It had been more than two decades since I'd been inside the doors of Rossford High School.
TG was an exemplary scholar athlete there from 1966 to 1970. His achievements both academic and athletic while a student at RHS earned him a full scholarship to The Citadel, where he played basketball from 1970 to 1974.
I am no stripe of an athlete and not much of a scholar. Nor was I a cheerleader, and I never dated the quarterback. I had no brothers.
Had no seat at the cool-kids table either.
In fact, from first through twelfth grades not once did I attend the same school two years running. Several times I was obliged to switch institutional rockpiles within the school year. It was confusing.
Not so my TG. He's an all-the-way-through kind of guy, steady, dependable. Accomplished and popular then, greatly loved and respected now.
I was blessed beyond measure to marry the handsomest man I ever laid eyes on in person (and with whom I fell deeply in love on sight in February of 1976) and the most sincere Christian I have ever personally known (hands down, no contest).
Icing on the cake as it were: He is also scary-smart and an athlete of great talent.
He doesn't do much on the court or field these days -- being sixty fine-looking years old and a papaw -- but he loves a day on the golf course and he's still all those other things, and nobody can take any of it away from him.
Yes I am bragging! Deal. I think people should be bragged upon. It encourages them. It's yourself you should not brag on. Others? Always.
Where were we? Oh! I was boasting of the many stellar qualities of my one and only, and I believe I was about to explain why he took me to his old high school.
It is because I am working on a project involving the life of my late father-in-law, who coached and taught at Rossford Junior High and High Schools for over thirty years.
I needed some pictures of Mr. Weber's classroom (Room 201), the gym, et cetera. TG had already contacted the principal, who was very cordial, and made an appointment for us to be let into the school after the students had gone home last Friday.
TG, Audrey, and I spent about an hour moseying down memory lane, and while a morsel of bittersweet nostalgia goes a long way with me, I'm glad we did it.
We have a plaque just like the one in this next picture but I like to see the one affixed securely to the battered cinderblock wall -- along with a couple of hundred others just like it -- in the hallway outside the gym where TG and his brother played hoops to great acclaim back in the day.
The plaque commemorates the snowy evening in 1991 when TG was inducted into the Rossford High School Athletic Hall of Fame.
That's our darling daughter Audrey's face reflected in the plaque next to TG's. But it could just as well be mine, back around 1979 when TG and I married.
And here is TG himself, reflected in his own plaque. Then and now.
What say you to that? Carpe ... carpe diem ...? Yeah. Me too. Sieze the day, y'all.
Here is the plaque honoring TG's younger brother, Ron. He earned ten varsity letters!
And here is a picture of Grandpa Weber's plaque.
Then we went into the gym and I noticed this huge billboard-type thing up above the door, and TG's name at the very top. I pointed it out to him.
He laughed and said he didn't even know that sign had been put up there.
"But they cheated me out of a few inches," he chuckled, speaking of his still-standing school record discus throw during a Northern Lakes League/Great Lakes League track meet during his senior year. "I think I actually threw it one-fifty-seven three."
Ah. I shall reserve comment.
Later that evening we drove into Toledo, about a twelve-minute jaunt from Rossford High School. While tooling around we saw this building.
I don't know what it means but when you see your surname up on a building, you sort of have to take a picture of it.
Then we strolled in International Park by the banks of the Maumee River and, in the company of placidly opportunistic ducks, watched the sun set over downtown Toledo.
Finally I looked eastward to the Cherry Street Bridge, a hop, skip, and a jump beyond which lies Maumee Bay and the vastness of Lake Erie. The squat bridge was partially fairy-lit, glowing ghostily in the gloaming.
I'm not sure you can spot it but there is a battleship docked on the other side of the bridge. At rest.
And becoming as stubbornly reflective as the gray-cast water I thought: sometimes we bridge; sometimes we battle; sometimes we rest.
That is all.
Happy end-of-August!
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Friday, August 31, 2012 at 01:44PM 
