What were some of the "official reasons" given for students leaving? Not just graduation, but earlier in the school year as well?
One was a guy named Randy. He was officially a run away. He was a Mainah. I ran into him he told me a story about not wanting to go to college and refusing to sign up for the military. I guess at that point in 77 you had to go into the military or college. Henry told him he had to do one of the three: sign up, get excepted to a college or leave. This was close to grduation. The other was a guy named Peter. this is the peter you probably think of when you think of a guy name Peter at hyde in 77. The story was a little different. I would have to say that I am pretty sure he was high at the time. He asked me if I wanted to snort some crushed percocets. I declined his gracious offer. The bottom line was the same: Henry told him to get his ass out of Dodge. So it is believable that people were asked to go. They were kids that in the current hyde parlance were "offtrack" so it would look like they were running away. I have also been in contact with a guy that was gone before I got to Hyde named Walter who spun a similar tale. I found his story to be believable.
If you are talking about Peter T, he absolutely hated Hyde and was pretty cynical about any adult hypocrisy, but was basically a decent kid. I also have to wonder about Henry's interest in him.
Somehow I cannot picture Peter M with the crushed percocets and he may have been there earlier; Peter M also had a sister who went, Heidi. Never heard what happened to either one of them, they were kind of quiet and kept to themselves. Maybe they even graduated and I just don't remember! lol
Did Walter usually go by a different name? Never heard what actually happened to him, if we're talking about the same person. I thought he took the credits accrued and just never came back.
I remember a girl named Donna A, who I had always assumed was one of Hyde's darlings since she was pretty gung-ho about Hyde and Sumner really liked her (she played Blanche in the school play
A Streetcar Named Desire, amongst other leads in other plays), but one day she disappeared and the official word was she "ran away." Not long afterwards, I ran into her on the road between the New Dorms and the Outhouse; tears were streaming down her face as she had just talked to some faculty member about her returning/staying. She said that she couldn't talk to me about it. I had always assumed that she really wanted to be there. But it seemed as if there were some "difficulties." And then she was gone.
Yeah, I do remember a lot of people officially designated as "runaways" and ones who never came back from a period of time at home, be that the end of the year or mid-term such as Christmas or Spring Break, etc. It was always portrayed as "their decision," like they made that choice on their own sans Hyde's stipulations. But this is what Hyde told us. I don't remember many of these kids telling me themselves what the reason was, at least not while they were there.
