Phil Wattles

After highschool I went to NDSU and graduated in pharmacy. I was about to get drafted so I enlisted in the Air Force. My most memorable military experience was piloting one of the planes that carried the 1970 Bob Hope Christmas Show through Vietnam. After finishing my commitment, I returned to practicing pharmacy and over the next 36 years worked in just about every field of the profession including sales, community, nuclear, and even a little hospital pharmacy. I'm not working any longer but I don't think I have totally retired.

I never married. It is funny because I always thought I'd be a husband and father but one day I woke up at the age of 40 and was still single. So, I decided maybe I was meant to be a bachelor.

I spend my spare time traveling and dabbling in photography. My most exotic trip was to Antarctica last year. I started playing the organ when I was in grade school and I continued to be a church organist until just recently. One of my best experiences as a musician was playing the organ in J.S. Bach's church in Leipzig, Germany shortly after the Berlin wall came down.

Some of you may remember my mother. She is alive, well, and still living in the home I grew up in at Irving and 5th Street.

How can it be our 50th reunion. I'm only 49.

Due to an extraordinary combination of timing and good fortune, I had an audience with Pope John Paul II in 2004. It was an emotional experience for a former altar boy from St. Philip's.

On a band trip to Winnepeg, I tossed a water filled balloon out a hotel window. It landed on the head of a well dressed woman wearing a big hat. The manager came up to admonish the guilty party but my friends assured him that I would never do such a thing. So you see, I wasn't such a Goody Two-Shoes afterall.

Sandy Allen was my big high school rommance. We met the summer before freshman year and sat on the stage together at graduation. Her other friends and I have lost track of her so I hope she contacts us for the reunion.

A trip to Australia. I have been to all the other continents, so this would fulfill some kind of goal.

St. Philip's

Yes