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Nine Non-Random Things about Lanier and Miller from Mike Cass

1. Lanier’s intense meritocracy was more important to me than its academic atmosphere. Doctors’ and bankers’ and judges’ sons marched on the drill field and played on the football field and the basketball court beside the sons of mechanics and clerks, and often the latter were higher in ROTC rank as well as in athletic prestige. I learned more from that large social range than I learned from teachers and books.

2. I still wear on one of my sport coats the orange-and-green badge we wore on our ROTC uniforms, the one that says “We Lead” and shows logos for scholarship, athletics, and military activity. Properly, the academic is at the top, athletics in the middle, and military at the bottom.

3. Many of us were “too cool,“ not for school, but for ROTC. John Reinertsen and Emory Johnson and I were captains of ROTC companies, and around halfway through our senior year we made a friendly bet to see whose company would come in last. I won.

4. Despite my lasck of seriousness about ROTC, every evening I bring in from my front porch the U.S. flag before nightfall, and I always bring it in when there’s rain, because I remember Sergeant Shealy.

5. Two of the people I met in the eighth grade, Charlie Jordan, and George Hart, are among the best friends I have, fifty-five years later.

6. Miller High was the sanctum sanctorum, the holiest of holies, the mysterious place where THEY were, the girls, the women, elevated and complete and therefore inapproachable, or approachable only in fear and trembling. I was inside the walls of Miller High only twice in our high-school years, on some kind of Poet Leader or Student Council business, probably, and both times I felt awed and a bit scared, as boys and men should be.

7. On the B team in football, it was difficult to be a 130-pound guard, but interesting. If the 185-pounder across the line of scrimmage from me was also quick, I had to try to keep him guessing.

8. Julius Shouse was my best friend on the B team in the season of 1956 and was a model of how to do a job, steady, reliable, conscientious, and uncomplaining.

9. Charles Brittain, Roslyn Rawls Platt, Sally Murphey Heard, Bob Sanders, Larry Brown, Katherine Kennedy Walden, Bonnie Johnson Hearn, Marilee Kinard Rivers, Rick Wansley, Phillip Lord, Wayne Bloodworth, George Bowen, Bob Malone, Ed Sell, and Coleman Tidwell are the members of the group that planned the Fiftieth Reunion.

Lanier in Retrospect from Larry Brown

From an early age, I remember knowing about Lanier High School. My dad went there. My mother went to Miller. I remember playing in Tommy Porter's backyard when we were probably about 9-10 years old. We donned old Lanier football and basketball jerseys which Tommy's dad had brought home. They were much too big, but that did not matter. We were the "Poets". I recall seeing Lanier boys in my neighborhood wearing their ROTC uniforms coming home from school. Lanier athletic teams often were state champs. Someday, I would be a part of that. I looked forward to it.

In September,1954,it happened. Was I really ready for this? Now,I was not so sure. On the first day of junior high, I remember being directed to report to the lunchroom. To get there, you must pass through a place called the "Fishbowl". Once in the lunchroom, I felt like a fish out of water. There must have been about 500 eighth graders there and not one of them did I recognize. Where was anyone that I knew from elementary school? Who were all those strangers? Lanier was the melting pot for all of Bibb County. After some orientation, we were all taken to our supervisions. Things did not get any better. Not a sole in my supervision nor in other class did I know. Band was the final class of the day. Eureka! There were Charles Brittain and Philip Lord.

At the time, I did not realize it, but many of those strangers would become friends, and what actually was happening on that first day of school was the formation of, and I guess you could say the birth of the Lanier class of 1959. How could I ever have envisioned still being associated with many of those strangers fifty years later? Well, I am and I consider it an honor to be a member of the class of 59. I feel that we really are an outstanding class. In closing, I will repeat some words which I first heard from Bubba Youmans. "You take water, I'll take wine, Hail to the class of 59."

From JoAnne McDonald Smith

Mrs. Mary Pellew, my homeroom and stenographer teacher, had an impact on my life. She introduced the idea of "thinking outside of the box" even before it had been invented. During my Senior Year, she talked about our future and shared her experiences of working at the Pentagon. When we talked about it more in length, I became excited and wanted to pursue the idea. However my parents were not on the same page - "you are too young" (only 17 when I graduated) and needed some maturity before embarking in this direction.

We had a job fair and the FBI was represented and discussed jobs in Washington, D.C. I completed an application and was informed of the lengthy process. I agreed to continue a business course at Middle Georgia College AND to pursue the FBI job. There were tests, references, and more interviews. The end result-I was offered a Secretarial position and moved to Washington, D.C without knowing anyone or what to expect. The first week I met two girls, one from West Virginia and the other Pennsylvania. (one is still a good friend today) Now for the rest of the story.

When our son was born in 1962, he experienced problems which were not diagnosed until we were referred to a renown Hematologist, Dr. Sanford Leiken with Children's Hospital. The prognosis for hemophilia was dire, and we had many close calls. We were at the right place at the right time.

The other note has to do with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Investigative Division, in which I worked at the Bureau, was responsible for filtering incoming and outgoing information. The work schedule was hectic and filled with mixed emotions of sadness and excitement. Thinking back, what a difference this made in life.

A Significant Moment At Lanier by Mike Cass

This is a moment that I don't actually remember, but it was reported to me by the late Tommy Porter, the son of our great math teacher at Lanier. I tell it because it helps me know that I was being taught the right things by my parents and coaches, and in this case it was something that, it seems, is not being taught much these days.

This event happened in football practice, and it must have been when we were in the ninth grade or on the B team, when Tommy and I were in tenth grade together, because a knee injury in my tenth-grade year kept me from playing after that. Tommy says that on a downfield play, I blocked him from behind. Such a block is "legal" only at the line of scrimmage, not downfield. Tommy says I held out my hand to him to help him back up and apologized.

We have lived most of the last fifty years in an age in which "Whatever it takes to win" is the rule in sports, as well as in the rest of life. As a recreational-league soccer coach in the Eighties, I saw players beginning to foul at the start of matches, to find out whether or not the referee would call them on it. If the referees didn't, they fouled whenever possible the rest of the match. Similarly, in basketball, rebounders begin their games throwing elbows, to find out how much the referees will allow. There is no sense of honor, no authority that says to the player, "You should not do that because it's not fair to do that, and it might seriously injure someone."

Would we be in our current economic mess if the hedge-fund traders and bankers had a sense of honor?

Memoirs of Lanier by Charles Brittain

I will always cherish my years at Lanier. Yes, there were moments when I doubted myself and my self esteem was bruised. But the good times outweighed the bad. And I was to overcome my shyness later in life. I learned to trust myself and knew I could do almost anything I set my mind to (except sports).

Lanier prepared me for the rigors of Georgia Tech, and my music prepared me for appreciation for the arts and architecture.

It was the little things that made the whole, such as:

Tom Porter giving me 18 licks with my head stuck in a book pigeon hole because I made the mistake of telling Bobby Ellerbee that it was my birthday. He had the class singing "Happy Birthday" when Fess Porter walked into class.

It was Oren P. Fulmer ending each question with "what".

It was the rumor that Stewart Cunningham kept brass knuckles in his desk drawer because the class was about to rebel since his French didn't match up to that of Russell Floyd (Mr. Floyd later apologized to us for leaving us to become a Principal). After all, Mr. Cunningham had been to France.

It was watching a fight after school and having Sgt. Killian discover that onlookers had crushed the roof of his car.

It was the band winning Superior at the annual Music Festival in the 11th grade. Instead of repeating the way we got there, Turner Gaughf tried other tactics and we stepped down from the lofts in the 12th grade.

It was playing at Fraternity and Sorority dances with the Steve Meadows band, the Victor Andros band and the Homer Scarborough band.

It was all these things and much, much more.....

After all these years, I am impressed that my Lanier classmates are all successful and I am proud to have known so many.

In more than one occasion at past reunions, Classmates have come to me and told me that I made an impression on them as a mentor or was the reason they took up a hobby. It really hit home that we really do make impressions on other people, many of which we will never know.

A Significant Moment at Miller by Linda Carstarphen Gugin

When I was in the tenth grade (or maybe the eleventh), my history teacher, Miss Anne Henry, invited several students in her class to form a reading group. She picked out a book for us to read and on a designated night we met at her house to discuss the book. The book that I remember in particular was Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, the biography of president Franklin D. Roosevelt by James McGregor Burns. Miss Henry provided refreshments and we sat in her living room and discussed the book. It was the first time that I participated in that type of learning situation, and to my recollection it was the only time that I did so in high school. It made a lasting impression on me because it opened my eyes to the many nuances of a book. It challenged me to think more deeply about things that I read. I found the give and take of the discussion exciting and perhaps it was a first, small stepping stone towards the career path that I chose for myself – being a college professor of political science.

I almost didn't make it to Lanier by Kirk Domingos

The Time was March 1954. We were in the seventh grade at Joseph Clisby. It was a Saturday night around 11 p.m. All of a sudden a tornado ripped through Macon, killing several people.

It could have been worse; it could have been many of us. In addition to moving a wall at Clisby, it required us to attend classes at Vineville Methodist for the rest of the year. The tornado ripped the slate roof off of Vineville Christian Church next door to Clisby. Had the storm occurred during the school day many of us would have been killed or injured by the bits of slate that we saw later were embedded in our desks in Mis Holt's and Mrs. Jordan's rooms.

To this day I remember getting up at 4:30 in the dark to deliver papers and finding National Guardsmen blocking Vineville Ave. I recall that several houses to which I delivered papers were destroyed and many more damaged.

Had the storm occurred thirty-six hours later, many of us would not be at our reunion.

I treasure my Clisby Grammar School and my high school experience at Miller for the many close friends I made. We have stayed in touch growing older through both happy and hard times. But for me, the surprising encounters I had with people I hardly knew at these reunions were the ones that have been life lessons. That is why I encouraged the high school kids at the school where I taught Art to always come back reunions. My advice was to a leave behind a small piece of themselves so that when they returned they could remember who they were, and by reconnecting to their classmates, they might find who they are today.

At our 25th, an acquaintance rushed up to me and said, "Oh my god, I will never forget what you said in Supervision 103". I froze, afraid of the answer and thinking, oh no, what dumb thing did I say. She said, "Ginger, you told me you liked my hair!” It turned out that she had always felt bad about how she looked and what I said made her so happy. This was an unexpected gift to me. One never knows what impact a few words will make.

The following story is one that is hard to tell but much more important as a life lesson. I remember a man coming up to me whom I didn't recognize. "You don't have a clue who I am do you?”, he said. I responded, "No I'm sorry I don't”. He told me when he was in high school he used to come to my house to assist his dad who was an electrician. “I remember”, he continued, ”I would see you come down the stairs of your house dressed for a date and I would think to myself, I wish I could ask her out, but, no, I didn't feel that I could. Our lives seemed so far apart then”. I tried to apologize to him. He said, “this is the first reunion I have come to. It has taken me a long time to tell you this and I am glad I did”. I said, “ I am glad you did too”. As I have moved though my life, I have learned to listen better and reach out more to all people.

Even today, as I looked back on that moment where I realized I hurt someone or even said the right thing, I am grateful for their honesty. It is a painful and happy reminder of lessons I taught my own children and the kids I taught. We are not alone on this earth. How we affect one today can impact another tomorrow. Because we are afraid to tell of our pain, often it becomes unsaid. I continue to be grateful to both of these classmates for being honest and truthful. Many of my former students have responded to me over the years how important reconnecting to each other has been, more they ever could have imagined. I feel the same way.