HIGHLIGHTS FROM OUR 45TH IN MAY, 2003

Pat,

This is Richard Evans in Lomita, CA soon to move to Tucson. My wife Michiko and I will be at the reunion in October. Glad you have it the last part of the month. I have traveled around Florida on and off for many years. Played on St Pete beach back in the '60s between Air Force tours in Southeast Asia. Graduated from University of West Florida in Pensacola. Retired from the Air Force in Fort Walton Beach.

I enjoy your site especially the photos. I will send you some via snail mail......

My cell is 310-686-6675 which you can add to the mail list.

You always had artistic talent as I remember it. Wasn't it you who gave the yearbook the name of "Regit"? being tiger spelled backwards...

Richard (Dick) Evans

Note: Everyone in the Air Force over all the years knows me as Dick.... from Dick Evans

Pat,

  I have attached four photos.  The proudest photo is of me with Robbie Risner whose plane I worked on prior to his being shot down over North Vietnam.  He was held prisoner for seven years and thirty years later I met him again in San Antonio airport.  There is a nine foot statue of him at the Air Force Academy.

  I worked on many of the aircraft that flew during the Vietnam war.  I spent three and a half years total in Southeast Asia, mostly Thailand.  We lost a lot of good pilots.  I was humbled by the bravery shown on their flights into Hanoi.

 

  One photo is of me in 1966 outside a maintenace trailer at Takhli Thailand.  I was sent there for six months duty all the way from France.

 

 Another photo of me and my wife Michiko on our travels in Italy.  It was taken at a our favorite little restaurant on a street.

 

The third photo is of me on the Great Wall last year while in China during another of our trips.

 

Dick Evans

10.11.07

Dear Members of the SPHS Class of '57,

We are totally unable to attend your Sunshine Soirée, and that fact makes me so very, very sad. My wife, Virginia is due to have a knee replacement three days before your reunion and she will be hospitalized until the 27th of October. Following the surgery, she will be confined for a week or more for rehabilitation. I consider the coincidence most unfortunate.

 

In an earlier note from Pat Spalluto Shapiro, Pat wrote that I was one of your favorite teachers, followed by the question, "we know WE were your favorite class, right?" How right she is: Right, right, right, a thousand times.

 

After I graduated from Franklin and Marshall College following my stint as an aviation cadet (navy) during World War II, I began my career as a teacher at Merchantville High School on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River, directly across from Philadelphia. I taught there for five years. While there, South Plainfield, where I grew up, was planning its FIRST High School, and I decided to apply for a position.

 

What a thrill that was. I, of course, was one of the many kids who went daily by bus to North Plainfield. The wonderful part of going to NPHS was that I met the girl I would eventuqally marry. We now have been married for 61 years (I assume most of you wonderful students of mine are now 67 years old. Am I right?)

 

I could not believe that your class of 67 students were the top class in the new high school for four years, and that I taught all of you twice as eleventh and twelfth graders. I thought I had died and gone to Heaven after the large home rooms and English classes I had at my first school. Your class of sixty seven students divided into three classes averaging 22 per class. My former classes averaged 32.

 

After teaching you wonderful students for your junior and your senior years, I also became your senior advisor and had much to do with your senior trip, your senior play and your graduation as the first senior class from SPHS. Wow!! I also asked the principal to put all of you into one large homeroom so that when we were planning your senior events each announcement was heard by all. The principal thoought I was crazy to ask for a homeroom of 67 kids, but I finally convinced him. I state all of these details as a direct answer to Pat's question as to whether "youse guys" were my favorite class. I never had to speak a harsh word to anyone. We were so close and so friendly that it really was the most enjoyable experience of my entire career as a teacher. I will never forget that experience with all of you. I even wonder if any teacher anywhere has ever had as wonderful an experience.