In this edition of the Prep '58 Blog...
Bill Wittman sent us some great photos from his trip to Scotland. We included a few photos in this edition, and will have the full show in the December edition.
Jim Horan joined us at our Nov 11th Cuppa, where we presented him with a Cuppa Club mug as a Thank You for his help with all things '58.
Rave reviews from Messrs. Sippel and Rodino about their Bio cookies. After a bit of a delay due to our move, the cookies finally got there. If you haven't sent in your Bio, you are missing out on a treat.
We take a peek at the December, '54 Petroc , featuring a list of those on the Honor Roll for the marking period. Did you make it? Check for your name on page 14.
A few G'kid Halloween photos, just to keep the calendar straight, and...
...another delicious recipe from Desserts with Stephanie - a Pumpkin Bundt Cake with Cream Cheese, just in time for Thanksgiving. Give it a try!
Petroc Retrospective - Winter Freshman Year
A new world was opening up for us in the Fall of 1954, and one of the tools at our disposal to learn what was going on was Prep's official student publication - The Petroc. We will be highlighting an issue of the Petroc in each edition of the '58 Blog going forward, and we welcome your comments. The Editor believes that we will see the shift from what we thought was hot when we were freshmen to what we knew was really cool when we were seniors.
This edition features a list of guys who made the freshman Honor Roll for the marking period.
- Can you find the guys in the list who made it into the Greek class in sophomore year?
- Is that John Z. on the cover?
- And who is he sitting next to?
We got a much better turnout for the Zoom Cuppa we held on Monday, Nov 10th.
Rich Campion and Bill Wittman joined from Canada; Jim Heaney Md, Phil Campana TN, Bob Stubin VA, Tom Reilly CO, joined Dave Connolly, joined Peter Donnelly, George Armbruster and Vince from NJ.
We hope to see even more next month.
The Cuppa schedule resumed with a good turnout on Nov. 11th. Bob Filoramo and his son Marc, Bob Pipchick, Frank Geremia, Joe Machewirth, Dave Connolly and Vince joined Jim Horan, recently retired from his 51-year career with the Prep, at the Reo Diner.
We had intended to present Jim with a Cuppa Club Thank You mug when he officially retired earlier in the year, but we couldn't get schedules synched, so we took care of it this week. Jim has been a good friend to the '58 guys, and has always been available to Vince whenever we needed him.
We held our 67th Reunion Summa Bash on Tuesday, July 15th at Bar-A in Belmar, NJ and it was a great day!
We had a total of 32 attendees, close to the number of folks that attended last year's event. We have enough room at these events for more than 50, and we hope to set attendance records next year.
We gave away some cookies, and reviewed the latest results from our Annual Fund projects. Since 1982, when Prep started keeping records of fund raising events, the Class of '58 has raised more than $1.7M for the Annual Fund, the '58 Scholarship Fund, and various other events. Nice work!
The team at Bar-A did a great job at our event. We met from noon 'til 4:00, had some lunch and spent time together with folks we might not have seen since the year before. We captured some great photos and video, which you can see here.
And so, another reunion is in the books. We'll take a week or two off, and then get started on next year's Reunion. Let's make that one another record-breaker!
Prep '58 Website - It's worth another look...
On a Zoom call in May, we had a discussion about the Prep '58 website, and discovered that several guys on the call did not know that there was such a thing as a Prep '58 website. Some thought that the Blog was the only thing available for viewing.
Vince went thru a very quick report on the website (see image of the Home page to the left) and invited everyone to check out all that's available. And there really is a whole lot to see!
- The entire collection of Petroc's from our 4 years at Prep;
- the '58 Book Library with reviews by the gang; various photo and video collections, and other features of interest.
- We have all six of the photos from our senior retreat at Gonzaga, with most of the guys identified.
- G'Kid photos sent in over the years;
- Links to the '58 Petrean, Reunions, the After '58 Bio's, and a whole lot more.
If anyone has a suggestion for another feature for the website, send in your idea to Vince, and we'll give it a look.
Click here to visit the Prep '58 website.
Happy browsing!
We started the Blogtoons feature to share some of the humorous cartoons we get from time to time.
Some of them are not technically cartoons, but they all got a chuckle out of the Editor.
Most of them are from '58 guys, but occasionally we will get contributions from a few others...
If you come across one you think the gang would enjoy, send it in to Vince in an email.
Here's a peek at the best of the bunch, so far.
We made it to 41 Bio's...
... when we received Bio's from Joe Rodino and Norm Sippel. We hope to get to 50 or more. If you have not sent in a Bio, please take a look at the Bio's we have, and send in one of your own. There's a dozen delicious chocolate chunk cookies just waiting to be shipped for sending in your Bio.
'After '58' got started in March, 2017, when we received this suggestion from Bill Kretzer to collect stories from the '58 gang about what they did after graduation.
"I think there would be a bushel of interest in interviews with each & every ‘58 graduate. I for one, since I went away to college and never returned to NJ, didn’t keep in touch as much as I should have and would be curious to hear how everyone’s life turned out."
Bill sent in his Bio, and 8 years later, we are at 41. We should be approaching 100 Bio's by now, so we're asking for your help to get us there.
We hope every one of the '58 gang will pick up on Bill's suggestion and send in their story in an email to Vince. It takes no more time to put your story together than it would to tell it to your grandkids, so how about it? We will return the favor by sending a baker's dozen of Stephanie Grillo's famous Chocolate Chunk cookies. We've already shipped out over 500 of the best cookies you've ever tasted, and there's more where they came from.
Take a look at the whole collection of Bio's so far.
Vince shares a few Halloween G'kid photos...
"Every year since they were married 5 years ago, G'daughter Kortney and her husband Kyle have hosted a Halloween get together for family, friends and colleagues at their Galloway, NJ home.
It's a mix and mingle event, where some of the guests see each other regularly, and some haven't seen each other since the last party.
Since they started, the families have grown, a whole new generation was born, and the parties get better and better.
Vince"
