I was not a particularly good student even though it usually appeared that way since my way of surviving was “to be seen but not heard”. I was always on time, polite, neat, and seem to be doing what I was suppose to be doing.
Reality is that I did what I enjoyed, indulged in my passions, and procrastinated on most everything else. A couple of teachers paved the way for me to carve out my own unique niche – elevating my interests to such a degree that I was excused from the things that bored me.
Throughout school I found myself amid social transition in the education system – a brand new experimental elementary school, a Junior High in transition from gender role classes to co-ed, and in high school the first television production curriculum in the nation.
Landing on the moon preordained our space-age future with little distinction between the covers of My Weekly Reader and episodes of the Jetsons. Nobody doubted for a minute that we would all be zooming around in anti-gravity personal space craft in the decades to come. They never depicted how we would transition, apparently one day it would all just happen.
Rochester Central Lutheran School
I attended kindergarten at Rochester Central Lutheran School, my first year of formal education.
The school was relatively new at the time. Rochester Central Lutheran School was established in 1959 when Trinity, Grace, and Redeemer Lutheran congregations combined their elementary schools into a single school. A new campus was constructed in northwest Rochester in 1961 to accommodate the growing enrollment.
My memories from kindergarten are limited, but a few have endured. My science fair project explored the question, “How does popcorn pop?” I also remember bringing our Saint Bernard to school for show-and-tell, which was undoubtedly more memorable for my classmates than for the dog.
Horace Mann Elementary School
I attended first through third grades at Horace Mann Elementary School in Rochester. It was a traditional neighborhood elementary school and provided a conventional classroom experience before I transferred to the newly built Benjamin Franklin Elementary School.
Benjamin Franklin Elementary School
As the Meadow Park neighborhood grew, a new elementary school was built to accommodate the expanding population. Construction was not completed in time for the start of the school year, so we spent the first part of the year attending classes in the gymnasium at Golden Hill Elementary School while we waited for Benjamin Franklin Elementary to open.
Benjamin Franklin was considered a revolutionary school for its time. Kindergarten through third grade occupied one wing in a traditional classroom setting, along with the band room, art room, gymnasium, and other shared facilities.
The opposite wing housed fourth through sixth grade in an experimental open-classroom design. Each classroom had only three walls, with the fourth side opening into a large shared resource center. The idea was to move away from isolated classrooms and create a collaborative learning environment centered around what was envisioned as a high-tech multimedia library. At the time, it represented a glimpse of what educators believed the future of education would look like. It was an ambitious experiment, and I happened to be there as it began.
Central Junior High School
Central Junior High consisted of two large four-story buildings: Central and Coffman. They stood diagonally across the street from each other, connected by a narrow underground tunnel. Because it was a closed campus, using the tunnel was mandatory. Five minutes between classes often meant leaving a third-floor classroom at the back of one building and making it to a third-floor classroom in the other—a journey of roughly two city blocks and the equivalent of climbing 16 flights of stairs.
Both buildings dated to the early 1900s and reflected the architecture of the era. Interior courtyards and enormous windows filled the classrooms with natural light. Central had originally been an elementary school. Coffman had once served as Rochester High School and later the Junior College before each moved into newer facilities. In its final years, Coffman housed the school district offices before eventually being demolished.
Looking back, both buildings were architecturally fascinating. At the time, however, they felt old and a bit creepy. Very little had been modernized. The ceilings were unusually high, the corridors seemed endless, the bathrooms looked ancient, and the steam heating system filled the buildings with the clanging and hissing of temperamental radiators.
Central’s auditorium occupied the middle of the building. It seated more than 1,000 people beneath a large balcony, yet it was rarely used. It was too large for everyday instruction and too small to assemble the entire student body. The stage fascinated me. The lighting controls were mounted on an open-frame rack with exposed wiring, giving it the feel of an earlier era. A few years after the building was demolished, I salvaged the stage footlights and the illuminated exit sign outside my English classroom. The footlights went on to serve in Omni Music Systems and several theater productions. The exit sign still lights the basement door in my home today.
Because the auditorium sat largely unused, I persuaded a couple of my teachers to let me produce my own play there after school. Having access to such a large performance space was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
In seventh grade I ran for student council, which included giving a speech before the entire seventh-grade class of more than 700 students. As the only newcomer in a well-established group, I quickly acquired the reputation of being “the one who doesn’t talk at council meetings.” Before long I realized that life at Central was not always what it appeared to be.
There were students, teachers, and even parts of the buildings that kids like me learned to avoid. Standing out—such as serving on student council—was not always an advantage. The safest strategy was to blend into a crowd of more than 2,000 students, relying on the odds of not attracting attention. I spent the rest of my time at Central doing something of a balancing act: appearing to fit in without ever really fitting in.
I had many good experiences there, but the school also had a darker side. On the surface everything appeared orderly, yet within those aging buildings were places and situations that could be intimidating for vulnerable or nonconforming students. More than anything, what I remember was not specific incidents but the persistent sense that something could happen. That underlying atmosphere of uncertainty shaped the way many of us navigated daily life.
Click here to read more about Central.
Mayo High School
The transition from Central Junior High to Mayo High School was more than a change of schools—it was a complete cultural shift.
Gone were the dark tunnels, aging classrooms, and cavernous hallways of two early twentieth-century buildings. In their place was a bright, modern campus with cheerful white circular hallways, open spaces, and an atmosphere that felt optimistic rather than intimidating.
For the first time in years, school felt less like something to survive and more like a place where opportunities existed. The physical environment reflected the era’s confidence in modern education. Everything was new, clean, and intentionally designed, replacing the institutional feel of Central with a campus that looked toward the future.
Television Production
Television production at Mayo High School was the brainchild of Dwain Johnson and is believed to be the first such program in the country. He carved out not just a new curriculum, but an entirely new learning modality as he became the television production coordinator for the entire school district. Television production at Mayo was regarded as vocational education and operated like a business.
Every classroom in Mayo High School was equipped with a black and white television set suspended from the ceiling and connected to a closed-circuit network of a dozen TV channels. Select rooms had the extravagance of color television!
The television studio was buried deep behind the library accessed by a long hallway complete with an illuminated “ON AIR” sign at the entrance. The studio was divided into three parts: program transmission, production floor and control room.
The transmission room is where student’s playback videotapes on twelve closed-circuit channels. Teachers request programs to be played back at specific times for their classes. Programs came from the extensive library of tapes that was constantly expanding by students recording shows off the air virtually every evening of the week. Between recording and playback this was an 18-hour per day operation.
The studio production floor space consisted of three sets – news, features, sports – for the daily news program The Spartan Scene. We had three black-and-white cameras on tripods with each camera’s cables bundled into a garden hose leading to the control room. This was one of many innovations of Mr. J that reflected the practicality of building a real studio on a shoestring budget.
For the closing credits, he repurposed an old humidifier – the kind where a foam pad loops from a water tank to a fan and back again. He replaced the evaporative pad with interchangeable slats of black wood with vinyl lettering for titles and names. The motor would slowly loop the slats as they would be superimposed over video. Names could be changed by simply swapping out wood slats.
He also came up with a graphics box – a wooden enclosure with a fixed video camera with lights and a slot where standard size pieces of cardboard with graphics could be dropped into. Arguably the first character generator!
Black paint seemed to be the common ingredient to everything Mr. J built. Probably a carryover from his theatrical days, Lisa Johnson, his daughter, co-anchor of The Spartan Scene, and actress extraordinaire said, “Give him a can of flat black paint and he can make just about anything”.
The control room was the nerve center of the studio. This is where the director called the shots, switched video sources and the assistant director ran audio. This was also the office of Mr. Herman the hub of everything and everybody. (Mr. J’s office was far enough away to not interfere with daily operations, but close enough to oversee the big picture.)
The control room was home to an amazing contraption made from a welded steel frame that housed all the equipment for studio productions. There were open reel video recorders, a video switch, camera monitors, an audio mixer, an open reel audio tape recorder, and most importantly an impressive array of custom switches to tie everything together. I remember visiting several times over one summer to see the progress as Mr. Herman rewired much of the console.
Spartan Scene
The Spartan Scene is a ten-minute news, sports and feature program that is “broadcast” live via closed circuit television to every classroom. The entire production is run by students. It is believed to be at the time the first such television program in the country.
Director
Toward the end of my junior year, I was named director for the following school year. Mr. J took me aside to explain that he is giving me full charge responsibility and authority for directing all aspects of the show for the entire year. He said authority and responsibility go together – they can never be separated. He assured me that the show is mine and he would never second guess my decisions. Oh, he would be critical, very critical – but only in his office. On the production floor he would always fully support me.
This seemed like no big deal at the time, but in retrospect it was one of the most profound lessons of my life.
Theater
Under the direction of Dwayne “Mr. J” Johnson, the Mayo High School Drama Department earned a reputation for producing outstanding shows that challenged every student involved. That reputation was all the more remarkable because the theater itself was poorly suited for theatrical productions.
Although the school was only a few years old, much of the theater technology was already obsolete. The stage was exceptionally wide because of the building’s curved design, but it was shallow with very limited fly space above it. Large musical productions could take advantage of the full width, but most plays used only the center portion of the stage. The curved seating arrangement created poor sight lines, and scene changes were surprisingly difficult. There was not enough vertical height to raise scenery out of sight, and the wing space on either side of the stage was too small to store sets, forcing crews to invent creative solutions.
Backstage facilities were equally limited. There was little room for scenery, props or actors, and there were no dedicated dressing rooms, makeup areas, or scene construction space. Classrooms and restrooms routinely became makeshift dressing rooms during productions.
The lighting system was especially memorable. Instead of a control booth at the rear of the theater, the controls were located backstage where operators could not see the performance. The dimmer cabinet was enormous—about the size of half a dozen refrigerators—yet it housed only fifteen dimmers. Each dimmer was operated by a massive mechanical arm connected to an autotransformer, and every production required circuits to be manually reassigned using a patch panel that resembled an old telephone switchboard. Many of the lighting instruments themselves were donated surplus equipment from KROC-TV.
The sound system was little more than a gymnasium public address system, making musicals especially challenging because the orchestra often overpowered the performers. The stage floor had originally been polished like a gymnasium, but over time Mr. J encouraged students to treat it as a working stage. Years of scenery construction and paint gradually transformed it into a practical theatrical surface that didn’t reflect bright stage lighting.
It was a different era. There were no computerized lighting consoles, digital sound systems, automated scenery, wireless microphones, or special effects to elevate a production. Every improvement came from the ingenuity, craftsmanship, rehearsal, and discipline of the people involved. The quality of a performance depended almost entirely on talent and skill rather than the technology supporting it.
Click here to see plays.
Stage Manager
Toward the end of my junior year, I was named Stage Manager for the following school year. This was a complete surprise to me when called into a meeting with Mr. J and outgoing stage manager Dale Madsen. They explained that they were about to break tradition by asking an outsider, me, to step into the role of stage manager since they didn’t have anybody properly groomed for the job. Dale handed the theater master key ring to me, and the job was mine.
I was Stage Manager for three plays, a talent show, and a show for an international square-dancing convention. It took one play to get up to speed and to discover the dilapidated backstage infrastructure. Over winter break I rewired the stage manager console and communication wiring before tackling the remainder of the plays.
As Stage Manager I had full charge of everything backstage. The director, Mr. J, never came backstage. Ever. If he had an issue, he would bellow “Peter!” and then we would have a chat on the headsets. He demanded absolute silence during rehearsals and would bellow at the slightest disturbance – not at the offenders, but rather at me. Ironically, he had no problem with me yelling and interrupting his rehearsal repeatedly if that is what I needed to do to reel things in.
When performing for an audience the director told me when to start the show, how long to hold intermission, and if he wanted a second curtain call. It was my job to call every actor entrance, light cue, sound cue, blackout, scenery change, prop change and special effect.
Student Newspaper
The student newspaper was called The Advocate. This was a professionally printed publication that was entirely produced by students including the rather extensive process of laying it out before sending it to the printers. Look at some of the articles in the photo gallery below – topics you probably would not see today!
Click here to learn more about how the newspaper was layed out.
Click here to read The Advocate
Editor in Chief
I was given quite a few liberties with my class schedule during my senior year. It seemed to be a combination of Mr. J clearing the way to direct the Spartan Scene and my guidance counselor just signing off on stuff rather than try to call me in to talk about my choices. All I know is that the principle issued a new policy that year that no schedule changes would take place unless there was a mistake preventing graduation. My schedule was changed many times with at least two changes that should have prevented graduation. This included when I found Advanced Placement English class required reading some 20 classics. I was given equivalent graduation credit for taking an introductory journalism class in its place. There was no class to attend – it was a block of time for students to work on the school newspaper The Advocate. It was awkward at first since I was not part of the regular staff, but after a few weeks of writing articles I became News Editor. Later in the year I was named Editor-in-Chief. We changed formats from a news tabloid to a feature-oriented magazine with a press run of about 2,500 per issue (every other week).
Events
Graduation
Rochester Community College
When I graduated from high school, people naturally asked what I planned to do next. I needed an answer, so I enrolled at Rochester Community College as a business major.
It didn’t take long to discover that the business curriculum wasn’t for me. The math and science courses were a significant step down from what I had taken at Mayo, and I quickly became bored.
Meanwhile, I found myself drawn to the engineering students and the courses they were taking. Their classes looked far more interesting than mine, so I switched majors and headed down the engineering path.
For a while it was exactly what I was looking for. I completed five quarters of calculus along with classical physics and introductory modern physics. Eventually, however, I reached the point where I was simply in over my head. The coursework had become more than I could realistically handle, and I decided it was time to move on.
Looking back, Rochester Community College continued a pattern that would repeat itself throughout much of my career. I was less interested in following a predefined path than in chasing whatever genuinely captured my curiosity. Sometimes that led to success. Other times it simply led me in a different direction.
Brown Institute
It is unfortunate that the stellar national reputation Brown Institute built over decades was ultimately destroyed by its new owners, who appeared to view the school primarily as a cash cow. By the time they were finished, they had squandered one of the most respected technical schools in the country.
Brown’s reputation was so strong that I enrolled immediately after being accepted, unaware that the school had just been sold to National Education Center. Even then, the cultural shift was becoming obvious. The emphasis was changing from founder-driven excellence to corporate standardization. Fortunately for my class, the faculty and curriculum had not yet been diluted.
The campus itself was unlike any school I had ever seen. The main building had been pieced together by connecting several older buildings that didn’t quite line up. The electronics laboratories occupied a former grocery store. The recording studio was located in the basement of a storefront on Lake Street. When the neighboring fried chicken restaurant closed, Brown simply removed the booths, installed tables and chalkboards, and declared it another classroom. Restaurant equipment remained behind the chalkboards as a reminder of the building’s previous life. It looked improvised because it was—but the education was anything but.
The instructors were as eclectic as they were talented. Brown had a policy limiting instructors to three consecutive years of teaching before requiring them to return to industry for a period of time. The goal was simple: instructors should be practicing professionals, not career academics who had lost touch with the field.
The curriculum was relentless. Each quarter lasted twelve weeks, five days a week, six hours a day. Every week focused on a single topic—capacitors, for example—which was explored through lectures, laboratory work, written assignments, and discussion. Every Friday concluded with a 100-question examination that was graded immediately in front of the class. Students were expected to maintain at least a B average. Missing more than one day during a quarter was grounds for dismissal. Aside from roughly twenty holidays each year, there were no semester breaks. It was two continuous years of concentrated technical education.
For decades Brown Institute maintained a remarkable record of nearly 100 percent job placement. Their formula was surprisingly straightforward.
They developed the curriculum by listening to employers rather than educators. Admission resembled a job interview more than a college application. If they believed you would not succeed in the profession, they simply would not admit you. Once enrolled, students were expected to conduct themselves as professionals. If, at any point, the school concluded that a student was no longer employable, that student was dismissed. By graduation, Brown had produced a class of graduates employers already wanted to hire.
The placement process reflected the same philosophy. Rather than simply handing graduates a diploma, Brown actively introduced them to prospective employers, treating placement as the final step in the educational process.
The year after I graduated, the school moved into an impressive new campus. Many of us initially felt a little cheated after spending two years in improvised facilities. In retrospect, however, it appeared that the new building had been financed, at least in part, by replacing many of the outstanding instructors who had built Brown’s reputation. The priorities had shifted from substance to appearance.
I was fortunate to attend during the brief period when the old Brown Institute still existed.
Brown had a 100% placement rate for decades. How did they do it? An idea so simple and so practical that it would never fly these days.
- They listened to industry and nobody else when developing curriculum.
- They screened applicants to the school as if they were applying for a job. If they would not “hire” you then they would tell you that and not accept them into the school. Either you were employable or not employable – they had a pulse on what employers expected. Students were expected to conduct themselves as if professionally employed. If at any time Brown thought that you were not employable then out, you go. So, they end up with a bunch of employable graduates.
- Marketing of graduates by personal introduction to potential employers.