Here’s my four.
Phil Hartman
Howard Kaylan (The Turtles/ Flo and Eddie)
Patricia Krenwinkel (Manson Family)
Trevor Ariza (NBA)
Believe me, I am not threadshitting when I say there aren’t four people from the entire 35-odd years my high school existed who would be worth throwing a dinner party for. It was built after World War II for the newly emerging suburbs, and closed when the baby boomer generation grew up and moved away.
No professional athletes
No politicans, at least none above the local level
No notorious criminals
No groundbreaking medical or scientific researchers
No award-winning novelists
No star singers, actors or other types of performers
If pressed, I can name a successful executive (at least until he was convicted of stock fraud) and someone who wrote a few sitcom episodes.
Magic Johnson lived right down the road from our high school when I was there but he was bused out of the neighborhood-I think he went to our rivals, Eastern
That’s about it.
My dinner party would be a whole bunch of NHL players!
One of which probably overlapped with my time at the school. I’m going to head home from work and look for Jay Bouwmeester in my yearbook! I kinda thought he looked familiar. Too cool.
I had Spanish with Harris Barton.
These guys wrote Homestar Runner.
Ryan Seacrest is some kinda TV personality.
Dinner for two will be fine with me.
You didn’t say they had to be famous people. So I’ll pick my dad, and a couple of the people I went to high school with, and I guess we’ll invite Vachel Lindsay.
Same here. 23 year history.
Most notable
Brendan Eich Creator of JavaScript
Bill Green Olympic sprinter(400)
Gregg Rolie co-founder of the bands Santana, Journey and Abraxas Pool.
Ron Jones(faculty) creator of The Third Wave social experiment
He’s there! 2 years behind me, but I do remember him. Mostly because he was awfully tall.
Anna Kendrick Actress
Bob Marley The comedian, not the musician
Ryan Flaherty Orioles player
Wilbur R. Ingalls, Jr. He was an architect who designed the technical high school I took a class at.
The conversation will be rather eclectic at my dinner party.
The closest I can come (that I know of) is the public high school I attended, that was about five miles away from the private school that young Barack Obama attended (about ten years later). No matter, he’s invited to dinner anyway, but I expect he’ll have to send his regrets.
Interesting. The only ‘name’ I know is Jim Jarmusch (film director), who went to school at the same time I did. Knew him (casually) from speech team activities. Odd sort of a duck, even then.
Otherwise, looking at a couple of sites, I’m left with some pro football players of minor note and Albert Kingsbury, who had a number of inventions/patents in the 1920’s-30’s.
Ten percent of the boys (5/45) who were in my graduating class have already committed suicide.
Music.
Barbara Mandrell
Sports.
Willie Banks
Thad Bosley
Willie Buchanon
Chris Chambliss
Charles Dimry
Lee Guetterman
C.R. Roberts
Jose Perez
Joe Salave’a
Bill Sandifer
Junior Seau
Gary Thomasson
Terry Vaughn
Roberto Wallace
Sam Brenner
Brian Schwenke
Larry Warford
I cheated, I looked it up.
The known people would be known to locals, not internationally. There are mainly politicians (sigh). I would include:
Julia de Burgos
Willy Rodríguez, from Cultura Profética
Carmen Cruz Soto, current mayor of San Juan
Alexandra Lúgaro, independent candidate for governorship, and the one in the list I most disagree with
But mostly, I’d be cool just meeting Julia.
Mine is sad. All the notable grads are athletes, Hoagy Carmichael, and two people in my graduating class, one of whom was actually my one of my best friends, and the other of whom was a family friend.
I don’t want to invite Hoagy Carmichael, and I don’t want any athletes, so I’ll invite Meg and David. Then, I’ll skip over to the other side of town, where in the graduating class of 1985 of the sister high school in my town (there was Bloomington High School North, and Bloomington High School South. I went to South) was Josh Bell.
So, we have these:
Meggin Cabot
David Shuster
Joshua Bell
No one else from North is really famous, except more athletes, none of whom are familiar to me, so I’ll pick Freda Love, who is a musician, and was famous enough to be in bands with Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield, and was also in my class.
So we’ll have own own special little reunion.
Wait a year. He’ll have some free time.
Jack Benny
Jerry Orbach
Connie Brazelton
Jim Bittermann
Most of the people listed in the Wiki article on the school were ball players of some variety. Bleah.
Charles Addams (cartoonist for The New Yorker, most famous for The Addams Family)
Virginia Apgar (created the Apgar score for assessing health of newborns)
Kevin Feige (President of Marvel Studios)
Kevin Kelly (founder of Wired magazine)
CMC fnord!