Following is the online version of the News and Observer's article which
I downloaded off a CDROM in the library. Pretty interesting story
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The News and Observer - 1994 - Article with Citation
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Headline: ' '74-'75 ': 20 years down the road at Broughton High
Date: April 29, 1994 Section: DAY
Page: D1 Edition: FINAL
Length: 2592
Author: DAVID MENCONI
Staff writer
Index Terms: Connells
music
television
Broughton
Joni Jones
David Hoggard
Paul Cooper
BIO
PROFILE
LEAD
Text:
When Broughton High School's class of 1975 convenes for its
20-year reunion next year, they'll have something unusual to talk
about. After all, how many high school classes wind up as the
subjects of a rock video?
Fourteen Broughton '75 graduates star in the video for
"'74-'75," the latest single from Raleigh rock band the Connells.
The video was directed by Mark Pellington (who also directed Pearl
Jam's award-winning video for "Jeremy"), who juxtaposes shots of
each person today with old yearbook photographs.
"'74-'75" author Mike Connell didn't have anything like this in
mind when he wrote the song, a moody ballad that he says is about
"people reaching a crossover point of no return in their lives." In
fact, the only reason Connell picked the numbers in the title was
that they sang well within the song's meter. He admits to some
initial skepticism about Pellington's idea for the video, which
borrows its concept from the PBS documentary series "28 Up."
"I thought it might turn out kind of hokey, to be quite
honest," Connell says. "But given Mark's track record, I wasn't
gonna be the one to tell him that. I felt better while watching him
and his crew filming it, because they were all so competent and
talented, and I was very pleasantly surprised when I saw the
finished video. It's a lot more forceful than I thought it would
be. Some of the juxtapositions are pretty powerful."
The video has a mysterious feel because it leaves so much
unsaid. You see people as high school seniors (many in ridiculous
period clothing and hairstyles) and then as adults in their late
30s, with no explanation apart from the melancholy mood of the song
itself. That leaves the viewer to fill in 20 years of blank space.
Some of the subjects have aged well, others badly and a few
seemingly not at all. Some seem content -- especially Andrew Lewis
Bates Jr., who appears wearing a baseball cap that declares, "His
Name Is Jesus." Others appear more bemused (WRDU morning deejay
Frank King) or even dour (Harvey Heartley Jr., son of the recently
retired St. Augustine's College basketball coach).
They range from those who had active high school careers to
others who kept low profiles. Robert Bryon Staton describes himself
during his high school days as "basically a recluse, one of the
geeks." There's also a class president (Thomas Glenn Ray, sophomore
year), homecoming queen (Joni Jones, fall of '74) and school paper
editor (Steven John Gurganus).
Post-graduation, they wound up doing everything imaginable --
running offices, banks, businesses, computers and households,
driving trucks, flying planes, building houses. They're shown posed
alone, with spouses, with children. Most are married, a few
divorced, several on second marriages. About half are now parents
themselves. Some even have children about the same age they were
back in 1975.
"'74-'75" was filmed last September in downtown Raleigh's
warehouse and railroad-track district. The video producers
contacted several dozen people for interviews, and paid each person
who made it into the video $75 in cash. All they had to do was show
up and stand in front of a backdrop.
"They just had me stand in front of a camera," says Ray, who
appears first in the video. "The director wanted a little motion,
some different facial expressions. Then it was over. Best-paid 20
minutes I've ever done."
While the video has picked up a lot of favorable attention
(including a glowing writeup in The New Yorker magazine last
month), it hasn't aired much on MTV. But there have been some
sightings.
"I've heard from a few people who've said, 'I was watching MTV
at 3 a.m. and saw you on there,'" says Gurganus. "'I looked up and
there you were -- "It's Steve, but it can't be!" -- and I couldn't
get to sleep for hours afterward.'"
###Joni Jones:
Joni Jones grew up in Southeast Raleigh, a ways away from
Broughton High School. She rode the bus to Broughton every day as
part of one of the school's earliest integration efforts.
"Personally, busing and integration didn't bother me," she
says. "I was very much aware of my ethnic background, but I had
been in integrated schools since the fifth grade. The black-white
thing was OK most of the time I was at Broughton. We tried to avoid
situations that would create tension. Like we had two homecoming
queens: one white and one black."
In the fall of 1974, Jones (who was then Joni Coburn) was the
black homecoming queen and Ellen Hipp was the white one. The
practice has since been discontinued.
Today, Jones works as an insurance adjuster for Nationwide
Insurance, handling automobile accident claims in Eastern North
Carolina. The work can be stressful, and Jones has found herself in
more than one potentially dicey situation.
"You do take some chances going into certain areas, especially
as a female and even moreso as a minority female," she says. "One
time I did this death claim in Bailey, a fatality involving a 14-
or 15-year-old kid who had been on a Moped. I was driving up to his
parents' house, got close to the barn and saw some letters painted
on the side: 'KKK.'
"I just froze, wondering if I should go in or leave. But I went
in and talked to them, praying they wouldn't knock me on the side
of the head and dump me somewhere.
"Another time in Johnston County, I was looking for witnesses
to a motorcycle accident. I was driving through a field where the
wheat was taller than the car. I had been told to look for the
mobile home with Confederate flags for curtains. Sure enough, there
it was. So I left the engine running and the door open, stuck a
business card in the door and left.
"Didn't want to hang around there."
In high school, Jones met her first husband in driver's
education. They were married after graduation, but the marriage
lasted "shorter than you can wink your eye."
Jones went to N.C. State University and got a degree in textile
technology. After graduation, she considered taking a job at B.F.
Goodrich until interviewing at the company's headquarters in Akron,
Ohio, where there were seven inches of snow on the ground.
Instead, she moved to South Carolina and went to work for
Kendall, a division of Johnson & Johnson. The worsening economy
convinced her to get out of textiles, so she went into customer
service. She moved back to Raleigh with her family in 1988.
"Raleigh is a whole lot bigger now, it seems like it's
quadrupled in size," she says. "When I was growing up, Crabtree
Mall was the other side of the world. So when I came back, I would
get directions for something and ask, 'Is that past Crabtree?'
"Finally, after I had asked that 10 times in two days, my boss
told me, 'Joni, everything is past Crabtree now.'"
Jones has a teenage son from her first marriage who is
finishing his freshman year at Winston-Salem State University. She
also has two daughters for her present marriage, ages 10 and 7, who
are starting to evoke memories of her own school days.
"My 7-year-old is more laid-back, like my son," she says. "He
participated in sports from age 5 on. Last year was the first he
didn't play football, because he wanted to concentrate on his
studies. I was disappointed, but I didn't want him to get hurt,
either.
"My 10-year-old reminds me a lot of myself because she wants to
be involved in everything -- and I joined every club and group I
could when I was in school, I've always been kind of high-strung.
Now, my 7-year-old is taking Tai Kwon Do and I'm hoping it will
make her more verbal and aggressive.
"But at least I won't have to worry about her getting high
blood pressure."
###David Hoggard:
Ironically, the most dramatic moment of the "'74-'75" video
belongs to someone who wasn't actually in that year's class. David
Hoggard from Broughton's class of 1974 appears in a wheelchair,
flanked by his wife Susan (a Sanderson 1975 graduate) and
4-year-old daughter Alison.
Hoggard wound up in a wheelchair after surviving a harrowing
bout of aplastic anemia, in which the bone marrow stops producing
red blood cells. He was diagnosed in 1990. While undergoing
treatment, he was completely dependent on blood transfusions for
almost a year. The treatments cured him, but left his joints and
bones so badly damaged that he can no longer walk.
"The doctors talked some about joint replacement, but they were
afraid my body might reject them and then I'd be left with nothing.
I'm better off in a wheelchair where I can at least do this,"
Hoggard says, lifting his right leg off the floor.
"I've gotten to the point where I can crouch. I can bear
weight, but I can't take a step."
In spite of his ill fortune, Hoggard has managed to stay
remarkably upbeat. The wheelchair has become second-nature by now
and he easily negotiates obstacles, sometimes even popping wheelies.
"That's probably what kept me going through it, keeping a
positive attitude," he says. "This has about a 40 percent mortality
rate, so I guess I looked death in the face a couple of times. It
was hard on all of us, and we all pulled through.
"But how we lived through it, I don't know."
At Broughton, Hoggard was classmates with future professional
golfer Scott Hoch and Wilson Huntley, older brother of Connells
guitarist George Huntley. Hoggard describes himself as "a little
too radical" for most school activities. He spent most of his free
time riding motocross motorcycles.
Hoggard also wanted to fly, and joined the Navy after
graduating from college. He was commissioned in 1979 and did
several tours of duty in the Mediterranean, flying an S-3 Viking
anti-submarine plane.
He left the Navy after seven years and went to work for an
advertising company. Then he got sick. Hoggard still doesn't know
how or why it happened, although he suspects it was exposure to
radiation or toxins while he was flying.
"I went from completely healthy, landing jets on an aircraft
carrier, to being flat on my back and unable to walk," he says
matter-of-factly.
While he was in the hospital, Hoggard realized that his
family's home wouldn't accommodate his wheelchair. So they designed
and built a new one with lower counters in the kitchen and
bathrooms. It also has wider doorways and plenty of space
throughout each room.
Hoggard and his family recently moved into their new home,
which also has a gently sloping brick ramp from the driveway to the
front porch. Hoggard says he likes that because, "It's subtle and
doesn't scream, 'DISABLED PERSON HERE.'"
In fact, Hoggard says that designing and building such
wheelchair-friendly houses might be his next career. He doesn't
want to go back into advertising ("too cutthroat") and needs to
move on to something new.
"What seems important changes so much from when you were
young," he says. "Back then, we were worried about what we were
gonna do Friday night and whether or not we could borrow mom's car.
Now, it's building a house with wheelchair access.
"There's no comparison. When you're young, you think you're
invincible. I know I did, with my motorcycles and jets. Now, I'm
just happy to be able to get around in a wheelchair."###Paul Cooper:
Of all the people in the "'74-'75" video, no one deserved to be
in it more than Paul Cooper. A longtime Triangle music scene
fixture, Cooper had done live sound engineering for various local
bands (including the X-Teens and Bad Checks). He also produced the
Connells' first demo in 1984.
"That was probably the pinnacle of my 'career' as a producer,"
Cooper says. "All I heard of them ahead of time was this tape,
recorded on a boombox from the back of the room at one of their
shows. I listened to it in the car on the way to the studio in
Chapel Hill, and all I could think of was, 'They sound like R.E.M.'
"So, I tried to make 'em sound like R.E.M."
It must have worked. Once the tape began to circulate, it was
sans credits, leading to speculation that it had actually been
produced by Don Dixon (co-producer of R.E.M.'s first two albums).
While the demo gave the Connells an early boost in their career, it
didn't get Cooper any more production work.
"It just never happened," he says with a shrug. "I didn't get
any calls from anyone else, but I wasn't going out looking, either.
I was real attached to the Bad Checks by then. My modus operandi
was to go hang around bands I liked and talk them into letting me
do sound, and I was happy just mixing sound for the Bad Checks."
Cooper's probably has been the longest, strangest trip of
anybody's in the video. A self-described "geek wannabe" in high
school, he says he took up photography as a way to make people pay
attention to him. He shot pictures for Broughton's yearbook and "Hi
Times" student paper.
For college, Cooper attended the University of the South in
Sewanee, Tenn. He says he went there because it was the closest
school to Raleigh that offered astronomy and Russian, and also had
a Division III basketball team.
"I sat on the bench for two years before finally deciding it
was silly and giving up basketball," he says.
After graduating with an art degree, Cooper gave professional
photography a try and was "a dismal failure." But taking a camera
to shows gave him a way to approach and become friendly with bands,
which led to his part-time career as a sound mixer. When the
X-Teens' soundman quit, the band decided they wanted to hire
someone who already knew their songs, so Cooper signed on.
"I still think the X-Teens were one of the great bands and
should have been huge," Cooper says. "They were perfect, with two
songwriters who meshed and matched just right. I thought they were
the next Lennon and McCartney."
Post-photography, Cooper went back to school and ended up
working with computers. That led to his current job doing
programming and technical support for Martin Marietta's materials
division, which produces and sells crushed rock for roads and
buildings.
Cooper's most recent sound engineering credit was for the local
band Platypus Jukebox, which broke up last fall. He wants to do
more of that, and also to get into computer animation. He even
talks about getting on the other side of the microphone as a
musician himself, which would bring his interests in music,
computers and photography full-circle.
"There are some people who do the greatest thing they'll ever
do in high school," he says. "I hope I'm still building up to mine,
whatever it is. I have a guitar and keyboards, and I'm working on
them.
"Not many people break into the business when they're old. I'll
either be a guitarist in a rock band or have my own computer
animation company by then. Or maybe even both."
(This story has a sidebar)
Graphic:
6 photos; Jones, Hoggard, Cooper
Caption:
Joni Jones rode a bus to Broughton. Being among the
first graduates of an integrated Broughton didn't bother her. But
some troubling things have happened to her since. Her story is on
page 3D.
David Hoggard has found wisdom in adversity since graduating from
Broughton. The former motorcycle racer and Navy pilot tells his story
on page 3D.
Being featured in a music video seems inevitable for Paul Cooper, a
largely unsung hero in the Connells' history. His story is also on
page 3D.
Copyright 1994 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.
Accession Number: RNOB179927
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm sure that when I see these people around town, I'll be like I was
when I saw James Worthy in Chapel Hill a few summers ago!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Dana McCall - Chapel Hill http://www.unc.edu/~umccall/
"Free the bound periodicals!" - anonymous
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|
