Central Class of ’74 Will Talk About Streaking, But Please, No Watergate | Daily Headlines

The Champaign Central class of 1974 need not be reminded of the big news of the day: the Watergate scandal.

Whether they liked it or not, they heard about it all the time from their history teacher, Les Bowman.

“I really wasn’t interested in politics at the time,” said John Parkhill, a longtime car dealer in the area.

But Mr. Bowman did.

“He would say outrageous things and try to get us to defend it. Like, ‘Freedom is limitation.’ And we’d say, ‘What?'” said Eileen Miller, a Champaign resident who worked at Marathon Petroleum for more than three decades. “We’d go home and tell our parents, and then we’d come back and try to argue with him.”

“I think some people loved him and some people hated him, depending on whether you liked that or not,” Candy Rollins said.

Parkhill shared a story about a classmate who had a master key to the school. As a prank, someone (no names) locked Mr. Bowman in his classroom.

He called the office and asked if he could leave.

You can bet their teacher’s Watergate fixation will be among the topics discussed at the upcoming 50th reunion. An informal gathering is planned for Jupiter’s at the Crossing on August 30. A tour of the renovated high school will be held on August 31. None of the reunion organizers have been back since the makeover.

That evening, a dinner and party are planned at the Elks Lodge in Savoy. On September 1, there will be an informal breakfast.

Patty Kobel, a longtime class reunion organizer, leads a team of ’74 alumni who organize the reunion.

Kobel, Lorenzo Bolden, Miller, Rollins, Parkhill and Jolie Trautman gathered at the Elks Lodge last week and shared stories with me for 45 minutes. They were just getting started.

Another key organizer who was not available for the photo shoot is Bobbi Hendrick.

“She’s a huge driving force,” Rollins said.

The group has been planning Reunion #50 for 1 1/2 to 2 years. Anyone who would like more information about the reunion can contact Kobel at [email protected].

This won’t be the first reunion for the class of ’74. Not even close. They’ve been held on their 5th, 10th, 20th, 30th, 40th, their combined 50th birthdays, and when they turned 60. Previous locations include a few places that are no longer open: Katsinas, Famous Dave’s, and Jillian’s.

Reunion attendance was high in the early years, recently numbers have been 50-70.

“We hope this year it will be more than in the past,” said Kobel, who is retired after a long career as a secretary at the University of Illinois.

Trautman and her husband are retired after working in a dental practice for 40 years.

The reunion organizers are all 68 years old.

The class of ’74 is full of achievers, including University of Illinois Athletics Hall of Famer Becky Beach. There are lawyers and successful businessmen in the class.

“Most of us went to college, did what we wanted, got married and became successful at whatever we did,” Kobel said.

The class has largely left Champaign-Urbana, with the group estimating that about 10 percent remain in the area.

Parkhill is back in Champaign after years of working in Houston. His only client for the computer leasing company: Enron.

“It was life in the fast lane,” he said. “Remember the show ‘Dallas’? That stuff is real.”

Bolden joined the Air Force after high school and served as an Air Force chaplain for 20 years, traveling the world.

“I don’t think there’s a continent I haven’t been to,” he said.

In 2005 he retired and came to Champaign.

“I think I’ll be leaving soon,” he said. “I have a house in Florida.”

Fifty of their classmates have died, including Page Parkhill (John’s wife), the reunion organizers, and Bruce Amsbury.

In two years the class will be 70 years old and the organizers are considering a new celebration.

Big numbers

The ’74 graduating class consisted of 438 students, including several juniors who had graduated early. Their graduation ceremony was on May 31, 1974, in the Great Hall of the Krannert Center.

It was the first class Centennial played in American football, with Central winning 10-0 at Unit 4 Field (now named in honor of late Central coach Tommy Stewart).

Bolden played for Stewart and assistant coach Rich Wooley, who later became head coach.

“We were very close as a football team and we were very competitive,” Bolden said. “It was a good time.”

Yes, they call it the…

Streak. Maybe coincidentally. Maybe not, 1974 happened to be the height of the streaking craze.

A refresher on streaking: It was a naked run through a group of unsuspecting people. The bigger the event — like the Academy Awards or a baseball game — the more attention.

The madness also hit Central. At football and basketball games. In the hallways.

“They didn’t have the sense to wear masks,” Miller said. “It was just putting on tennis shoes and running.”

Another, less revealing activity was when Central students had to get into a Volkswagen Beetle.

It could be the virus from classmate Barb Barry, but no one knows for sure.

Current topics

The class of ’74 was the last to enter the military lottery, although no one from the school was selected. The Vietnam War was ending as the class graduated.

“It was a turbulent time,” Rollins said.

“There was a lot of race fighting when we were in ninth grade,” Kobel said. “But when we got to high school, Dr. Bernie Fleener, who was the principal, if you got in trouble, he would put you on the intercom and you had to apologize to the whole school for getting into a fight.”

Fleener was a large man, between 1.98 and 2.03 meters tall.

“He grabbed two guys at once and threw them against the locker room,” Parkhill said. “We didn’t have any disciplinary issues because he didn’t take it.”

The school had a number of problems.

“There was racial tension and division at the time,” Bolden said.

“I think it was part of the process of gaining equality for a lot of African Americans. We had been through so much inequality, we were really striving to just be equal, free to live where we wanted to live and be ourselves.”

As they grew older, racial tensions subsided.

Bolden sees progress in the process.

“As a country we are doing a lot better, but there is still racial division,” he said.

“Nothing can kill hate,” Rollins said. “Not even laws can cure it.”

In 1974 they were just kids, about to live 50 years… and it’s still going on.

“It’s the youth who have always been the leaders when it comes to equality,” Bolden said. “Even now, when you see the marches, it’s the young generation.”