Conrad Murphy's graduation

Valley Center High School celebrated its graduating seniors on Tuesday night, June 14, and one senior couldn't be there in person.
But he sure was there in spirit.
Conrad Murphy survived a horrific car crash on April 23 while driving to baseball practice. His life-threatening injuries included a broken pelvis, two fractured vertebrae and massive head trauma. But just short of eight weeks later, Conrad is awake, speaking, and working through rehabilitation every day.
Because he's still in the hospital, Conrad couldn't make it to his high school graduation ceremony. His older brother, Clark, received his diploma on his behalf to a standing ovation from the Valley Center crowd.
And the following day, VCHS administrators and faculty brought graduation to Conrad with a small diploma presentation ceremony at the hospital.
Here are some videos from the ceremony:
(To see more photos from this ceremony on the Valley Roadrunner's Facebook page, click here.)

Clark Murphy accepts Conrad's diploma at VCHS graduation:


Conrad answers some news reporters' questions before his diploma presentation:


Conrad shows off his diploma:


Conrad plays a little tune on the piano:


Conrad gets wheeled down the hall to say hi to the VCHS administrators and teachers:


Conrad receives his diploma from VCHS Principal Ron McCowan and VCPUSD Superintendent Dr. Lou Obermeyer:


Conrad was given a baseball bat signed by the class of 2011:


Conrad spends a few minutes talking with the teachers and students who came to visit him:


VCPUSD Superintendent Dr. Lou Obermeyer gets interviewed by the San Diego TV stations:


Clark Murphy gets interviewed by the TV reporters:

photos and videos by Dan Kidder

After 25 years with the VCPUSD, Gary Pay heads off into retirement

Gary Pay plays the mandolin with The Ash Street Ramblers at Bates Nut Farm in 2009.

BY: DAN KIDDER

After 25 years anywhere, you’re going to end up with some stories to tell.
But it’s not every day that you’d get to talking about your week and end up explaining how you and a coworker chased a snake through a parking lot with a trash can.
Such is, or rather has been, the life of Gary Pay for the past quarter century as the head of maintenance and operations for the Valley Center/Pauma Unified School District (VCPUSD). But this summer, Pay will ride off into the sunset of retirement.
“This is the best school district in California,” he says. “I couldn’t imagine spending twenty-five years working anywhere but here.”
The result of simply answering a “help wanted” ad in a newsletter, Pay drove down from Lone Pine to Valley Center for his interview, and knew he’d end up staying.
“When I drove into the area and saw the schools, it really seemed like this was my kind of place,” he says.
Since then, Pay says he has come to appreciate the community’s commitment to the school district, especially shown in the consistency of the school board.
“This community is fortunate to have had such a stable school board all these years,” he says. “I’ve worked with Henry Van Wyk my whole career here, Barb Rohrer has been here fifteen years, and all of the four superintendents I’ve worked under have been such a stable influence. It’s been very consistent, which is nice.”
Pay has in turn become a valued contributor to our community, from serving as the president of the Valley Center Lions Club to getting “talked into” filling the same post in the Valley Center Girls Softball League (VCGSL).
“Pat Tousley has a way of talking you into helping out, one way or another,” he says with a laugh about one of our town’s staunchest supporters of girls softball. “But that’s what I love about our community—those connections. It’s a great community for that.”
Those connections become especially important in times of crisis, as our town has experienced time and time again.
“I’ve worked with Tony Lopresti from the water district for a long time, and we’ve worked together through five disasters here,” Pay says. “In the fires of 2007, I stayed here the whole time, transporting food to the high school, getting lights set up, and taking care of the logistics that need to be taken care of when you have a thousand people staying in your facility for a week. In times like that, you see the same people you see every day, people in the community, working together to help each other get back on their feet.”
When the school year ends and he finally begins his retirement, Pay admits that he won’t miss some things.
“It’ll be nice not to get those phone calls at two or three in the morning,” he says with a smile. “I’ve been on call, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the past twenty-five years. That’s OK, it’s what I signed up for. But when you work toward a goal like this, it seems so far away, but when you get close, it doesn’t sink in right away that you’re almost there.”
As for his plans in retirement, Pay says that one of his favorite hobbies will get to fill a more central role in his life.
“I’m going to get more exercise, and I’m going to play more music,” he says, referring to his spot in the local bluegrass band, The Ash Street Ramblers. “We’ve got a fiddle player who is a teacher from the Escondido School District, an artist from LA and a bass player who works for NASA working on the next Mars rover—it’s quite a mix of people.”
Pay, who plays the mandolin, first met the group’s guitar player, Ken Simon, who retired from the Valley Center Municipal Water District, when they used to get together in Simon’s office to practice. From those humble beginnings came a band that played in the Millpond Music Festival, the Julian Bluegrass Festival, the Tea Party at Grape Day Park, the Bluegrass On The Greengrass at Skyline Ranch, and a number of shows at Bates Nut Farm, where they will be playing again in October and November. Be sure to check out The Ash Street Ramblers on their Web site at www.ashstreetramblers.net for more information.
But no matter where retired life takes him, Pay says that the memories of his time with the school district will pile as thick as the green spiral notebooks filled with his work projects that he still has covering his desk.
And when the new head of maintenance and operations takes over next year, he or she will be able to look up the proper way to catch a gopher snake in a parking lot with a trash can.

Photos: 2010 Turkey Trot Races

Check out the photos from the 2010 Turkey Trot races at Lilac School on Friday on our Facebook page:

Turkey Trot runners & winners

Turkey Trot photos

Photos by Cathy Schwickert

VC Girls Varsity Volleyball Scrimmage

The Lady Jaguars got the season underway with a scrimmage at Escondido High School on Thursday. The team looked solid, and coach Nathan Rendon was able to get everybody on the team involved, which is always helpful down the road. There wasn't any official score being kept, but Valley Center rolled over Orange Glen (even with the backups in), cruised against Ramona, and played tough in a back-and-forth match with Mission Hills.

Here are a couple of video clips of Stephanie Becvar serving, first against Ramona and later against Mission Hills.

I Love You, Awkward Silences

Laughing out loud is not something I do with tremendous regularity.

Not that I'm not a happy person or anything, it's just that it takes something genuinely, unexpectedly, refreshingly funny to get me to break my otherwise Victorian stoicism and let loose with an audible chuckle or two. If it's predictable, or run-of-the-mill, or in the category of "I'm pretty sure they hired a chimp to write that," then I probably won't find it humorous in the least. But keep trying, Comedy Central...I'm sure you'll find a new idea for a show that's worth watching some day. Thank goodness for Stephen Colbert and Futurama reruns in the meantime.

But after smirking my way through a series of underwhelming comedies in recent memory, I was refreshed and delighted by I Love You, Beth Cooper. For a movie that centers around a high school graduation, this movie surprised me. Usually, you expect to see a lot of toilet humor (translation: easier than clever humor, and therefore not nearly as funny) and just as much sexuality of a gratuitous nature throughout the film.

Not so with this movie. Well, not entirely -- there is a subplot about the best friend and his assumed homosexuality, and there is a shower scene -- but in comparison to most teen comedies, these are handled relatively well on the shadiness meter and really don't distract from the overall feel of the movie.

And the overall feel is the key -- somehow, director Chris Columbus (I love that his company is 1492 Pictures -- he pretty much had that one mapped out for him at birth) finds a way to give the characters a depth that is usually lacking in these kinds of movies. Amidst the hilarity and the absurdity of what's happening to these people, there exists a reality that isn't just mushy or contrived. You find yourself laughing with the characters, not at them.

At least I did. Movies like this are always personally fun for me because...well, without going into too many details, I wasn't the most popular in high school. I'm sure there are many of us out there in the world, living normal adult lives now, but looking back at our prep days and just shaking our heads.

What's great about this movie isn't that the dorky kid gets the hot cheerleader (please, like you didn't know what was going to happen), or that the hot cheerleader finds some deeper truth to life besides being popular (again...nothing spoiled there).

The great thing is that you know what it's like to be there -- to be hopelessly awkward when the girl of your dreams finally talks to you, or to be swept up in the craziness of the moment and end up driving your ex-boyfriend's Hummer into the living room of the skank he was cheating on you with, or to be forced to pretend like you're calm and collected while you're so freaked out that you're wondering if it's possible to throw up your spleen.

I Love You, Beth Cooper is full of those awkward pauses, those moments between the moments, those silent hiccups in the flow of normalcy that can take your breath away. And it sticks with you on your way out of the theater because it's so unswervingly authentic. In a word, I think I might call this movie precious -- partly in a sarcastic way that refers to the inherent cuteness of these little high school kids having all this drama and craziness, but also partly in a way that means that it's something personal, something unique that each of us experiences by way of recalling our own youthful exploits.

And just to clarify, I'm not saying that this movie is going to rewrite Shakespeare, or that it's going to win major awards. But for what it is, it's really well done and genuinely funny to boot.

Some personal notes that you may or may not find helpful:

-- The main character (Dennis) totally reminded me of my brother Nate. He looks a little (just a little) like him, and I think the striped rugby shirt added to the overall picture, but even his mannerisms were enough like my bro that it was that much funnier for me.

-- Hayden Panettiere does a great job, and not just because she's absolutely adorable. She plays Beth Cooper in a way that is alternately confident and self-conscious, which totally rings true of what I see in high school kids, especially the popular ones. Given that she's only a few years removed from high school herself probably helped. But her performance just draws you to the character and adds more and more layers of authenticity to the film. Great work.

-- The blond friend of Beth's, Treece I guess her name is (had to IMDB that one), totally reminded me of this girl I just met recently. My friend Kaitlynn totally agreed. We're not exactly sure we should tell this girl though. I'll let you know how that turns out.

-- Another great performance by Dennis Cooverman's father, played by Alan Ruck (aka Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, among many other films) as well. He added another layer of humor and novelty that most actors in that role would not have acheived. And he's just a fun actor to see anyway. We were a little disappointed that he didn't have a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California in his garage.

-- I will go see this movie again. If you want to come with me, let me know. It will be fun.

So, long story short, go see I Love You, Beth Cooper. It's funny, it's clever, it's deep but not too deep, and if your heart isn't at least a little warmed by the end, then you just shouldn't watch movies at all.