The Young Rascals and Father Ryan

When we were in school at Father Ryan one of the top musical groups of the day was The Young Rascals, who later shortened their name to just The Rascals.

By any name the group was one of the top bands of our high school era. They were elected into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 1997 after recording a number of hit albums and singles during the late 1960s, including this one courtesy of YouTube: "Good Loving" which was Number One on the charts both here and in Canada

One of the leaders of the group was Felix Cavaliere who did vocals and the keyboards. Never in my wildest dreams when I was at Father Ryan did I ever imagine that Felix Cavaliere would somehow directly touch my life or my family.

But it happened and it happened at Father Ryan. My oldest daughter, Katie, who is a member of the Class of 1997, was a part of the Father Ryan Singers choral group when she was in school.

One night I attended her spring concert and I saw twin girls in the group identified by the last name of Cavaliere. I inquired about who they were and learned their father was indeed the Felix Cavaliere, who also during his career was also a part of the group "Joey and the Starliters, which I believe once again a hit recording of "The Peppermint Twist" among others.>

It seems Cavaliere had moved his musical career to Nashville during the 1990s and brought his family to town as well, with his daughters attending and graduating from Father Ryan.

Wow! Imagine if could have seen into the future while we were in school and thought that oone of our kids would be singing on the same stage at school as the kids of rock star Felix Cavaliere. It sure shows what the wonderful town Nashville is to attract such talented people to our city and what a great school Father Ryan is to provide their families with a great education.

Spring Break?

It's quiet on the Father Ryan campus this week.



It's Spring Break.



Did we have "spring break" back when we were in school? I can't remember us calling it that? Can you?



Oh sure, we got a week out of school this time of year. But it was always the week after Easter, whenever that fell. And that could be anywhere from late March to the very end of April. Now Spring Break is always sometime around the middle of March, which educators feel give them a more consistent academic year.



Did anyone go on "spring break" trips back in our day? I can't remember doing it. Heck, a summer time vacation trip was what I remember living for.



When my daughters went to Ryan back in the middle to late 1990s, spring break trips were a big thing, to the point that the school every year used to send home a letter reminding parents and their students to try and remain on their best behavior while out of town.



The school itself would sometimes sponsor spring break trips. I remember one of my daughters going on a trip France during their week out of class.



So I guess maybe we missed out on a lot of that back in our day. But we sure had the music for spring break. I can't really say why, but to me, there is nothing like the music of The Beach Boys in a song like their hit, "Surfing U.S.A." to make me think about spring break, even if I've never been on a surfboard in California in my life....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU9-uY_32uA




Do have memories of Spring Break and Father Ryan or trips you took while you were in school? If so, share them below or send them to me e-mail, pat.nolan@dvl.com

POW! ZING! BAM! What A New TV Show

Unlike today, network night-time TV was the only major entertainment outlet most of us had at home at night. You know, what we wanted to be doing instead of our homework!

The most hyped new show our freshman year was BATMAN, based on the DC Comics character we all grew up with at the drugstore news stands.

But this show was a little different from the comic strip. BATMAN on ABC Television, WSIX-TV, Channel 8 here in Nashville at the time, was styled as a pop art, camp comedy.

And this is now-famous theme song that debuted on January 12, 1966...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOUPjEHYFew


The show and its theme became so popular for a while that I can remember the bands at TEEN TOWN playing the song at our weekly dances. BATMAN actually ran twice a week on ABC with the episodes connected by cliff-hanger endings. The series made stars out of Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin. It also typecast them and hurt their future careers.

It's also true that life and TV move on quickly. After only about two and half seasons, BATMAN was cancelled with its last show airing on March 14, 1968. NBC made a last minute bid to save the show but this was one cliff-hanger that didn't have a happy ending, Robin.

Holy cancellation, Batman!

What TV shows did you enjoy watching (instead of doing your homework)while we were at FRHS? Send me an e-mail or leave your thoughts below and I will try and profile the shows in a later posting.

Another State Championship--But In A Different Sport

Congratulations to the Father Ryan High School Ice Hockey Team!

They are Tennessee State Champions after winning the 2009 Predators' Cup this past weekend. Making the accomplishment even sweeter was the fact that the Irish won the title by defeating arch-rival, and two-time defending state champions, Pope John Paul II High School, 4-1.

It was the second victory of the year for Ryan over JPII. They defeated the Knights 5-2 during the regular season.

Ice Hockey is certainly a sport we didn't have when we attended Father Ryan 40 years ago. But like wrestling in our day, ice hockey is a sport that is catching at the high school-level on all over Tennessee. That's in large part due to the continuing success of the NHL's Nashville Predator franchise.

Professional hockey is not a new thing in Nashville. During our day, we had the Eastern Hockey League Dixie Flyers, a minor league franchise that played at the city's Municipal Auditorium (with its under-sized rink) from 1962 until the franchise folded in 1971.

Sure it wasn't big league hockey, but remember this was back in the pre-expansion days of the " Original Six" at the NHL-level, meaning that there was a lot of good talent available to the minor league clubs, because there were so few roster spots at the very top.

A number of the players for the Dixie Flyers stayed in Nashville and became a part of the community. That includes Flo Pilote, a French-Canadian, who for many years operated a restaurant in the Hermitage area called "The Penalty Box." There was also Ted McCaskill, who worked with my Dad at the Ford Glass Plant. McCaskill's son, Kirk, also had some national sports prominence as a big-league pitcher.

And, of course, who can forget the other Dixie Flyer greats such as goal-keeper Marv Edwards, who once had 15 shutouts in a single season, and played without a face mask (by the way, most of the players skated without helmets). Other memorable Flyers included player-coach Lloyd Hinchberger, captain Ken "Red" Murphy," Wally Sprange and Joe Zorica.

The Flyers did very well during our years at Father Ryan. They won EHL championships our freshman and sophomore years (1965-66 & 1966-67) and lost out in the finals when were seniors (1968-69).

Two years later, the franchise was gone as the NHL expanded and the sport struggled to find fans here in a "non-traditional" market. The same thing happened for the Nashville South Stars minor-league pro team here in the 1990s.

The Predators have had their struggles as well, although with new local ownership and an exciting, scrappy team once again fighting for a playoff berth, the future for the sport here looks bright.

That also include our FRHS state championship team. Go Irish!

If you have memories of the Dixie Flyers during our time at Ryan, please send them to me (pat.nolan@dvl.com) or post them below. That particularly includes my classmate Pat Bauer, who, along with his dad, took me to several Flyers game back in the day.

More Father Hitchcock Reflections

We've had a lot of positive reaction to my recent story posted here about our late principal Father (later Monsignor) James Hitchcock.

Here's one sent to me by our classmate David Adams which he asked me to share with everyone:

"I remember being called out of class one day to report to Father Hitchcock's office. As I was on my way to his office, I kept trying to figure out what I may have done to be specifically called out of class.

As I walked into his office, he looked at me, greeted me, and pulled out an old photograph. He laughed and told me some amusing stories of the Father Ryan students in the old photograph with him.

He had called me in because my Dad (Julian "Moon" Adams) and my uncle (John Fey) were two of those former students. He said he just wanted to share some happy times with me.

Memories such as this, never fade over time."

David Adams, FRHS Class of 1969

If you have any such memories like this concerning Father Hitchcock or any of our experiences at Father Ryan, please feel free to post them below or send them to me at pat.nolan@dvl.com and I will place them here on the blog.

Also please scroll down to the original story about Father Hitchcock,and read Bill Carver's memories.

Even In The Movies....

If there is one thing we all had in common during our years together at Father Ryan, it was our music.

When we began our classes as freshmen in the fall of 1965, the British Invasion was still going strong. And nobody was bigger than The Beatles.

In fact, while the big movies that year included The Sound of Music (it won the Best Picture Oscar), The Agony & The Ecstasy and Dr. Zhivago, what we all made sure we went to see, I suspect, was the latest flick by the Fab Four....HELP!



During our four years at Father Ryan, musical tastes changed quite a bit from the pop-rock British Invasion to the psychedelic sounds that dominated the radio air waves by the end of the decade. But throughout it all, The Beatles remains primarily because their music seemed to change as pop culture changed.

What are your memories of popular music while we were in school? What groups or songs were your favorite? Let me know by e-mail (pat.nolan@dvl.com) or leave me a message below and I will see what I find out of the Internet and bring it to you here on the blog.

A Legendary Voice Is Silent

One thing I'd like to do with this blog is to re-create the spirit and the history of the time we spent together back in the mid-to-late 1960s.

Certainly one of the legendary figures of that time was newscaster and commentator Paul Harvey, who died a few days ago at the age of 90. Not that Harvey had faded away since we were in school. An ABC News release about his passing noted that during his career had 25 million listeners a week on over 1,0000 radio stations. No wonder he was called: "The Most Listened To Man In The History Of Radio."

If you are a member of the FRHS Class of 1969 you probably think you've been hearing Paul Harvey on the radio all your life. And you would be correct about that, since Harvey began his network radio career in 1951, the year most of us were born. So great was his continuning audience draw he signed a 10-year, $100 milion contract in 2000 just after he 80th birthday.

One of my first memories of Paul Harvey was having to listen to him in the car because the adult behind the wheel (usually either my dad or my uncle) didn't want to listen to the rock & roll station that I preferred to listen to, while taking me to school in the mornings.

But as the years went by, while I didn't always agree with his politics or commentaries, you couldn't help but come to love Harvey's smooth delivery, his distinctive voice and his wonderful ability to paint very vivid pictures with the words he spoke. As a journalist I couldn't help but stand in awe of his verbal and writing abilities.

He didn't use jingles or sound bites. He just told you the story. Most broadcasters would consider it a great career if just one catch-phrase they uttered became legendary. Paul Harvey had several from "Stand-by for news!" to "Page 2" or his legendary close of "Good Day!". Finally, and, perhaps the phrase he will be best remembered for (and which became its own radio program), "And Now You Know The Rest of the Story".

Courtesy of YouTube here's a brief biography of Harvey done by Rita Dixon for a history class at Bellarmine College and one of Harvey's "Rest of the Story" classics (written by his son, but delivered in his impossible-to-forget style....