Getting caught by the past

It was 45 years ago that a young DePue High School student carved his name and graduation year into the wall. In September, work on that wall revealed the name, and brought Larry Peterson back to his past. (BCR photo/Barb Kromphardt)

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DEPUE/GOULDSBORO, Maine — The year was 1963, or maybe it was 1964. Larry Peterson wasn't quite sure on the year, but he did remember it was time for shop class at DePue High School. And Peterson, one of the school’s less than stellar students, was bored.

“I did not win any academic prizes, and I didn’t win any behavioral prizes either,” Peterson said with a laugh. “I was one of those kids that was really happy to be involved in anything and everything other than school.”

But the sophomore student decided to leave his mark on the school and managed to carve his name and his graduation year, “Larry 66,” into the wall without anyone noticing.

Fast forward about 45 years to Sept. 22, 2009.

It’s 3 a.m. in Gouldsboro, Maine, and Peterson, now retired, can’t sleep.

“I’m just a terrible insomniac,” he said. “I get up every day between 2 and 4 o’clock, and on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, I make a habit of going on-line and checking out the BCR’s latest.”

So Peterson is browsing through the site and comes across the article, “What lurks behind those cafeteria walls?” When custodians were repairing a cracked wall in the DePue cafeteria, DePue Cafeteria Director Elizabeth Fox saw a name and date etched into the back wall above some bleachers that were installed when the room was used as a gymnasium. Fox was eager to share the history of the place with her students, and also notified the BCR about it as a human interest story.

So Peterson starts reading.

“And when I get to ‘Larry 66,’ there’s a big bell that goes off in my head,” Peterson said. “I’m absolutely flabbergasted, and I’m thinking, ‘By gosh, I think I have a vague recollection of doing that.’”

Peterson was born in DePue, and spent his entire childhood there until he enlisted in the Navy after high school. He worked in Naval intelligence for 23 years, serving all over the world including a stretch in Maine, where he met and married his wife in 1972. After retiring from the Navy in 1989, he had a second career in New Hampshire with a defense contractor as an engineering project manager. After retiring from that job two years ago, he now works as an active freelance photographer, whose work has run in the BCR.

Peterson has good memories of his days in DePue and still has family and friends in the area. Many of those friends were surprised to see Peterson remembered in the newspaper.

“I was contacted by three or four people saying, ‘Look what was in the paper!’” Peterson said.

But Peterson thinks he saw the article before anybody else.

“I suspect I was probably the first person in the country that read it, unless there’s another insomniac out there,” he said.

Peterson looked up Fox’s telephone number and called her about a week after the story ran.

“I said, ‘I don’t recognize your name; do I know you?’ and she said, ‘Of course!’” Peterson said. “She was four years younger than me. But it’s a small town, and you know everybody.”

Peterson has enjoyed remembering the boy he was so long ago and all his wishes and desires.

“The way it was articulated in the article was absolutely correct,” he said. “It said a student decided he wanted to be memorialized for ages. I couldn’t put it any better than that.”

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