It was about 10:30 when my phone rand nd it was Rob. He said they won a close game that shouldn't have been close and that there weren't 10 kids there from our school. Mike the team would like to meet with you. Rob, this is an ugly week for me and we have finals but let me see what I can work out with Doc Johnson in the morning. Rob said, Mike we all know that we need this over. Rob, I'll work something out. Thinking about it I realized that I could be free Thursday after school. That was all I needed something more to do but I should have know as we took a stand and now we had to put Humpty Dumpty back together. I simply stood up stripped, turned out the lights piled on the covers and jumped into bed.
The alarm woke me and I quickly dress for the run and left the coffee for later. JJ was waiting 4 houses up the street. He was in a great mood and he just kept talking the entire run, which slowed thing down. He was hyper excited about the VT trip. He said it will be great and relaxing after 5 finals. MJ, I'm studying hard for there to prove a point to the rents but as a second semester Senior, I'm not doing shit. I laughed at that but I knew I would be slacking off as well. JJ asked where we would staying at VT and I said well Sean is setting all that up and he and Rodrigues are available. JJ, remember this isn't an official visit so we are on our own for the most part. MJ, I have a meeting with Coach Conn. JJ, I have nothing scheduled but would bet Coach B grabs me and it will be early Saturday as he will want to see how wild of a time I had Friday night. So MJ, is that why Coach Conn wants me Saturday at 9:00 AM. JJ, I have no idea but I'm not looking forward to that meeting with Coach B. MJ, how do you know about that? I said Sean and I'll see you in school. Good luck on the tests.
At my place, I put on coffee and jumped in the shower. I shaved and washed my hair. Outside it took forever to blow dry my hair and make it presentable. I dressed in jeans and a hoodie. I packed a blazer, dress shirt, tie, dress shoes and slacks in a suit bag. Then I filled my travel mug with coffee and put on my bomber jacket and was off to school. My only test was History and I sat through a review in English. The history test was to select one of three questions and explain in detail what that even meant in terms of the US today. I just laughed as I could teach a class on any of the questions. I just started to write in the blue book that we were given. I went up to the teacher and asked for another book and he smiled and said that's the lasts one. It took all of 25 minutes and I wrote my name on the books and marks the book 1 & 2 and turned them in. With that I went to see it Doc Johnson was available. It wasn't much of a wait and Science was another review so I didn't care.
We chatted about how the basketball team reacted and we agreed that we should let them up for air. Doc, suggested that we have a last period assembly in the auditorium for winter and spring teams. I asked about finals and he said, I'll find a work around. Doc, I would want you, the superintendent, the AD and as many Board members there that can make it. They have a choice to make and the people responsible for our athletic and academic success already have one foot out the door. They need to choose, what their legacy might be, we can no longer do that for them. Doc shrugged and said yup, I'll miss you guys. I said, thanks and signed out for the shit show that was looming at work.
I was starving so I debated if it was Wendy's and better hamburgers burgers or McDonalds and better coffee. The coffee lost the debate. There was no line at the drive through and I parked to eat the double burger, fries and coffee. I decided to call David Fay at the USGA. It went to voicemail but the call was quickly returned. He laughed and said Mike,I was going to call you today and try to change your mind. Well David, after the PAAA stuff I thought it would be easier to fight from within. He laughed and said well that's good to know. Well David, I need a favor. So you want to pick the time we make the announcement? Yup and 3:15 today would be perfect as I'm having a media event with ESPN as well as national and local media in attendance. Mike, I'll have it sent to the top people at ESPN. Thanks for doing this and we already have the press release ready and all it needs is a quick update. I said thanks and drove to the office.
Security just looked at my dress but actually apologized when they opened my suit bag. In the office I found the remote and lowered the blinds and changed clothes. It was still three hours before the event so I went for a walk around to see how things looked. My first stop was on the second floor so that I could get coffee. I spent about a half hour talking and meeting people. I decided to take the stairs to the 3rd floor. I was about to open the door and reached for my ID badge when the door flew open. There stood Alan Clarkson. He was from the original NASA group and his son, my age, started at my school. He was a damn good football player and blamed me for forcing his family to move. One thing led to another and he transferred to Central. He was Alan, Jr and his dad and I talked and I paid the tuition at Central, to prove a point. Early this year after we beat Central, Alan and I shook hands and told me he was also a VT recruit. Allen stopped and I asked how his son was? Mike, he is good and looking to graduate. I laughed and said there is a lot of that going around. So Al, Is he still going to VT? Mike he is and he fought for weeks about it with his mother. She wants him to go to Notre Dame. She finally threw in the towel but wants to see the place. Allen is taking a half day and I'm taking a personal day and we should be on the road by 1:00 and as we will stop to eat we should get there around 8:00.
Al, I don't know how you might feel about this but JJ and I will be going down for the weekend and we will be leaving as soon as JJ is done with his finals. I figure around 3:00. The difference is that we will be flying down. It's a 6 passenger corporate jet so we have room for 6 passengers. Al, talk with Major Messer and he will answer any questions about our certifications and abilities. You can rent a car, if you want and make sure you and the wife see the duck pond. Mike, are you sure as we don't want to impose. Al, think about it and let me know sometime tomorrow. I thought it would be nice to have Allen along and his parents would not be an issue but I felt bad for him as he would have more fun without them. I quickly went through the 3rd floor and took the back stairs to my office.
In my office I was sitting in the club chairs and was simply waiting for the pre conference shit to start as everyone would pay a visit to make sure things were ok. I was calm and looking forward to the start of the press conference as the USGA news would break just as we started. This was not just a spare of the moment thing. I knew I would not be able to turn Mr. Fay down, long term. It would get more publicity for the upcoming Opens and locally sell some tickets. It would also give the coaches at VT an issue and I needed all those resolved. I was staying three years, I had business concerns, there would be the aircraft available for trips home and other places and besides the required dorm I would have an apartment. I felt that most of that wasn't negotiable and I'm not sure they would accept all that. Just then Tim appeared and that was followed in quick order by Dillon, the Major, Kyle, Amy and as always dad was last. Everyone was making sure I was good. Once that was resolved I told them about the USGA announcement and the Major asked what else? Well J & J will be starting the Marina project and then the Messer School of Aeronautics. I'll save the building contest till last and build the excitement. Dad said, everyone out and Mike and we will see you all downstairs.
I just sat there looking out the window and dad was quiet. Finally he asked, WHY? His tone meant business. Ok dad, this is to help protect Cole but I am aware that the PGA likes or has accepted him and he needs to qualify for USGA events. It will piss the gang at VT off and I want it as a chip to bargain with as the USGA knows I'll miss meetings. Dad, after the PIAA thing I figure it is better to change things from within. Mike, what if VT pulls your offer? Dad, I'll simply play somewhere else or continue to enjoy life without football. It will be what it becomes. Mike, it always becomes what you want it to become and I think you blow up things that scare you. For some reason you are scared shitless. You can't decide on the building because it scares you that it won't measure up to your past achievements. You are simply kicking it down the road and looking for a bail out. Mike you are trying to force VT to dump you and that is how you operate. You won't quit you will force them to not want you. Ask any of those rebound chicks you dated after Carrie. See Mike, it hurt you when she forced you to dump her. Mike you are built like a fucking god and always had a big set of ball and simply made it happen so who castrated you? Dad, I have people waiting on me. Dad smiled and said well there is the Mike Pivot. However you aren't going anywhere until you answer me. Dad, you did. This building was easy as nothing I did would be worse. Now as we expand I have to remember I am responsible for the 572 people who work here and their families. Dad smiled and said son, that's exactly why I needed a break. Now I'm not sure I want back. However, I promised you 3 years at college so let's do this downstairs together. Mike, I'm back involved and we can deal with the details next week. I'm giving you my remaining shares and I am the CEO of Enterprises and you are the chairman. No changes in the structure here. Dad, that's all great but unfair to my team. Mike this was Kyle's idea. Your team is good, well our team is good. Now let's go down stairs and blow their minds. Dad, thanks for all this but I'll be making all those announcements and you can answer questions. You took just enough off my plate and I'm ready. Then I looked at him and said dad, you better be fucking serious.
Dad was a bit surprised that I took the back stairs to the second floor. For me that eliminated an entrance. I walked right into the room grabbed the podium and moved it out of the way and said, Good afternoon everyone and thanks for spending some time with us this afternoon. With that every hand in the room went up and everyone was asking a question. I raised both hands and things quite down and I said, how about you let me tell you wants going on and hopefully I will answer a lot of your questions. I will be taking questions, later. As you are no doubt aware I have accepted an appointment to the USGA Executive committee. Mr. Fay and I have been discussing that for a while. As you already know I am Co-chair of the Woman's Open to be held at Oakmont next year. That will be followed by the Men's Open the following year and I am the host clubs' representative to that event. As you are also aware my brother Cole is a very good golfer. He won a PGA event last season and as such qualifies for the Open. He also qualifies for the Amateur based on his world ranking. All that was accomplished my him before I accepted that position. The USGA, the PGA and the R&A are independent and separate organizations. They have their rules and procedures and I will not be looking for special exemptions. The USGA is aware that there will be a number of meetings that I will attend remotely or not at all, depending on my schedule.
Major James Messer will be resigning his responsibilities as PR Director at Technologies and will remain as PR Director at Enterprises. He will have added responsibilities as Personal Advisor to the Chairman of Enterprises. I will be holding that position as Senior will be CEO of Enterprises. As you know the umbrella organization for all my holding is Enterprises. They include the winery, the law firm, Standard Property and Technologies. It also holds title to two buildings and soon to be 4 buildings. This was done as the Major has just purchased The Allegheny Flight School. I am a minor investor and Jim has two NASA Astronauts who will be joining him in the newly named Messer School of Aeronautics. It will continued to be housed at the Allegheny County Airport. The final change is that Riley McBain will be assuming the PR responsibilities at Technologies.
On other construction news J & J Architects will be starting work on a marina and Restaurant. that will be housed in the smaller building next door. We are hoping to get that started soon with minimal problems with the permits. J & J we're the designers on this building and it is natural fit.
Oh, I missed something earlier, the position of Chairman at Technologies is eliminated and those duties will be handled by the Chairman of Enterprises. Actually the title of Chairman is a misnomer as there is no board of directors. I am either the owner or managing partner of both groups.
As for the building contest. Details are available as you leave and the building design should reflect its location near the river and use new and innovative materials. The smaller manufacturing building will initially house robotics and coils be finished first. The environment is very important and the fact that things flood should be considered. Nothing retro and something that could be built in 2020. I am confident that all your questions will be answered by the packets of information.
Thanks You and Patti, as usual, you are first? Mike, I'll need 30 minutes to sort through the 2,000 questions I currently have. All of a sudden Patti laughed and said well all those moves hide the important thing, your dad is back, why? Well that was the deal all long. He needed. Break and time off to enjoy life. To that end I gave up some of my high school life but claimed my college years and limited that to three rather than 4. Diane from ABC asked, Mike how does your team feel about all this? Diane, all that happens is that there is another person between me and them. They are doing what they have always done they are running the damn company. They will always have access to me. There is no one on my team that has to worry and they are all well compensated. I couldn't ask for more. There will be individual meeting next week with each of them. They were aware of all this generally.
Mike what does Cole think of the USGA thing? I have no idea as I never discussed it with him. Mike, so basically you need a break? That is correct, Steve. As a follow up what will VT, think of all this? I guess I'll find out Saturday when I meet with Coach B. We have a lot to discuss before intent day. Mike, are you changing your mind about VT. I am not. There was some laughter at the response and Patty said Mike, let's try it this way. What would cause you not to play football at VT? Patti, that is a much more complicate question and I liked the earlier question much more. Well I have been on a football team since 5th grade and these few weeks not being on a team have opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities. I will not be the average first year football player. First of all I will go there as a Sophomore. Second, I'll have a plane parked there to get me home when necessary. Third, I'm the highest rated defensive recruit they have. They have a very high profile QB from Virginia Beach and I want to know about him. Finally, I expect to start Day 1 and the goal is a National championship. That is simply the standard and excellence in sports and business and life is always the standard.
There were a lot of questions and some were deflected to the Major, dad and a few for Kyle. Kyle told them that he had discussed all this with Senior and that the first day he met me he had a resignation letter to hand me. Then he said 5 minutes into that meeting he knew he wouldn't need it. The entire thing lasted till almost 5:00. I was immediately grabbed by the Major and he said you need to do one more thing and that is wrap up the football season. In my office was Diane and one cameramen. Diane said Mike this is easy and Paul has a few shots of your office. I had a microphone attached to my lapel and Diane asked Mike, how did you guys do all this with all the issues you had? Diane, it wasn't easy as there were some very talented teams we beat and some might have been better on paper than we were but none of them were a tight as we were. We had a saying that was adopted to deal with a QB issue in voluntary workouts and it worked on many levels. Mike what was that saying? Diane it was more than a saying and we lived it. ONE FOR ALL AND ALL FOR ONE. We simply ONED everyone we played. Diane smiled and said thanks, it's perfect. So guys when will this be aired? Mike, we have it scheduled for this weekend on Saturday afternoon. Mike, we will send you 20 cassettes and give them to whoever you want. I said thanks and I'll make copies for the entire team. Mike, we will send copies for the entire team to the school. Those 20 are for your special people. Diane and I drove to South Hills and had a great and relaxing dinner. It was 8:00 when she got in the cab and said Mike, I'm not done with you. I'll be in touch soon. I laughed nd said good night and watched as the cab worked it's way down the driveway.
I simply drove home and when I got there I went into the house and was glad to see that Megan was on the phone with Cole. He immediately asked to talk with me. MJ, I heard you made the big time in golf. I laughed and said well someone has to work so you and your group can act like spoiled kids. So Cole why are you not on the course? Well Mike, I am in 20 minutes as they moved me back as the chairman on Nike wants to play with me. Well Cole, hit them where you want. I put Megan back on and let them finish. I only chatted for a few minutes as I was tired and wanted to call Winnie so it was a quick goodnight and I went to my place.
I called Winnie and we didn't talk long as she had two finals. She said that she had watched me on the local news and that her uncle was furious that he blew the opportunity to do the Marina and Restaurant. He finally said that he needed to figure out how thing worked in this strange town. I laughed at the strange town as I knew we were different and the fact that as a region we helped each other and outsiders needed to adjust. As we hung up I said babe, thanks for putting up with me and for being my very special girl. He chuckled and said Mick, I love you too. I spent the next hour reviewing some of things we did in physics and concentrated on waves and the math involved in measuring every aspect of them. We had spent a lot of time on that and I was hoping that was the focus of the test. Whatever it would be I knew it would be a bitch. As usual with math, I got over involved and climbed into bed just before midnight.
I woke with the alarm and was still tired but it was the usual run, coffee and a shower and dressed in jeans and a crewneck and drove to school. I didn't have a lot of time but quickly met with Dr. Johnson and he would have all potential winter and spring sports teams in the auditorium immediately after school. I ran an idea past home and he said he would have the play director and the marching band director in the auditorium second period. I said thanks and went to English for the semester final. Like history there were 3 topics and I had to choose one and write an essay. I kept it to one of the damn blue books and was finished in quick order. This time I just sat and thought about my quickly devised plan and the statement I would make and turn the building over to Josh, Wyatt and Rod. During second period I got the fob that worked the curtains and the band director agreed to have a senior there who played the bagpipes. I explained what I needed and the director said it was no problem but that he wasn't missing this show for the world and he would be there.
With that done I went to Physics and the damn test was hard and I finished almost last and handed in the answers and the work and drove to the office. There I met with Kyle and we verbally reworked his contract and he asked for a 5% raise and I gave him 10% and insisted on a 2 year non-compete, which he readily agreed to. The contract was for 5 years with a 5% raise each year if the company remained profitable. Amy was told that there was no change in her program and that her job was secure as Riley would be PR at Enterprises and she was visibly relived. Dillon was told to relax nd that I would meet with him on Monday. That was more than enough and I drove back to school.
I went right to administration and was told that I was needed in the conference room. The school board President asked, Mike what do you have planned. Well Sir, I will tell them that they are off the hook and that the seniors will not tolerate any form of hazing. It is my hope that once we leave you with the underclassmen and women you will reinforce that. I will remind them what our class has demanded and gotten from you and demonstrate to them that we are leaving and they need to claim their goals and who they want to be and that all they will have left of us is the memories. Mike, will we object to anything you say. Before I could answer Dr. Johnson said, NO YOU WILL NOT. Let's go.
We all walked to the auditorium and used the back stage entrance and I was immediately met by JJ, Chad and Jim. JJ said Mike we were not letting you do this alone and on stage behind the curtains was a ton of seniors. Jim said Mike, everyone who could make it. I smiled and whispered thanks. Just follow along. I was handed a microphone which did not require a cord and I stood in the middle and the curtain went up. The curtain went up and we all stepped forward, I was barely on the stage. I said Good Afternoon and if there are any Seniors sitting out there please join us. I smiled as there were none. What brought us here today was hazing and bullying and Tuesday night we sent you a message. A message that you agreed with because there was a IFO event at the away game. Family members only. There are no more messages. We up here are telling you that it won't happen again, well this year. Is that understood? There was a loud response of YES. See it is that easy and I'm sure after we march out of here this afternoon you will hear that loud and clear from the administration.
This all started for us long before we walked into this building. We weren't starry eyed freshman. We knew who we were all the way back in 5th grade. We always had a high bar and lots of promise and ability and for some reason it worked as a unit. We weren't always the NO FUN CLASS. We partied and lost key people to drugs, booze and Dr. Johnson put us in this very auditorium and set the rules. We bought in and because we bought in so did you. You bought somewhat into us but something happened this week, anyone know what it was? There was a shout we all had finals. I smiled and said correct. Ours were different as it was the last set of high school tests that matter for us. No college admission person, no tech school, no military recruiter will care what we did second semester senior year. We took a step closer to being a memory. Which that I took a step back and so did everyone on the stage. Our influence will be a bit less as each month passes. By February the football trophies will have a thin layer of dust. Last years State Championship Trophy in basketball won't glitter as much. We will work but not as hard. In March other trophies might appear and others fade. ANOTHER STEP BACK AND THE CURTAIN SLOWLY STARTED TO FALL. you will need to find out who you will become and we will work and help but not as much. April will come and section championships from last year will mean less. We will still be working but not as much. May comes and you better be starting to realize that you have work to do. You need to set your bar, establish your goals as we are about to become a memory and we all took two steps and very lowly the bagpipes started to be heard and the June comes a we March down the ramp to the stadium, listen to boring speakers, get our diplomas, throw our hats in the air and become ghosts. All that is left is your memories of us and we are no longer Highlanders but cadets, apprentices, Lions, Panthers and even Hokies. You need to become who you are as a class. Yes the same thing will happen to each of you. All that will be left is the memories of who you became. All of up behind this curtain wish you well but we can no longer help. Find your leaders and trust them and I know Dr. Johnson will be replacing his helpers. With that the bagpipes went full force the curtain went up and we walked out of the auditorium.
Outside we simply hung around and chatted and enjoyed each other's company. About 20 minutes later as we were starting to leave the other group came out and I could tell things were uncomfortable inside. Wyatt came up and said well Mike, that was more than interesting and the Juniors got blasted as a group for being underachievers as did the Sophomores. Wyatt what about guys? Well there were so few of us all he could say was that we needed to emulate you guys and he added a few Juniors as well. Wyatt that's sounds like good advice. Mike, he said underachievers both academically and athletically. Then he called them tailcoat leaches. Wyatt said he found that funny. Wyatt, it is sad and you will find that the dude speakers the truth. Can you help him? MJ, fuck yes and you know it. That was the first time he ever called me MJ, I guess he has earned that. I smiled when he got in the car with Josh. I was starving but I had a head doctor appointment and went looking for some fast food.
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