BASEBALL SEASON MAY BE OVER BUT IN KIRKWOOD KHOURY LEAGUE WAS A HIT

From our classmate Bruce Antle comes a wonderful memory.  The photo isn't great, but he'll try to get a better image... even if you weren't a baseball fan in grade school, check this out, a great story!  I've posted the scan of the article Bruce kindly sent just today, I'll try to fix it up so it is larger to view on the blog when I get a chance...THANKS again Bruce!  Happy Fall to everyone!

BASEBALL SEASON 1958 Khoury League with the Only Woman Manager in Kirkwood

It was the summer of 1958.  We were all in the fifth grade, most of us attended Keyser Elementary School on Geyer Road.  I played second base and outfield. Lew Williamson and Gary VonDerheide were my best friends.  They would also play second base and outfield. I was pretty good at fielding because my dad would always play catch with my brother and me.  He would throw us grounders as well as high flying balls. I wasn’t much good at hitting. Probably because we didn’t practice hitting, the picture window of the family room would have been within range.

At registration time, we were told, “No team if you don’t have a coach or a manager.”  

John Harris’s mother, a fifth grade teacher at Manchester school in the Parkway District, not wanting to disappoint her son and the boys, spoke up. “If they would allow a woman to take on the office, she would do it.”

She would be the only woman Khoury League manager in Kirkwood.  She recruited Mr and Mrs Vern Schmidt who volunteered to be coaches for the boys.

Sponsored by the Kirkwood Western Auto, the team finished second in the Bantam C League that year.  

Pictured: Front Row - Cheerleaders Kathy Pierce, Mary Sue Fillo, Nancy Beckman

Middle Row -  Bruce Antle, Lew Williamson, Gary VonDerheide, John Harris, Steve Huber

Back Row - Larry Lazier, Denny Liddle, Warren Orlick, Mike Kramer, Mark Lawyer

Standing in back- Manager, Mrs. R.A. Harris

Also on the team but not pictured were, Dickie Schmidt, Eddie Sunder, Larry Reutter, Pat Erwin and 
David Mueller. There were also two more cheerleaders Cathy Modray and Carol Summers who
either could not be present on the day of the picture or were out of town. 

It is mind-blowing that very many of these people are still in touch with one another and with our class. I don't know Larry Reutter, Pat Erwin and David Mueller, but you Keysor kids probably do. Carol Summers moved to Massachusetts before we hit KHS and now lives in California. Her parents and mine were best friends, my parents being the god-parents of her little sister. She's only been back once, for a reunion in the 90s, or maybe 2000. Larry Lazier is still here, a retired Kirkwood Fireman who had a great career right here 'at home'. We think Dickie Schmidt was Richard Charles Schmidt of our class, not Rick Schmidt as I speculated earlier. We have no information on R C Schmidt at this time. I have lived near or not far from Manchester School for years! It's still a beautiful red brick building, now housing a popular bridal shop. Cathy Modray was just with us a couple of weeks ago at our mini Reunion at Karen Lowe's home in Kirkwood....

THANK YOU again Bruce for sharing your memories!

LOTS OF RED & WHITE IN OUR LIVES, CHECK THIS OUT!

I don't know the year this was taken, Junior High I'm pretty sure.  Back row l to r:
Priscilla Flint, Sandy Schneider, Georgann Meinhardt, Lynn Blackwell, Pat Dunbar, Sue Croce, Mary Ann Dueker, Chris Kleemeier, Kathy Staten.  Bottom l to r:  Sandy Sullivan, Sue Kraft, Joyce Moller, Susan Merritt I think, Gail Sutton, Jamie (Jamieson) Linton, Sharno Merritt I think, Pat Corpening, Sherri Stiff, Joyce Leslie Ker :-)). Sharon please correct me if I got you two mixed up :-)) 

I don't know the year and I don't know why I was never a Candy Striper, I later spent 10 wonderful in the hospital biz! We all lived close to the then St. Joseph's Hospital on Couch Avenue.  Mary Ann Dueker lived literally across the street.  We were all in the same class at KHS65 & at Robinson School and many of us in this pic in the same Scout troop. Mrs. Meinhardt, Mrs. Ker and Mrs. Stiff were our leaders, maybe others but those are the ones I remember best. Mrs. Stiff taught us how to play Bridge! Staten, Sutton, Linton and Stiff all moved before we graduated, although Sherri not far, in fact barely out of the Kirkwood School District. The Suttons went to the church I, Mollers and Krafts did but we lost track of them years ago. Flint, Corpening, Blackwell, Dunbar, Dueker, Meek, Moller, Sharon Merritt, Stiff & I are still here unless someone has moved recently. Croce still in Missouri. Georgann is in FL, Ker in oh darn, I think Arkansas? Kraft in MN, Anyone know where any others are, I'd love to know?

When I was working on this, I was thinking about Lynn, Joyce and Georgann living in those wonderful homes on South Geyer Road and it reminded me that the other day I was coming home through Kirkwood and noticed that 1117 S. Geyer is being torn down - likely to make way for an ugly McMansion ...  luckily there are very few of those situations on South Geyer which is a good thing.  Go here:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/1117+S+Geyer+Rd,+Kirkwood,+MO+63122/@38.5643498,-90.4160149,3a,75y,320.26h,90.77t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sV-H6PeGNsG1gLzmGn7WLrA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x87d8ce7ec70a190d:0x1ff55e45247aa568!8m2!3d38.5644691!4d-90.4164761
to see the house that's going...it's across the street and down a block or so from Lynn and Georgann. 

KHS63 MEMBER JOHN C. NASH, A NOTABLE KIRKWOODIAN AND FRIEND OF KHS EVEN IN HIS DEATH

Perhaps many of you in KHS65 will remember Pam Dalton.  If not, check out the Yearbook, she's on page 173.  Tri-Hi-Y president, Student Council, Call circulation manager, Gold K and a Commencement Speaker.  She is also well-known among the girls for having been the steady girl of John Nash, KHS63.  She was fortunate to have been able to visit John at Princeton our Senior Year.  As it turns out that visit was a pivotal time in their relationship.  Fast forward to now.  Pam and John went their separate ways but reconnected in recent years.  Pam was able to visit John a couple of times, once just before his untimely death earlier this year.  I was fortunate to know Pam after we moved to Harwood Hills mid-Junior year, and we rode back & forth to school sometimes.  I so enjoyed a great visit with her and Karen Schurig in Dallas a couple of years ago, see my Facebook page. 

From Pam, and John's family, comes the following obituary.  An amazing person who left Kirkwood High School $100,000 in his Will, to do good things for the children of KHS.  The school is still deciding exactly how to use it in John's honor and memory to benefit the Kirkwood students of today.  Obviously John, like so many of us, felt he had a wonderful beginning in the Kirkwood school system.  Pam sends her greetings to our classmates and we are looking forward to the next class of KHS Hall of Fame for which we'll see to it that John is nominated.  Herewith a review of John's accomplishments, most of us will have a connection to his life's work, read on!  Thank you Pam for your friendship then and now.  Thank you John C. Nash for being part of our lives in so many ways.

John C. Nash died March 6, 2018 in Los Altos, California. He had lived in the Bay area for 35 years, largely in Redwood City.

John entered the Princeton Class of ’67 from Kirkwood, Missouri High School [KHS63] in suburban St. Louis where he had been Student Council Vice-President, class Vice-President, and class valedictorian.

At Princeton John majored in mathematics after first preparing for the psychology department. As he wrote in our 50^th Reunion Book, he discovered math was his true interest so spent his sophomore summer catching up on the courses he had needed as preparation for the math department. He roomed with Roger Rudolph, Bob Grant, and Dave Paul in 4A Holder Hall and was an active Elm Club member, the club’s ace pool player and competitor in the inter-club tournaments. He was also a member of Whig-Clio, the James Madison Humorous Debating Society, and the Stock Investment and Analysis Club.

After graduation John went to Stanford for graduate study getting his M.S. in mathematics in 1970 and Ph.D. in 1976. He then taught math at the University of California Santa Cruz from 1975-78, and the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, from 1978-83. At the end of 8 years in academia John switched careers to join the private technology industry which was amidst the great computer and digital revolution of personal computing and enterprise systems. He moved back to the San Francisco Bay area and what became Silicon Valley working for a small software design firm from 1983-86, a subsidiary of Xerox Corp called Versatec Corp. When the smaller firm was absorbed by Xerox, John decided to leave to again find a small firm in which to work freed from the large bureaucracy of American corporations. The firm he started with at the time had only 100 employees but grew into its own large business, Adobe Systems. John began as a staffer but rose to become the company’s Principal Scientist which permitted him to often work independently outside the bureaucratic organization doing, as he wrote for the class, “development {of} software for a number of Adobe’s graphics products.” He retired in 2005 having helped establish one of Silicon Valley’s, and our world’s, major indispensable computer business tools.

In retirement John continued his hobbies including collecting rare books from the 1930s Los Angeles genre of crime and detective novels of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett , and James T. Cain, and he pursued his love of cooking, hiking, and watching the film version of  '30s crime stories in the Hollywood “Film Noir” genre.

John is survived by a stepson, Jason, stepdaughter Rachel, and two sisters Diane Schultz [KHS58] and Sue Stoltz [KHS66]. The Class of ’67 is proud of this technology pioneer, who contributed so much to the digital and information economy of the past 4 decades and we are greatly diminished by the loss of a brilliant mathematical innovator and engineer. 

If you would like to contact Pam, please let me know.   

More on the late Bob Albrecht

I just ran across this blog entry which I do not believe is the same as my earlier posts, for which please scroll down/back a bit to this summer.
Check out :
 https://dentoncountyhistoryandculture.wordpress.com/2018/07/27/whos-who-in-denton-county-bob-albrecht/

Barbara Whelove obituary

Rich Whelove has been a great teacher (I think professor is the proper term) and many other things; his dad was a railroad aficionado and knew some of our classmates through that hobby, one of those being Bob O'Neill who alerted me to the sad loss of Rich's wife recently.  Rich was friends with several of our KHS65 members over the years after high school and college abds such a nice guy!  We send our blessings to him and his family at this sad time.  His daughters are darling, I met them at Rich's mom's funeral here in Kirkwood not too long ago.  Please keep them all in your thoughts and prayers.  Here is the obituary from the Fulton, MO paper:

Barbara Ann Brazos, Nov. 19, 1950 — Sept. 21, 2018

• Submitted by Memorial Funeral Home
• Sep 25, 2018

Barbara Ann Brazos, 67, of Fulton died Friday, Sept. 21, 2018. A celebration of life will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, 2018, at Memorial Funeral Home, 1217 Business Loop 70 W., in Columbia.

Barbara was born in Watertown, Wisconsin, to John and Rose (Gose) Brazos.

Barbara was a devoted wife, mother, sister and grandmother. She never met a stranger and touched souls with her humor. She had a nurturing, maternal instinct and brought this to everyone she met. A psychiatric nurse of over 30 years, she cared deeply about mental health, positive parenting and treating people well. Most of all she loved the people closest to her — her husband, children, grandchildren, brothers and friends; she would drop everything to spend time with them.

She extended this love to all creatures, big and small. As a lifelong lover of animals, her horses, dogs and cats were near and dear to her, many of which she gave a home as they were abandoned. Her passion for people and animals was matched by her love of the arts. In her spare time, she could be found watercolor painting, weaving, creating stamps, playing musical instruments, beekeeping or growing fruit trees and flowers. Her works reflected the beauty she saw in nature.

In later years, she adored spending time with her grandchildren and passing along her love of animals and art. Barb was also an extremely strong and passionate individual who gave herself and her time for the betterment of the community and the world. Her spirit and joy live on in all the lives she touched.

Barbara was preceded in death by her mother, Rose Margaret; father, John; and brother Blaise.

Barbara is survived by her husband, Richard Whelove; daughters, Ona Whelove of San Francisco and Asia Honeysuckle (Denard) of Phoenix; grandchildren, Adeline, Brandon and Independence; siblings Bruce Brazas (Jan) of Batavia, Illinois, and John Brazas of Rochester, New York; stepbrother Kevin West (Deborah) of Ashland, Missouri; nephews and nieces, Jeremy, Ryan, Shawn, Megan, Shannon and Amy; and stepmother, Helen.

If desired, friends may make memorial contributions to Prairie Chapel UMC, 3700 County Road 227, Fulton, MO 65251.