Hong Kong With Barb

This post is based on an album I put together in 1976 or so called “Bill – The Story So Far.”  I have other pictures from Hong Kong in my with-Barb days, 1974-76, but these are what was in that particular album. I will find some way to collate others as I come across them. I will also surely get some of these events out of sequence and leave out other important items but perhaps Barb will help set me straight, as she so often has.

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11th Grade

Barb and Betsy arrived in Hong Kong from Dusseldorf as I entered 11th grade in 1974. They were yet another set of new kids coming into HKIS, cuter than most, but I was too shy and dorky to say “hi,” if I even said that. I didn’t have any classes with Barb that first semester but I did have one with Betsy who evidently gave a positive report to Barb, unbeknownst to me.

That fall, my friend and bandmate, Edmund Lo, threw a party at his house. I don’t remember the occasion, and in fact it was rare for me to go to parties to just hang out with people, but there I was. Barb started talking to me, first as part of a group and then actually one-on-one. She asked about my history and family and seemed actually interested in what I had to say. This was a singular circumstance for me. No one had seemed particularly interested in what I had to say before, certainly not a girl, and I actually enjoyed the chance to talk. I like to think I asked questions back and actually carried on a conversation, but I don’t guarantee it. I’m sure Barb did most of the questioning. We went out on the balcony for a while so we could hear each other better and I really enjoyed the time together. Eventually, the party broke up and people got rides home. I lived less than a mile down Repulse Bay Road and decided to walk. In fact, I fairly floated down the road, intoxicated by the evening (though there’d been no alcohol or anything else) and thrilled that a girl, a very pretty girl, seemed interested in me.

I felt like the next thing we should do is go on a proper date, but didn’t really know how to go about such a thing. At some point pretty soon thereafter, I learned that Jose Feliciano was having a concert in town. Foreign music acts were few and far between in Hong Kong so that seemed like something special, even if I wasn’t really much of a fan. At least he played guitar well, and I figured I’d like that. I talked Mom and Dad into getting tickets, which were expensive for my nonexistent dating budget, and called Barb one evening to ask her out. Rather infamously, Betsy answered the phone and had to fetch Barb out of her bedroom where she’d already sequestered herself for the evening. I asked her out, awkwardly, I’m sure, and she agreed to go, even though a concert was probably the last thing in the world she really wanted to do. When the evening came, I think I must have picked her up with Ah Lam and went to the concert hall in Central. Neither of us enjoyed the concert much, probably for different reasons. I was very nervous and the show afforded little chance to talk or get to know each other further. I don’t think I knew enough to include dinner in the deal, and generally didn’t know what I was doing. I just knew it didn’t feel right and by the end of the evening was pretty sure we both had a fairly miserable time.

Not quite knowing how to recover from that debacle, I elected to return to my little shell of tennis and music and being by myself. It seemed safer. I don’t think we saw much of each other for the rest of 11th grade, other than passing in the halls or maybe in group settings. We weren’t antagonistic or anything, I just felt embarrassed and was too timid to pick up the phone or otherwise make an effort to speak with her again. I figured I’d blown my chance. I don’t think she started going out with other guys, but I guess I assumed she would.

I began to get more serious about school and academics in 11th grade largely because that’s when we started to focus on college preparations and selection. A key course for everyone was American History and we had a teacher, Sharon Prechtl, with a very tough reputation. Her husband was an FBI lawyer assigned to the consulate and she was a career teacher (not a Lutheran). She demanded a major research project and spent as much time teaching us how to research and prepare notes as she did teaching history. For whatever reason, she motivated me to work harder and actually apply myself.

Even though we were in different classes, Barb and I both chose Aaron Burr for our projects. I chose him because I’d recently read Gore Vidal’s Burr and was fascinated by his conspiracy and trial for treason. I spent a lot of time researching and making background notes, and obtained a couple of other books over the course of the semester (I think because Dad was able to get them during a trip back to the States). One of the keys for me was a hard-to-find 1954 book by Thomas Abernethy, The Burr Conspiracy. There was no chance anyone else in Hong Kong had it, and the book provided details I hadn’t found anywhere else. Despite doing a fair amount of research and reading, I fell behind on the actual drafting of the report. I remember finally typing it up without a final draft the night before it was due.

Decades later, in 2007, Mom found this letter I wrote at the time thanking “Both of yous” for finding the Abernethy book. I honestly have no idea at this point who I writing so familiarly and that I would see in the summertime…nor how the letter would end up with Mom decades later. Maybe Laurie and David? Were they my secret connection? The letter describes the writing of the Burr paper in more detail, including finishing it at 3:30am the night before it was due.

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Barb got an A for her report but to her great annoyance I got an A+ and Mrs. Prechtl gushed over it (she said she’d never given an A+ before). It became pretty much the highlight of my entire academic career. Mrs. Prechtl wrote recommendations for me to attend the Presidential Classroom program in Washington, DC, in my senior year and for my college application to Georgetown that I think helped greatly in gaining me early acceptance. I don’t think the episode helped me greatly with Barb.

The letter above also mentions a 3-1/2 day trip to Taiwan with the school choir where I played bass. I had mostly forgotten about that trip (clearly I was not greatly impressed) though I do remember getting a bunch of pirated Taiwan records for cheap. I knew in my dim memories that I’d been to Taiwan at some point — this was it.

More memorably, in the spring of 1975, I was selected for the Hong Kong Junior Davis Cup tennis team which may sound like a big deal but it mostly consisted of customers of the former Australian pro who had become our coach at the Hong Kong Country Club, John Cooper. Nevertheless, a highlight was a trip to Bangkok to play the Thai team. We got crushed, as I recall, but our team of 8 teenage boys had a great time in Bangkok, feeling very grown up even if we weren’t. I include this episode because there were pictures in the album to deal with but also because while in Bangkok I took the opportunity to shop at a gem market for a nice star sapphire. I had thoughts that I might give it to Barb if she came back for our senior year.

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I didn’t take part in the 1975 class graduation, but the Fisher clan did to honor Betsy’s graduation. Here’s a nice photo that has stayed on Barb’s dresser all these years.

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12th Grade

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The summer between my junior and senior year, we went on an extended trip back to the States and didn’t return to Hong Kong until late August, just before school started. I remember one day coming back from Central with Mom and seeing Barb with her distinctive long hair walking on the street near her apartment as we drove by on Stubbs Road. That was confirmation she would be back for another year (one never knew who would be coming or going) and I was hopeful to get another chance to become friends. At the school check-in day, Barb was volunteering and buzzing around the room helping folks confirm class schedules. I found enough courage to actually say hello and learned that we would actually be taking some classes together in the new semester. Things were looking up.

It seems neither Barb nor I can remember exactly what happened next, but we started seeing more of each other starting in September of our senior year. Partly it was because we were in classes together and there was an excuse to start studying together, partly we just sort of fell into a group of kids that hung out together at school, partly I was able to win a few free dinners at various places in town through some radio contests. It eventually became clear that food rather than music was a much more happy avenue to Barb’s attention. With other kids or sometimes with Barb’s parents, we started to frequent the New American Restaurant in Wanchai that offered onion cakes and other Chinese food that was cheap, very good but maybe slightly Americanized for sailors and tourists. 

In October for her birthday, Barb and her buddies arranged a beach party cookout at Deepwater Bay, to which I was invited. The loose-kint group included Lloyd Chao who now also went to HKIS, Phil Schock who had become one of my good friends, Barb’s best friends Kathy McGown, Martha Goudey and Anne Banwell, and a number of others, including Ed Ketterer, Cindy Morgan, Brenda Bauman, Lesley Wang, and some others I can’t identify at this point. There is some conjecture that this party happened in the Spring of ’76, but Barb says it was for her birthday, so she’s probably right. 

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I did end up giving Barb the sapphire from Bangkok as a birthday present. I wasn’t sure what type of jewelry she might actually want, and didn’t have many additional funds to mount it anyway, so I gave it to her as a standalone gem. She seemed very pleased and, with help from her Mom and Dad, had the Chu’s set it into a ring. 

Just after Barb’s birthday, there happened to be a big two-week trade promotion called “American Fortnight” put on by the American Chamber of Commerce. It was a celebration of American culture, sports and business and included appearances by the Kilgore Rangerettes (the “star attraction”). Our school was involved in several events, including a band and choir concert at Hong Kong Stadium and a concert in Macau that required an overnight trip. The ferry ride to Macau and back along with some unscheduled time there (I think we skipped a tour of the city) gave Barb and me a chance to spend a lot of time together. By that point we were pretty officially a couple.

I’d gotten more involved with the school’s music programs in 12th grade, actually joining the choir and playing in the Rock Ensemble. We had a new teacher, Mr. Passarella, who was said (I think by Mr. Passarella) to have played saxophone in an early band with Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey. We could never verify that, but he tried to get us to play some more upbeat funk numbers like the Tower of Power’s “What is Hip.” We proved emphatically that we weren’t. More our speed was a very white version of “Love Will Keep Us Together” by the Captain and Tennille. We played it many times during the American Fortnight.

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In November, Barb invited me to Sadie Hawkins dance at school. I believe this was the only school dance that I actually enjoyed. The photo from the dance is one of our most favorites.

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We began to study together which was our excuse to go over to one another’s house after school most days. My tennis suffered but my grades and general outlook on life improved. Most often, I would go to Barb’s apartment and before long began to get to know her Mom and Dad, Louise and Fred. By this point I hardly spoke to my own Dad and Mom, but it was much easier to have conversations with Fred and Louise. They both worked at the US Consulate and I enjoyed hearing about their lives. I began to stay for dinner more often. Every now and then Barb would come for dinner at my house, but even though she adored Ah Chen’s fried shrimp and potato chips, we were never very comfortable being around my Mom and Dad.

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Later in the year I joined the Fisher’s team in their consulate bowling league, raising the team’s average and actually having fun. It was Barb and Louise, however, that walked away with trophies. I like to think I helped.

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I had already decided over the summer that Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service was my #1 college choice and submitted my application for early admission in October or so. My application essay was on the implications of cloning which at that point was more science fiction than fact (Dolly the sheep was born in July 1976). I’m honestly not sure how I landed on that topic but later, at Georgetown, someone in the admissions process mentioned having read the essay and that it helped my application by being so far off-topic. I was thrilled to learn in December that I’d been accepted at Georgetown. It was an especially good thing because I didn’t really have a strong second choice. Other schools I’d considered included Rice, Vanderbilt, American, GW, and Florida backups like Rollins and Eckerd, but it was a pretty wide open crapshoot after Georgetown. Thank goodness for early acceptance. It helped make the rest of my senior year pretty much an academic breeze. 

Barb would have you know she continued to work hard, earning a third year in the National Honor Society. She never let me off the hook that I didn’t have the grades to qualify. Barb knew from her Dad that she could attend any college she wanted as long as it was a public one in Virginia. She applied to a few but was happy to be accepted at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. So, entirely by coincidence (or fate?), we were bound for colleges within a few hours of each other. By even more coincidence, the Fishers were to move back to Oakton and become a landing point between.

Mrs. Prechtl helped nominate me as one of three representatives from our school to travel to Washington, DC, for a week-long program called Presidential Classroom (the program now appears to be defunct). The actual week in January 1976 was based in a hotel in Crystal City and included tours of the Capitol, State Department and various Smithsonian museums, but for some reason not the White House. We had presentations from a number of quasi-luminaries, including William Colby who was Director of the CIA. I’d learned just a few weeks before that I’d been accepted to Georgetown, so the burden of college selection was off, but the trip solidified my interest in government and Washington, DC. My co-representatives, Pam Peterson and Mark Wallis, and I had to fund-raise from the local community of American businesses to cover the trip expenses (I think, in truth, our parents ended up covering most of it) and then report results to them. That process of soliciting funds and reporting results was the most nerve-wracking aspect of the program. The photos below include my notes from the report we gave as a follow-up to our corporate sponsors.

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Our school got its first taste of computing when one of the local companies (I think it might have been SeaLand; our classmate Rob Janssen’s father was the local head) installed a terminal in a small room so we could timeshare off their mainframe (probably actually a DEC minicomputer). We didn’t have a formal class, but a computer club formed as an extra activity and I was an early member. At first we actually had a punchcard terminal where we would type out and sort punch cards to send over to the SeaLand office, wait a few days and then see our results. By the end of senior year we advanced to a teletype terminal where we could enter BASIC code directly and get results more or less in realtime on a long scroll of paper. It was still a slow and laborious process which I never mastered; I recall it was frustrating on one hand to have to wait for a turn at the terminal, but it also gave us a chance to watch each other’s progress and share in each other’s failures and successes. It gave me an inkling of the power of computer processing and felt like a small keyhole on the future. 

I spent quite a bit of time teaching tennis, especially during my senior year. Barb and Kathy McGown took lessons, and so did a few other kids from school, but I also tried doing clinics for younger kids and occasional individual lessons for adults. There were some courts at Barb’s apartment building that we could get on for free. Tennis lessons were the main way I could generate any income to support my budding social life. I remember trying to bug Dad into getting a job at his office or nearby, but that went nowhere.

Barb was a cheerleader in senior year (an official sport!) after having been on the basketball team in junior year, and was on the track and cross country team both years. As best I recall, cheerleading activities centered on basketball games and culminated in the Holiday Tournament where HKIS hosted teams from American schools across Asia. Barb’s cross country career was motivated by the roast beef sandwiches Mrs. Ketterer would have at the end of each race.

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In springtime, HKIS organized a one-off “Festival of Champions” with the International School Manila. I can’t remember the official excuse for the event, but a whole contingent of us flew to Manila for the better part of a week to compete in various sports including basketball, swimming, tennis…and cheerleading. Manila was very different than Hong Kong, much more spread out, very hot, the people were friendly and more Americanized. We stayed in the homes of various American families in Makati and Forbes Park which felt like Florida suburbs. We took a memorable field trip to the enormous Manila American Cemetery nearby. Barb had visited many US cemeteries in Europe with her family but had not seen anything as massive as this. The whole trip seemed like a vacation. I don’t know how we did at any of the sports but we had a great time.

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At some point in the Spring we had the opportunity to take introductory Transcendental Meditation lessons at the local TM Center, either for free or a very low price. Barb and I did it together, along with a few other school friends. I remember being rather haphazardly issued a mantra and a few basic instructions, then told to start practicing meditation. I actually enjoyed it and found it helpful for a bit, though I did not have the discipline to meditate regularly. I still remember my mantra and from time to time still try to settle myself and meditate when I’m feeling particularly stressed. I was never a big fan of the Maharishi nor some of TM’s more outlandish claims, but there is something timeless and useful about the practice of meditation. I’m glad I had the chance to learn the very first steps for free.

Toward the end of the year it was time for Prom. I hadn’t been to one before. Barb had been the previous year so was a veteran. I remember choosing my outfit and getting it completely tailor-made at A Man Hing Cheong (still one of the top shops in the Mandarin Hotel). Mom was with me the whole way and somehow still didn’t talk me out of the red jacket; I think she even thought it was a good choice. Regardless, I met Barb at her place and felt like a goof next to her in her lovely dress. What a fine couple! We “double dated” with Kathy and Lloyd who we’d kind of forced to go together. The pictures, including cameos of Fred, Louise, and Louise’s budgie, were all taken at their apartment. I recall very little from the Prom itself (at the Furama Hotel?), but we had a grand time. No great shenanigans to report.

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The year closed with publishing of the yearbook and graduation. I’m thankful to the yearbook crew that put together a decent product. I was hardly in any previous yearbooks but had quite a few spots as a senior, as did Barb. It has helped with these memories.

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I found some outtakes that I guess Lloyd gave to me; he had been one of the yearbook photographers.

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Here is our graduation announcement from June 17, 1976, courtesy of Barb and a box she squirreled away. Our graduation theme song was “Breakaway” by Art Garfunkel. Don’t ask me why.

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I don’t recall much about the actual graduation ceremony, but here are photos that show I was there! And one with Mom from later that evening.

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Barb sent a graduation photo to her Aunt Gerry and Uncle Bob, whom I take to be Gerry Carlson, her teacher from Dusseldorf. Eventually, it made its way back to us, along with the graduation announcement, I believe. Thanks Aunt Gerry.

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Before long, it came time to leave Hong Kong and what had become a quite idyllic final year. The photos below are from my flight out of Kai Tak in July 1976. I didn’t know when I would return. Mom and Dad were to stay in Hong Kong one more year before Dad’s mandatory retirement at age 60. There was some thought he might stay longer but it was not to be. I knew I would miss the place greatly and knew I would make my way back, one way or another. But I also knew it would never be the same.

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