Bishop Kearney High School
Shahin Era Band & Musicals Reunion
A Big Thanks! from Kathe Kilmer, Vice Chair
The day was a blur for me! The band jam was just such a
happy surprise for me, having Ray come, and the thrill of hearing Joe and
Gil and the trumpets behind me--Carolanne, I didn't know you played trumpet!
Steve with his sax near me, and the happy faces of grads from other
classes, everything was GREAT. I even had 2 ”new” girls to play
trombone with, thanks to the Borton sisters Claire & Celeste.
Tom Vollmer on his baritone, who unlike myself never made a single mistake,
(forgetting weep no more that one time doesn’t count!). Bill
Graff and his 10 yr old son, Kim Jackson and her 8 year old daughter, and
I think there were a couple other kids too. All the flutes!
And THEN the drums came in! Wow! Don't you wish you could
put these moments in a bottle? They went by too fast!
To all of you that night I rushed by and said “hi, I'll be back”,
I'm SO SORRY there wasn't more time!
Here’s my thank you list, it doesn’t get everyone, believe me
there are many, many more who helped!
First, to Ray, thanks for making the reunion just perfect by being there
for us, for the band jam, for being you, and I'm sooo glad you enjoyed it!
(Sue Boden’s quote was perfect, and if you order the photo CD there
will be a nice riff on that)
Special thanks to John Rafalak our webmaster, Bob Zogby our web assistant,
scanner, and who also helped with the karaoke, a busy guy! To Robin Camardo
who did our Photo CD slideshows,and much of it last minute, to Kathy Finnegan
who worked soo so hard on the band video amid many setbacks, and her Dad
John who helped. And thanks to John and Bob for all the great photos
as well! I can tell you there was more than one night when Robin, Kathy,
and I worked into the wee hours trying to get these CDs, posters and music
DVDs and tapes ready in time.
Thanks to Mary Ann Napoli McAlpin, who was there all the way with all the
tickets, Ray Erb and Tom's son Mike our database guys, lots of work
there in the beginning especially, Rick and Margaret Duncan for taking
the reunion pix, they came out great!
A big big thanks to Sharyn Christo for loaning us her husband Mike Leahy
who burned our CDs for us, a tremendous help that apparently caused Kodak
to sell off his dept soon thereafter (just kidding)!)
Thanks to Rosemary Erb who worked with Elizabeth (Tina) Leutung and Bob
Zogby on the karaoke and also volunteered to hand assemble 450 CD labels
on CDs while immobile with a broken ankle! To Elizabeth who also did
the music clips for our web, that was amazing! To Jayvee who scanned
our music for the web, to Sue Boden Dodge for coordinating the band
jam, and Jeanne Hauser our secretary and band jam helper, and Ken Vorndran
for helping on the database.
Thanks to Tim Prinzing and Dan Kester for getting our slideshows and movies
to actually happen (and steadying my last minute nerves!), Greg Smith for
coordinating parking and more, Teri McLaughlin Hunter our treasurer, and
all our "chairs"--Nance Bowllan with her help with the musical
programs and mailer design (her Dad helped too!), Carol M and Sharyn C for
color guard, to Paul & Kathi Bonsignore, our band and twirler chairs,
Tim Prinzing for stage crew, and Peg Gillen for helping with the parents.
To Art Keegan who wrote the brilliant and of course amusing copy for the
CD's (don't forget to pull out the little record jackets, get a nice drink,
make yourself comfy, and have a laugh reading them--hopefully you bought
all 3, they are worth it for that alone!)
Of course to Dan Schwehm and Rick Barry for providing our food and drink
arrangements so professionally --thank you thank you! And Tom Calzone
for the golf, and to people like Mary Kearney, who helped with the first
mailer, Ann Garzynski, and many others for helping with various and sundry
things.
Thanks to all the CD and poster assemblers, especially Bill Graff, Ken Vorndran
and Luigi I for their extra effort with a paper cutters, including Peg Andrews,
Marilyn DiP, Ann Garzynski, Pat Conlon, Rosemary, Ada Nastasi, Jeanne
Hauser & Rick & Margaret Duncan. A special thanks to Carol
Warth who pulled the posters together at the end, and Kathi Bonsignore who
put them up so creatively along the back walkways. BTW, Carol just
missed the band jam at the party--we almost had 5 drum majorettes up there.
Thanks to all who provided cardboard, and especially to Mike Napoli who
brought cardboard precut to size and transported the posters to the reunion
for us.
And thank you for all the grads who dug up albums, dusted off scrap books
and donated pictures and clippings. Joanie DiP, Ada Nastasi, Carol Warth,
Kathy Finnegan, Jeanne Hauser, Kim Jackson, Bill Graff, Pat Conlon, Paul
and Kathi Bonsignore, Rick Duncan, JayVee, Maureen Doohan, Sue Potter and
Jan Koetter. A special thanks to Ada Nastasi, Kathy Finnegan, John Rafalak,
Nance Bowllan and Bob Z (again) for helping with scanning as well as digging
up the pictures. Frank DiPrimo and all of you who are or will be uploading
pictures to Bob or John from the reunion. And there were more that I don’t
know about!
At the reunion--thanks to all those helping Mary Ann and hubby Ken McAlpin
at the door with tickets & nametags & selling CDs -- Jimi Napoli,
Wanda Buda, Mike & Nancy Napoli, Deb & Mike McAlpin, Mary Kearney
and Dan Parker. I heard Jim Scarpulla got conscripted to sell them as well;
thanks Jim! . For Bill Graff for taking the easels.
Thanks to our open house volunteers--along with the usual suspects were
Wanda Buda and John Camelio. To Jeanne Hauser yet again for organizing her
wind ensemble to entertain at our open house, it was very memorable. To
Barb Trybulski for ordering the cookies for the open house. Thanks to John
R who in addition to webmastering, went around and took lots of pictures
and movies over the weekend.
And thanks for all the family members who helped at the reunion! Starting
with Dave Morrow (son of Doug) who helped pass out music at the band jam
like a pro, and Rick Dodge (Sue Boden’s hubby) who helped with the
band jam and played a mean sax to boot. To Kerry Kulpinski (my daughter)
and Julia Huson (Lisa Kilburne’s daughter) who helped with CD’s
and selling refreshments at the open house. To Ada Nastasi (wife of John),
as well as Evan Clements (son of Jim), Dan Molinari (son of Norah (Kilmer)
& Tom, and to Colleen MacEwan (daughter of Diane Healy) for their thankless
work helping with parking. To Jim Huson for scanning and clearing my flash
card for me. For Rich Gardner, friend of Joanne Guarnere’s for graciously
loaning his apt for out of town guests.
To all the grads who contributed memories and such for our website
to make it such a great "home" I enjoyed reading them all!
Many of you have WAAY better memories than I do. Also, many of you
walked much more on the wild side than I did; it was fun to read all the
exploits. I was definitely too boring back then to be that creative
with my free time! Thanks for sharing your stories!
Many thanks to Kim & Louis of Artisan Works for all their support of
this event over and above the call of duty, and to Leah Larew for helping
settle so many last minutes details".
And most importantly, to all the “contacts” who called fellow
graduates, that was by far the single most important thing anyone could
do to help make this reunion a success. A personal phone call not only enabled
us to get emails for communications but helped make this reunion “real”
to former classmates. Your time was well spent and hopefully was fun to
make contact with former band or show members to boot. We know many of you
spent your own money on stamps and phone calls and we are ever so grateful.
And to the rest of the team and all their contributions, large and small,
they all counted and thank you so much for sharing our vision and believing
in us! I know I missed some, please forgive! There
are many of you that did things I don't even know about, and maybe Tom can
fill in any big misses after he reads this.
Finally, my biggest thanks to Tom, what a leader! We certainly
thought differently but I was constantly amazed at his drive and abilities
and thoughtfulness, and all in all we made a great team. To this day,
there are things he did that I don’t even know about that that just
helped make things happen. And here’s a secret—he does think about
all the details too, and just ssolves them as they come, so they magically
disappear as resolved.
I hope that this event inspires some of you to step forward and volunteer
to do it again in a couple -- 2? 3? years, with the directory and website
in place it should be a breeze, ha! The beauty of this whole process
was that, it was important enough to people from all the different classes
to pitch together and believe in this, and for that, I truly believe that
it was Ray Shahin's gift to us that we became a family with strong memories
and a sense of accomplishment that will indeed last us a lifetime. Maybe
this connection can be dusted off and revived more than just this one time—dare
I say this, so many people said to me, “see you at the next one!!!
“
Kathe Kilmer ‘70
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