Pat Tharp (’54) knows some great stories. Pat starred on Woodrow Wilson’s 1953-54 state semifinalist team, which will be honored at Homecoming this month.
He owns Dancemaster’s Ballroom at Northwest Highway and Plano Road, where the Homecoming alumni dance will be held. The dance will raise money for a fund in memory of former football coach Jim Riley, who died in July.
Pat, who helped plan the reunion and dance,says he received a brick from the fire-destroyed Harrell’s Drugstore from Jenny Abbey, who collects bricks from around the world. Pat remembers that Denise Foster’s (’55) dad, Al, was a pharmacist with Doc Harrell for many years.
Pat says he is responsible for the first four-way stop sign at Greenville Avenue and Lovers Lane. After leaving Lou Ann’s the popular hangout, he and Jerry Orr (’54) were broadsided by another car, and forced into a telephone pole. No one was hurt, but Pat wanted to make sure a similar accident didn’t happen again.
Goody-Goody Two Shoes
The class of 1983 is back, and they’re bringing Adam Ant and his hit song with them.
The class will meet at Homecoming at Tolbert’s downtown on St. Paul after the Homecoming pep rally on Friday, then to the game at 2 p.m. Saturday vs. Thomas Jefferson at Loos Field on the North Dallas tundra. The main event is a dance at Level 2, behind the red door at Cedar Springs and Maple.
Raving about the activities is chairman Monty Watson, who went on to Georgetown University in Washington and SMU’s law school. He lives in Austin.
Also planning to attend are high achievers Robert Simpson, who just started University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, and Bill Hiser.
The latter graduated from Princeton and also studied at Harvard, where he met his fiancee. Bill is interning at Baylor Medical Center.
Let’s not forget that the CEO of Baylor, one of the country’s largest private hospitals, is none other than Woodrow graduate Boone Powell Jr.
More medical minutiae: Dr. Bob Smith (’40), who made a donation to the Alumni Association earlier this summer, made a million-dollar donation to Southwestern. Dr. Smith was a principle in Doctors Hospital near White Rock Lake.
Oh, What a Night
The title of the popular late-1970s song accurately describes the recent 15-year reunion of the class of 1978. From some accounts, the reunion lasted 12 hours, beginning at 6 a.m. on the shores of White Rock Lake (at classmate Keith Rowe’s scenic hacienda). In between, the class terrorized the Casa Linda Chili’s.
No submarines were sighted, but those ex-jocks were braying braggadocio.
“Those were the greatest days of my life,” says Kenneth Green, who is now an attorney. He reports that sister Jackie (’76) is now a psychiatrist in New York City.
Howie Hammond, now a mortgage banker, couldn’t understand why he can’t fit into his old football jersey, and Holley “Number 10” Cole says the Wildcats would have won district that year if he hadn’t been injured in the 3-0 loss to Skyline.
Friends Laura Pearson Classen, Kirby Shaw Gomez and Jana Rains Stillwagon flew in from Denver, San Francisco and Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., for the event, leaving kids and husbands to fend for themselves.
Unofficially voted most changed were Cherie Bynum Snell, Brian Piper and Joel Bozarth, whose brother Paul (’73) coaches at Woodrow. Still the same were Susan Brady, Leota Woodford and Charlie Secker.
Organizers Roxanne Snyder and Annette Silvas DiCarlo made sure the Wildcats behaved themselves (although Roxanne left her annual behind, and would like anyone who found it to call her).
Have Hartmann, Will Travel
If you have the luggage, call Hartmann Travel, just opened by another member of the class of 1978, Monica Hartmann Shaw. She is from the rather large Hartmann family – every Woodrow class in the past 20 years seemed like it had at least one of them. Monica is also busy being a new mother to daughter Katy.
