Jeffrey T. Russell

After leaving SHS, I went to college at Rensselaer in Troy, NY. After graduating from there, I worked as a computer programmer for New York State. I retired from that in 2005 when I hit the magic combination of over 30 years on the job and over 55 years old. Retirement is great! I highly recommend it. I haven't regretted it for 1 gdf second.

I still play guitar and have written a few songs. You can check out some of them on my website.

And lastly, no, I am not the Jeff Russell who used to pitch for the Red Sox, and yes, I am the Jeff Russell who ran against Hillary.

I remember one time in chemistry class, Mr. Petrillo wasn’t in, and another teacher filled in for him. I don’t remember who it was, but he told us to just use the class as a study hall. He told us we could do our homework, read a book or whatever. He didn’t care as long as we were quiet.

We all started doing whatever we had. After a few minutes, Dana Johnston started singing very softly, “Strangers in the night exchanging glances, wondering in the night what were the chances…” Remember that song? He wasn’t very loud, but the room was so quiet, the teacher overheard him and became very angry.

“Who’s doing that?” he shouted. “Who’s doing that singing? Who is it?” Dana raised his hand and admitted that he was the one singing. “Oh, so you like to sing,” said the teacher. “Well why don’t you come up in front of the class and sing for everybody so we can all hear you?”

“Okay,” said Dana, and he proceeded to walk up to the front of the class. I can still remember the look on the teacher’s face. His jaw dropped so far I thought it would hit the floor. The whole class burst into laughter.

“No, no, go back to your seat,” he said, realizing that Dana had called his bluff and was perfectly willing to sing for the whole class. “Just sit in your seat and be quiet.”

Anyway, that’s the way I remember it. Maybe Dana or someone else in the class can fill in some details. To this day, every time I hear the song “Strangers In the Night” I think of that incident and laugh.

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