Thursday, December 14, 2006

Lou Nagy from CIRCUS DAYS

Photo by Jill Freedman


On "Senior Cut Day" all the seniors cut out of school and head up to "Inspiration Point" to have a huge kegger and sign the class rock. Lou Nagy, at that point 78 years old and misunderstanding the use of the word "senior", assumed that it was an AARP meeting, wandered away from the show after the matinee and went up there with "SENIORS RULE" scrawled in soap across the back windshield of one of the show trucks.

The kids were kind of put off by a 78 year old man in stretch shorts and clown makeup at first but as soon as he started juggling he was an immediate hit. They nicknamed him "Geezer" and he was so popular he was elected king of the senior prom (which was the coolest EVAR) and was voted both "Class Clown" and "Most Likely to Lose His Medic-Alert Bracelet".

He started going steady with Mary Jo Kaputnick, a pretty classmate and waitress at the local Waffle Hut. Their budding romance was put on hold when Lou got his acceptance letter to State where he and his pals pledged TKE, got in and had several wild adventures and run-ins with the uptight old dean who could often be heard screaming "NAGY!" clear across the commons.

He twice switched majors but eventually graduated with a BA in Communication, married his high school sweetheart Mary Jo, had two kids and moved to Seattle to start a small mom & pop coffeeshop.

The one you know today as Starbucks.

And the two kids? His son is wrestling legend Capt. Lou Albano. His daughter, political columnist Ann Coulter.

And that's...the rest of the story. I'm Paul Harvey.

Click the title of any of these CIRCUS DAYS posts to be linked to the amazon.com listing for more of Jill Freedman's great photos of the Beatty-Cole show in the early 70s.

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