Zanesville High School, Class of 1964

I’m Gary Smith, with address and phone number already on the site (no doubt thanks to Ron Drumm, another buddy).

It’s funny how the nerds/jocks and other such labels seem to melt away after so many years.  I was a pretty studious, shy kid hovering between “almost fat” and “fat”.  Quite sobering is the revelation that 31 of us are gone—some with whom in my ZHS years I was pretty close.

My sense of place at ZHS began and ended with things musical.  I was in the marching band, the Blue Knights and even took Mr. Newman’s harmony class and played (sax) as a mentor for the cadet band as a senior.  Graduated, went to O.U. Athens for four years and almost never touched a horn.  But in the ‘90’s I found our local Southern Maryland Concert Band and Swing Band where I played for about eight years—a great antidote to the rest of life.

Ron Drumm, Larry Hollingshead and I went to spectate basketball (and ladies) together a lot and then get the requisite 15-cent burger and dime coke at Burger Chef after.

When I was in Nerk for 13 years as a photog at “The Advocate” I attended more 15-minute segments of football and basketball games than you might imagine.  We regularly shot quarter one of a football or basketball game at one school, then drove ten or fifteen miles to the next Licking County school to shoot the third quarter, racing back to the paper to develop and print pix for the Saturday morning paper.  Even today, I have little attention span for a game and typically bail after the first quarter shooting for the “Maryland Independent” in Charles County, MD.

We (wife Linda from Peebles, Ohio and three kids) have been away from S.E. Ohio for twenty years except to visit with family several times a year.  All three kids are through college now and in Corona, CA, Burlington, NC and Odenton, MD.

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