Frank William Sliz

LHS '66

September 29, 1948 - December 16, 2014

(Submitted by John Scales, LHS '66)

I first met Frank during the 1964-65 school year when we were in Mr. Fox’s chemistry class. The latter assigned lab partners alphabetically, so we were thrown together. I was a little leery at first (being a bit straight-laced), as his nickname was “Pop-top” and he was one of the few with a smoking permit, but it turned out to be a great match. His strengths complimented my weaknesses and vice versa. He also was an excellent trumpet player and marched in the band. We became good friends and remained so through high school and on to college.

At the University of Alabama, we lived in the same dorm our freshman year and hung out with the same group of people, many of whom also had gone to Lee. Frank tried out for and made the Million Dollar band. He also enrolled in Army ROTC as I did, although we were in different units. We both were physics majors and took many of the same classes together. He remained a great lab partner.

His sophomore year, he moved to a one-bedroom apartment just west of Denny Stadium. He also had a car, an early-60s Chevy he nicknamed “The Blue Goose”. Frank followed a different schedule. He would go to class (usually in the mornings for both of us), go to his apartment, and sleep. In the evening he would wake up, pull out a six-pack, and start drinking, studying, and working on problems. He would often take his “lunch” around midnight at a burger joint on University Drive, run by, I want to say, “Mr. Cookie”. He also sometimes dated the waitress there, Rhonda. He continued this routine for his remaining three years at Alabama, breaking only for ROTC summer camp which we attended together - he drove. in spite of his rather, umm, unusual study habits, Frank graduated Phi Beta Kappa!

Upon graduation. Frank went on active duty in the Ordnance Corps and was assigned to White Sands Missile Range. He helped write the software for the TACFIRE computer, the Army’s first tactical computer, which was used to control artillery fire. While there he met Joann, his future wife, who was an Army nurse. They both left active duty in 1973 and married in the Catholic Church near her home in Hartford, Connecticut, and I was able to attend. Frank and Joann never had children.

In 1975 Frank was working in Pittsburgh when I was able to visit but soon left for another job. He ended up living in Vancouver, Washington, working for Hewlitt-Packard writing embedded code. He was co-inventor on two patents while he was there. Very occasionally I called and I visited him once (2009?), but as is often the case we had drifted apart. After the reunion last week, I resolved to call him and, to my horror, found out he had passed away years ago. 

Let this be a lesson to all of us – stay in contact with those you care about!

Saranette Stapleton and me - in a photo that took 58 years to complete.

My High School Prom - Reflections and Corrections

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

Here's a little personal story I can share thanks to our latest reunion. It is a little personal, but I think you might find it interesting or maybe even associate with it based on your personal life. My apologies go out to Saranette should she remember these facts differently than I do. These are my memories and not her's.

I have the following memories about the entry I made On March 23, 1964, in the journal I kept back then.

School was back in session, and the time clock started back on the road toward the end of school and the finale of childhood.  Future events, which at one time seemed so far distant, would start coming even faster.  The things that once seemed so far in our future were now only days and weeks away.  Still to come were the senior banquet, picnic, and graduation.  Some of the events would be passive.  We just had to show up and enjoy them.  Others, such as the senior prom, required an active role.

The senior prom is not an event that just happens.  There were some serious factors that had to be considered for an event like that.  The most dominant of all factors was who to invite to accompany you.  That task could not be taken lightly.  It required serious thought and plans.  With spring vacation over, the senior prom required that type of serious attention.  The break had brought no changes to my social status or love life.  I had failed to meet the perfect girl, the love of my life.  I had not even dated anyone during the break.  With that social failure behind me, I had to revert to the old, time-proven methods of getting a date.  That type of interaction still did not come easy for me.

On April 6th, I added the cryptic lines below. I had broken up with the only girl I had dated seriously in high school. I was dating no one at the present time.

Everyone had to do the same thing.  For some it was easier than for others.  The pressure I felt of such an important event drawing near without having a date was starting to work on me.  I knew more than I wrote on the yellow pages.  I had some idea of who I would ask.  I did not know if she would accept.  By not mentioning her name, I would not have to document failure.  Even with a code, some things must remain a secret.

The next reflection about the Senior Prom came with my April 9th entry.

Our senior prom?  It would be the only high school senior prom I would ever attend.  This one dance stands out in everyone's memory as "The Dance."

It's one of those events, good or bad, that makes a permanent crease in the part of our brains that contain our high school memories and remains a part our past forever.  A night of disappointment awaited some.  It would be the night to remember for others.  Be it good or bad, great or small, successful or a failure, it didn't really matter.  It was still an event of our growing up to be remembered, and it did not happen without some serious thought and planning.  There were many levels of success possible.  Not going at all would be the ultimate failure of the trip that had taken twelve years to complete.  Staying home with the flu or for the lack of an invitation could leave a gap in one's memories forever.  Going with the wrong date would be a close second in bad memories.  That's why planning was so important.  It's almost impossible to find a high school graduate who doesn't remember the night of the senior prom.  Many hours are spent sitting, waiting for the right person to ask or trying to get up the nerve to ask the right person.  It doesn't matter if you're male or female, popular or a fruit, the problems are still the same.

For that particular dance, the date needed to be someone with whom I could enjoy myself enough that in my old age I could look back and remember it with fond memories.  This ideal person posed more of a problem than she should have.  Little did I know, but others had decided to help me out with that difficult decision. (If you looked up the definition of shy in the dictionary you would have found a picture of me. I had dated very few girls up to then, really only one seriously. I had never initiated a good night kiss on a first date even.)

After all, it was Lee's first senior prom and was destined to be an event to be remembered.  A good friend of mine was dating a classmate who wanted to find someone to ask Saranette out, and since we were friends the decision was almost out of my hands.  It was a part of a grandiose plot.

With a little prompting, I was assured that Saranette would say yes, so I finally got up the nerve to ask her.  I cornered her at her locker between periods.  In the short five minutes between classes, I asked her the question.  Although I seemed surprised to find that she accepted, it was really like a communist election where everyone knew how it would come out long before the votes were ever cast.  She knew I would ask and I knew she would accept.  The only thing missing was the formalities. There was one over-riding problem with my choice for a date to the senior prom.  I had never before dated Saranette.  I had never even been alone with her.  My association with her was always in the company of the other couple.

Saranette was a junior.  She was a cute brunette, perhaps a little shy, but then so was I.  She was about my height, but we made an acceptable couple and did not stand out in the crowd as freaks.  She wore her hair in a "Patty Duke" look, had braces on her teeth, and seemed a little uncomfortable with them.  Her smile always seemed to try to cover up the fact that she had the metal bands in her mouth.  I had never before dated a girl who wore braces but felt that I could live through such a handicap.  She was cute, had a nice figure, could dance, was accepted by the crowd, and had said yes.  What more could anyone want for a date?  

On April 22nd I reflected:

My life was beginning to look like that of a bullfighter preparing for the big event.  The activities of the whole day seemed destined to revolve around further preparations for the all-important senior prom.  How one event could occupy so much time is amazing.  Yet, for me, it was all necessary to make sure that the big dance went well.  Attention to details, such as haircuts, clean clothes, and a new belt and pair of socks were all part of the preparations.  Not until the release of "Saturday Night Fever," would the details of such preparations be shown to the world.  

The 1964 Senior Prom took place on April 24th and these memories were made:

Finally, the big night arrived.  We double dated and the four of us showed up at the school and wandered into the lunchroom where the big event was taking place.  The motif of the night was "Sayonara," a befitting theme for a good-bye occasion.  As if it were taken out of the script of "Footloose," rock-and-roll was not to be our music of the evening.  That type of music was not acceptable for the senior prom.  People hadn't gotten dressed up in their nicest outfits to get out on the dance floor and dance to jungle music.  Whoever was appointed to the music committee decided that slow music would be better to dance to.  Of course, none of the committee ever went to dances like the rest of us seniors and didn't have a clue what type of music we really wanted.

I had been to dances almost every weekend during my senior year.  I had seen good bands and bad.  I had seen battles between bands.  I had even seen and danced to the many bands, but  I had never seen or even heard of "Dixie Belle and Her Combo."  Their name was as bad as "Dixie and the Dancekings" from Burt Reynold's movie "WW and the Dixie Dancekings."  Only Dixie Belle wasn't country and western.  She and her group played elevator music and that wasn't rock-and-roll either.  In 1964, the only fast song that any of the ballroom combos knew was "Kansas City."  When someone requested something fast they got the ole' "Kansas City here I come."  The song just didn't sound the same played with an organ and drum as it did when played on an electric guitar and saxophone.

So, the evening was spent sitting around trying to act sophisticated and dancing nice to the slow piano-bar-type music.  The air was filled with the "swish-swish" sounds of the girls' formal dresses.  We slow danced instead of getting out on the dance floor and doing what we really wanted to do.  We sat around at the lunchroom tables, looking at the crepe paper and balloons, and drinking unspiked punch.  Everyone had a proper time and too soon the evening came to an end.  The girls in their nice gowns and the boys in their coats and ties moved their way to the dance floor and danced the last slow dances of the evening to bring the night and their big dance to a close.  We wanted to get a jump on the crowd in the parking lot and so one song before the dance was over, my date of the evening and I danced to our last song together.  It was not only our last dance of the evening, it was the last dance of our short-lived relationship.

The one thing I had always regretted is that I never had a picture taken of me and my Senior Prom date. The world was not dominated with cell phones and selfies back then. Cameras, films, and film processing were expensive, so very few photos were taken at events. This Reunion filled a big part of my bucket list. Finally, 58 years after attending my Senior Prom with Saranette, we had our photo taken together at this reunion. After 58 years, we did not look the same (she has aged much better than I have and remains a beautiful girl) but I am happy to have it.

Below are the photos from the 1964 yearbook. I was a 17-year-old senior of course, and Saranette was a 16-year-old junior. The bottom photo is Saranette's Senior picture from the 1965 yearbook.

I will include some more reunion photos next week. The copy I had already planned and the obituary submitted by John Scales took up most of the space this week.

Hello

Richard and Kathy Markley

Tommy, thanks for your pictures of the reunion, sorry I couldn't be there.  I am not sure if many people remember me as I left to go back to Seattle in the summer of 1965.  I am attaching a couple of pictures of my wife and myself at our wedding on July 31, 1971, and right after our 50th anniversary last year.  I hope everyone had a good time and maybe if another reunion comes around, we could probably attend.  THX

This Week's Questions, Answers, Comments

Ginger Burrus, LHS ‘64, "I attended the Saturday night reunion at Ditto Landing, and the breakfast on Sunday.  Had a wonderful time - great to see people I remembered AND wonderful to visit with several that I didn’t really know while I was at Lee."

Mary Ann Bond Wallace, LHS ‘64, "I really enjoyed the reunion at Ditto Landing.  I have not been able to attend but two reunions in the past.  The Reunion Committee did a great job with all aspects of the event.  It was great to see old friends and to make new friends.  I really appreciate the people who took to time to talk with my husband and make him feel a part of the event.  Next time maybe we can make all the events that were planned.  Ditto Landing was a great place to have the reunion and we were blessed with a beautiful afternoon and night.  Could not have asked for anything else.  Great to see all of you; new and old friends."

Jim Bannister, LHS ‘66, "Had a wonderful time at the reunion. The food and the fellowship was great. Loved the casual nature of the event. Sincere thanks to everyone who worked to make it happen."

Jim King, "Just saving information. Did George set up BBQ and who did Mexican food? Would like that info as well."

(Editor's Note: Niles Prestage made arrangements for the Cajun Food, and Bucky Hoffmeyer arranged for the BBQ.)

Linda Taylor, LHS '64, Posted this on her Lee High School Huntsville AL Reunion 2022 Facebook Group, 

"Good Morning Everyone, to Friends and FamiLee, now that the Fun, the Memories, the Heartfelt Pauses of Loss, and I have settled, I want to Thank Everyone that had a hand, a voice, or a piece of tape in hand that worked to make this Event such a Great Success!

Thank You Thank You!!

It is Amazing what we as a Team can make happen!! When put to the Task at Hand.... It Happens!!

We are ALL so Grateful that Ms Faulkner and Coach Wilson were able and eager (I Hope!) to join in Celebration with us. You Both are the Best of the Best and have left an Endearing and Forever Mark on our lives at a time when we needed you the most! Speaking for myself, I often give credit to you for a significant part of the Successes of my Life. ** Ms Faulkner, please do not judge my writing skills here!! This is written for Emphasis using today's formatting capabilities!! 😃

This Gathering (All 200+) was long overdue! Seeing the Smiles, the Happy Faces, the Second Looks and then a Quick Glance at a nametag, the Excited Recognition of a long ago familiar face, was Special to all of us.

Looking Forward to the Next Gathering of Friends, Close and from Afar, to Celebrate a Moment in Time we all Shared Together and Remember Still. We are a Special Generation and Special FamiLee that share connected Memories!

Until Next Time........ It was my Pleasure to work with this Dedicated Crew with the Attitude to Make It Work!!

**If there are more photos to Post, please do. Old and New photos of US are Welcomed for ALL of US to Enjoy!!!"

A Song to Remember Our Reunion

"Things"

Even though I had six hours and 57 minutes of Oldie Goldie music to play at the reunion, Dwight Jones, LHS '64, stumped the band with a request for "Things." I did not have a copy with me, but here it is especially for Dwight.