High School at Detroit Lutheran West

Dennis Toumi - a Great Coach

Dennis Toumi, the best sports coach I ever had...and many others thought the same. The man spent his entire career teaching physical education and coaching at Detroit Lutheran High Schools although he was offered college coaching positions. His small teams regularly beat much larger teams. Coach Toumi is in the Michigan High School Coaches Hall of Fame. 

Getting an Award for Being Wrong

In the book I tell of the time Rev. Dequin fired me as an acolyte because I wasn't Lutheran. Imagine my surprise during the awards assembly at the end of the year when I got this Award Certificate. Irony is the best medicine. 

High School Drama Rehearsal for The Cinderella Complex (circa 1964). Stuck up Cinderella and arrogant Prince Charming (Carol Molnar and Yours Truly). Directed by Annette Schroeder. Evidently, during this rehearsal I was supposed to pick up Jack Fish (a classmate) and toss him off the set. Jack was smallish, and a good sport and wit. He was one of three classmates who became Lutheran pastors. I saw Jack at our 50th Reunion (Sept 2015) and he says his still has a sore back from that day. But with Jack, one never knows. (Sorry, Jack.)

King of the Golden Shovel Award

My State of Michigan Science Fair award. I got in the habit of winning awards for last place. My peers called met he King of the Golden Shovel for winning this. It was more about how I wrote up the project than what the project really was.  I keep these things around to remind me that even losers can be winners (so to speak). This falls in the category of the acolyte certificate and the National Music Camp Poster Boy image (below)

Looks are Deceiving Honor

Irony strikes again. Another example of my knack of looking looking good even through I was in last place. As I explain in the book, my summer at Interlochen was perhaps the best 8-weeks of my teenage years. Of the seven bassoonists at the camp I was the worst. I sat last chair of the second string orchestra and band. But the wonderfulness of it all was no one ever challenged me, and I only had to practice enough to know when NOT to try to play during a concert, so as not to embarrass the bassoon section. So, imagine my surprise when the next year at school this poster ends up on the band room wall (actually this is a composite to make me look more important than I was, my image was actually kind of moderate in size near the bottom). My band instructor didn't particularly like me even through I was the student conductor of the band. So the poster was only up for a day or two before it disappeared.  I had to write the camp to get my own copy. : )

PICTURES FROM MY LHW YEARBOOKS

Rev. Edward Williams, our chalk-tossing math teacher and class sponsor who helped me write our class hymn.  He was the only person to sign my year book with a Scripture reference...a true Evangelical. Phil 4:13: "I can do all this through him who gives me strength."

(L-R) Choir director, Rev. Lavern Franzen who interrupted the Carousel movie to tell us that JFK had been shot, and then again that he had died. Terrible day. / Rev. Henry Dequin, our chain-smoking chaplain who cared a great deal for us in his German ways / Lloyd McLaughlin, who taught Trigonometry and Analytic Geometry. He drove one of two small Plymouth Valients that were identical (his or his wife's). For two years I walked 1/4-mile to the corner of Ford Rd. and Gulley Rd. in Dearborn Hts, where he would pick me up on his way to school (15 miles away), and then get behind a slow moving semi-truck and stay there all the way to our turn off for school. His reasoning was simple: "No one will cut in front of me." I find my self following his example today.