I put a new guestbook in the main reunion page. The old one was fairly inactive except for spambot entries and so this new one which requires an authorization code should help to prevent that. Please go ahead and sign it to let us know you've been here.

I'm reposting this for Jay. For some reason, the posts that were done over the weekend were not stored in the database on Blogger which meant that they'd get erased whenever a new posting was added. Also wanted to say Congratuations to your son in winning the finals and wish him well in the States!


Howdy everyone!! We are heading to States on Feb 24-25 at the Nassau County Coliseum!! My son won in the finals in style, pinning his opponent in 1:09 of the first period. What a little buzz-saw!!! Hopefully I'll have a good report to file after we return. Keep your fingers crossed!!

I could hardly believe that Dick Cheney took my advice! And he did more than just blog about the incident. No more than 12 hours after I wrote about it, he came out on Fox News (that fair and balanced network) and came clean on what had happened with the shooting accident. And it seems to have helped his cause. He got a standing ovation in his home state of Wyoming by fellow lawmakers.

So never for a moment doubt the power of a blog. It's true that I have no evidence that it was actually this blog that made the difference. And I have no way of knowing that the 6 or 7 people who read it each day are close enough to Cheney to mention to him what I was suggesting. But considering all the other bloggers were just kvetching about what he did wrong, never bothering to tell him how to correct the wrong, leads me to believe that in some small way the advice given here helped.

You never realize how the little things in life, things long forgotten about, can shape your ability to assess a situation and provide you with keen insight. Every adversity has buried within it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. One day you're accidentally shooting your friends and the next day (or even 35 years later) you're able to use that experience to give sage advice to the leaders of your country.

I'm Dick Cheney yes
I'm the real Cheney
All you other Dick Cheney's are just imitatin'

I'm feeling pretty bad for Dick Cheney, but long before he started shooting his hunting buddies, I was guilty of the same thing. While planning the 2002 reunion and chatting on the blog, Joe Petrasek emailed me something about shooting him with my BB gun. I thought he was joking, but then recalled I have a gift...it's really a form of amnesia...about unpleasant past experiences. I try not to think about unpleasant past experiences, and then they just disappear from my memory. I thank God every day for that gift.

But then, in June 2002, I get this email from Joe:

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Hi Lee,

Just getting back to you on the BB gun incident. As I remember, many...many...years ago, we were about 10 or 11 years old when we decided to go hunting over the MARSH. As you remember the Marsh was a dump area for a steel (structural iron works) fabricator. The Marsh is where all the young juveniles from Swoyersville and Luzerne hung out.

The marsh always had a light green or orange tint to it. It always had 5 gallon paint cans and 55 gallon drums floating on the surface. It was a great place to ice skate in the winter. Always had to look out for those obstacles while skating. (55 gal drums, wooden skids, paint cans, rail road ties...) A GREAT PLACE TO PLAY... enough of that, on with the story...

We were on a hunt for anything that moved. We hunted the trees on the west side and the flat ground on the east side. We were walking on the east side of the marsh when I think a rabbit ran out between you and I (I was approx. 10 yds. in front of you) and you either swung you gun around and the gun went off or you shot at the rabbit and the BB ricocheted off something and bit me square it the back. (A little Forrest Gump there). I think I fell to my knees it hurt so bad. The size of the welt was huge. Nice shot... BINGO... You got ME!!!

I hope this refreshes you memory or maybe there was no rabbit... I now remember that cold blank stare.

I just want to know one thing. Were you anywhere near Dealey Plaza, Dallas Texas around 12:25 p.m, November 22nd, 1963? Are you sure you weren't on the Grassy Knoll? Were you the "Umbrella Man?" I don't care if you were only 4 or 5 years old.

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I responded to Joe after this email and went into the first phase of grief, i.e, denial, offering up suggestions that it was really another one of our friends who had done the deed. Then I remembered my 'gift', that one where I forget unpleasant experiences and chalked it up to that and subsequently issued a public apology (linked to our headliners page).

After issuing this public apology, Joe accepted it much to my relief. I can't say for sure how long this time lapse was before notifying the public of my misdeed, but certainly decades longer than the 14 hours that Cheney delayed in telling his story. I'm just glad I'm not the vice president of the USA, and I suspect after this public admission, it's no longer in the cards for me.

Now with this experience under my belt, I feel compelled to offer some advice to our V.P.: Get yourself a blog or webpage and admit to your guilt, get it off your chest, and ask for forgiveness. Offer a running commentary on the health of your friend. Then and only then will the media storm abate and you can get back to running the country.

Hi Jay! Thanks for the update. It's been sooo long since anyone besides me had posted here that I was starting to get lonely. I changed the theme in honor of the occasion. I got tired of looking at the old one partly because it was a little drab and partly because the first posting wasn't showing up at the top of the page on IE. It worked OK on the Firefox browser, but more people use IE.

So now we have a new look and feel.

I got an email recently from Mary Lynn Delfino, Director of Development for Bishop O'Reilly and she's looking for volunteers to help out with the annual Phonathon fund raiser. If you ever wanted to walk a mile in the shoes of a telemarketer, this could be a golden opportunity. It may help you to re-connect with some old friends too, so there's an upside to it. Please contact Mary Lynn if you'd like to volunteer.

Happy February, everyone!! Gosh, it's been a loooong time since I've written. I apologize for not keeping in touch. I just returned from the Broome County Arena, where my son advanced to the semi-finals of the Section IV Wrestling Tournament. It's equivalent to the regionals in PA. I hope that everyone is doing well, and would love to hear from you. My e-mail is jtobias@stny.rr.com, or johntobiasny@lycos.com. Take care!!!

In order for a blog to get any visitors, it has to be updated periodically so I'll write a few words here in the hope that it may spark some discussion. Today is Super Bowl Sunday and I expect that a few of you will be cheering for the Pittsburgh Steelers who knocked our beloved Broncos out of contention for the championship a few weeks ago. You can't live in Colorado without swearing allegiance to the local teams, and that means whether they're having a good year or not. I recall growing up in Pennsylvania that there wasn't any strong loyalty to the local teams. My friends had favorites like the Mets, Vikings, Bucks, Braves, Packers, Raiders, etc., In other words, teams from around the whole country, and usually teams that had established themselves as champions at one time or another. Out here things are different. Most people have moved here from somewhere else. It's rare to find someone who was actually born in Colorado and I guess that means that the immigrants like myself aren't bound by home team loyalties. You'll still find a few of them here and there, but the nearest professional teams are hundreds of miles away and so that may account for such a strong sense of loyalty to the Broncos, Rockies, Avalanche, and yes, even the Nuggets.

Of course, now that Pittsburgh is in the Super Bowl, I will cheer for them. When I went to Penn State, we cheered for any team that played against Pitt, our arch rival. But that animosity didn't translate to Pittsburgh professional teams. Speaking of Penn State, did you happen to catch the Orange Bowl this year? I didn't think my heart could stand much more of it. We spent six hours of watching a game that ended in triple overtime, fortunately in Penn State's favor! I could not listen to that annoying FSU war chant for another second. A bowl victory is a much better outcome than the last few years have been for Joe Paterno. However, I wish it had been for the National Championship instead of a #3 NCAA ranking. Still, the Big 10 Championship was pretty sweet.



I got an email from Mary Lynn Delfino, Director of Development at Bishop O'Reilly, recently. Mary Lynn had found our website and was trying to track down our fellow classmate Tim Wallo. The address I had for him was 1220 Scenic Brook Trail, Conyers, GA which is different than the one she had for him. If someone knows of a more recent address, please let me know. She explained that the love letters she was sending to Tim were returned by the USPS. After giving us a nice compliment (I believe the words she used to describe the website were 'a great source of information, nostalgia, and comedy!) I gave her the address and hope that they are able to track him down and get some money from him. I wouldn't want Tim to miss out on an opportunity to 'return the love' to our alma mater :-).

Over the next 9 week period in February and March, Mary Lynn is helping to organize the annual Phonathon. If you'd like to participate in it, please email her and she can get you set up with phone numbers and the scripts so you can do some shaking down for the old Alma Mater. I've never aspired to be a telemarketer, but this could be fun. You can collect an old debt for a good cause. And please be willing to donate when called upon to help further cement our reputation as the best BOR class that ever graduated from those hallowed halls...:-)