Fifty years ago three normal teenagers graduated from Rider High School.
Now Pat Tempelmeyer, Jan Albin and Vicki Spaulding have a unique opportunity as they finish working at Rider after walking acoss the stage together in 1974.
“We all have a great relationship with each other. Vicki Spaulding and I wish we had run around together after high school,” Albin said. “I have admired Pat Tempelmeyer as a teacher during the years I have worked here. He’s really too intelligent to be my friend.”
When the three went to high school together, they didn’t talk to each other, all running in different crews. They didn’t get closer until they started working together decades later.
“We kind of connected from going to school at Rider and have gotten really close,” Spaulding said. “We’ve been working here together, had a lot of laughs and get-togethers. It’s just been fun.”
Rider’s 50-year reunion will be June 21-22 at the Courtyard by Marriott. The Friday before the reunion party is a meet-and-greet for the ones who are in for the reunion.
Many things have changed in the past 50 years from trends, staff and the building itself. All three love to see the difference in their high school they grew up at.
“Physically the building has changed a lot. Choir and band were where theater and dance are now,” Albin said. “The fieldhouse, library and music wing have been added.”
Not only have different things changed in the building, but the clothing the students wear has changed as well.
“We couldn’t wear shorts, motorcycles used to just line up out here. You know there’d probably be 40 motorcycles out there,” Tempelmeyer said. “The library is completely different. They built the big gym while we were still students here.”
The looks of the students and buildings are different from then and now. So has the culture.
“We wore dresses all the time and we used to have a smoking pit for the students so the students had a place they could go to smoke,” Spaulding said. “Some of the teachers smoked in the rooms back in the day.”
However, not everything has changed. All three believe a lot of things are still the same as they were in the 1970s from school spirit to teachers.
“Cream of the crop faculty and staff, we had great teachers, administrators and staff both then and now,” Albin said.
They all have worked here for quite a while now and have enjoyed every minute of it.
Tempelmeyer has worked 18 years at Rider. He’s been an AP physics teacher for 11 years, but enjoyed being a testing coordinator for seven years.
Albin, who is now the discipline clerk, has been working at Rider for 26 years and moved to different positions, but she mostly enjoyed working special ed for a year.
“I was an attendance clerk for 23 of my 26 years,” Albin said. “I loved the year I spent in special ed.”
Spaulding has been a history inclusion teacher for 15 years and helped the testing coordinator. She enjoyed being an inclusion teacher because of how the people around her were close to her and felt like family.
“I really enjoyed working with the coaches which mostly I work with and having to get to know all the coaches that are long gone,” Spaulding said. “The coaches, the ones who are here that literally had made me laugh every day, they’re so fun to work with.”
As Rider comes to a close, these three staff members get to remember all the memories they’ve had over the past years working together while finishing the school year.
“God blessed me abundantly with graduating from Rider High School and allowing me to work here for 26 years,” Albin said. “It has been an honor and a privilege to be a part of this family for so many years.”
