Welcome To Wheeler

I'm not sure when the "Dog Days of Summer" actually start. But I'm pretty sure they have started.

Summer in Georgia is always hot. It is always muggy. This summer, we have the bonus of air-to-ground lightning storms, usually in the afternoon.

I'm not sure what causes it. All I know is that science is involved, and I checked out of science long ago when I was a student at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia (School Motto: "Where The Leaders of Tomorrow Are Sticking Gum Underneath The Desks Of Today").

Speaking of Wheeler High School, the big news is President Trump will be at Wheeler next week for something.  I think it has to do with his "Trump Accounts," in which parents can open up an IRA for their kid(s) so they can pay for college to earn a degree that they can't get a job with because of AI. 

Therefore, please consider this a primer regarding Wheeler High School to help all of the national media that will descend upon Holt Road this week.

The mascot: The Wildcats. School Colors: Blue and Gold. School Alma Mater:  "We're The Wheeler Wildcats"

Lyrics to "We're The Wheeler Wildcats":  "We're the Wheeler Wildcats you've heard so much about. Mother's hide their daughters whenever we're about.  We fight with knives and forty-fives and broken bottle too. We're the Wheeler Wildcats, who the <insert your favorite bad word> are you?"

Wheeler was named for General Joseph Wheeler, who was a Confederate General and later became a U.S. general in the Spanish-American War, and he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Additionally, he was non-binary and used to ride his horse into battle side-saddle. [Editor's note:  There is no record of this in any history book.]

When I went to Wheeler, it was considered one of the best, if not the best, high school in Cobb County. I don't know if that was such a high bar, but it made us feel good. I heard from kids at other high schools that said we were "stuck up" because we could read.

We had a lot of students who were very smart.  They took classes like Calculus, which is the mathematical study of continuous change. I think. To be honest, I never had anyone explain to me what Calculus was except to say it was hard and would go over my head because I didn't understand all of the X= whatever of Algebra. 

Needless to say, the math I took at Wheeler was called "Math".

Back then, it wasn't illegal to smoke cigarettes on Earth.  We had a designated place at Wheeler where "students" (usually the same ones that took "Math" with me) could go and smoke. We called it "The Smoke Hole."

The teachers did not smoke in our "Smoke Hole."  They smoked in something called "The Teacher's Lounge," which also had a Coke machine.  (Editor's Note: in some areas of the country they are referred to as "Soda Machines".)

We had one teacher who would literally stick a cigarette in her mouth the minute the bell dismissing school for the day rang. I guess we kind of stressed her out. 

Another time, a "student" ( a guy my brother knew) fell asleep in class.

Now, kids were falling asleep in class for various reasons back then. Drugs, laziness, too much excitement in Calculus.  I must admit, I fell asleep several times, too, even though I didn't do drugs or Calculus. For some reason, teachers do not like this.

The teacher in this class (who was fairly "cool") went over and shook this guy to wake him up.  He woke up and whopped her pretty good. The force of the whop caused her to hit a bulletin board and enabled him to have some time away from school, if you know what I mean.  

We have some notable alumni.

Brett Butler, who had her own situation comedy called "Grace Under Pressure".  My brother sort of knew her. She also was the center fielder for the Atlanta Braves.

Pam Stone, who was in the situation comedy "Coach", where she played Dauber's girlfriend. Fun fact: the actor who played Dauber is the voice of Patrick Star on "SpongeBob SquarePants".  She (Pam, not SpongeBob) was in my class and wore a lot of T-shirts that had pictures of horses on them.

Bob Tway, another member of my class, played in the PGA and won the PGA Open, defeating Greg Norman. To my knowledge, he has never work on "SpongeBob SquarePants."

Jaylen Brown, a basketball player who played for the Celtics but was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers.

Robert Shaw, a football player who was the Dallas Cowboys' number one pick in 1979. He is the only Wheeler graduate to have his name spoken by Howard Cosell.  If my memory serves, he was a real big guy.
 
Brad Armstrong was a professional wrestler. He was the son of "Bullet Bob Armstrong" and the brother of Scott, who my wife knew. 

 

 

  

Her Retirement

 

 

Two weeks after she graduated from Wheeler High School, Lori got a job.

That was June of 1979.

Jimmy Carter was President.  The average price per gallon for gas was around ninety cents.  The most popular movie was "The Amityville Horror". The radio played songs like "Bad Girls", "Ring My Bell", and "The Logical Song".

Her parents were all for it.  Her mother told her that she would soon marry a boy who would make enough money for her to stay at home and raise the kids.

Oops.

So, while her friends and classmates enjoyed the summer off before starting college, Lori did something else. 

Lori went to work in the front office at a Browning Manufacturing warehouse. Browning (a division of Emerson Electric) made power transmission parts, and Lori's warehouse shipped them out. 

She never stepped foot inside a college classroom.  She never had a term paper due or had to read a book for English Lit. She never had to take an elective. 

She never experienced Sorority rush.  She never pledged. She never went to a mixer. She was never pinned.

Unlike her classmates, Lori didn't have a Christmas break or a summer break because she had a job.

She lived with her parents, her brother, and her sister in a little East Marietta subdivision known as Red Oak Park. 

She was able to save enough to buy a car.  A red Chevette. 

She stayed at that job for over 19 years.

In the meantime, she married me.  She still had the job.

Soon it was Lori and Me and Ben-Ben makes three.

Total time away from work, not including paid time off: 6 weeks after the baby was born. Then Lori went back to work.  That's how they did things back then.

She left that job to become an executive assistant to the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of a building and design firm.  She worked there from 1998 to 2009.

When things were good at the building and design firm, things were really good, like the Christmas parties.  However, there were some bad things.

One day, she got a call from a job site.  An elevator inspector was killed in an accident. 

Another time, an executive she supported was killed in an airplane crash.

Another time, a colleague committed suicide. 

The cherry on top was the owner and the firm being investigated by the FBI  and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI). It is a long story. Lori was interviewed by the FBI and MBI simply because she submitted timecards for people working in the field. Lori wasn't in trouble, but she was on the government's subpoena list. The United States of America cut a deal with the owner of the firm before the case went to trial. 
 

Wheeler High School never prepared her for that.

She moved on to a Medical documentation tech firm in 2009. She was the executive assistant to the Owner/CEO. 

That firm was bought by another tech firm, Nuance,  in 2012. Then that firm was bought by another tech firm you might have heard of in 2021.

Microsoft.

She started with a small company she would have to explain to everyone and finished at a company that needed no explanation. 

She always has regretted not going to college. She would always wonder out loud what she would have majored in. While graduating from college is a feather in a cap, it was not a cap Lori needed. 

She has skills they don't teach in college. She worked with a lot of people from different backgrounds and got along with all of them. She worked with doctors, nurses, and construction managers. She worked with building superintendents. She worked with other admins that were older and some that were younger.  She worked with medical school graduates, night school graduates, and Ivy League graduates. 

She would go to the warehouse in the middle of the night to box up and ship a part because some plant was shut down.

She would take a million calls to change flight arrangements. The most memorable one was when she had to arrange a flight for an executive who was in Chicago to take a flight to Birmingham, Alabama due to the death of his mother. At five o'clock on a Friday afternoon.

She would know how to talk to her fellow admins off the ledge when work got a little too much.

For a Southern Baptist, she knew how to celebrate Diwali. 

I told her that quote from Woody Allen: "90% of success in life is just showing up".  I heard her tell her colleagues that during a virtual going-away party.

Lori showed up.

Now, she doesn't have to.