WASHINGTON HIGH SCHOOL TWO RIVERS WI CLASS OF 1989

Friday, February 16, 2007

UPDATE - DAVE SVATEK

I had lunch with Dave on Wednesday of this week. I snapped a photo of him before he left. You can see it in his entry.

Enjoy!

P.S. A few posts down from here, is a picture of Mr. Schott. Read Cindy's new comment. It's a good one!

Thursday, February 15, 2007

UPDATE - KEVIN DEHNE

I added three new pictures of Kevin. They were taken by himself, as he watched the Steven Avery trial on his computer. You can find them in his entry.

Enjoy!

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

WELCOME - REBECCA SHEDLOSKY

Becky has signed on and left a comment in her entry. She's using the name "Sprout."

Welcome Becky!

Monday, February 12, 2007

IS THIS MR. SCHOTT?

According to the Two Rivers High School's website, it is. It's definitely him. But he looks a little older. Then again, I haven't seen him in close to 18 years.

Friday, February 09, 2007

MRS. KULAS

Mrs. Kulas (Peg) was one of two Spanish teachers at Washington High School.

I never had her as a teacher. So I don’t have a whole lot of memories about her. She wore glasses, and kind of looked “motherly” to me. I guess that’s to be expected. She had at least two daughters – both of whom were somewhat close in age to me.

From what I recall about Kulas, I really didn’t care for her. She seemed a little bit snotty to me. But again, not having her as a teacher, I can’t really judge her. My friend Dave had her however. I don’t think he cared for her that much. In fact, during our sophomore year, he told me about a little incident he had with her.

Dave had really sloppy penmanship. It was as messy as messy can be. Apparently Kulas chided him for it. Dave put up the defense that he simply couldn’t help it. That’s just the way he wrote. Kulas snapped back, “That’s bullshit!” To which Dave replied, “It’s not bullshit. It’s serious.” I highly doubt Dave changed his ways.

After high school, I ran into Mrs. Kulas quite a bit. She and her husband would come into T&R Video a lot. They were beyond regular customers. They were always friendly to me. I’m not sure how many kids they had. But they had at least two – class of 1992’s Ellen, and class of 1995’s Gail. Gail came in quite a bit too. I always thought she was cute. I actually had Ellen in a class or two at UW Manitowoc.

Since I left T&R Video, I’ve not seen her since. Today she still lives in Two Rivers. And she also still teaches Spanish at the high school.

UPDATE - 4/27/07 - I found this recent picture of Mrs. Kulas. She looks almost pretty much the same as she did 20 years ago.



UPDATE - 6/5/07 - A member of the class of 1990 (who prefers to remain anonymous) sent me this brief memory on Mrs. Kulas. "During the Spanish class trip to Mexico City, Mrs. Kulas asked me to "stop being a bitch". I was being a bitch, so I guess that was deserved. But looking back I think it is very funny."

Thursday, February 08, 2007

MRS. SCHWANTES

Mrs. Schwantes (Carol) was a teacher at Washington High School. I had her during my sophomore year. She taught various English courses. I can’t exactly recall which class I actually had her for. I barely passed it though. Perhaps that’s one reason for the faulty memory.

Mrs. Schwantes is the mother of fellow graduate Wyatt Wood. Thus she is the ex-wife of the former vice principal, Mr. Wood. When I was in high school, she was married to fellow teacher Ken Schwantes. See my entry on Mr. Wood for more details surrounding this.

I liked Mrs. Schwantes. She was always friendly to me. She was always smiling too. What more can you ask? For the life of me, I can’t even recall any of my fellow students from that class – with the exception of that one guy from the group home that everyone called “Ski.” See my entry on Mr. Wenner for a story on him. Of course I can’t even remember what Ski’s real name was either. If memory serves, I may have had several freshmen in that class.

Our class was very well behaved. It made for a pretty laid back teaching style. It was a semester course. I think I had her during the second semester.

In the final quarter, most of it was devoted to this giant term paper. The paper was on what we wanted to do as a profession. Schwantes had several thick books which had lengthy bits of information regarding virtually every profession available. I decided I wanted to be an airline pilot – seriously. But my dreams were crushed when I found out that you had to have 20/20 vision, unaided. Oh well. That didn’t stop me from daydreaming though. I grabbed that book everyday. I read it and reread it. It really sounded like something I wanted to do. Schwantes gave us weeks to do this paper. She often gave us the entire period to research and write it. I used that time to simply read that portion of the book, over and over again. So of course when the day came to turn the assignment in, I had nothing. Yes, I had done absolutely nothing in regards to that paper. Yet somehow I managed to squeak by with a D- for the semester. Woohoo! I passed!

That was the one and only time I had her for a teacher. To the best of my knowledge, we never spoke again. Although I do have a vague memory of her coming into the video store a few times. So I guess we did talk a few more times post high school.

At some point in the 1990’s (I think) she and Mr. Schwantes divorced. I believe she is retired today. I think she still lives in Two Rivers. I imagine she’s in her mid-60’s by now. It looks as if she’s into arts and crafts. She’s also heavily involved with her church – a church in which fellow graduates Elmer Mikeal and Jennifer Hansel also belong to.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

MS. KRAUSE

Miss Krause (Brenda) was my 5th grade teacher at Magee. Thanks to Cindy Rohrer, we have a couple of pictures from that class. Of course my photo somehow wasn’t included in the class photo. But there are two other pictures you can see me in. In one of them I’m leering at Treesa Carron. I make no apologies for that!

In the class photo, from left to right, starting with the top row, we see Rod Lumaye, Mr. Willert, Miss Krause, Cory Schultz, Becky Koeppel, Dawn Schmidt, Sheila Zach, Troy Rezachek, Pookie Bergeon, Craig Stangel, Jenny Dent, Tricia Wetzel, Shane Peterson, Erin Hynek, Dean Lichterman, Tracy Peterson, Brian Belongia, Treesa Carron, Lisa King, Randy Klein, Trina Taddy, Jay Rozmarynoski, Jason Anderson, Ken Bartz, Jeremy Karman, Lori Wavrunek, Any Reinhart, Cindy Rohrer and Chad Daffner.



In the top photo you see Jason Anderson, Ken Bartz, Andy Reinhart, Jeremy Karman, Cory Schultz, ???, Rod Lumaye. Craig Stangel and Randy Klein. In the bottom photo you see my staring at Treesa Carron, followed by Erin Hynek, Tricia Wetzel, Lisa King, Cindy Rohrer, Jenny Dent, Pookie Bergeon and Lori Wavrunek.



In this collage of photos, Miss Krause's class is in the upper left. I think you can figure out who everyone is. I believe Tracy Peterson is in the upper right. You can only see her arm. Tracy rarely spoke. But she did cling to Lori Wavrunek - who is right next to her. So I assume that's her.



As I finished 4th grade, Mrs. Schmidt told me that she was putting me in Krause’s class for 5th grade. She was very blunt about her reasons why. She said Krause had been known to take a whip to her students when they got out of line. Lovely. I have a hard time believing that’s true. After all, it was the 1980’s, not the 1880’s.

Anyway, there’s no doubt that Krause was a strict disciplinarian. With my cocky attitude and rebellious nature, you’d think that she and I would have constantly clashed. But for whatever reason, we didn’t. In fact, she and I rarely had any problems with each other at all. I got yelled at here and there. But I received the brunt of her wrath no more than the average student. In fact I know that a lot of the students didn’t care for her. But I never had much of a problem with her.

When people did get out of line, she’d banish them to the hall. More than anyone, Cory Schultz took the brunt of her wrath throughout the entire school year. Miss Hynek had Shawn Pickard. Miss Krause had Cory Schultz. Once or twice each week we would inevitably hear Krause scream at the top of her lungs, “Mr. Schultz, in the hall!” Then she’d continue teaching. When she was good and ready, she’d venture into the hallway to chew him out. During the course of that 1981 - 1982 school year, I was sent in the hall only once. And in my case, there was no yelling. She calmly told me to leave. And when she did come out to talk to me, she was calm then too.

Miss Krause had a policy about going to the bathroom. If you went up to ask her whether you could go or not, she would reply, “Is it an emergency?” If it wasn’t, you sat back down. Of course that was sort of a dumb concept if you ask me. 90% of the time, the students would say that it was. I of course bucked the trend once and said, “No.” But about 10 minutes later, I asked her again. At that point, she simply said, “Yes.”

I have an odd memory of a day that I got sick. I didn’t throw up or anything. But I ended up leaving class and going to that one room near the office, where there was a cot for students to lie down on. I think I laid there for about 45 minutes. Then Miss Krause came to check on me. When she walked in, she bypassed me, and went straight into an adjoining bathroom that was there. It was a one-seater which could be used by anyone. And I was sort of embarrassed. Because I could hear every drop of her peeing. Do you know how unsettling it is to hear your teacher pee? Well I do. Trust me, it is. It must have been an emergency.

Krause used what she called a “backboard.” It was a set of cupboards in the back of the room. Whenever someone had neglected to finish their assignment, she would write down the name of the assignment on a piece of paper. Then she’d tape it to the cupboard. Then she’d write down the name of each student who had failed to complete it. The only way to get your name off the board was to actually finish the assignment. Then she’d let you cross your name off. I think at one time or another, nearly every student made at least one appearance on the backboard. As I recall, Jenny Dent appeared on nearly every single paper. At some point in February or March of that year, I went into some sort of funk, and wound up with my name on about 10 different pages. Krause ended up calling my parents about it. Needless to say, my parents made me stay in my room until I got caught up on all of them. Krause was often fond of pointing out that when we got into high school, the teachers wouldn’t let finish uncompleted assignments at a later date.

I do have another peeing story surrounding that class. This one involves me. And I’m not proud of it. But hey, I might as well be honest about everything. I had been out sick one day. We happened to take a test on the day I missed. Well we ended up going over the test in class. Since I had yet to take it, she made me go into the back room. I think I was doing some other school work or something. But then I suddenly had to go to the bathroom. And it was an emergency! The door was closed. But it had a small window. I peered out and saw that class was going on. I thought it would have been really awkward to come out, interrupt the class, and ask to go. For some reason I thought people would laugh. And I didn’t want that embarrassment. So for that reason, I decided to go inside this tall box she had. I really, really had to go. So I did. So be it. That was 25 years ago. I was 10. What’s the big deal now?

If memory serves, Miss Krause had a slight limp in her walk. She may have been slightly hunched over a bit. I could be wrong about that though.

I don’t think Miss Krause was ever married. She lived on the far north side of town, near L.B. Clarke (and Toby Schwartz for that matter). I do recall that she had a dog. I think it was a golden retriever. She even brought it to class one day.

See my entries on Dawn Schmidt, Tracy Peterson, Rod Lumaye, Pookie Bergeon, Jason Anderson, Andy Reinhart, Nikki Baugniet, Cindy Rohrer and Cory Schultz for a few other stories about Miss Krause.

After I left 5th grade (which was my last year at Magee School) I don’t think I ever ran into her again. Today she still lives in the same house. I would imagine she’s retired. She would be in her early-60’s by now. It appears as if she’s a trustee at the Two Rivers Library. What a trustee does in a mystery to me. She also appears to be involved with a local kennel club. I guess her love of dogs continues to this day.

UPDATE - 2/8/07 - A little angel told me that Miss Krause is indeed retired. However, she apparently does work as a substitute teacher from time to time.