good evening i'm foster right retired belmont high school principal and member of the belmont high school scholarship committee and i would like to welcome you to our distinguished graduates program i'm delighted to have to belmont high school graduates reggie perry class nine hundred and eighty seven perry harding class in one thousand nine hundred and six with me it makes my heart feel good to be sitting with you two guys after all these years and i would like to say i hope we didn't do any damage to tell on high school i'd like to tell you a little bit about the scholarship program and you know why we have reggie and harry with us tonight we're trying to increase the amount of money we're raising for the scholarship committee and traditionally we've gone to our alumni and we've done very well but many of the towns around us  also solicit contributions from the members of the community and hopefully those of you that are watching us out there would consider making a donation some of the towns including the town i live in have raised over a one million dollars and as you know today it's a very expensive proposition to go to college so any help that a youngster can get is really much appreciated in i remember sitting in the scholarship committee meetings and awarding these scholarships and as when i was principal and having the kids come and say gee that really made a difference it's going to cover my books it's going to do this and that but the other thing so we're doing this we're trying to show you the quality of our graduates so that you can see it's really worthwhile to contribute and we hope that these series will pique your interest in what went on in the high school  back years ago and what still is going on there and for those of you that live in this community you're fortunate to have the quality high school that you have it so it's been ranked number one number two in the whole country from from time to time graduate with a communications major i had a plan to go into film and t v editing coming out of you mass this semester then i graduated you mass then instituted its film program the karate kid the whole end of the movie garment they were daniel that's called sport karate and there are three elements to what this is sparring this forms and this weapons and i i did in the sparring aspect of it and i made quite a fifteen year comp this in korea out of doing that but all those years in all that training and competing was working i got my st job out of your mouth i dealt the dental plan imagine you know what i spent four years of my life there in the spring of ninety seven i happened to be driving through del montana and dum i was preparing for a talent day and that moment right then and there it hit me why am i wasting really i knew nothing about what it is that you folks did but what the discipline in the sort of all kinds of other things happen with that kind of training and i was so i'm very very much impressed with what you've done and as i've said to their folks that have spoken to me their center sent their children to your program and so you know it's good but now you're telling me you're going to retire y that teaching for waltham in the surrounding communities this one being one of them in watertown and weston i decided to move on from teaching as i've told you and you've seen the of these guys could fly so your son comes by this honestly we're going to come back to that i'm going to give harry a chance to do the same thing to talk a little bit about when you left belmont high school where did you go to do you know so i graduated ninety six and i went to howard university my freshman year so which was interesting in that you know as a medical student and growing up in dorchester and then in belmont as you know a largely affluent you know you know white area then going to an all black college while there was a huge contrast to jump to go to howard but i only stayed at howard for a semester because financially we couldn't afford to stay at howard at the time and so i ended up having a great semester at howard then transferred back to you mass amherst to finish my freshman year and i studied communications at howard when i got to u mass i switched up and started what close to jerry maguire i started working at footlocker which is not the same thing at all you know it was really just a job right out of college and i did that i got a management position a full lock it was really just to put some money in my pocket so i kind of figured  what i wanted to do but i'm not doing really well in retail management and again as a as a graduate just again just to put some money in my pocket to gain some experience i ended up being a general manager for  two years but it was it was i was making good money but it was really really taxing i was working probably eighty to one hundred hours a week and not really feeling fulfilled like i really wasn't what i wanted to do whereas and what you were supposed to do no in me and the writer in me and encourage that so i appreciate that foster that's that's something that you know it's just invaluable it's always been something even to facebook throughout the years like you just even says a word of encouragement you've always been you know just a great source that i wouldn't do that if i didn't think you were very talented you are a good poet and you need to continue to do this and it's hard hard work and it's lonely work you know but it's it's what's in your soul and just as you know what you do and what your dedication you had to be as good as you are athletically and to pass it on to your children i kind of feel sorry for them a little bit because i think if they're going to get the blackburn treatment jim blackburn was the track coach him he was the guy that pushed the kids pretty hard but very very good human being but so talk a little bit about the time i published a book of poetry was in two thousand and seventeen i published my st book called perspectives in progress and that book of poetry is really a collection of poetry that i've written over the course of maybe fifteen to twenty years and i you know had maybe about two hundred poems or so in my you know my catalog so to speak and so i curated a very very specific yeah yeah and the perspectives in progress the idea was that it was you know different phases and different perspectives throughout my life but then also it's still in progress like i'm still growing as a poet as a man as a as a professional as as many facets of my life so that st book was both a a reflection of where i was at the time and then also a huge milestone for me to publish my absolutely that's what i meant as harry indicated that you know academically being raised in a effluent caucasian town i think that poppy population of students and not when i see students of color african american haitian or whatever not to make up one percent of the population for four years there's a hard dynamic to adjust to and i thought and i thank my time here and think if i had those thirteen years being in this town being at that university would have been hard water so i think the time spent here definitely made easier and we all took a little bit more to broach then we did jim or mr blackburn and he just had a very calming way about him and coaching  guys if you can lead when you're tired you have no problems leading when you're fresh that would i have used that phrase throughout my entire life he is a wonderful human being a very good biology teacher as well and i've been wanting to tell him hopefully he sees and if he doesn't i don't i will make a trip over to the high school and tell him that phrase has reverberated throughout my entire life my entire teaching career and i use it with my children especially my ten y me one of the best experiences i took or the most valuable thing that took form belmont in my belmont experience was being able to enter any room and feel comfortable like right now i feel like i can walk i'm just as comfortable on a block or neighborhood block in dorchester as i am on in a boardroom and wall street and i can i can navigate either one of those rooms and feel like i don't have to necessarily change who i am i can just be myself and that that you know sometimes people call it code switching or what have you you know where you're able to you know adjust your yourself to a different audience but i think that the value of having the experience that like a lifestyle dichotomy of living in and growing up in dorchester and also growing up in belmont i literally had the you know i had the balance of both of those worlds and so i bring that with me again to every room i walk into and so you know the i never undervalue the education you know it's easy to say you i mean i know you didn't i didn't have you as a direct teacher but you were going always someone as a mentor just always someone who tried to keep me in line and give me words of encouragement we need you as the principal overseeing the entire school that was the one thing i felt like you had there was a lot of students the thought they had a personal relationship with you and i think that's probably not one hundred percent that's really difficult to do since it's makes my heart feel good to have your say so i definitely include you in that list of wow my mill name is based on so i know yeah he and i have a picture and took in my school i have spencer on my lap and he has koby on his lap that's wonderful i wish i'd bought that picture with the thing that's terrific yeah  know to echo that was another very positive thing about my belmont experience was that there were so many families of my friends who took me in or who were always willing to you know you know that because they understood the whole you know the traveling back and forth to boston you know yeah yeah yeah so now tell me a little bit about your families my wife is from cambridge she's five years my junior i met her her cousin s yeah i mean our daughter is thriving and doing well so yeah you know life is good but you know to have you two guys here after all these years makes it's really a treat for me and you know i think that we want all of you out there to realize the quality of the youngsters who graduate from belmont high school i'm sure still do and so we wanted to kind of dig deep and come up with some contributions for the