The Aqua Net Diaries (34 page)

Laura earned her BFA at Indiana University, with a major in English and a minor in theater. After college, she attended graduate school at Columbia College in Chicago, studying film and video. She has worked on numerous short films as both a writer and director, and has also worked on national spots—commercials, industrials, and feature films. Performance-wise, she has continued training in improv, film, and theater productions, mostly at the Piven Theater (owned and operated by Jeremy Piven's parents).

She continues to write and direct today. Her last movie,
Brushfires,
was filmed, written, and directed by seven different women using the same style of writing so loved by our little group back in Richmond—writing one chapter at a
time and handing it off to the next woman to see how she continues the story.

Laura still lives in Chicago, Illinois, with her enormous handbag, killer heels, and gallons of hair spray, and continues to work on a variety of film and video projects.

Tom Dehner is Medicaid director in the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Tom provides strategic policy direction, directs clinical policy, negotiates with federal and state regulators, and supervises plan operations for a health insurance program that covers more than one million members.

Tom came to MassHealth in 2003 as chief of staff of the Division of Medical Assistance. In February 2004, Tom was named deputy Medicaid director. Before coming to work at MassHealth, Tom earned his law degree from Northeastern University. He later served as counsel to the Massachusetts Senate Committee on Ways and Means, where he supervised legislative policy on insurance matters and health care.

He is married and has three children. About his days at Richmond High School, he says, “Unless I was mistaken, Tom Mangas was the golden king of RHS. To me, he still is. I was just a lucky kid.”

As Teresa says, “Richmond High School was a great experience.” After high school Teresa attended Indiana University (Bloomington), where her relationship with Tom Dehner ended. Tom attended DePauw University and began dating someone almost immediately. “In retrospect, it was the biggest heartbreak of my life,” Teresa says, “but it was inevitable. We remained friends, though. I will always have a warm place in my heart for my first love.”

Teresa met Tim Radtke at IU, they dated for six years, and they were married in 1992. They have two sons, Jake and Luke. They live in Muncie, Indiana, and chose to raise the boys in a smaller community very similar to Richmond. Tim's high school experience was at a Catholic high school in Chicago, so Teresa had to convince him that a smaller
public high school in Indiana was a good thing. Once Tim met friends and family from Richmond he agreed.

Teresa has a successful sales career and continues to balance her career and motherhood. She says Tim is her rock and keeps her focused. She is just as social as she was in her high school days. She owes her leadership skills, confidence, and passion to RHS.

Eric Lundquist lives in Chicago, where he is a process development scientist for Abbott Laboratories. (“Basically, if you see on the news someone manipulating red liquid in a Petri dish, that's what I do—but on a large scale.”) He's happily married and has two beautiful daughters.

He said his parents live in the same house in Richmond, the one he grew up in. Over the years, his mom has clipped out articles from the
Palladium-Item
relating to my books and to my father's death and sent them to Eric. He told me he's proud of me. I told him how much he meant to me and how sorry I was for the way I acted when I was silly and sixteen. He said the smiley face I drew, all those years ago, is still there on the basement chalkboard.

After high school, Alex traveled the country in a van, following the Grateful Dead from state to state, city to city. He belonged to a hippie cartel, living a carefree lifestyle, part of the counterculture. Now he lives in Colorado. He is, according to him, one part Grizzly Adams, one part Buddhist monk. He has never married and is an accomplished stonemason, one of the best known, most in-demand in the state. His brother Chris was killed nine years ago in a kayaking accident and Alex says that tragic loss opened the world to him. He now makes the most of every day, traveling the world when he can, scuba diving, snowboarding, snorkeling with whale sharks.

When we spoke recently, he told me about his dog Vela, who was just a puppy when he inherited her from Chris. He said, “I guess you could say she's the third most significant
woman in my life. The first two were Diane Weigle and you.”

I said, “Can I put that in the book?”

He said, “You can put it all in, sweetheart. I'm just honored to be included.”

In 1989, Tommy joined the navy at the start of the Persian Gulf War. As he says, he saw a lot of the world as well as a lot of devastation. “It really makes you appreciate what we have.” He married Pam, the girl from County Market, that same year. He got out of the navy in 1993 and moved back to Indiana, where he worked for Dana Corporation. In 2004 Dana moved its operations to Mexico, and, Tommy says, “with the grades I got in Spanish (and the fact that I once pissed off Señor Sackett so bad that he sent himself to the office), I figured this probably was not a good transition for me.” So he took advantage of the tuition-free schooling offered for displaced workers and received a degree in electronics. He is now the maintenance supervisor at Smith Dairy in Richmond. He and Pam and their five kids— Maggie, Emily, Jacob, Katie, and Sarah—live in Lynn, Indiana,
and his children attend Randolph Southern schools (one in every even grade except sixth). Tommy and Pam will celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary this year.

Whenever things get a little too intense around the house—whenever the girls overrun things—Tommy says to his son, “Jake, let's go get some ice cream.” That's their code to get out and take a break. Mostly he tries to keep his kids from pulling anything over on him or running too wild like he used to. He says they're surprisingly—shockingly—well behaved.

Tom Mangas, Heather Craig, Dan Allen, Jennifer Niven, Teresa Ripperger, Sherri Dillon, and Tommy Wissel

It's got a tiny skyscape,
And the people are happy here …
Back again in Richmond,
Where the people all drive slow,
Back again in Richmond,
Where the people never go!

—“Back Again in Richmond,” original song by Jennifer and Joey

Each book is a journey. The journey of my first two books was rewarding and very special. The third, my novel, was deeply fulfilling in ways I can't describe. But the journey of writing this book was by far the most laughout
-loud, tease-your-hair-up fun. It was also surprisingly moving. It took me back to a happy time when my dad was alive and my parents were together, when Joey lived just across town, when I was young and silly and hadn't ever lost anything or anyone, and it reunited me with some wonderful people. It also made me feel unnervingly like a high school girl again.

The research was very different this time around. Instead of archives and libraries, I talked to real people and dug through my own memories. Mary Lou Griffey, alumni director at Richmond High School, generously gave me access to numerous yearbook photos spanning nearly a hundred years. After sorting through thousands of pictures, I stumbled across a photo of Joey, Laura, and myself from our
Judy on Purpose
photo shoot. The file was titled “High Hair,” and Mary said it had been used in a display at the school as
the
single example of 1980s hairstyles. “Great,” said Laura when I told her about it. “Of all the hair in all the years of that entire decade, they of course chose us.”

The thing about writing a memoir is that if you want to use people's real names it can be a good idea to get their okay to use those names in your book. This is something that didn't occur to me when I sold my book about high school. At the time I sent out the proposal, I was having so much fun reliving every silly, embarrassing, humiliating, crazy adventure I had back in Richmond, that I didn't stop to think about the other people involved in those adventures. The ones I would decide to contact to say: