Classmates

SPRINGFIELD, Ore. -- A second teen-ager died yesterday as grieving residents here struggled to understand why no one who saw the warning signs acted to stop a 15-year-old who stands accused of killing his parents and then raking his high school cafeteria with gunfire Thursday morning.Kipland Phillip Kinkel, handcuffed and flanked by sheriff's deputies, was arraigned as an adult on four counts of aggravated murder in connection with the deaths of two classmates, his mother and his father. He showed no emotion.

Eight years ago, a documentary entitled "Lean On Me" depicted how a tough-minded principal named Joe Clark produced positive results in a struggling school in New Jersey.If Hollywood decides to do a sequel, it could choose Annapolis as its site and Navy senior basketball co-captain Hassan Booker as its protagonist. For everyone -- family, friends, teammates and classmates -- seems to lean on the unusually mature and inspirational Booker for support."I've been coaching for 24 years," said Navy's Don DeVoe, whose team opens its season tonight at Wake Forest, "and I have to put Hassan in a class by himself.

For the past two days, men in their 70s hugged, exchanged addresses, shared old black-and-white photos, snapped new pictures and swapped stories about their days as midshipmen at the Naval Academy.About 370 members of the Class of 1947 returned to Annapolis for their 50th anniversary reunion, distressed over the scandals that have rocked their alma mater, but ready to act on the words of their famous classmate, former President Jimmy Carter, who urged them to "improve the academy's image."

We are obsessed with reunions in this country. We have college reunions, high school reunions, even elementary school reunions, and yet there is no testimonial to one's seminal year in the education system: the nursery school reunion.Attending your, say, 30-year nursery school reunion would be great because it would basically be pressure-free.Since you and your classmates were so young back then, absolutely no one at the reunion would look familiar to anyone else.So you wouldn't have to worry about some guy in a loud plaid sports coat suddenly laying a meaty hand on your shoulder and shouting: "Hey, remember me?

IN THE fall of 1989, Ian Drummond began first grade.After a year in special-education kindergarten, this nonspeaking autistic boy was deemed ready to take another step into the world.But before Ian started at Gateway Elementary in Woodland Park, Colo., his mother came to school to describe her son to his future classmates.She showed them a videotape -- images of a blond boy, who looked normal, swinging and sliding on their playground.His mother explained that Ian had a sister named Sarah and a dog, that he liked stories about animals and that he loved to watch movies.

BEIJING -- When Baltimore student Brandon Fleming returns this month from a semester of study abroad, he'll carry a new view of China."I didn't really know what to expect," said Brandon, 17, a senior at Polytechnic Institute. "A lot of peasants sure, but not streets full of bikes and cars. It doesn't feel like a socialist country with everything under government control. And it's far more colorful than books suggest."He and 17 American classmates recently ended a remarkable semester, arranged by School Year Abroad, a nonprofit organization that offered a trial immersion in the language and culture of the world's most populous country.

Eleven-year-old Joshua Torres died of complications from muscular dystrophy in October before the leaves fell from the trees, but his Havre de Grace classmates haven't forgotten their friend in a wheelchair.Over the winter, the Roye-Williams Elementary fifth-graders turned their grief into a classroom project, gathering dimes and quarters and seeking larger donations from parents and local businesses to raise $400 to buy a memorial for Joshua -- a desk designed for the disabled."What started out as a dream for Room 308 has become a reality," the students' teacher, Renee Villareal, said at an emotional ceremony yesterday to dedicate the desk and to remember Joshua.

It was a year of assassination and riot, a year that the Vietnamese Communists took advantage of the lunar New Year holiday to launch what became known as the Tet offensive.The scores of men clustered Saturday under a long white tent at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium were young officers 25 years ago, leaving the cloistered world of the U.S. Naval Academy for the chaos of events outside."In a lot of ways we were removed from the rest of the world," said Richard D'Anna of Baltimore, a member of the academy's Class of 1968, who recalls little discussion about the war that was raging in Southeast Asia.

On a recent fall weekend, about 80 fledgling Maryland Republican pols gathered at the Tidewater Inn in Easton for three days of intensive campaign training. It was the political equivalent of war gaming. The assignment: to put together a winning campaign for a fictional mayoral candidate. Participants schemed and argued into the night as they hammered out plans for fund raising, budgeting, issue selection and the like.The weekend boot camp was run by the state GOP, which has high hopes for big wins all across the board in 1994.

Los Angeles.--- Driving home from my daughter's Christmas pageant at school, which of course could not mention what Christmas is, I asked her when school would re-open after the new year.''February 14,'' she said. I laughed. After all, she's only in the second grade.''Fiona,'' I said, ''school starts again the first week in January. You don't get two months off in the middle of the year.''''Valentine's Day,'' she said. ''February 14.'' She was right.A system called ''90-30'' is now in effect in all Los Angeles public schools.

Nick Sabo, a South River High School senior, recently received his yearbook order forms, including ballots to vote for senior superlatives, such as most popular or class clown. He hardly recognized any of the nominees' names. "He didn't know anybody, and it broke my heart," said his mother, Mary Ann Sabo, who lives in Edgewater. "I guess students are afraid." Sabo was born with cerebral palsy, a brain injury that put him in a wheelchair, slurs his speech, and made him an outcast among his peers.

They were pioneers, among the first students to be racially integrated as kindergartners in Baltimore's public schools. Fifty years later, what the former students of Franklin D. Roosevelt Elementary (Public School No. 18) remembered was the smell -- and taste -- of paste, old Ms. Buisick, the coatroom they'd hide in before classes, the old drive-in theater across the street. And the Mussenden twins. No one had forgotten Christine and Caryl Mussenden, the vivacious duo who, it seemed, were friends with everyone.

BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Tonight, Caroline Merrey plans to put on her academic gown - gingerly, because she is still sore - place the black cap on her blond hair and join her classmates for the evening commencement ceremony in Lane Stadium at Virginia Tech. As she graduates, she will think about her loved ones sitting in the audience - her parents who drove down from their Parkville home, her boyfriend who flew in from Chicago. But, she says, she will also think about those not in the stands, the professors and classmates who died on a Monday morning not quite four weeks ago. On that day, a student killed two people in a dorm, then burst into the building where Merrey was attending class and shot and killed 30 others before taking his own life.

Truth sometimes hurts. But for children closing in on adolescence, a firm grasp on the truth about one's standing with classmates and peers can be healthy, even when it does hurt a bit. A new study has found that children who can accurately assess how much - or little - their peers like them are less likely to develop symptoms of depression, including sadness and difficulties concentrating or sleeping. By comparison, children with unrealistically rosy or unfoundedly gloomy views of their standing appear more likely to be headed toward depression.

To say that Brandon Jones was surprised when he received the Principal's Award at Harford Technical High School's senior awards banquet Wednesday is a gross understatement. In fact, he was overwhelmed. And when his classmates gave him a standing ovation upon hearing his named announced as recipient of the award, he was even more moved. "What a way to leave high school," the 18-year-old Havre de Grace resident said. "I won't ever forget how awesome I felt seeing my classmates clapping and cheering for me."

Twenty-one years ago, I was a City College Knight. City College, or the Castle on the Hill as it is still known, was a high school in which Latin was everyone's second language and Thanksgiving was more about the annual City-Poly football game than eating turkey and cranberry sauce. For some of my classmates, these years in high school included such happy milestones as the prom, the big homecoming games and graduation. For me, on the other hand, high school was a series of unrequited loves, being a wallflower at school dances, being picked on by a bully and countless hours doing of all things ... studying!

Every two months, they come from Baltimore-area neighborhoods, the Eastern Shore and Virginia to sustain two treasures - their youth and enduring friendship. On this steamy summer day, the rugged platoon shows up once more, some using canes, one with a hearing aid but everybody with an attitude that seems to shout, "Ain't life grand!" The surviving members of Kenwood High School's Class of 1941, bonded by hardships from the Great Depression and World War II, gather at Sanders' Corner Restaurant in the Loch Raven watershed.

Dumbarton Middle School in Rodgers Forge has suspended indefinitely a sixth-grade pupil who brought a toy gun to school and told classmates it was real, school officials said yesterday. Assistant Principal Michael Etzel said he removed the boy from his first-period class on Tuesday, after a classmate reported the remarks. "At no time was there a threat to any kids in the school," Etzel said yesterday. The boy, whose name was not released by school officials for confidentiality reasons, will be suspended until he receives a hearing from the school board.

POOR PARRIS N. Glendening. The governor of Maryland begins to take his leave of office by taking leave of his senses. He attempts to strike a bold pose as belated conqueror of William Donald Schaefer and instead merely solidifies his own previous image. For Glendening, it is the image of the school nerd who thought he'd find popularity by running for class president, and instead found the older guys still mocking him. They mocked his spending habits, and his dating habits, too, and did it in public so that it hurt.

GENE SOMERS remembers being routed from his bunk at 2 in the morning and forced to stand at attention until someone confessed to instigating a water fight. It was his Plebe Summer at the Naval Academy, 1937. Water fights were among the shenanigans common at that time. Somers, an Annapolis resident, also recalls the struggle some of his classmates had with drill. "It was amazing how difficult it was for some," he said. "Left foot, right foot, following the beat of the drum. Some couldn't do it. Remarkable when you think about it."