2023 WSHS Alumni Weekend

Each year the Alumni Weekend in Willow Springs brings back memories and provides an opportunity to reconnect with friends and discover new stories to share. This year was no exception. 

After visiting with brother Jack (BTHS, 1961) and his pack of German shepherds on Friday, I received a text from sister-in-law Sandy (WSHS, 1963) inviting me to the Class of 1963 dinner party at Cattlemens Steakhouse. I had always admired that class, so I was happy to be an interloper. 

After only a few steps inside the restaurant, a man with the biggest grin you can imagine strolled toward me with his hand extended. “Teddy Bunch,” he said. I instantly recalled a night sixty-some years ago, before an out-of-town football game, when Teddy and I went to my house for a pregame dinner, which included my grandmother’s blackberry cobbler. 

I took one of the few remaining seats, between Alice West Brook (WSHS, 1967) and Sandy, and managed to eat half of the salmon Alice had ordered. 

Around the room, I saw schoolmates I hadn’t seen since they graduated: Deanna Gentry Casebeer, Jean McCreary Gardner, Glenna Sanders Davolt, Janella Madden, Kay Napoleon Dickison, Carolyn Gibbs Bunch, Nancy Smith, Cleta Dean Collins, Etta Green, Bonnie Wheat, and Richard Grogan. Others, I’ve seen more recently: Joanne Longnecker Taylor, Delbert McCormic, Tom White and wife Phyliss, and Linda Pruett White and husband Deon (WSHS, 1960).

Several former Class of 1963 athletes in attendance had been teammates: Dennis “Butch” Coulter, Denver Lawson (a first-team all-conference lineman), and David James, one of Willow’s best basketball players.

David, first-team all-SCA, led the conference in scoring his senior year. At six-foot three-plus, David wasn’t the tallest player on the team, but he always “jumped center” to start the games because he had the greatest vertical leap. 

I recall him dribbling around defensive players and launching his body in the air like a broad-jumper from around the free-throw line, with the ball in an outstretched hand. If an opponent leaped to block him, he flipped the ball to his other hand and slammed it in the basket.

I asked David how he learned to shoot with both hands. He told me his collarbone was broken in football practice, so with his right arm in a sling, he spent months in the gym dribbling and shooting with his left hand. His talent opened the door to play at William Jewell College.

David also excelled in baseball as a pitcher. He had the most remarkable knuckleball I have ever seen, which he threw with a unique one-finger grip. Two or three fingers, yes, but one finger is virtually unknown. A knuckleball, one of the hardest pitches to master produces an erratic ball flight with little spin that appears to go in different directions and is a challenge for batters. And David’s was a dandy—it was hard to catch, too—I know, as the behind-the-plate catcher for him one night in a summer league game. David told me his grandfather (Williams), who had been a good pitcher when Hutton Valley had a team prior to World War I, taught him how to throw it.

Saturday morning, I drove to Shannon County. Montier has succumbed to time, and other than a few scattered houses, only the Church of God of Prophecy looks the same. The Montier Cemetery, however, is well maintained. After meandering for a while past the graves of ancestors and those with familiar names, I noticed a pickup truck slowing at the gate. A woman rolled down the window on the passenger’s side and yelled, “Are you Lonnie Whitaker?” 

To my surprise, Judy Mizer Barnes, a dear friend whom I’ve known as long as I can literally remember, opened the door and stepped out. Our families moved to Shannon County from Iowa at the same time in 1956. It had been years since we last saw each other. Later, Judy wrote about our meeting on Facebook saying she had seen this “old man” strolling in the cemetery that turned out to be me. Old man? I move like a man twice my age. 

On the way back to Willow, I detoured up Highway 17 and pulled off the road at the bridge over Jacks Fork, which is the site of numerous baptisms, including my first. First? Yes, after I moved to Willow Springs, the Baptist preacher Floyd Gentry apparently thought in my case a second dunking was necessary. Incidentally, the scene of Jacks Fork at the Highway 17 bridge is the screensaver on my computer. 

Saturday afternoon at the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) hanger, approximately 250 former students and family members gathered for the annual WSHS Alumni Weekend picnic. Phyliss and Tom White, all the Baileys, and the rest of the organizers deserve encomiums for another successful outing. 

Classmate Leon Brassfield, wearing his signature smile and straw cowboy hat, recalling an article from a couple weeks ago, asked me if I had seen any more “Longhorn chickens.” Perhaps, my motto should be “often wrong, but never in doubt.” 

John Carr (WSHS, 1968), a real banjo player, and I discussed clawhammer and bluegrass styles. Wendell Bailey gave me a marvelous idea for a sequel to my novel, Soda Fountain Blues, and cornered Mark James (WSHS, 1994) for supporting background material.

Speaking of James boys, I saw brothers Randy (WSHS, 1967) and Tim (WSHS, 1973), both outstanding athletes. Tim and his cousin Mark became a defensive duo the Bears play-by-play announcer referred to as the “James Gang,” as in “another tackle by the James Gang.” Randy, a first-team all-SCA defensive player, and I bragged that opponents never ran around our side of the line. The pride diminished a bit when we noticed John Twist (WSHS, 1967) who was “all-everything” in football.

Another of Willow’s best basketball players, Bill Shanks (WSHS, 1966), attended this year’s event. Twice awarded first-team all-SCA honors, he also earned all-Ozark and all-state honorable mention. I still wouldn’t challenge Bill to a game of “horse,” even if he spotted me the first four letters.

Classmate Annette Tetrick Johnson introduced me to Wanda Street (WSHS, 1950). Annette explained she had met Wanda at church in Florida, and was surprised to learn they were both from Willow Springs. With the introduction, I realized I had actually met Wanda one time before, in November 1964, when I was a patient at a hospital in Springfield, Missouri, for knee surgery resulting from a football injury.

After I was wheeled into the operating room, a nurse came to my bedside and said, “I see you are from Willow Springs. Do you know Mr. Thomas, the principal?” I told her I did. She said, “I bet he’s a pretty mean guy.” I said, “Oh no. I like Mr. Thomas.” She said, “That’s good, because he’s my father.” Wanda says she remembers the incident. Now, the story I’ve told for years is corroborated.  

I enjoyed visiting with my Class of 1965 classmates: Donna Spence Romans, Joe Corn and wife Janie, and Buddy Stuart with brother Mike (WSHS, 1967), Joe Bradford, and Peggy Henry Bradford and husband Jack (WSHS, 1964). Incidentally, Jack, with a wry smile, asked me if I still arm-wrestled. I told him not since my one and only pathetic effort against him that resulted in the same experience most people had when they arm-wrestled Jack Bradford—losing. 

As usual, the weekend closed for me in the lobby of the Comfort Inn on Saturday night, with “Midnight Round Table” members Barbara Sherrill Pig, Dee Collins Corn, and Charlie Hord (all WSHS, 1964) and Roberta Haase Donnell (WSHS, 1969), laughing like teenagers as we remembered the way we were.