Donald R. Morrison
Edgewood High School Class of 1962
Director of Public Information, Harford County Public Schools

I remember the day like it was yesterday even though it was about 45 years of yesterdays now. "Chuck" Marzen was my Senior English teacher and baseball coach at Edgewood High School. It was the late spring of 1962 and we had just won Edgewood High's first boys county championship in the brief eight year history of the school. Coach Marzen -- who later became a guidance counselor at the school and eventually the county's first Supervisor of Guidance -- asked me one of those questions good counselors come up with -- "So, what are you going to do with your life?" Coming from a family where college was not a consideration, I replied, "I think I'd like to be a teacher and coach like you," to which my wise mentor said, "You know, that means you have to go to college."

That wise and gentle man got me the application papers and helped me secure scholarships to go to what was then Harford Junior College and then Towson State College, allowing me to land my dream job, teaching History at Aberdeen High and coaching basketball and baseball there. Without him and the other caring and talented teachers at Edgewood High the course of my life would have been far different and the opportunities to impact the lives of others would have been far less.

It was the kind of life changing experience that many of us can point to from our schooldays, but one, I think, that is more pronounced at Edgewood High School. Down through the generations, Edgewood High teachers like Chuck Marzen have taken students like Don Morrison under their wing and helped them become more than the kid thought he or she could be. Maybe it's the nature of the school, serving such a diverse population ethnically, financially, and socially that helps build the bond among students and between students and the faculty/administration. Perhaps there are more lost souls like I was looking for that gentle hand applied with true affection to point the direction. Maybe it's the "fortress mentality" of "us against the world" that brings Edgewood High students together in the face of unfair and unthinking bias from other parts of the county.

Whatever it is, to this day, when I enter the doors of Edgewood High School, I get that warm feeling of students who really care about each other and of a dedicated faculty/administration for whom the young people there are more than just students. My good friend Bob Magee, former principal of Aberdeen High and later president of the Harford Board of Education, coined the phrase, "Proud to be Seen in Aberdeen." Maybe we who count ourselves lucky to have been students at Edgewood High could begin saying, "A Ram I Was and a Ram I Am."