CLASS OF 1958
Gary Engelbart
by Daniel Kent
When I was in sixth grade, my folks moved to town and we lived north across the street from the high school.
One of my best playmates growing up was the big north wall of the high school gymnasium building. I threw a lot of baseballs against the big north wall practicing my pitching, fielding ground balls and fly balls of the wall.
Before the present building was build, we had a huge playground to play in. Rod and Gale Lander, Dick Larsen, Jim Rasmussen, Paul Wenke, my late nephew Myron Schoch, Paul Fletcher from Thurston and many others played a lot of ball on this playground.
After graduating from Wayne State, I taught business education and coached basketball in Walthill and Hooper and have memorizes of coaching these schools in the Pender gymnasium.
While in high school, I took college prep classes with emphasize on business classes including accounting, typing, and law. I also remember taking Vocational agriculture and participating in their seed and weed contest.
Early in my high school years, athletics was very good in Pender High School. Richard Shipwright was one of the best basketball players that I can remember to play basketball. I remember Jerry Bush, the basketball coach at Nebraska, came to watch him play. Dick Brink, Randall Powley, Bill Zeplin and Bill Averman are a few of the other players that I remember looking up to.
Teachers that I can remember were Bulford Jones, Clarence Schwartz, Al Sick, Jean Young, Gertride Case, Martha Heyne, and Dennis Johnson.
Teacher/coaches were Ray Magsamen, Bob Mackie, Ed Hansen, Jack Gilmore, and Charles Lanik.
I also have fond memories of custodians Lu and Hoger Larsen and their popcorn stand up town. I spent a lot of time collecting popcorn sacks and boxes on main street and selling popcorn at town team baseball games.
Pender is a great town and I am proud to say that Pender is my home town and that I graduated from Pender Public School.
