Philip Krogh

Okay. I know I didn’t graduate from Columbia River High School. In fact, I did not even attend. But what I did do was this: I went to school for 8 years with about one-quarter of you CRHS graduates. Grade school and some Jr. High. Doesn’t that count for something?

I moved away in junior high. I thought my life was ruined. For about a year. It wasn’t of course, and I found my own happy niche during my high school years.

But that first year… that first year away from Hazel Dell… that first year without any friends I went to kindergarten with. That first year without being next-door-neighbors to Stanley Straub, Jeff Phillips and Sharon Davis. And farther down 88^th Street: Brenda Sandstrom. That first year not being able to hope I get a class with Brenda Sandstrom. Not being able to ride my bicycle past Brenda Sandstrom’s house. Not having a swimming pool like Brenda Sandstrom. Not running into Brenda Sandstrom at the Clark County Fair... Hey, does anyone see an unhealthy, obsessive pattern here?

Now that I’m writing about it, maybe I didn’t get over that first year! Maybe my life was ruined! Maybe my life would have been absolutely perfect if I had not moved!

And maybe it’s all your fault! All you 1970 CRHS graduates fault for not being in my life. When I needed you! And I did need you! So, thanks for nothing. I thank you, my therapist thanks you, my dysfunctional children and my substance-dependent wife thank you! They all thank you for ruining their lives, as well as mine. (Except for my therapist who is making a lot of money!)

But my life was not ruined, of course. And I found my own happy niche in high school. Shelton High School. Band. Cross-country. Swimming. Bicycling every corner of Mason County. I had one girl-friend in high school. And one in college. Whom I married.

Phil is happily married (27 years), lives in Woodinville, Wash. and has three reasonably successful children. He considered attending your last reunion, but then chickened out because no one would have remembered him. Or would they?

His email is pkrogh@nwlink.com and web page is at: