I was a "township kid" when I went to Clairton High School in 1952 for ninth grade.
Since I came from a four-room, two-grades-per-room elementary school with no indoor plumbing and no central heating, Clairton was the "big city" to me, and I viewed my new classmates as sophisticates. I went out for the junior high basketball team and did pretty well despite the fact that I had never bounced a ball on a hardwood floor.
I met my first girlfriend, also a township kid, on the school bus. We went to football games with her older brother driving us around. Unfortunately, she moved to another state shortly thereafter, and there was no one to replace her.
I became a "class clown," probably as a pathetic way to get attention. I never passed up a chance to get my class to laugh or to break a rule to drive a teacher nuts -- a typical teen "smart aleck." However, the last day of ninth grade and the first day of 10th grade changed my life forever.
On that last day, I met a Clairton girl on a field trip to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. We spent the whole day together. She begged off her plan to eat lunch with her friends to be with me.
When we got back to school, I walked her home to Woodland Terrace and hitchhiked home. We saw each other a few times over the summer at Clairton Pool, where I tried mightily to impress her with my swimming and diving. But since I had the social skills of a rock, I did nothing over that summer to otherwise contact her.
The first day of school in 10th grade, I got off the bus and there she was waiting for me. She took my hand, led me aside and we decided to be a couple. Although the relationship lasted only a few months, it was through her that I met a beautiful redhead named Fay Bickerton, who became my new girlfriend and, subsequently, my wife of 53 years.
The second big thing that happened that day was that I was summoned to the principal's office, something that had happened a number of times the previous year. "Holy cow," I thought, "how could I be in trouble so soon?"
The principal was sitting at the head of a table with every one of my teachers in the other seats. "Bill, do you remember the IQ test that you took near the end of last year?" I mumbled in the affirmative although I really didn't.
"Well," he said, "it showed that you have the highest IQ of anyone in your class. You've been getting good grades, but not the excellent ones that you should be getting, and we're not going to tolerate that anymore.
"Moreover. I understand that you've been a 'wise guy.' We checked with your parents, and they were shocked to find out about your behavior. So, we're not going to tolerate that either. Your teachers and parents have all agreed that if you don't shape up immediately, you're going to be spending many hours in detention after school and on Saturday and be very restricted at home."
I was stunned. All I could say was, "Yes, sir."
The shallow depth of my teenage rebellion was revealed by my reaction after thinking it all over. "The jig is up," I thought. "Unless I change, I won't be able to see my new girlfriend much."
Also, I knew that my father, who was the president of the Union Township School Board, would come down on me hard after finding out that as soon as I'd gotten away on my own in the big city, I had shamed the family.
I had no real choice. I had to shape up. I adopted a new persona -- a guy with a steady girlfriend who effortlessly got very good grades. Later in the year, I got a bid to become a Top Hatter -- part of a fraternal club that had many of the coolest guys in the school as members.
If that day hadn't happened the way it did, I probably wouldn't have met my wife, who didn't even go to Clairton High until the next year. And if my teachers and the principal hadn't taken an interest in me, who knows how far my teen jerkdom might have gone?
I ended up graduating eighth in my class of 450 even though I didn't do any time-consuming "extra credit" assignments that most top students did to get superior grades. I spoke at commencement and went on to get a Ph.D.
And I often think of how that day in 1953 changed my life.
First Published: September 9, 2011, 8:00 a.m.