Whats New:
The Events page...THE most important page on the site.
Find out what we're up to, where we'll be and when. There are so many talented alumni in area bands, find out about reunions, fundraisers and of course, those HTHS Alumni Night Out functions at a local watering hole. More
info to come.
Current News
Planning for 2012
The
committee is busy planning for 2012. If you can help, please contact
Dan Santora ('73)
Recent Events
HTHSAA Gift to HTHS
$2000 Donation
Thanks to everyone for their support of the HTHS Alumni Association for the past year. We recently presented HTHS Principal Gary O'Brien with a check for $2,000 to benefit the athletics and activities fund.
Bill Shefski '74
aka Bill Shears
At the track they're called "closers," horses that hit their stride in the home stretch. Though some of his classmates may be about to retire, Bill Shefski, HTHS '74, may just be on the verge of breaking out. He says he'll never retire: "Never be able to. Somewhere in Florida there's a hot dog stand that doesn't know I'll be working there someday."
Nineteen seventy-four was a good year to graduate high school Shefski says: "Same year as Marge and Homer Simpson." Class president for two years, after high school he moved into the food-and-beverage industry ("Mostly beverage.") while attended Temple University's film school.
Graduating there in 1983 ("On the ten-year plan, I graduated two years early.") he went on to do some independent, industrial and legal support video work, then he dove into the vast maw of the computer business, starting out part-time, completely self-taught: "I had to drop Fortran in college. Those punch cards were so sloooow."
His first position was as a technical editor/database administrator in the corporate communications department at Unisys at their HQ in Blue Bell, PA. Next came the support department at a manufacturing software company in Mt. Laurel, where he initiated and edited the department's first knowledgebase.
Along the way he wrote when he could, selling a short story to Aboriginal Science Fiction magazine: "Now Defunct. But not because of me. I'm pretty sure." and two non-fiction books about computer networking which focus on the social aspects of the virtual world: "Still listed on Amazon.com. They were obsolete the day they were published...until years later."
Along the way he absorbed some skills in Lotus Notes development, and now puts food on the table with a job as Lotus Notes developer/administrator and Blackberry administrator at a trucking company in Scranton, PA.
And, oh yes, he also married ("Above my station.") to a concert pianist and piano pedagogy expert, Cathy, from whom he learned a new word ("Pedagogy!"); but still he could not get all the way through that first adult piano instruction book: "I hit the wall at 'Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.' perhaps distracted by the mention of drink." (Cathy's blog is at: http://allpiano.wordpress.com)
All three of their children are musically talented: Luke is in college at Temple U. in the their History Department; Joe will graduate high school this year and has been accepted into the honors program at Drexel U.; Gabrielle, a sophomore in high school, will likely have her pick of schools, and is currently focused on art and illustration.
Back-burnered throughout has been his long-standing goal of writing more science fiction. In the early Aughts he came up with an idea for a film script based on a debris sweeper in space and its working-stiff operator. Kite is the title of the end-result, a novel set in Earth orbit (http://kite.infinitybound.com).
"Space debris wasn't as big a topic then as it is now. I can be a little ahead of the curve at times. It's just that the curve I'm ahead of is often on a road that heads off in a less-than-useful direction, or goes straight round the bend."
While the story was a screenplay it attracted representation and got some good reads in the business, one of which was at Lightstorm, James Cameron's production company. "They passed but I take consolation in the small fantasy that there may have been a day when Cameron sat there with the early script incarnation of Kite in one hand and Avatar in the other going: 'Kite or Avatar...Avatar or Kite. Hm. Tough choice.' Hey, I said it was a fantasy!"
When that didn't pan out Shefski novelized the story, adding a subplot about the adventures of a beautiful virtual female entity. Specializing in hard, near-future science fiction his writing does not quite fit into the mainstream of far-future, near-fantasy sci-fi that dominates the market. ("Yes, science fiction has a mainstream of its own. I write how I write.") and he uses the nom-de-cyber of Bill Shears: "Publishers are fairly hide-bound by genre and have been known to conduct online searches, and I'd hope to write some non-sci-fi at some point. Maybe later in life."
So as with the closers at the track, patience may be paying off, artistically in any case. He's has been chosen by an independent film studio to adapt E.M. Forster's dystopian novella The Machine Stops into a feature film. Forster's stories have been made into Oscar-winning films such as A Room with View and Howard's End. "It's his only science fiction tale, done as a response to the somewhat rose-colored utopias envisioned by H.G. Wells." Freise Brothers Studio has already made the story into a short which has been well-received at festivals. Check in here (http://themachinestopsfilm.wordpress.com) for news and updates on the project.
Here's another sample of Shefski/Shears' work, a complete short story posted on Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/34842119/The-Beekeeper So saving his kick for the homestretch, Shefski is headed for the winner's circle.
Nineteen seventy-four was a good year to graduate high school Shefski says: "Same year as Marge and Homer Simpson." Class president for two years, after high school he moved into the food-and-beverage industry ("Mostly beverage.") while attended Temple University's film school.
Graduating there in 1983 ("On the ten-year plan, I graduated two years early.") he went on to do some independent, industrial and legal support video work, then he dove into the vast maw of the computer business, starting out part-time, completely self-taught: "I had to drop Fortran in college. Those punch cards were so sloooow."
His first position was as a technical editor/database administrator in the corporate communications department at Unisys at their HQ in Blue Bell, PA. Next came the support department at a manufacturing software company in Mt. Laurel, where he initiated and edited the department's first knowledgebase.
Along the way he wrote when he could, selling a short story to Aboriginal Science Fiction magazine: "Now Defunct. But not because of me. I'm pretty sure." and two non-fiction books about computer networking which focus on the social aspects of the virtual world: "Still listed on Amazon.com. They were obsolete the day they were published...until years later."
Along the way he absorbed some skills in Lotus Notes development, and now puts food on the table with a job as Lotus Notes developer/administrator and Blackberry administrator at a trucking company in Scranton, PA.
And, oh yes, he also married ("Above my station.") to a concert pianist and piano pedagogy expert, Cathy, from whom he learned a new word ("Pedagogy!"); but still he could not get all the way through that first adult piano instruction book: "I hit the wall at 'Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.' perhaps distracted by the mention of drink." (Cathy's blog is at: http://allpiano.wordpress.com)
All three of their children are musically talented: Luke is in college at Temple U. in the their History Department; Joe will graduate high school this year and has been accepted into the honors program at Drexel U.; Gabrielle, a sophomore in high school, will likely have her pick of schools, and is currently focused on art and illustration.
Back-burnered throughout has been his long-standing goal of writing more science fiction. In the early Aughts he came up with an idea for a film script based on a debris sweeper in space and its working-stiff operator. Kite is the title of the end-result, a novel set in Earth orbit (http://kite.infinitybound.com).
"Space debris wasn't as big a topic then as it is now. I can be a little ahead of the curve at times. It's just that the curve I'm ahead of is often on a road that heads off in a less-than-useful direction, or goes straight round the bend."
While the story was a screenplay it attracted representation and got some good reads in the business, one of which was at Lightstorm, James Cameron's production company. "They passed but I take consolation in the small fantasy that there may have been a day when Cameron sat there with the early script incarnation of Kite in one hand and Avatar in the other going: 'Kite or Avatar...Avatar or Kite. Hm. Tough choice.' Hey, I said it was a fantasy!"
When that didn't pan out Shefski novelized the story, adding a subplot about the adventures of a beautiful virtual female entity. Specializing in hard, near-future science fiction his writing does not quite fit into the mainstream of far-future, near-fantasy sci-fi that dominates the market. ("Yes, science fiction has a mainstream of its own. I write how I write.") and he uses the nom-de-cyber of Bill Shears: "Publishers are fairly hide-bound by genre and have been known to conduct online searches, and I'd hope to write some non-sci-fi at some point. Maybe later in life."
So as with the closers at the track, patience may be paying off, artistically in any case. He's has been chosen by an independent film studio to adapt E.M. Forster's dystopian novella The Machine Stops into a feature film. Forster's stories have been made into Oscar-winning films such as A Room with View and Howard's End. "It's his only science fiction tale, done as a response to the somewhat rose-colored utopias envisioned by H.G. Wells." Freise Brothers Studio has already made the story into a short which has been well-received at festivals. Check in here (http://themachinestopsfilm.wordpress.com) for news and updates on the project.
Here's another sample of Shefski/Shears' work, a complete short story posted on Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/34842119/The-Beekeeper So saving his kick for the homestretch, Shefski is headed for the winner's circle.
