Olympus High School

Well, I got through the posting about my junior high years without too much pain. So here goes on the high school era.

I attended Olympus High School from September 1959 until June of 1962. There were many highs and lows while I was a student there. I still remember the school motto, "With freedom comes responsibility." I truly believe that.

Sophomore Year
One of the highlights of every young man's sophomore year was drivers' ed. We actually got to drive. The car I drove in was a 1960 Pontiac. The first day out on the road in the car, I felt that I was too close to the side of the road. I only felt comfortable in the middle of the road. The instructor had to keep pulling the wheel to the right to get me into the proper lane. I overcame that tendency by the second time behind the wheel. I eventually passed my driver's license test the summer after I completed the sophomore year.

Seminary that year was Old Testament with Brother Max Moffat. He made the subject fun. I still remember learning the order of all the books. I think I can still recite them up through the major prophets. I didn't ever get the minor prophets down.

For math that year I had Mr. Jensen for geometry. I loved it. He was an excellent teacher, and by the end of the first grading period, we were ahead of the advanced math class that many of my friends were in. But he had bought a dairy farm in Heber City, which he had hired a manager to run. That didn't work out well and he had to quit teaching half way through the year to run his farm. We had a series of substitute teachers the rest of the year, and made almost no additional progress.

I also took a typing class at the encouragement from Mom. She had taught me a little before on our little portable typewriter at home. I was able to stay ahead of the class on speed tests for the first few weeks. But when I got to 30 words per minute I hit a plateau. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get any faster. My old problem with poor finger dexterity had bit me again, just like when I tried to learn to play the piano. I still type about the same speed, today. I did learn touch typing and it has been a great blessing through all the years.

I did have a lot of friends at Olympus, but I was still suffering from shyness, and from problems with Dad at home. One of the boys who had tormented me was giving me a hard time after a class, and I pushed him down, hard, into some of the desks. Then I just walked away. He was very nice to me after that. The boys who had been so cruel in junior high were not at the high school. The worst of them were in juvenile detention for some really bad things they had done. The one who seemed to hate me the most ended up killing himself and some others, including a couple of police officers, when he grabbed the steering wheel and forced the police car into oncoming traffic while being transported between court and the detention center in Ogden. He thought he could escape that way. No seat belts in cars at that time.

Junior Year
My English teacher, Mr. Lynn Reading, was also one of the coaches. He thought it would be good to give more boys the chance to participate in sports, so he started an intramural program. There were 2 divisions, a team division, and an individual division. I didn't know enough people who were competing in team sports, so I only entered the individual events. But I entered every one: golf, tennis, swimming, track, rifle shooting, table tennis, badminton, bowling, skiing, chess. There may have been others, also. I did well enough at enough of them to win the first place trophy in the individual division. In high school it was socially important for a boy to be a jock. That success helped my self esteem. I didn't get to keep the trophy. Mr. Reading took it to get it engraved for me, but he moved away and I never saw it again.

My poor study habits carried on from the years before. I got by, but I could have done much better. I frequently forgot assignments, or put them off until the last minute and did them sloppily, so my grades were not as good as I could have. My friends in the advance placement classes moved further and further ahead of me.

For Seminary, I had Brother Olsen. He was very enthusiastic and I enjoyed my New Testament studies. For my class essay, I wrote about the Savior, and referenced Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage. I'm afraid I copied too much from the book, because I remember the teacher's comment on the paper, "Next time more Hippen, and less Talmage!"

All 3 years at Olympus I took Spanish. I had started that in 8th grade at Evergreen Jr with Mr. Cooper. Mr. Cooper had been a pretty good teacher. He had also introduced us to Mexican cooking by taking us to the Casa de Tampico restaurant at the end of each year. I went with other students to the BYU campus to participate in the "Festival of Foreigh Languages" that the Y put on each year. I loved the college atmosphere. Every year I spent the time with Dave Powers at the competition. I remember having a comment on one of my presentations that I spoke Spanish with an Italian accent. However, the Spanish teacher at Olympus was not a good teacher. We never made any progress, because he never had us practice speaking. We called him "The Berb Brain." All we ever did in class was conjugate "berbs" (verbs, with a Spanish accent.)

I also got involved in more serious science classes. I took physics and chemistry. Mr. Poulsen was the physics teacher. He was quite good and I did well in his class. He invited me to join his advanced physics class the next year. I loved being in an advanced class.

Senior Year
My last year at Olympus was much better. I had better teachers for one thing. I dated more regularly, although it was still a painful experience to ask a girl out.. The main other thing was the swimming team.

Olympus had never had a swim team before. We didn't have a pool. But arrangements were made to use the Granite High School pool, and a coach was called. The coach was Mr. Sullivan, who had been my chemistry teacher the previous year. We had a pretty good team, especially considering that Mr. Sullivan had no training as a swimming coach, and we were limited to 3 days per week practice. At the end of the year we placed 5th at the state championship. I swam breaststroke as my primary stroke. Gerry Carlson, whose father ran a swim school, was the other breaststroker. I occasionally beat him. I also swam individual medley at times. That's 2 lengths each of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle crawl.

In seminary I had Brother Groberg. He lived in the East Mill Creek 1st Ward, so I knew who he was long before I had him as a teacher. We studied the Book of Mormon for the first half of the year, then Doctrine and Covenants and Church History the second half. Brother Groberg had a reputation of being very boring. He did have a monotone voice, and showed little personality in his teaching, but he was not as bad as I expected from hearing him speak in church.

My English teacher was Mrs Clemmons. She was brilliant. She was a Vassar College graduate. I was familiar with Vassar, because my cousin, Kathryn Stein was going there that same year. Vassar had the highest entrance standards and the toughest curriculum of any liberal arts school in the country. It was an all girls school. The first week of class she passed out a list of about 100 classic books that she said were required reading for anyone going to Vassar. She said every girl going there was expected to read them all before starting as a freshman. She had us all check off the ones we had read. I had read 6 or 7 of them. But that was more that anyone else in any of her classes, so I started out on a very good footing with her.

We studied Shakespeare that year. Macbeth was the main point of study, but we studied parts of several other of his plays and many of his sonnets. We also studied other British authors, like Chaucer, and Bacon. For one of our term papers, we were given the choice of an essay on Macbeth or to write a Shakespearean sonnet. There were other choices also. I intended to write the essay on Macbeth, but put it off until later, and then forgot about it. Most of the other students wrote the essay. The morning of the day it was due, one of my friends asked me how I did on the paper. He could tell from the look of panic on my face that I had forgotten it. I decided the only choice I had time for was a Shakespearean sonnet. I had read all of his sonnets so I was very familiar with the format and style. The subject of my sonnet was 'virtue'. I cranked it out in the few minutes after I finished lunch. My friend was surprised when I handed in the assignment, but he was furious when I got the top grade in the class on it. Mrs. Clemmons actually read it to the class before she handed our papers back to us.

That was the only year she taught high school English. The following year she was teaching at the University of Utah. I was blessed to have her.

I started dating Cheryl Cutler that year. Her best friend was Georgia Smith. I had called Georgia for a date earlier, but she was in the hospital having her appendix out when I called. By the time I worked up the courage to call her again, she was dating another friend of mine, Paul Pitts, our bishop's son. We were encouraged to double date as much as possible by our church leaders, so it was just natural for Cheryl and me to get together with Paul and Georgia. We dated often, many times just Friday nights at Cheryl's house for ice cream and to watch the Friday night horror movies that were very popular on TV at that time. (That was the inspiration for Michael Jackson's Thriller.) We also went to all the church dances together, and eventually were called as Ward Dance Directors, all 4 of us. The problem was, I found myself liking Paul's date more than my own. Much more. But I was too good a friend to try and cut in on him then.

I tried to break up with Cheryl towards the end of the year. I did it very clumsily, and I probably hurt her feelings. Then Georgia asked me to ask Cheryl out for a special occasion, Jr. Prom, I think. I then realized that I had fallen for Georgia. I did ask Cheryl out again. I did it because I would do anything for Georgia. But she was still going with Paul.

I also took a couple of other girls out that year. One was Marjorie Debenham. At first I really enjoyed her, but after a few dates, her giddiness started to wear on my nerves. Her mother was also putting pressure on me to make some kind of commitment to her. I was definitely not ready for that.

I started school an hour early that year. My advanced physics class started an hour before the regular school day. We had a great time there. It was all laboratory work, and we designed our own projects and experiments to demonstrate various principles. One very cold winter morning we got to class and the heat had gone off in the night. It was barely above freezing in the room. Mr. Poulsen turned on some of the gas jets that we used for powering bunsen burners, and lit them! We had several 2-3 foot long torches going all at the same time. Warmed the room up pretty quickly.

I grew a lot, physically. When I started as a sophomore I was about 5 ft 2 in. When I started my junior year I was 5 ft 6 in and weighed 135 pounds. When I started my senior year I was 6 ft 1 in and still weighed 135 pounds. My entire junior year, and especially the summer between those years, I was tired all the time. I could sleep 12 hours a day, easily. The rapid growth took all my energy. When we went outside for gym the fall of my senior year, I had difficulty running because I was not used to the size of my body. I felt like I was falling over forward all the time I was trying to run. Being on the swim team helped me catch up by strengthening my muscles. I was still only about 145 pounds when I graduated.

Our graduation was a big deal. It was one of the largest graduating classes in the state. I think it was over 700 graduates. After graduation, Jeff Anderson, Charlie Nielson, and I took dates to Charlie's house for dinner and games late into the morning hours. I do not remember who any of our dates were.

I started working at the Holiday Neighbor newspaper during my junior year. I delivered bundles of newspapers to the carrier boys. I started using Mom's '52 Buick, then our '54 Chrysler Imperial, and eventually in my '57 Chevy. I made about $20 per week. I saved more than half of everything I earned, and used it to buy the Chevy and to pay tuition for my first year of college. I kept that job for about 3 years.

Junior High

This part of my life story I have been putting off as long as possible. But now is the time to suck it up, quit feeling sorry for myself, and just write it!

We were moving into our house in East Mill Creek when I started 7th grade at Evergreen Jr. High. The first week or two was ok. I met some good future friends. Don Cowan and I kind of raced walking up Evergreen Avenue. I was ahead of him, walking alone. He decided he wanted to pass me. I heard him coming up behind me and I decided to not let him pass. We ended up almost running up the hill until we started laughing at the situation.

Jeff Anderson and Charlie Nielson stopped by the house and introduced themselves. They ended up being some of the best, most loyal friends I had for the next 8 years.

I started going to church regularly. Sister Barney was my first teacher. I was still in Primary for the first few weeks, and she saw to it that I completed my requirements for Primary graduation.

I also walked past the East Mill Creek library on my way to and from school every day. I got a library card and made it a habit to stop there and check out books on a regular basis. My favorite author that first year was Jim Kjelgard. He wrote about dogs, Irish setters mostly, and forest animals. His stories made their lives sound very interesting.

My study habits in 7th grade kind of slipped. I read a lot, and I watched a lot of TV. But I didn't organize myself and didn't apply myself very consistently to my studies. In my English and history class I succumbed to teasing from a boy who sat near me. It seemed that I always retaliated against him just as the teacher turned around, so I was frequently in trouble.

In my first Home Room I was seated next to Bill Haskins. He and I became good friends for the next several years. I even nominated him for 7th grade president, the class voted for him, and I became his campaign manager. I had no idea how to do that. I was also too shy to ask for help, so the campaign didn't go very well. He didn't win.

I don't know why I suddenly became shy. I had not been that way before, but I became terribly shy. I guess it had something to do with teenage hormones. I was afraid to talk to girls. I was afraid to talk to adults. I was afraid of my teachers. All the things I'd done successfully before then left my memory, and I lost all self confidence. Things were not very good at home. Dad was not acting nicely. His friends became more important than his family. He seemed to get very hard on me and I was always in trouble at home. He wasn't interested in helping me with any of my school work, but would yell at me and punish me if I didn't do it right. He became antagonistic toward the Church. I couldn't seem to do anything right. I was still basically happy. Happy was my natural state. But I was also quite miserable much of the time.

I kind of withdrew into a shell. I read a lot, and watched TV. I went to school, church, and not much else. Withdrawing was not the best thing to do. It just made things worse.

I made my first enemies in 7th grade. There were a few social groups, and I didn't seem to fit in any of them. The group I was most afraid of were the 'greasers'. I thought I could befriend them by combing my hair like they did. Mom was my barber, so I was not able to carry that out well. The 'greasers' just laughed at me. A couple of the worst of them started bullying me, and my shyness put me at a great disadvantage. The only time I tried to retaliate, I just made them mad, then I became even more afraid.

The other groups were the 'betas', the 'brains', and the 'jocks'. The betas were the rich kids who set the fashion trends. Mom bought all my clothes, and I was not 'in' with the expensive fashions the betas wore. Beta was derived from the Greek letter and indicated that these kids were destined to be fraternity members in college. They also were the kids with the most self confidence, so I didn't fit in with them in any way.

The brains were the top students. I fit in with them socially, but my study habits made me so I didn't fit in with them very well, either. They were the guys I hung out with. I ate lunch with them. But they left me behind when it came to grades. I just had no self discipline at this time in my life.

I didn't fit in with the jocks either. The other boys started filling out and getting taller. I was short and skinny. And I was kind of a weakling. I was afraid to try out for any sports. I lacked coordination. I started practicing basketball in our driveway, and eventually got to be a pretty good shot. But I felt I was too short to actually participate.

Mr.Walker, my 7th grade gym teacher, organized a baseball league for the summer. I was encouraged to participate. All who came were guaranteed positions on a team. I played shortstop and got to be a pretty good fielder. I was still afraid of too many things, especially failure, and that made me very nervous when I played, so I was not able to perform at my best.

There were a lot of others that didn't fit with any of these 'in' groups. I started hanging out with some of them. We kind of formed our own group, the 'losers'. Anyway, that's how I felt. Staying just on the edge of the 'brains' group kept me from becoming a total loser.

Toward the end of 7th grade I got to be friends with Hugh Coleman. He was popular because he was often the class clown. He made people laugh. I invited him to go fishing with Dad and some of Dad's friends for the opening day of fishing season at Moon Lake. Fishing was Hugh's favorite activity so he readily accepted. We had a great time, and Hugh became a great friend.

Hugh and I were locker partners in 8th and 9th grades. At the end of 8th grade Hugh ran for student body office. He used his ability to make people laugh to good advantage and was successful in his campaign. A result of his popularity was that I was no longer 'in' with his new group of friends. We started to drift apart. Toward the end of 9th grade some of the greasers who were bullying me started to intimidate Hugh, also. That pretty much ended our friendship. He no longer wanted to be associated with me if it meant he would be one of their targets also.

Eighth grade is just a blur. Things got worse at home. My grades did not improve. I withdrew even more socially.

Ninth grade was a little better. I was assigned to Mrs. Herman's English class. Mrs. Herman was a short Jewish lady. Many of her students were taller than she was. She also had a reputation of being the toughest teacher in the school. But she really challenged her students to do their best. I accepted her challenge and started to improve my study habits, if only for her class. She singled out those in her class that were doing well, and we kind of became members of an exclusive club. We spent time with her outside of school on special projects. I really enjoyed the attention and I responded with much of my best work.

Some of my classes served me well in later years. As I worked as a handyman, I remembered many of the lessons learned in shop classes. Woodworking shop, sheet metal shop, and electrical shop were all good learning experiences.

I actually started dating in ninth grade. No one at that time had suggested we wait until we were 16. The dates were just to school dances. My first date was with Marian Florence. She was a good friend. Mom had to drive us, since I was still a couple of years away from having a driver's license. I only remember one other date, it was a group date to a girls choice dance. I had never met the girl before she asked me, but she was a friend of Kathy Harrington. I think every boy in the class wished that Kathy would ask them, but she made arrangements for all of her friends to have dates. We all went as a group. I don't remember how we got there. The girl who asked me was a very cute blond. If I hadn't been so shy, I would have had a much better time with her. Now, I can't even remember her name. I did remember. It was Jane Rasmussen. She is now married to Kathy's brother Bob.

Boy Scouts

All things considered, Boy Scouts has been one of the best experiences of my life.

I was 12 years old when I first got involved there. My first Scoutmaster was Jerry Snider. One experience I had with him was passing the cooking part of my First Class rank in his back yard. I built a fire in the middle of his garden area. It was Autumn and all his vegetables had been harvested.

Other Scoutmasters were Charles Crosby, and Tom Wall. 'Bing' Crosby, as we all called him, was a retired U.S.Army cook. He was a great positive influence on my life. Most of my Scouting was done under his leadership.

Tom Wall had us earning the money we would need for our activities, including summer camp. He organized us and took us out almost every Saturday to sell stuff. We went all over the Salt Lake Valley to a different neighborhood each week. We sold Maxfield chocolates and pecan bars, bath oil, and bags of light bulbs. I earned much of my camping gear, my uniforms, as well as my camping fees. It was a great experience which would be the basis for being a salesman later in life.

My first year I was not able to go to Scout Camp in the Summer. I do not remember why. They went to Camp Steiner in the Uinta mountains. The stories they told about it made me want to never miss another one.

The next year they went to Camp Hunt at Bear Lake. I got my Canoeing and Nature Merit Badges and passed a few other requirements and generally had one of the best times of my life.

The following year we went to a camp near Bryce Canyon, Camp Pine Lake. Once again I thoroughly enjoyed myself and being out in nature and the friendship with the other boys.

Each spring, when we had a 3 day break from school, we'd go to Mount Topaz for a campout. There was a dry stream bed there that had a lot of clear gem stones, topaz, in the sand. Around the stream bed were rock outcroppings where you could dig into crevasses in the rock and find the orange colored gems. Once they were washed into the stream, the sun would bleach all the color out of them. We would also stop on the way home to climb and jump in the sand dunes in the area. One night we had a spring rain storm, accompanied by some strong winds. Most of the tents had blown over in the night, leaving us with puddles of water on the sleeping bags. Another night, there was a full moon and we went on a nighttime hike. As a I jumped onto a rock while coming down a mountainside, the rock moved a little, and I heard the unmistakable buzz of a rattlesnake's tail. I think I cleared about half of the mountain in one jump, getting away from it.

Each winter we would have a campout in the snow at Tracy Wigwam. It was only a few miles from our neighborhood up Millcreek Canyon. We slept in bunks in 3-sided Adirondack cabins. I always had a hard time sleeping, because I could not keep warm. I was very skinny, and would always wake up in the night shivering. One morning a very cold pocket of air had settled in there during the night. It was so cold that the leather on our boots was frozen and several boys could not get their boots on. We were trying to cook breakfast on an open fire in front of the cabin. It was so cold that the sausage we were trying to cook would be burnt on the bottom and still frozen on the top. Eggs would not come out of the shell. The camp staff finally realized that it was too cold for us and came and collected everyone to the lodge and finished cooking breakfast for us in the kitchen there.

In between time I passed my other rank requirements. We went to the YWCA swimming pool every week in the winter. I earned my Swimming and Life Saving Merit Badges there. I really started to learn to swim well during that time.

Other merit badges I remember were Reading, Music, Hiking, Cooking, Camping, Citizenship in the Nation, Citizenship in the Community, Home Repairs, Personal Fitness, and Geology. I ended up working many years later when we lived in Orem, Utah, for the man, Dr Preston Hyatt, who taught the Geology Merit Badge class. He once showed us evidence on a hillside in North Salt Lake where the Wasatch Fault had slipped some 50 feet in one quake. That would level everything in Salt Lake Vally were it to happen now.

I also went with a bunch of other Scouts from our troop to The University of Utah to take Aviation Merit Badge classes from the Air Force ROTC. That eventually led me to join the ROTC when I was at the U, which led me to a career in aircraft maintenance in the Air Force.

Other merit badges I worked on but never completed were Pioneering, Rifle and Shotgun, and Astronomy. I learned a lot from every badge I worked on, even those I didn't complete.

My final rank earned was Star. I was about to earn my Life rank when Dad grounded me from Scouting. I had been with some friends who decided we should work on our Cycling badge. When we got home from school, we grabbed our bikes and headed for the Salt Lake airport for our first long ride. No one was home when I got there from school, so I was not able to get permission. I left a note, but that didn't cut it. I stopped to buy some food on the way home and got way behind my friends. I got home very late, and Mom was very upset because she was worried.

Dad blamed the whole problem on the Church, and since the Church sponsored Scouting, I was taken out of that. Dad was socializing with a bunch of anti-Mormon friends at the time and looked for any excuse to get us away from church. I think he was also a little jealous because I had passed him in Scout rank advancement.

When I was in the Air Force in Omaha, Nebraska, I had the opportunity to work with the Scouts again. I was working with the Young Men, and the Scouts were going to drive to Yellowstone and Teton National Parks for their summer adventure. I was asked to go along to help with the driving. The troop rented several cars. We visited Yellowstone for 3 days and nights. We camped out on the banks of Yellowstone Lake near Fishing Bridge. We went to Teton National Park, swam in Jackson Lake. It's very cold, but not as cold as Yellowstone Lake. We also went to Custer Battlefield, Devils Tower, Mount Rushmore, and the Badlands of South Dakota as we were traveling homeward.

It was a wonderful trip except for one incident. The Scoutmaster was a very high strung, nervous man. He was an excellent organizer, so the trip was well planned. He also had a medical problem that was exacerbated by stress. He had medication for the problem, but he was very worried about the boys. They were fine, but he still worried. His medication was therefore not handling his problem, so he took a double dose. Big mistake. That caused him to hallucinate, and there was a very scary outburst in front of the boys as we were getting ready for bed one night. The other leaders anointed and gave him a priesthood blessing and then took him to a clinic for medical treatment. I was left behind to calm the boys and get them to bed. He was brought back late that night and the rest of the trip went without further incident.

However, he was very embarrassed by the incident, and soon after the trip he asked to be released. I was subsequently asked to serve as Scoutmaster.

We had a lot of good times while I was Scoutmaster. The Air Force encourages it's officers and others to support Scouting. I was essentially given as much time off from my duties as I wanted to serve in that position. I took advantage of that and spent at least 2 weeks each summer with the boys on Scout campouts. I read in Boys' Life magazine about a canoe outfitter in Minnesota that catered to scouts. I talked to the boys and their parents, as well as the other leaders, and then organized a trip to Ely, Minnesota and the Canadian Border Waters Canoe Country. We went for 9 days each of the 2 summers I was Scoutmaster. Fortunately, both years we had an outstanding group of boys and leaders. We traveled over 50 miles each of those years canoeing and portaging between lakes along the U.S./Canadian border. The boys all got their canoeing and swimming merit badges. Most of them also got Cooking and most of the requirements for Camping merit badges. The second year most of the boys earned their Mile Swim patch. I picked out an island about a half mile out in the lake where we camped, and we swam to the island and back. It was an easy swim for those boys who tried it (only one boy on the trip did not do it). I learned then that all of the boys were on age-group swimming teams. The first day on the lake each trip was always a learning experience. The boys would be doing loops and zigzag courses, trying to learn how to make the canoe go straight. One year there was a windstorm blowing the day we had to go home. I was in the lead canoe. The big lake we had to cross coming back had white capped waves, which made it quite treacherous. As we got to the middle of the lake I turned around to see how the boys were doing, and was very pleased to see an absolutely straight line of canoes following my canoe. They were having no trouble handling the rough water. A week of practice had made them all excellent canoeists. A couple of the boys also became excellent cooks. We did a lot of our cooking in dutch ovens. There were lots of blueberries in the woods around us, and we were treated to some excellent blueberry pies. On the next to last day of the trip we discovered hidden in the bottom of one of the packs a large bag of raisins that we were supposed to have eaten throughout the week. Oops. But the two boys, who were brothers made a couple of raisin pies, which we all enjoyed.

After the Air Force time, I had the opportunity to work with the Scouts again. This time I worked with Georgia as the 11-year old Scout leaders. It was a really good experience for Georgia in helping her understand what it takes for a Scout to make Eagle rank. So she was able to help all 3 of our sons to achieve that rank. It was also good for our sons Lyle and Eric. They were just a little younger than our Scouts at the time, and we allowed them to participate along with the Scouts in many of the activities. It got them started well on their road to Eagle.