Apparently some were able to hear my comments, as a few after thanked me for my mini-talk. A good time was had by all based on the constant high noise level. After all the purpose of the gathering was to see and talk, not listen to presentations. The talking continued well into the night.

Pictures Friday night a photographer took a series of casual pictures. Saturday night he took individual or couple pictures with names, as well as class pictures of each graduating year. He provided DVD’s of all the pictures for twelve dollars. I received my disk in late September. The total number of casual pictures was well over four hundred shots of happy glad to be together again classmates.

Sunday Morning Sunday morning at the buffet breakfast, our classmates were much quieter and obviously a little short of sleep. Breakfast was much more relaxed, but with still much table hopping. Over the next couple of


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hours we each said our good byes and wished each other well, as we returned to our regular worlds.

Faculty We were blessed to have a few of the old faculty attend. I spoke to Mr. Coykendall, Mr. Donahue, and Mr. Phenix. It was good to talk to them. I don’t think they remembered me, but I was one of thousands of students that passed through their classrooms. I had no expectations. Mr. Coykendall was one of my favorites and it was good to see him again and thank him for inspiring me in Physics nudging me in the engineering direction. Also in attendance was Mrs. Banton from the English Department, well into her nineties. I did not have her as a teacher and did not speak to her. From the reactions of others she was a very good teacher. Seeing the former faculty members was a real unexpected pleasure.

Conclusion It was a great weekend and there was talk about doing it again in five years. With all the wonderful work that Judy and her crew did, I can’t imagine them or anyone else recovering enough from this venture and being willing to do it all over again so soon.


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About the Author Charles A. Peterson is a retired engineer raised in Highland Park, Michigan during the 1940s, 1950s and the 1960s. Highland Park was the site of Henry Ford’s first continuous (circa 1910) automotive production facility. This factory facility drew a rich mix of ethnic working people to service the factory and develop a middle class within the community. The city was established around the factory as a complete stand alone city later to be completely surrounded by Detroit proper. The population was about 40,000 during Charles’s growing years.

Charles is the second of three sons of a general practice physician and a former school teacher. His personal experiences are rich having been raised in a value oriented environment with committed and caring adults.

He spent forty years in the engineering profession (Westinghouse/ABB Bloomington, IN, Cooper Power Systems Olean, NY/Fayetteville, AR) developing and manufacturing products used by the electric utility industry.

He and his wife Becki throughout their child raising years, focused and worked hard to pass on their values, expose their daughters to positive life experiences, responsibility oriented attitudes and truly enjoy them.

His written works include several books describing portions of his life and a series of short writings that may be compiled into future books. He views his works as pieces of a puzzle being assembled to provide his daughters and future generations a written understanding of this part of their history as seen from his perspective.

50ish HPHS Reunion by Chuck Peterson

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