Foreign Friday

Schubert's Last Serenade cast members

Back: David Wall, Tony Dennie, Sally Eichorn

Front: Ray Eichorn, Dirk Steinmeier, Sherry McMillan, Enzo Schiovo

Misawa, Japan
April 1980

Language Arts, Drama, and Speech were the classes that I taught at Robert D. Edgren High School on Misawa AFB, Misawa, Japan from Fall 1979 until Spring 1981. The spring of 1980 was Edgren's year to host the Pacific Drama Festival, an enormous task. In addition to scheduling the plays and finding qualified judges, I had the responsibility of finding housing for teams, representing several military schools throughout the Pacific. Families on-base volunteered to provide meals, beds, and transportation for the students over the three-day weekend. It was a huge task for someone who had only been on base for seven months.

My drama students prepared a cute one-act play, called Shubert's Last Serenade, for the competition.

I don't remember much of the actual festival because the weekend and all the activities was a blur. I do remember being exhausted and relieved when the last plane load of students left on Sunday evening. Since the students were military dependents, their sponsors obtained orders for them to fly to Misawa on military planes: C-130s commonly brought passengers to the base.