We were the first class to get letter jackets. Bob Dahl modeled one with a white "D" letter, and I showed off a jacket with a red "D." The lettermen chose white, so all new jackets had the white letter. I kept mine with the red letter. My daughter wore it and had it stolen in Costa Rica. Never did try to replace it.

I THINK CHARLIE DESERVES A PAT OR TWO FOR WHAT HE DID FOR SPORTS AND THE SKI,CROSS COUNTRY TEAMS. HE PROBLY GOT LOST FOR MOST STUDENTS BECAUSE HE WAS OVER AT WASHINGTON MACHINE SHOP. CHARLIE BUILT A TRANING FACILITY FOR CROSSCOUNTRY SKI TRAINING AT HIS PLACE IN CLOVER VALLEY. HE MAINTAINED IT AND HAD STUDENTS HELP IN RESTORING AN OLD SKI DOO TRACK MACHINE TO GROOM IT. MANY OTHER SCHOOLS USE THE TRACK ALSO. CHARLIE ALSO WAS ONE HELL OF A GOOD TEACHER FOR MACHINE SHOP AS HE WORKED AS A MACHINIST IN THE SUMMER.

THANKS CHARLIE

YOGI

Cars and transportation were always important, both in High School and in College.  In High School, we used to quadruple date in my 1951 Hudson, eight people, four in front an four in back.  Nick Grundman, Terry Swor, Milt Huhta, Gordy Granmoe, Bob Nylen, Bob Lyle, Bob Nelson, Harry Sorman, Charlie Davidson, Dave Carlson, and many others, went to football games, dances, and for pizza, on fishing trips, down to the Twin Cities, and you name it, in that car.

Between Junior High and High Schools, Milt Huhta had a Cushman Eagle Motor Scooter with a hopped up engine and we used to take road trips on it.  I owned three Hudsons, including a Hornet Hollywood Hardtop, with a big engine and dual carburetors.  I also owned a 1957 Pontiac and a 1960 Oldsmobile, both were Station Wagons.  Terry Swor, had a 1953 Chevy that we used on double dates. Gordy Grandmoe, had a 1956 Buick that we double dated in. I remember Nick Grundman, had a DeSoto with a V-8 and a fluid clutch.  Frank Cooper, had several Willys-Jeep-vehicles.

Submitted by Bill Lowell

Editors Note: In the picture, the guy in the Fedora hat driving the Hudson is not Bill, however Bill says that the color of the car is very close (and yes this is a 1951 Hudson).  What other cars do you remember classmates driving?  Dick Vitullo's 195_? Chev, Barrett Nelson's 1957 Chev, Ken Sjoquist's 1956 Oldsmobile rear-ended by Ken Sorensen's Mom's 1957 Ford...

Click on names in Blue to find more about that person.  Names in Red are not part of our class.

Miss Majo was the best math teacher I ever had.  Marjorie Majo taught me plane geometry in the 10th grade.  She made the subject seem so ... logical ... that it almost was easy.  Her teaching style involved her making part of a statement, then pausing at the end for all the students to say the next word, in unison.  A very effective style, which makes me wonder why no other math teacher did that.
 
My saying she was the best math teacher I had actually means something--I had a LOT of math teachers.  I got an undergraduate major in math (mainly because a University of Minnesota math prof wasn't paying attention when he approved 15 credits of Finite Math taken at UMD--I hope the statute of limitations on withdrawing degrees has run out!).  I also took math classes after getting my B.A. degree.
 
The worst math teacher I had was at the University of Minnesota, where I took third-semester calculus in the Engineering Department.  (I think today students take that in about the 7th grade, but I'm not sure.)  The only thing I remember about that calculus course was one time when a student asked the prof for some help after class.  The prof told him, in an irritated voice heard across campus, that the student should take a week off and just think about his problem.  Maybe that would be a good strategy, but I would think that a guy getting paid to teach would actually try to teach, rather than tell students to learn the material themselves.
 
Another "interesting" math prof I had tried to teach me partial differential equations.  I don't think he tried too hard.  About the only thing I remember from his class was that, if you can't seduce a woman by playing Ravel's Bolero, well, you're hopeless.  I did in fact buy Ravel's Bolero, and, well, yeah, I guess I was hopeless.  Or still am hopeless.
 
But I digress.  Miss Majo was the best math teacher I ever had.  I only wish I had told her that.

Submitted by Doug Johnson

If Marjorie Majo was the best math teacher I had at Central, Dale Baum was the most interesting teacher.  He taught 11th grade English, probably called American Literature.  He taught that subject, but his heart really was in theatre.  He was Central's drama coach.  And during English class, he indeed was dramatic, regaling us with stories mostly unrelated to the subject, but also more interesting. 

He wasn't keen on grammar.  He was supposed to teach us to diagram sentences, organizing parts such as subject, verb, object, and modifying adjectives and adverbs.  And other things I don't remember.  Mr. Baum would have a student go to the blackboard and show how a particular sentence should be diagrammed.  He would look at it for a while and say, "That looks good."  And I, being a nerdy know-it-all, generally would raise my hand and say something like "Shouldn't the 'very' modify 'rich' rather than 'person'?"  And he would ultimately agree.  What he probably wanted to do was throw an eraser at me, or something harder. 

But he inspired some of us, especially about theatre.  Even I got involved, doing some backstage things, but way too bashful (as well as untalented) to do anything in front of an audience.  Mr. Baum was not above having favorite students.  He praised Nada Kenyon for being the most vivacious student in our class.  (And who would argue?)  He also liked Frank Cooper.  I'm not sure that was because Frank was vivacious--and I'm not saying he wasn't--or possibly because Frank's family lived on Park Point and owned a boat.  I just don't know.  Just as football coaches have to teach something (usually physical education or history) so they can coach, Dale Baum taught English so he could produce school plays.  He brought a lot of enthusiasm to both activities, such that, even 51 years later, I still appreciate what he did.

Submitted by Doug Johnson

This story is not so much about what happened at Central, but about two 1961 Central grads.  One was me (One was I?).  The other was my first girlfriend (FG).  I will try to protect my anonymity, and will protect hers, by referring to her only as my FG.
 
We attended the same elementary school, which we walked together to and from each day, in kindergarten and in first grade.  She was the cutest girl in class, and I felt extremely fortunate.  Although we didn't do anything else together, our relationship seemed sincere.  Three examples:  Once my FG had constructed some sort of paper-folding thing, so that when someone (like me) made three selections (such as, favorite color), the object opened up to some saying.  When my FG put me through my paces, she looked away and wouldn't tell me what this magical paper thing said, but showed it to me.  It said, "I love you."  Wow!
 
And remember Valentine's Day in elementary school?  Each student would give each other student in the class a valentine card, punched out of a sheet of 40 cards that cost all of 19 cents for the lot of them.  Not my FG; she gave me a real card, in a real envelope, that said something more than the lame 40-for-19 cents cards said.  It was sincere.  I still have the card, 62 years later.
 
I used to buy her candy on the way home each day.  (Remember being able to buy six caramels for a nickel?)  One day, she asked me to give her the money instead of a candy bar, because she was saving to buy a bike.
 
And so it went through kindergarten and first grade.  On the first day of second grade, I went to the usual corner where we met and waited for her.  But she didn't show up.  Second day, same thing.  Third day, she still didn't show.  And I was too bashful (=backward) to ask her why.  After several days of this implicit rejection, I quit waiting and instead took a more direct route to and from school.  But disappointed every day.
 
We never talked again, through elementary school, junior high school, and high school.  She was part of the "in" crowd; I was not.  And she was one of the cutest, if not THE cutest, girls in our graduating class.
 
She attended the first reunion I went to, our 15th (remember two-for-50-cents drinks?).  I asked her to dance, and we talked a bit, about families and things.  But I didn't ask her why she had dumped me.  I was too bashful, and I probably didn't want to know.  And she was still about the cutest alumna there.
 
Most likely, we will both be at our 50th reunion.  From everything I've seen, she will still be about the cutest.  I hope to talk with her.  But I likely won't ask what happened.  I probably don't want to know.  And, after 61 years, she probably won't remember.

Anonymous

It was my junior year in high school and the Junior/Senior Prom was coming up and boy did I have a crush on Karen Christianson.  We met working on the Junior Class Play “You Can’t Take It With You”.  I was in charge of lighting and she worked on the committee.  After several tries, I finally got up the courage to ask her to the prom (thanks to the encouragement of Karen Johnson with whom I confided my desires).  To my great surprise she accepted.  We double dated with Karen Johnson (and her future husband Ron Bartlett) several times prior to the prom, but come the night of the prom I was to pick up “my” Karen in my mom’s new 1960 red and white Chevrolet Corvair.  It was to be a night to be remembered, little did I know why at the time. 

The week before the prom we had rainfall after rainfall.  Karen and I dated during that time; however, it became increasingly difficult to get to her house that was located on a dirt road north of Duluth.  The day of the prom came and although the rain had stopped, Karen’s road was impassable, especially for the low-slung body of my Corvair.  Was I to lose that most special event of my life?  No, but what could I do?  Then Karen called saying that her dad would drive her out to the paved part of the road and I could pick her up there.  When I got there, to my surprise here comes Karen and her dad driving down the road on his full size tractor.

From then on the evening was sheer delight and, as I remember it, time flew quickly and like Cinderella, I had to have Karen back at the pick up point at midnight (or maybe it was later, the mind blurs and exaggerates with age).  Evidently, the road wasn’t as bad as Karen’s dad had thought or maybe when she insisted on going, he was going to make it as difficult as he could.  In any case, as I met him at the designated location, there he was in his 1957 Edsel, ready to pick up my “Princess of the Prom”.

We seemed to go our separate ways after that, due to my major competition who was a dude on a motorcycle (Karen loved motorcycles) and I had all I could do to stay on my bike. C'est la vie*. 

*(Wikipedia - "That's life!"; or "Such is life!" or "It is what it is!" It is sometimes used as an expression to say that life is harsh but that one must accept it.)

P.S. - The picture isn't really Karen & I.

Submitted by Ken Sorensen

In the tenth grade, biology was my favorite subject and Mr. Anderson was my favorite teacher.  That, howerver, didn't keep me from joining some of my classmates from trying to torment him.  His classroom had a closet in the front with a door that would swing open when the floor shook.  Someone got an idea and passed it on;  During a lecture, a cue would be given and we would start jiggling our knees up and down and the closet door would open.  Mr. Anderson would close it and the process would start all over.  As far as I know, he didn't catch on and we gave it up after a couple of days.

In spite of that distraction and not doing a lot of my homework, I retained a lot in that class and it was a great help to me when I took botany and zoology at UMD. 

Submitted by Herb Ellis

Grand Forks ND 2011, at their annual Art and craft show, which I have been sketching at for 8 years.  A tall fellow about 30, comes in and asks me to sketch him on one side of the paper and he would bring his girlfriend in later to draw on the other side.   As I finished sketching her, he dropped to his knees, pulled out a box, took the ring out and said, "I love you so much, will you marry me."  After a few seconds, she started crying, said yes, and began hugging and kissing with me sitting there, almost in tears too.  Wish I had a song for the occasion, but I turn into a big emotional pussy at times like this.  What a great memory that I was chosen to be a part of that.

Submitted by Elliot Silberman

By Sir Arthur Conan Douglas

Sherlock Holmes lay awkwardly across his chair, playing his violin skillfully but with melancholy.  He had been depressed for years now, what with television shows like CSI so terribly misrepresenting what real detective work is about.  And, as Holmes often observed, not all murder victims are beautiful young women found naked in an alley.  He also had gone back to his opium.  He had tried newer drugs, from Valium to meth, but reverted to his standby whenever he was not mentally stimulated.  As I shut down my computer I sighed, which caught his attention.  “What’s wrong, dear Watson, no new material on your favorite porn sites?”

“That’s not it,” I replied.  “It’s that I have sent email messages to a number of classmates from 50 years ago, and no one has responded.”  Holmes resumed his violin-playing, clearly bored by my self-esteem issue.  “Well, one did,” I corrected myself.  “Larry Carlson did write back.”
Holmes paused his violin bow again.  Now perhaps my problem could possibly be of interest.  If some event always happens or never happens, its predictability Holmes finds boring.  If an event happens only sometimes, then either it is random or there is some factor that triggers it.  Holmes was not a strong believer in randomness, unless dice or well-shuffled cards were involved.  If some event, such as someone replying to my email, has a specific but unknown cause, then there is a puzzle to pique his interest.

Rarely did Holmes use a computer, yet he understood the processes involved more than most heavy users, and certainly much more than I did.  He never emailed, but he knew that whether or not a message was opened by the recipient depended on two things: the name of the sender and the topic listed on the subject line.  So he asked what those were on the messages I had sent.  I didn’t know, so I looked for the messages that had been sent to me from Pat Kennedy and Tom Hustvet.  Like me, they sent their messages through the Web site that Ken Sorenson had created for our classmates.

The sender line of the messages had “Duluth Central High School Class of 1961_.”  No indication of who actually had sent the message.  The subject line also said “Duluth Central High School Class of 1961_.”  These sender names and subject lines were identical to those on the reminders that Ken had regularly broadcast to all classmates, I commented to Holmes.  He quickly concluded that a recipient then could not know whether a message was one of the reminders that Ken regularly sent to all classmates, or an individual message sent to a single person.  “Tell me about the messages you sent, Watson.”

I had emailed Nancy Ness, noting that her lovely smile looked the same after all these years.  When she didn’t reply, I presumed that she thought I was trying to hit on her and didn’t want to encourage me.  I had emailed Pat Fairbanks, commenting that both of our careers involving federal service.  When she did not reply, I suspected that she had gotten through high school quite nicely without having to interact with me, so why should she start now?  I had emailed Sonny Lorentzsen, offering some financial help for the upcoming reunion.  No response.  Geez—I couldn’t even bribe someone to write back to me!

Holmes asked me if these people had anything in common, some characteristic not shared by Larry Carlson.  I couldn’t think of anything for a while, but then realized that the non-respondents were involved in planning the reunion, but Larry lived far away and was not. 

Holmes asked for more examples.  I thought of Claudia Nygaard, Nada Kenyon, Bernie Friedenson, all of whom had not responded to my messages.   “Were they active in planning the reunion?” Holmes asked.  When I said no, he furrowed his brow in deep thought.  “So,” he followed with, “what distinguishes Larry Carlson from Claudia Nygaard, Nada Kenyon, and this Bernie guy?” he implored.

I pondered a while.  “Well,” I said, “Larry was coming to the reunion, and the others were not.”  “A hah!,” exclaimed Holmes.  “There are two reasons your classmates might not respond to your messages.  Either they are involved with the reunion and are aware of what is going on, so they do not feel a need to read the broadcast messages, or they have already decided not to attend the reunion and so they have little interest in reading details about it.”

Having solved my puzzle and stimulated his mind, Holmes did not return to his violin but instead picked up the daily newspaper to search for little news snippets about interesting and unsolved crimes that might interest him.  I could barely hear him muttering, “Or they just don’t like you.”

Gary, Russ Morrison and I all joined the Air force together, they sent us on a train from Duluth to Minneaapolis where we were headed into a big building and hundreds of naked men getting their examations for service, anyway for some reason the Air Force turned Gary down, as I still remember his words to me "f... the air force Marv, I am going across the street and join the Marines"  well he did and they made him a fighter pilot, he sent me a letter from Florida that he was flying cross ccountry for his training to Duluth, and I was so jealous now Gary was an officer and had it made as fighter pilot!!  Well as we know while serving as a forward air observor in Viet Nam Gary died by a mortar shell, if the air force would not have turned him down, I think of my friend Gary a lot and how life little actions cause big results.