Remembering Jeff Meredith

(An unsigned tribute to Jeff Meredith appeared on Page 2, typically the opinion page, of the February 26, 1988, edition of the Golden Times. Jeff died on Feb. 6, 1988, after a long battle with cancer. Much of that tribute is reprinted below)

Jeff has been described by friends as sweet and “just an all-around nice guy,” but he was so much more than that. Jeff always had a wonderful smile that lit up his face for everyone. Though popular, he was never a snob. He was a fun person to be around. He was a friend – and a peacemaker – to many people. He was a very caring person, and even through his illness he continued to think of someone besides himself.

Jeff knew he was going to die, but he always wanted to know what he could do to help others. He would have done anything possible to relieve the pain and worry felt by those around him. He forgot his own physical suffering to comfort his family and friends who were suffering mentally.

Through his illness he demonstrated the rare courage to have faith and deal with his situation. He tried to live each day to the fullest. He was a Christian, and those around him could tell just because of his personality. It was his Christian faith that helped him get through the rough times; he placed his whole life in that belief. His faith was so strong that it even enabled others to deal with his cancer.

Jeff died at such a young age that it does not seem fair. But in the short time he was here, he touched so many lives in so many different ways. He believed he had a purpose for being born on Earth, and that once he accomplished that purpose, he died in peace. So, as hard as it may be, we should try not to be sad that Jeff is no longer with us. Instead we should be thankful for the times we shared with him, and remember them fondly.

Jeff is healed now. He wants us to remember him as he used to be, and let the good memories be a comfort to many in the future. No matter what, we will always have memories of Jeff, wearing his trademark baseball cap and a grin, clowning around at football games …

The way it was: February 26, 1988

Sadie Hawkins was “goin’ country again” on the front page of the February 26, 1988, edition of the Golden Times. There had been a Hawaiian phase to the annual “girls ask guys” dance the year before.

“I think people really enjoyed last year’s change, but there were several requests for the traditional theme,” said Marcie Brooks, a Student Council member. Whatever happened to her?

Kristy Dobson, whom I described not very eloquently as the “six-foot terror on the other side of the net” for JHS volleyball opponents, signed to play volleyball at the University of Tennessee. Kristy was a tough competitor in sports, but certainly never a “terror” personally -- quite the opposite.

They weren’t our classmates, but Page 8 featured lots of future political power. Sophomore Dustin McDaniel, now Arkansas' attorney general, talked about his visit to a political rally for George Bush … the elder George Bush, that is, back when he was Vice President Bush. Yes, McDaniel is a Democrat now, but enjoyed a very Republican event back then. And there was junior Jason Willett, who would eventually become state Democratic Party chairman and is now running for mayor of Jonesboro, winning Mr. Kool as Tiffany Tiger.

Regular school things kept happening too: The photo at top, taken by Stephen Hester and appearing on Page 3, shows JHS-88ers Charles Brinkley, Chris Harris, Kathy Williams, John Works and Craig Schuchardt working with pulleys in a physics class.

Under 30 and SPOILED!

[Thanks to Ashley Thompson Day for forwarding this to me. She thought you guys would enjoy it! I know I did! I don't know who wrote it or I would credit them.]

THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!!!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what, with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning uphill BOTH ways, yadda, yadda, yadda!

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that.. I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a freak'in Utopia!

And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!

There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter...with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3's or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!


We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'asteroids' and the graphics sucked! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, that was just too bad!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your bum and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little brats!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove or go build a fire ... imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot.

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled!!!!!!!!!

You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980! Oh yea, and a seatbelt was Mom throwing her arm across your chest every time she hit the brakes.

Regards,
The over 30 Crowd

After School

I picked my daughter up from school today and while I was waiting, I watched from afar (the primary building is across the street from the high school) as the high school kids left the parking lot in their various vehicles. I tried to remember what I did when school was out for the day. I remember many times waiting in line at the light on Caraway and Main to turn left and talking to everyone in the other line. I'm SURE I went to band practice often during marching season.

As I watched these kids take off in utter happiness, I tried to recapture that feeling of freedom. No responsibility. No bills waiting on you in the mailbox. No kid in the backseat begging to go to Sonic for a Cherry-Vanilla Dr. Pepper. No briefcase full of work sitting next to you in the car. Just freedom.

How did you spend your free time after school was out for the day? Did you go to a job? Did you go straight to a pool in the summer months? Or the mall? What was your free time filled with during high school?

Classmate bio: James Lindeman

Name: James Hale Lindeman

Family: Wife Brigette, daughters Amanda (11) and Jordyn (9)

Location: Warsaw, Indiana

Three years after graduation, James Lindeman put Jonesboro in the rear-view mirror, wanting to see what was “out there.”

“On a whim, I moved to D.C. and hung out for a year and a half,” James remembers about his becoming a “nomad” at age 21. “From D.C., I packed up my Civic hatchback and made my way to Aspen, Colorado, for a year. After that, it was New Orleans for a year and a half and from there, Key West, Florida, for almost 5 years.

“Along the way, I met great people who I'm still close with today, ate a ton of great food, and had a blast seeing what else was ‘out there.’ "

James has skied some of the hardest trails at Aspen and in the Swiss Alps, jumped out of airplanes over Louisiana and Mississippi, and scuba-dived off the Florida Keys and the Grand Cayman Islands.

But he says all of that pales in importance to “being with my kids and being a great dad and husband.” He and his wife Brigette in Indiana are raising Jordyn, 9, James’ daughter from a previous relationship, and Amanda, 11, James’ stepdaughter. (Amanda is left, Jordyn right in picture below)

James is an owner/operator of 10 CiCi’s Pizza franchise units in Virginia, Maryland and Indiana. But his road to being a successful pizza entrepreneur reflects his nomadic spirt.

Besides tending bar at his many stops, James also owned a jet ski business in the Florida Keys and has been both state-licensed and nationally certified as a massage therapist. Some 13 years after high school, James earned a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University ... with the help of college credits beginning at Arkansas State and stringing through the University of New Orleans, two Florida community colleges and Florida Atlantic University.

James said that, of all the places he’s lived, his time in Key West had the most impact on his life. “It's a place I spent quality time in, a place where I was welcomed, and a place where I learned to invest and give back to relationships that will last a lifetime," he said.

As for his Jonesboro days, James said that he suspects his JHS classmates might remember that he had his own apartment at age 17, that he worked at Pizza Inn and that he once organized a trip to Six Flags in St. Louis.

“I don't know that I did too much to be remembered by, other than quietly holding my own academically and socially,” James said of his high school years. “Maybe my female classmates remember that I was always the friend and never the boyfriend, unfortunately enough for me ... who knows?”

So with both his business and family thriving, is there anything else “out there” for James?

“A (crazy) personal goal I've had for years is to graduate law school from the University of Notre Dame...maybe when I'm 50?”

JHS Names New Football Coach

JHS has just named Randy Coleman (JHS Class of 1992) as Jonesboro's new head football coach. Coach Coleman comes to JHS after four seasons as Valley View's head coach. Coleman also has ties to our graduating class. His brother Rusty Coleman graduated with us in 1988. Read the whole article here.

Classmate bio: Kevin Myatt

(This is the 1st in a series of JHS Class of 88 mini-biographies. Since no one else wants to be first, and to give everyone else an idea of what these will be like, I am posting a mini-bio of myself up as an example for those that are to come. Others on what will hopefully be a wide cross-section of classmates will follow.)

Name: Kevin Myatt

Family: Wife, Erica, married in 2005; dog, Cindy, 9 years old, (found as a stray in Cushman, Ark.)

Location: Roanoke, Virginia

Unlike many of his classmates who left town soon after graduation for new adventures, Kevin was 26 before he got out of Jonesboro and 29 before he left Arkansas, but he’s found a home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

A scheduling change – choosing to take journalism in the 10th grade when all the typing classes were full -- charted Kevin on an unexpected career course over the next two decades. He spent 8 years writing for The Jonesboro Sun (getting an Arkansas State journalism degree during that time), 3 years as an editor at the Batesville Daily Guard, and then moved to Roanoke, Virginia, in late 1999 to become a copy editor at the Roanoke Times.

In Roanoke, he incorporates an old love into his work, as he writes a twice-weekly weather column for The Roanoke Times and maintains a weather blog for the newspaper’s Web site, Roanoke.com.

Each May, he assists a local meteorology teacher in leading high school and college students into the Plains to observe severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. The team has had its vans banged by golfball-sized hail and shaken by 70-mph winds, but has succeeded in close encounters with powerful thunderstorms and a few tornadoes each of the last three years.

"A lot of storm chasing is not as exciting as it's shown on TV -- there's a lot of driving and waiting," Kevin said. "I think last week's deadly tornado outbreak in the South underscores the need to give young people who might go into meteorology as a career a real-life experience with severe storms.”

But Kevin would rank his weather column and chasing tornadoes below two other developments since moving to Virginia.

(1) His closer walk with the Lord and involvement in Christian ministry. He currently serves on the vestry of a 1,000-member evangelical Anglican congregation.

(2) Marrying his wife Erica in 2005. Erica and Kevin share work and faith together -- she is the editor of a local feature section at The Roanoke Times, and she often sings at two different churches in Roanoke. In fact ... she sang to him during their wedding.

“I was a little geeky, but harmless,” Kevin recalls his high school days. “I was generally friendly to those who spoke to me or got to know me, but not outgoing at all.

“Today I’m much more confident – assured in my geekiness, you might say – and much warmer and fuzzier – literally fuzzier since I usually have a thick beard.”

Classmate bios are coming!

I hope to get a long-awaited series of classmate mini-biographies started very soon on this blog.

2 things to remember as we begin:

(1) What one has done or how much one has accomplished since graduation should have no bearing on being a part of the reunion. We're proud of our classmates everywhere and the mark they have made on the world, but when it comes to October, we don't care about all that, we just want to see you.

(2) There's no way I'm going to get to nearly 300 classmates in the 7 months between now and graduation. I would consider getting a tenth of that, about 30, as a major accomplishment. These bios are intended to give a snapshot of our class, not a complete mosaic. That said, Marcie and I are working on a list that will be diverse in race, location, education, professions, etc. Please don't feel we're snubbing you if you're not included. We are open to your suggestions, of course.

Nobody ever really wants to be first in something like this, so, at Marcie's urging, I have reluctantly agreed to put my own bio up first just so (1) no one else will have to go first and (2) everyone can get a feel for what these will be like so that you -- hopefully -- will be eager to answer the questionnaires you have received or may receive in the future. My writing background makes me absolutely abhor writing about myself in the third person, but I want to give you a feel for how these will go, so I will allow myself to be the guinea pig. My apologies in advance if it seems pompous.

I hope to have that up in the next day or two.

Coach Barry Pruitt Celebrates Win No. 500!

Speaking of Coach Barry Pruitt and the Jonesboro Hurricane basketball team back in the day—I had to post this current bit of information on the current JHS team and Coach Pruitt's 500th victory! Here's another story about the best Seven Under The Sun. Congratulations Coach Pruitt!

The 3-point shot

If you follow basketball at all, it may seem like the 3-point shot has always been part of the game. But the 1987-88 season was the first for the 3-point shot in high school basketball, a year after it had been introduced in college play.

Its arrival at the high school level was just in time for the Hurricane to take advantage of the long-range shooting talents of our classmate Terry Scott, pictured above.

When Terry was on, he could launch a barrage of 3-pointers that would easily rack up 30 or more points, and our Hurricane would usually win when he was hot.

Blytheville was the state runnerup the year before in boys’ basketball, and held a No. 6 statewide ranking when the Chickasaws came to Hurricane Gym in late January of 1988. Jonesboro was sitting on a 9-6 record, riding the up an down waves of its 3-point shooting.

Despite Blytheville’s high ranking, JHS and Blytheville fought a nip-and-tuck battle. The Hurricane went up by 1 at the end of three quarters when Terry drained a 30-foot 3-point shot, and JHS led 53-51 with just a few seconds left.

JHS’ defense kept Blytheville away from the hoop as the Chickasaws tried to score a tying basketball. One of the Chickasaws’ star players, Robert Mays, had only one option: Fire a shot from 25 feet out.

It hit nothing but net, and it was worth 3 points. Blytheville escaped JHS 54-53.

Terry Scott had hit a similar long-range 3-pointer late in the game to get the Hurricane out of a jam against Westside earlier in the season.

Since we graduated, the Hurrricane basketball team has become a perennial state powerhouse, capturing state titles in 1994 and in 2007. Coach Barry Pruitt is still there, having recently scored his 500th career coaching victory.

The way it was: February 1, 1988

Things were pretty quiet on the JHS campus as we turned the corner on the new year, sliding downhill toward graduation.

Front-page stories in the Golden Times included a preview of “The Nerd,” the dinner theatre play set for March. Keith Salter promised it would be “the best dinner theatre yet,” and it would seem that many participants and attendees would, years later, agree that it was. The cast included our classmates Greg Murray, Kelly Morris, Stephen Hester, Brian Haggbloom and Charles Brinkley.

Stephanie Owens wrote a front-page story looking into the costs of graduation year and entering college. Those of you who have kids approaching that age now know best that we only thought it was expensive back then.

Speaking of costs, the most amazing thing to me in these old papers are the ads for the 99-cent Whoppers at Burger King and 39-cent Chicken Littles at KFC. Can you even get a small drink for that little today?