When I look back on my days at Tech and tried remember things that happened. One thing always comes to mind I had purchased a RadioShack eight track player and put it in my 63 Chevrolet Impala that I used as a bus to commute several of us to Tech from the Airways area of Memphis. I know that is telling my age and I'm alright with that. It was for some an extremely long time ago, but for me it was only yesterday. I hadn't had the stereo eight track tape player in my car for long. I remember that morning turning in the driveway and up the hill of the berm to the parking lot for students and parking under that big old tree so that the car wouldn't be quite so hot when we left to go home. Some punk moron broke out the vent glass on the right side of the car and broke in and stole my eight track tape deck. I replaced it, but this time I put it in the glove box where it would be completely out of sight. You live and learn more than just school things when you're growing up and going to school.

This school was our home it was more than just a building. Our teachers were more than just teachers some of them became our friends. Some people may say I spend too much time trying to remember the past, believe me when I say it's not the past that I'm trying to remember. It's all of the friends I left behind as I grew into becoming an adult. It's not the time that I care so much about it's the people that made me who I am today that I'm trying my best to remember. You can graduate the students out of schools, but you will never take the friendships that they made away.

Seeing the pictures from Tech take me back to a student that walked into its doors for the first time, so overconfident and without a clue I thought that I would be able to make the transition easily. I always was able to make friends easily and I made hundreds of new friends. As far as scholastics were concerned I lost my way. I had taken way too many classes and had too many problems trying to keep up. High school was much harder than I thought it would be. I was not prepared mentally to take own so much at one time. I tried to hide the fact that I had learning disabilities by being a tough punk that didn't need school. It wasn't that I didn't think I needed it because I knew I did and I really wanted it desperately. It was just that I was so ashamed that I could not keep up that I put on this persona. I know I gave my teachers more grief than they deserved and for that I apologize. Somehow through all of my troubles a few of those teachers never gave up because I did learn things I did gain knowledge and for that I am eternally grateful.

This school, this Memphis Technical High School may not have graduated any geniuses that have changed our thinking of the universe, but I will assure you that this school formed our knowledge of the world. It gave the world some of the best people to walk on its surface. Tech has graduated musicians, actors, doctors, law years, but its greatest achievement of all was to graduate some really extremely good people.

It must be a good feeling for a teacher to see a group of misfits enter their classroom on the first day of class and see three years later a great group of people graduating.

I owe a great deal of gratitude to Memphis Technical High School, its Teachers and its Staff for all they did to make their students what we are today.