Parisian Phoenix Publishing

High School.

Adolescence.

Our formative years.

Regardless of your high school experience— good, bad, indifferent; athletic or academic; rural or urban; etc.— these teenaged years play a huge role in making us who were are today.

My journalism career traces its roots to my seventh, eighth and ninth grade years when I worked on the middle school newspaper. The advisor for the newspaper club later started a sports weekly in our rural area and when he expanded it into a more traditional “good news” weekly, he hired me, as a high school student, to write a feature every week.

Today, Sunday, June 1: Julian Costa’s latest local history book and educator biography Coach of the Building officially releases. This full-color volume chronicles the legacy of educator Richard Carty who was an instrumental part of the construction and opening of East Stroudsburg North High School. That school celebrates its 25th Anniversary this summer. The book highlights Carty’s career and also records not only the steps it took to prepare the new school, but also the district’s experience of September 11, 2001.

For those of you not from the region, East Stroudsburg North High School serves the Monroe and Pike county area of the Pocono Mountains. East Stroudsburg Area School District, with the opening of East Stroudsburg North in Dingman’s Ferry, Pa., has two high schools. As the name suggests, these schools serve the area east of Stroudsburg.

The relationship of our high school experience to the people we become as adults has me thinking more about our teenaged selves.