Heidelberg Lions '66 Website

Alumni and friends can buy their own CD recording (2 discs) of the 1967 HHS musical, SouthPacific! The recording was made at the dress rehearsal, and includes "whistle blowing" when we forgot to "project." It's the whole show, from (almost) the first note of the overture through the curtain call. This is audio only, transcribed from a reel-to-reel tape recording preserved by Shelly Ferrell ('68, but left for Arizona), and Bruce Barrett ('67). Sound quality is what you would expect from a single micropone out in an echoing auditorium. RCA Victor has nothing to worry about, but it's great fun hearing yourself and your friends in what was a darn good show.

Ready for some time warping? Our parents (the main audience) were in many cases the men and women who fought the war that we portrayed on the stage in Heidelberg. Another time warp? We are now older than our parents were when they came to see the show!

The cost is $10 for the two-disc CD recording, and $7 postage and handling for any address, state-side or not. Contact the company directly.

Reel 2 Reel 2 CD Transfer
114 S. Church St.
New Carlisle OH 45344

Toll - 1-800-617-TAPE (8273)
Local - 937-846-1630

Fax - 937-679-5098

Email - info@reel2reel2cd.com

I recommend them highly. Do any of you have tape recordings or super-8 film from back in the day? I believe these people will care for them well as they make them available for modern viewing or listening. The initial cost is reasonable and the price for additional copies (as above) is a bargain.

Go Lions!

Bruce Barrett, '67

Hi Lane --

I just went to a screening today of the film "Brats: Our Journey Home" in Cambridge,Mass. Small group but the film was great. Nobody from Heidelberg in the audience, but there are several great stills and some old film from a graduation at the Schloss. I think it's worth running a reminder to the folks, as the filmmaker is in the middle of quite an extensive tour. Check it out at www.bratsfilm.com.

I think you should contact the filmmaker directly, since you have done so much, and you also have a unique John Deere experience. I didn't tell her much about you, just that you have woven together quite a crowd from the sixties. Of course, the only e-mail I gave her was mine.Her name is Donna Musil, donna@bratsfilm.com, and she's very nice.

A few of us grabbed lunch after the show, and for the first time in many years I felt like I was on home turf, though I had never met any of them. There's a kind of tone, a cadence with everyone talking at once that I haven't heard since the lunch room at school, or Gerhard's, or zum Ritter.

Bruce Barrett, '67

Contract awarded for Wiesbaden USAREUR center
By Mark Patton, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, October 20, 2009

WIESBADEN, Germany The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract for the design and construction of the U.S. Army Europe Command and Battle Center on Wiesbaden Army Airfield, seemingly ending any speculation that the Armys European headquarters would remain in Heidelberg.

4/10/2010
Here is the latest I have on Heidelberg High closing. This comes from the Chief of Staff of the Heidelberg District Superintendent's Office:

The draw down in Heidelberg will probably begin in a year or two. It is highly unlikely that HHS will close prior to 2014-15. Even Mannheim schools are still open and will not close this year. It was predicted they would close last year. HQ and Mannheim cannot move to Wiesbaden until the construction is completed. It is scheduled to be completed in 2013 if there are no delays. Heidelberg HS has dropped some in enrollment, but still has approximately 660 students. There has been no indication here in the garrison that a closing is impending in 2012. The German newspaper mentioned the possibility of 2013. It is impossible to know, but 2012 is only a year away in terms of school years. Seems highly unlikely. It is predicted that the school population will continue to decline over the next two school years and then will begin to increase as USAREUR moves to Wiesbaden.

Green Lantern: 1/29/2012

Hey Heidelbergers! Hope all is well. The Green Lantern was out the back gate of the colonels quarters as we call it. About a quarter mile down on the right before the drink factory. It is now called the Schutzenhaus which is a common name for a gasthaus located on the outskirts associated with hunting/shooting. It is a popular place for families and teachers now. The kids go downtown HD for their fun of course. - Rich Bennett '66

Dear Lane,

I don't know if you are interested in this--or if anyone else is, but I just sent for a book called "One of Us Works For Them," by Jack D. Hunter. It was published in 1967, which is when I first read it. I just sent for a copy from a website called Abebooks, so that I can read it again. I was thinking about my years in Heidelberg and feeling a little nostalgic for those days, and I figured this book would take me back to the old days.

It is set in Campbell barracks, and it mentions various sites in Heidelberg that I remember, including the I.G. Farben building.

Peggy Coffey, English teacher, 1965-1970.

Its with a very heavy heart that I tell you all of the passing of Thomas Micket, English Teacher from the mid to late 60's. He died from lung cancer! I spoke with him 6 months ago and he was still smoking his Camel Unfiltered Cigs. I learned this news from Teacher/Coach Wayne Sabin at the 2012 Estes Park Reunion....! RIP Tom you will be missed by many....!

PHV will officially close down on Aug 30th, 2013 and HHS will officially close down on Sept 30th, 2013Mary Lawlor, HHS '67 has written a book about growing up as Military Brat during the Cold War. Following is a brief of the book. You can contact Mary at: Lawlor@Muhlenberg.edu.

This is NOT a solicitation on my part to promote her book. It's merely information so you can contact her if you are interested.

Subject: The Pilots House - Mary Lawlor THE PILOT'S HOUSE tells the story of the author as a young woman coming of age in an Irish Catholic, military family during the Cold War. Her father, an aviator in the Marines and later the Army, was transferred more than a dozen times to posts from Miami to California and Germany as the government's Cold War policies demanded. For the pilots wife and daughters, each move meant a complete upheaval of ordinary life. The car was sold, bank accounts closed, and of course one school after another was left behind. Friends and later boyfriends lined up in memory as a series of temporary attachments. The book describes the dramas of this traveling household during the middle years of the Cold War. In the process, THE PILOTS HOUSE shows how the larger turmoil of American foreign policy and the effects of Cold War politics permeated our domestic universe. The climactic moment of the story takes place in the spring of 1968, when the authors father was stationed in Vietnam and she was attending college in Paris. Having left the familys quarters in Heidelberg, Germany the previous fall, she was still an ingnue; but her strict upbringing had not gone deep enough to keep her anchored to her parents world. When the May riots broke out in the Latin quarter, she attached myself to the student leftists and American draft resisters who were throwing cobblestones at the French police. Getting word of her activities via a Red Cross telegram delivered on the airfield in Da Nang, Vietnam, her father came to Paris to find her. The book narrates their dramatically contentious meeting and return to the American military community of Heidelberg. The book concludes many years later, as the Cold War came to a close. After decades of tension that made communication all but impossible, the author and her father reunited. As the chill subsided in the world at large, so it did in the relationship between the pilot and his daughter. When he died a few years later, the hard edge between them, like the Cold War stand-off, had become a distant memory.

UPDATE 2/23/2013: the title to my book has been changed by the publisher to "Fighter Pilot's Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War".

DIRECT LINK TO THE BROCHURE "HEIDELBERG CLOSING EVENTS"
(Unfortunately it's posted sideways so it would fit on the pages)

I received the following info from Tom Peterson '69 about this book. It might be very interesting for those of us who lived in Heidelberg back then.

http://www.amazon.com/Heidelberg-Days-1964-1968-frank-lyons/dp/1505439833/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428432510&sr=1-6&keywords=lyons+frank