JERRY LEGREVE

His real name was Jerome. But he went by the name of Jerry.

Jerry joined me at Washington. Over the years I kind of had mixed feelings about him. Sometimes he was nice enough. Other times he was kind of a jerk. I never knew where I stood with him. Although I will say that as the years progressed, the jerk side of him mellowed quite a bit.

I had Jerry in gym class, freshman year. What stands out in my mind was playing softball. Jerry was kind of a hefty guy. And he could pound the crap out of that ball. "Jer Bear's up - back up." No kidding. He'd hit that ball all the way to the cars parked on the street. In time, those of us in the outfield knew to back up as far as we could. So we could generally get the ball back in before he rounded the bases. The fact that Jerry had a little extra girth also held him to a neverending series of triples.

Matt Doran joined us in our junior year. He and Jerry became best friends. In fact, on our senior video, the two of them did some sort of Bartles & James routine.

I saw Jerry from time to time at the video store. If I'm not mistaken, for awhile, he somehow became part-owner of the Studio 8 in Manitowoc. But I don't think he is today. I think he may work in a factory setting. If memory serves, Jerry also married quite young, and had kids at a young age also. Today he still lives in Two Rivers, with his wife Michelle. I believe they have two children.

UPDATE - 6/18/07 - Yesterday, Kevin Dehne and I stopped in to see Jerry. When we got there, we found that Jerry had just gotten up - even though it was late in the afternoon. His stepson answered and let us in the house. When Jerry came out, he was happy to see us. He said he'd been out drinking a bit the night before. So he was a little slow in starting his day.

Jerry said he'd read this blog before. He seemed to get a kick out of it. He said word had spread fast and that he'd heard about it from a lot of people. As far as he knew, no one was mad about it. But he surmised that Craig Rysticken might have been. In fact, his stepson apparently just graduated from Two Rivers High School. And he had Craig as a teacher. He told us that some of Craig's students had teased him about this blog a little bit. But Craig apparently brushed it off and moved on to another topic. He did go on to say that Craig is a pretty good teacher, and is well-liked by the students.

As it turns out, Jerry was not a part owener of Studio 8. In fact, that bar was one of his rivals. He ran a bar called Charlies. It sounds like he's thought about reopening at some point down the road. But as of yet, he has no future plans to.

With a full beard, Jerry somewhat resembles Michael McDonald, the lead singer of The Doobie Brothers. Before we left, we snapped a few pictures in Jerry's kitchen. Look down to see them.