high school award

I’m very pleased to receive the 2012 Alumni Achievement Award of Mt. Vernon High School (Iowa). I graduated way back in 1986 (my father in 1965), and they aren’t even in the same building anymore. But it’s still a nice surprise, and I’ll do everything in my power to return for the ceremony.

Like many or most Americans of an intellectual disposition, I didn’t enjoy my high school years at all, and couldn’t wait to put those years behind me. But with time you start to gain a ripened appreciation of the most formative institutions through which you passed. The fact that virtually all of my father’s side of the family attended the school makes it all the more formative.