ROD LUMAYE

If there were a poster boy for the sterotypical nerd look, Rod Lumaye would win, hands down. He always reminded me of the actor Eddie Deezen. For those of you who may know him, check the pic in this link, and tell me I'm wrong.

http://imdb.com/name/nm0214430/

I first met Rod in 5th grade, in Ms. Krause's class. Two memories stand out. One is that when we got our pictures back, he was soooooooo thrilled with his. He was wearing some sort of sweater that had a colorful sunburst-type thing on it. And he was thrilled that it looked so good.

Later in the year, we had a party in the class, where everyone brought food. Ms. Krause made a really big deal about people eating whatever food they took. If you take it, you eat it! Imagine Rod's dilemma when he found himself disliking some sort of salad thing that he'd taken. He asked for my advice. I gave it. I told him to slyly go back to the table, grab the serving spoon, pretend to take more, but in reality, put the majority of the salad back ON the spoon, and put it back. I thought it was a brilliant plan. Rod did too. I would have pulled it off. Rod didn't.

I think I was in the process of trying to get seconds on Jason Anderson's meatballs (which were plugged in at the back of the room) when I suddenly heard the cackle of a few of the girls (was Amy Schmidt one of them?) screaming, "Rod!" Their outburst was immediately followed by revealing what Rod was doing. Needless to say, Ms. Krause was furious. I'm not sure what fate had in store for Rod. But I'm sure it wasn't pleasant.

Rod never had a lot of respect around school. But he wasn't a completely typical nerd. He could be annoying at times. And he also had somewhat of a backbone.

I had Rod in Mr. Ertman's sophomore year, pre-algebra 2 class. Somehow we started talking about baseball cards. I had been missing one player from the 1980 set - a pitcher named Ken Holtzman. Rod said he'd give it to me, if he had a double. Sure enough, he came through. This was a few years before the baseball card boom of the early 1990's. So Rod was my only option. That was cool.

I ran into Rod a few times at the video store over the years. I also ran into him at UW Manitowoc. We shared a couple of classes together. He was still into baseball. So we had a few amiable conversations. The last I heard from him, he said he was going to become a police officer.

I guess it never happened. But he must have come close. These days, I believe he is a security officer at Oneida Bingo & Casino. It looks as if he's divorced, but has remarried. I don't know if he has any children. But it looks like his current wife may have kids from previous husbands. I believe they reside in Two Rivers.

UPDATE - 11/13/06 - On Saturday, August 12th, 2006, Kevin Dehne and I took our second trip to Two Rivers. We'd stopped by Rod's house on our first trip. But he wasn't home. This time we were more lucky. We found him in his backyard. Surprisingly, Rod has become a smoker. He said he'd started at some point in the early 1990's. We had a pretty good time with Rod. He also had lots of stories to share. We laughed quite a bit. We spent a good half hour there, perhaps even longer.