I’m opening almost five decades of scrapbooks and uncovering the personal as well as the cultural headlines of each year, starting with 1978. This week, it’s 1980.
I had no idea when I moved to South Bend in August 1979 that, within a month, I’d find my first group of close friends.
In Chicago, I hung out with a few folks in my northwest Chicago neighborhood.
And I’d made individual friends through the years like my friend Tony, with whom I shared a love of all things Billboard and American Top 40.
But it took meeting Tom, Chip, Ken and Joe for my social life, and my life as a whole, to blossom.
What started as a cafeteria overture by Tom after an awkward self-introduction in Mr. Gerencher’s American Literature Honors class quickly grew. We would pile in Tom’s car for weekend outings to football games (Chip and our friend Mike both were on the team), movies, Halloween and holiday parties, and hanging out at their houses.
All of the guys lived in houses. I was the only one whose family lived in an apartment.
At first, I felt self-conscious about that. But they were nonchalant, and I relaxed.
This became a common theme. I was the stranger; they welcomed me.
I didn’t like playing basketball; we all talked as I watched in Ken’s backyard and continued to eat and shoot the bull afterward.
Hanging out with the guys, I learned what it was like to have brothers without the drama. (My brother, a year and four days younger than I, were in the throes of sibling rivalry.)
For most of two years we were inseparable until the time came for college (and, in Chip’s case, the Navy).
Oddly enough, there aren’t many pictures of us – we spent too much time enjoying high school life to focus on chronicling it. This 1987 picture is from Chip’s wedding, in which we were groomsmen.
From left are Tom, me, Joe, Chip, and Ken.
The big story at St. Joe High in 1980 was the fact that its varsity football team went undefeated for a second straight year.
And, like the previous year: we didn’t go to the playoffs because of the way Indiana high school leagues were structured.
The format disadvantaged private high schools. The team went to court to seek a chance to prove itself. It was denied.
Eventually, the state’s football system would be restructured in ways that allowed private schools to compete with public schools. By then, we would be in college.
On the big screen:
Like two years before, 1980 had several movies that spun off multiple Top 40 hits.
I never saw Urban Cowboy, even though I liked the music and eventually got the soundtrack.
I did see The Blues Brothers…”
…and Caddyshack, finding both amusing.
Most of the guys thought the latter was hilarious.
On the other hand, while most people either ignored Xanadu or hated it, I liked it.
Olivia Newton-John fittingly portrayed a muse come to Earth, and Gene Kelly was charming in a supporting role.
Too bad lead actor Michael Beck was such a dud; his lack of chemistry with ONJ undercut the romance.
Its soundtrack was … how to describe it? Magic! Yielding five Top 20 singles, Xanadu the soundtrack scored with the public in a way the movie failed to do.
On the small screen:
This was the year TV fans wondered, “Who shot JR?”
Along with most everyone else, I was watching Dallas.
Although, once the mystery was solved in the fall, Larry Hagman and company were no longer “appointment television” for me.
In pop culture:
John Lennon was murdered in December 1980, the fall of senior year.
Our school newspaper interviewed mourning Lennon fans about the loss of a generation’s conscience.
Lennon had just come back into the pop spotlight with the release of his Double Fantasy album with his wife, Yoko Ono. The singles from that album were played constantly on the jukebox in the St. Joe cafeteria:
Along with the Ono B-side, “Kiss Kiss Kiss,” which fascinated yet appalled many of the lunch crowd.
On my radio and turntable:
My Hot 100 of the year leaned more than ever on AC and ballad pop:
With Air Supply and Robbie Dupree each placing two songs in the Top 10.
It would be a few years before harder-edged sounds would compete for my attention.
Several late 1980 songs that placed low in this countdown, including Lennon’s “(Just Like) Starting Over,” would reappear on the 1981 chart.
And at home:
I was beginning to find my voice as a writer.
A feature I had written on St. Joe’s chaplain made its way into the diocesan newspaper as well as the South Bend Tribune’s Next Generation Page.
I submitted it for a statewide high school newspaper contest and earned second place;
The judge would become my first boss at the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette.
Meantime, a letter I wrote about the first issue of DC’s breakout hit The New Teen Titans would be published:
… And it started a brief streak of letters-page appearances in DC comics over the next few years.
That summer, bitten by the writing bug, I signed up for the High School Journalism Institute at Indiana University. Two weeks of dorm life, note-taking, and writing news and feature articles, and I was smitten.
I knew senior year that I would apply to IU.
As senior year progressed, the failures of freshman year at Notre Dame High School for Boys faded like newsprint in the sun.
I was invited to join the National Honor Society and even wound up taking a rigorous math class, Analysis (what today would be Pre-Calculus).
Sitting next to me was a girl I vaguely knew from the school newspaper, where she worked on the business side. Soon, we would build a friendship that would rival and even surpass my friendships with the guys.
And she would have a profound effect on one of the guys as well.
Next up… 1981…
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This was a fun read. Thanks for taking us down memory lane, as a bunch of those pop culture references made me think of my own connections with them. It was nice to see how you came into your own in high school and found your tribe.