Larry Johnson

I've been living in Belleville with my wife Kris since 1985. We have 2 boys, freshman and junior in university. They are brilliant, like their mother. Kris knew what her future career would be as of junior high school and she attained it right on schedule. In contrast, I wandered from field to field. In GCHS, I decided I would become a pro-musician due to 4 fun-filled years in the band. Not being one to blaze a trial, I followed two of our class's true musicians from school to school. After a year in music schools, I eventually realized the talent and dedication required and that I was short on both counts.

So I took the road for which I was more suited, and followed another friend into engineering. After working nearly 10 years at McDonnell Douglas in electronic engineering doing kind of sciency stuff, I jumped on the internets bubble for another 8 years as a 'consultant'. Which is a high faluttin' word that really means 'contract laborer'. For the last 6 years a couple friends and I have been working under our own company. Life's been good.

Wish you all well,

Larry Johnson

Susan Prokopich Montgomery

Life after High School

Let’s see, after high school, I had BIG plans. I was going to sponge off my folks, get a job, buy a really cool car, and go clubbing with my best friend Mary. Five months later Mark Montgomery motioned for me to pull over and invited Mary and me to join him at Pere Marquette. While there, he was trying to move a big log and his pants split. I was a goner and a year later, we were Mr. and Mrs. Mark Montgomery. We were financially independent, Mark was happy since he got to drive my cool car, and I went clubbing with my husband, his brother and his brother’s wife instead of Mary. I was still on track.

When I gave birth to our first child Benjamin in May 1983, my job and clubbing lost their appeal. As the youngest of four who never babysat, I had no idea how to be a mother, but I was determined that he would survive. A friend told me I should have named him Velcro because he was always on my hip. As if motherhood wasn’t enough of a challenge, I found out the man I married was an atheist. Who knew?

Foolishly, I decided to become June Cleaver. I cooked exactly like my mom, burnt fried chicken, roast as tough as a hockey puck, and tuna casserole so dry you had to pour milk over it before it could be swallowed. Mark decided to teach me to cook and I was the world’s worst student. Plus, he was frustrated because he really wanted me to set Ben down every once in a while.

Okay, I decided I would take on the task of seeing to Ben’s spiritual education. Mark wasn’t too keen on the idea, and he promised to boycott any children’s program in which Ben participated. Like the housewife challenge, I rolled up my sleeves and committed myself 100%.

Pretty soon I could crank out a weekly menu’s worth of meals that were fairly edible so I started teaching Mission Friends to children ages 2 – 5. Mark was true to his word, boycotting Ben’s baptism and he also shared his beliefs of evolution with Ben. As I got a little better at this homemaker stuff, I became more involved in the church, teaching both the 1st and 2nd grade class and children’s church. With my 30th birthday around the corner, it was time to add to our family. In January 1991 during a horrible snowstorm, our daughter Rachel was born.

Now we had two beautiful children, I was lucky enough to be able to spend all my time with them since Mark was an excellent provider, my meals were still improving, and I began what would become a long run teaching 5th and 6th graders at church. On the home front, I was ready to tackle flower gardening.

When it was time for Rachel to go off to school I discovered your children could go to parochial school even if you weren’t Catholic. Rachel started Holy Family School and I did something I hadn’t done in 16 years—I got a job.

I chose a gas station down the street because I could start after I took Rachel to school and end my day when I picked her up. I was close to home so Ben could stop in to see me whenever he wanted, I didn’t have to invest in a wardrobe, and when Rachel was on school breaks, I could switch to evenings so she could be with daddy--no babysitter worries.

Trouble takes many forms. As it turned out trouble came to us because I was competent at something--ordering inventory, stocking shelves and waiting on customers. Who knew?

In a fairly short amount of time, I became a shift supervisor, then got a promotion and began working in the oil offices in Edwardsville as the administrative assistant to the CEO. Rachel went into daycare after school, Mark took over the cooking (thank God!), I managed to keep up with the laundry, but the house fell apart. As the result of pressure from my job, an unhappy family, the loss of my father, and the adjustment of my mother’s new marriage, I suffered from a lot of stress and an enormous amount of guilt.

Quitting my job a year later, I went to work for Vicki Johnson Royce and her husband John answering phones and setting up house showings—no pressure there. Unfortunately, it was too late. The die had been cast, the ill-feelings were still there, and by then I was completely miserable and terribly depressed.

In October 2001 I walked out of a 22-year marriage, leaving behind my beautiful garden, my clean home, and even my two kids. My best friend Mary took me in, and I began the pursuit of the fastest divorce of a long-term marriage in history so I could get my kids back. In January we were officially divorced, and I found a house to rent on St. Clair Avenue that was close enough to school that Rachel could walk. I was sleeping on an army cot without a single curtain on a window, my food was kept fresh in a cooler outside my kitchen door, everything I cooked came off a camp stove or an electric skillet, and my son Ben was so angry with me that he stayed with his dad. Talk about tough times.

Leaving Royce, I went to work for a temporary agency. The pay was good and the benefits were non-existent, but I desperately needed a work history. I bought a mattress and springs, a refrigerator, a stove, curtains, and a dryer. Eventually I got my current job working for a federally funded program at a local community college. My house was becoming a home, but Ben still angry with me. He went from being a wild child to a man living dangerously.

Time is the great physician and, in time Ben got the help he needed. He now owns his own home, has a wonderful job, and recently began school. In three years he hopefully will complete an apprenticeship program and become a machinist. Rachel graduated high school and will begin her freshman year next month at Benedictine University. She has decided to use her artistic talent to work with troubled kids as a career. After I got my present job, I bought my rental house and earned my associate’s degree in management. I started my bachelor’s but I stopped when I started focusing on Rachel’s college life.

At present I’m trying like the dickens to get a government job in Springfield, but that is proving to be more difficult than I thought. Rachel will be living with my mother until I can get a job there. Along with Mom, I have other family members living in Springfield waiting for me. In time I hope to join them.

So, as it turns out, there was life for me after divorce. Who knew?

Donna Smallie Klopfer

The last 30 years- I worked at National Supermarket until they sold to Schnucks in 1995. I then back to school and got a Associate Degree in Hotel/Motel Management and for the last 12 years I have been the manager of the Hampton Inn/Collinsville. I was married for the first time in 1983 to Tim McGrath and had daugher,Whitney who is now 21! We divorced in 1995 and I remarried in 2001 to Jack Klopfer from Alton. He had a daughter who at that time was 24. We all now live in Glen Carbon with both daughters and a 2 year old granddaughter. Picture attached is in front of my nephew's tour bus when they openned for Santana last year.

Bruce Monahan

Hello fellow allumni of GCHS South! Alex was kind enough to send me an e-mail directing me to the reunion blog (Thanks Alex!). It appears I was part of a list of missing allumni (funny I don't feel missing). You probably will remember me as being the guy in class sitting in the next to the last row .. you know? ... fourth one from the left? ... the knucklehead facing the wrong direction (story of my life!). So, thirty years since graduation .... Wow! Where has all the time gone? It seems like it was only yesterday ... I remember ... I was doing my laundry ... oh wait a minute that was yesterday (cue rim shot). It's actually been great reading some of the blogs that were posted here. It's good to see that with all the trial and tribulations some of you have encountered, that you have all come out on top. I guess since Alex asked for more blog entries that I would add my "life story" to the mix as well. Warning ... the following is full of lame attempts at humor ... read at your own risk.

My Life Story
I am originally from my mom (I'm sure we can all relate to that) and forcibly evicted from my first home after just nine months and sent to live in a grand old place called "the world". So I ventured out on my own with nothing more then a bottle, a rattle, and a god-awful smell coming from my diaper. I spent my formulative years at Parkview Elementary where I excelled at eating crayons and banging erasers. And yes, all at the same time. Somehow I graduated from there and moved on to Coolidge Junior High. Crayon eating was highly discouraged by them, so I had to move on to something else. I tried sniffing glue but almost drowned a few times (I guess they didn't mean Elmers) ... so I excelled at eating paste and licking my fingers. Somehow I also graduated from Coolidge and moved on to GCHS. I spent the next four years dealing with pimples, random body hairs, and the embarrassment from the pitch of my voice fluctuating three full octaves everytime I said something. Good times ... good times indeed. I guess I was a middle-of-the-road student. Was I athletically gifted? - Nope. How about academically inclined? - More declined then inclined I would say. Popular? - I guess many people thought my last name was "who" because they would always say "Bruce who?". Perhaps I was a "ladies man"? - wait, wait ...let me catch my breath because that one cracked me up. So what did I do in high school? Well, somehow I ended up in the theater department. This was strange because my acting talent was once compared to Keanu Reeves trying to do Shakspeare, but somehow I stayed with it. After graduation I then did a stint at SIU until it came to my second year. I was trying to prove the theory that pure osmosis could be used to gain a higher degree of knowledge withough actually attending classes ... um? ... I'm still working on trying to get that theory to work. I sure wish they would have offered a degree in "Student Center". Shortly after my abrupt college run I moved to Florida where I have been ever since. About ten years ago I doodled some cartoons and staked my corner on the world wide web with a site called "pencilwedgees". For about the past five years I have been a freelance cartoonist/3-d animator. As soon as I make another 999,999 more dollars I will become a millionaire. But for right now I guess I can be labeled as a "dollaraire" (before taxes). I guess I will shut up now. If you have read everything to this point then I must say congratulations and I'm sorry that you are having a really slow day. I won't be able to attend the reunion this year unfortunately. Maybe in another ten years I will have the opportunity. By then there should be flying cars and teleportation pods scattered everywhere ... and perhaps my osmosis theory will be perfected by then. Best of luck to everyone and have a great time at the reunion party ... oh and if anyone takes any photos of allumni highly inebriated and passed out in the corner or any of them dancing with lamp shades on their head, I would really like to see them. Take care everyone ... Bruce

Ronald P. Cline

Don't know If I'll get to attend the 30 year reunion this year, but would love to hear from some classmate of GCHS class of 1979. I currently live in Houston TX, and still come back to Granite from time to time either to see family and/or on business. Now here is a little about myself and what I've been up to.... After high school I went into the US Army as a Military Policeman. I spent the entire time (3 years) in Germany, and loved it, while traveling and seeing most of Europe. Then after my Military service I went back to college and completed a Business Degree. I then went to work for Conoco Oil, which has now merged with Phillips Oil, so it's ConocoPhillips Inc. these days. I'm currently a Statistical Analyst for ConocoPhillips and travel throughout the US on business. I spend a lot of time working in Los Angeles CA and Savannah GA, which is where we have 2 large lubricant facilities. Anyhow..., its really not all that exciting, but it pays well, and I enjoy the travel. I stayed single until age 33, when I finally got married for the first and only time, we had no children, therefore I continued to be the child. Still enjoying outdoor activities and sports with a little adrenaline rush, such as motorcycles, flying, white water rafting, snow skiing, and scuba diving, back packing, horseback riding, etc... Anything that keeps my heart pumping so I can feel young again. In fact..., I just got back from Breckenridge CO, where we did some hiking and horseback riding in the mountains. Love to hear from you...