Pictures Worth a Thousand Smiles

I wrote this for a FCHS alumni newsletter -- thought I'd share it:

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I have absolutely no recollection of Dave Draheim taking pictures when I was in high school. I never had a class with him. To be honest, I never really knew what classes he taught – to me he was a friendly teacher who I occasionally passed by in the hallways of FCHS.

In the summer, I would see him playing golf with his good friend Mr. Benda. Seeing them on the golf course was a weekday ritual at Forest City Country Club. Benda would pull up with his Notre Dame-clad license plate. Draheim would throw his clubs on Benda’s golf cart, and they were off to enjoy another round of golf together.
Sadly, a few years after high school, I remember walking by Dave in Forest City and noticing how thin he was becoming. He would walk past Cooper Apartments with his groceries or some other items he had picked up from downtown Forest City and I’d always stop to say a quick hello if I was walking, or wave out the window if I was in my car.

I soon found out that Dave had been diagnosed with ALS and was no longer able to play golf.

Before long he needed to live at the Good Samaritan Center in order to receive the necessary care that his unfortunate disease required.

Maggie Tillman (FCHS Class of 2005) posted on her wall that Dave would love to have visitors so I decided to stop by the Good Sam to visit with Dave for a little while.
We sat in his room and watched “Everyday Italian” on the Food Network – we both agreed that Giada was the main reason we enjoyed the show so much! He had received some candy in the mail from a relative and offered to share it with me.

He asked about my mom and her plans for retirement. And he asked how my golf game was – I fibbed and said it was pretty good even though it’s really gone downhill.
After about 20 minutes, one of the caretakers came into the room and said Dave had dinner or social hour to get to. So I said my goodbye to Dave and told him I’d make sure my mom visited him in the next week or so.

I was shocked to hear that only days after my mom visited Dave he passed away. ALS is a cruel disease and it was tough to see him losing the ability to swallow and lacking much energy at all – in some ways, I was glad to know that he wasn’t suffering any longer.

Fast forward to the alumni basketball tournament this spring -- I heard that hundreds of photos were being posted in the high school for anyone to take. I was surprised to hear it, but Dave Draheim had taken hundreds, probably even thousands, of photographs during his tenure at Forest City High School.

I didn’t think too much of it until I walked into the high school on Sunday morning to play our first game there (our previous games had been at Waldorf).

I walked by picture after picture of smiling students. Some I knew and some I had no clue who they were. I searched for pictures of myself and my friends. I took a couple down from the wall in order to show all my classmates how young and skinny we had once been.

As I looked at more pictures, I couldn’t help but laugh as I began to remember all the classmates that I had long since forgotten. Foreign exchange students. Cute older girls. Kids who moved away during our time at FCHS.

And then I started noticing a pattern in the pictures. Almost without exception, the students in the pictures were smiling or laughing or being silly.

They didn’t look angry or mean or intimidating. They looked happy.

Dave Draheim was capturing thousands of happy moments in the hallways of Forest City High School. In some ways, I think he was capturing the true essence of all of us.

Sweethearts holding hands. Friends with arms around each other’s shoulders. Teachers laughing at a student making a goofy face. Teenagers having the time of their lives around fellow classmates.

I walked out of the high school that morning with a smile on my face.

I like to think that Dave Draheim was also smiling as he looked down at the smiles he had captured with his camera and the smiles he was still creating with all those photographs.

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A memorial scholarship has been created in Dave Draheim’s name. The smiles will continue into the future thanks to Dave Draheim’s legacy.