OK, this Wisconsin stuff is starting to creep me out! Mickey Crowe stories, I love it (I thought he played college ball at Silver Lake in Manitowoc or Lakeland in Sheboygan, definitely not Marquette).
I personally competed against JFK Prep in their last years (80-82) but they were terrible at everything by then. Having gone to St. Lawrence Seminary in nearby Mt. Calvary, WI (part of Wisconsin's Holy Land!) I can appreciate the coolness of having teachers with offices just off their classrooms (I had some really great motivating sessions their as well). However, given that these convenient access offices were also later exposed as sites of abuse, I have mixed feelings. (I often say that the role of architecture in the physical and sexual abuse problems of the Catholic church goes unexplored--Catholic schools, churces, hospitals, rectories, etc. always had these little rooms next to official rooms that end up as sites of abuse).
Our cheerleaders were all guys but only our homecoming "queen" dressed in drag. I grew up in a county that had few (<20) non-whites (and they were usually professionals) but going to St. Lawrence my freshman HS class was >50% non-white.
Jim
Quoting budge <budge at el-pleasant.org>:
> On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 at 1:26pm Steven Gotzler wrote:
>
> > Lombardi funded a boarding school in Wisconsin in the late
> > 60's early 70's. It was called JFK Prep and was situated
> > in the remnants of an old German religious commune, I
> > think it was St. Naizians or something close.
>
> St. Nazianz. There were still a bunch of old retired
> Salavatorian Brothers living there when I spent my freshman
> year there in 1973 and a few of the younger Brothers taught
> there as well.
>
> > The school had no grades, no classes, and half of the
> > student body was inner city kids there on complete
> > scholarship. The place was a riot. Lots of interesting
> > people went there for the few years it existed. Then it
> > went broke I think.
>
> Close, but not quite. There were P/F grades and there were
> definitely classes held on regular schedules. But the
> really cool thing was the faculty each had their own
> classrooms attached to their office space and some of them
> were cool to hang out with and drink coffee and stuff.
> Quality bull sessions.
>
> There were lots of cool people (students and faculty) there,
> each one odder than the next. And you are right, there
> were a bunch of inner city kids there -- it was the first
> time in my life I lived around either black people or people
> from the 'inner city' (the polite word for the ghetto at the
> time). My dorm floor was about 1/3 black compared to the
> suburb where I grew up which had a 1970 census population of
> 68,000 and ONE black family...
>
>
> > I always wondered what Lombardi thought of the place.
>
> I never new Lombardi had anything to do with it -- it seemed
> a most un-Lombardi sort of place.
>
> > Important point. Their sports teams always won, and their
> > cheerleaders were almost all guys dressed in drag and they
> > only did silent cheers. But they won.
>
> That would be the basketball team whose star was Mickey
> Crowe (father Marty was the coach). One year he was there
> he was the highest scoring high school player in the
> country. I think Mickey went on to Marquette when Al
> McGuire was still coaching there, but I'm no basketball fan
> and am not sure of that. I don't think he ever turned pro.
> He was a weird bird-looking kind of guy with almost
> dreadlocks for hair (he was a white guy from the sticks).
>
> I lost my virginity in the woods there and dropped my first
> acid there (not the same day :-) Smoked a lot of pot which
> was not exactly approved of, but sort of accepted as being
> inevitable.
>
> Fond memories....
>
>