Hi everyone,
I'm Bruce Scherzinger, the current webmaster for hixnews.com. Maybe you've been curious just how I became affiliated with this newsletter and website. Well, there's definitely a story there.
First of all, my wife's maiden name is Eileen Goldstein, HHS class of 1977. Her good friend and fellow HHS classmate, Maureen (Monahan) Schumann, worked alongside me in the early 1980s at Magnavox Govt and Industrial Electronics Corp (MAGIEC, pronounced "magic!") in Fort Wayne, IN. Maureen and I became fast friends. At the time, she was engaged to be married. She had a photo of Eileen on her cubicle wall that always caught my eye when I visited her there. I recall saying at every visit, "I really need to meet that gal!". Maureen assured me that I would since Eileen would be her maid of honor, and I would definitely be getting invited to her wedding.
That summer, I was on a motorcycle camping trip with my father in southern Ohio. I had left the care of my two cats in the hands of another great friend in Fort Wayne. Have you ever been away and had an eerie feeling that something is wrong back at home? Well, I got that feeling and figured it must be something happened to my pets. So, I packed up my camping gear and headed back to Fort Wayne.
I arrived home to discover the kitties were just fine, but also that Eileen was in town visiting Maureen, and there was a party at a mutual friend's home that evening. Well, I invited myself to the party, and that's where and when Eileen and I met. We instantly hit it off and left the ongoing game of Uno to go outside, walk around, and talk to get to know each other. There was an undeniable mutual attraction there. We must have walked for an hour or more.
Over the rest of her stay in Fort Wayne, we got together every afternoon/evening after I got off work. We had dinners, both out and at my apartment where she cooked for me (lasagna, I think...another story there). We'd be up until 3 am or later (earlier?) just talking and getting to know each other better. By day 3, I knew she was "the one," and on day 4, I suggested the idea of us marrying. Sort of a proposal, but not really presented that way. Her reaction was not surprising; she thought I was nuts! But she didn't say no...or yes, for that matter.
Upon her departure, I did one of the silliest things I think I've ever done. I met her at Maureen's apartment as she was getting in Maureen's family's car to head back to New York and presented her with a FULL DOZEN long-stemmed roses, which she apparently kept in the back seat with her for the whole trip. Certainly, this confirmed to her that I WAS nuts (about her)!
After she got back home, her boyfriend, Mike, paid her a visit and could sense something different about her. He conjectured, "Did you meet some tall, blonde guy in Fort Wayne or something?" She must have been unable to lie to him and told him "yes," at which point they apparently got into a big argument (not surprising). He left her apartment very angry with her, at which point she called me back and hung up after 2 rings, our pre-arranged signal that I should call her back. I did, and Eileen was in tears over her encounter with Mike. She came to me, a guy she'd only known for 5 days, for solace.
That was the official beginning of our courtship, a long-distance relationship that would run up $600+/month phone bills for me. We talked daily for a week or so, after which we had to back off to a couple of times a week. This was in late July 1982 and went on until September, by which time we had decided we would become engaged to be married. We worked out that I would travel to her apartment on Staten Island that October (Halloween weekend) where I would meet her father to ask for her hand in marriage. Yeah, I was raised that way. I didn't present her with a ring then since I wanted her to pick it out. But I believe we began our ring shopping during my visit, though I truly do not remember where we ended up buying it.
We had discussed which one of us would move where, and at first, I figured I would relocate to the NY/NJ area. I scheduled another trip to NY to go on job interviews after arranging a few, including one with another Magnavox office at Forth Monmouth, NJ, as well as others with Sikorsky Helicopter in Connecticut and Singer-Link in Binghamton. I got offers from all three, but all were for less than I was already making in Fort Wayne; go figure. Additionally, after spending just a short week in that area, I developed a pounding headache. I suspected it was due to the air quality, which at that time was very bad.
With no leave left to spend on job interviews, I had to return to Fort Wayne. The relocation discussion resumed, and ultimately, Eileen agreed to move to Fort Wayne to give it a shot. This meant she'd be giving up her first job out of college at the State Hospital on Staten Island, a decrepit place that should frankly have been condemned. I insisted that she also get rid of her old, beat-up Chevy Bel-Air. Little did she know I'd already bought her a brand-new car back in Fort Wayne.
So I drove back to Staten Island towing a U-Haul trailer with my mother's Buick, packed up her things, and headed back to Fort Wayne in a light snowstorm. We got to my apartment mid-evening when Eileen saw her new car, a manual-shift Dodge 024, which I promised to teach her to drive. I proceeded to unload the trailer, which I completed before hitting the hay, all of this just more proof that I was nuts.
Eileen ended up not finding any degree-related work in Indiana and had to settle for retail management, which was not the ideal situation. So, I ended up taking a job in Dallas, where the same thing happened. We had bought our first house there at a peak in home prices, immediately after which some of the largest semiconductor and insurance companies relocated their headquarters elsewhere. This caused a glut in the housing market and a quick decrease in the value of our home, which we ended up selling at a 30% loss 2½ years later when we moved to Northern Virginia.
We've lived in NoVA since then, 1986, where we raised our 3 children and owned 3 more homes. We both went through numerous job changes and ultimately thrived in this area, despite several very traumatic and difficult family catastrophies.
Years passed, family moved around, and most of Eileen's family ended up in Central Florida. During one family visit, Eileen met-up with Stefanie Cedar Shames, another HHS classmate of hers. As one would guess, a lot of catching up happened during their visit, and they remained in contact through social media.
Then, one day, Stefanie called Eileen to tell her about hixnews.com, whose primary content contributor, Bob Casale, had recently passed away and whose other "staff" were getting up in age. The site was in a temporary hiatus stage; the newsletter had stopped being emailed. Stefanie asked Eileen if she knew anyone who could possibly help revive the newsletter. I am sure my hobby-based expertise in that domain had been discussed during that Florida visit. Eileen posed the idea to me, and I thought it would be fun. After all, I am still completely nuts!
This all transpired back in early March 2023, when Stefanie had already recruited Marc Malamud (another HHS 77 classmate) to spearhead the hixnews.com rejuvenation. Marc's expertise was in graphics art, whereas mine was/is in building functional websites. So, we became the new hixnews.com website team.
I proposed several changes to cut the cost of maintaining the site, which Marc and I implemented immediately. I also proposed moving the site onto a Content Management System (CMS) platform, specifically "Joomla!", and doing a quick-and-dirty migration of the old Microsoft FrontPage-produced HTML pages/files to the new platform. That effort took me less than one week, and the site was up and running under a new webhosting subscription.
Then, we had to re-create the newsletter mailing list. That was tricky since all we were able to muster from the old site was a spreadsheet of email addresses. The old mailing list service was no longer accessible, and I had not yet acquainted myself with how Bob Casale had been doing things. Fortunately, there was a little money raised from a GoFundMe, and we could purchase a license for mailing list software (Mailster) that plugs into the Joomla! platform. We added all the email addresses we had to the new mailing list and sent out the initial notice announcing the new website. A lot of those emails bounced, which significantly reduced our ability to get the word out. Over time, people caught on and began registering for website accounts, the benefit of which was fresh contact information.
The new website is hosted on a much more capable and maintainable platform. It has been a learning experience for the rest of the website team, but they have risen to the challenge admirably. We've also been able to regain/retain contributions from some of the writers from the old hixnews.com days. The newsletters have a bit different "flavor" than those of Bob Casale's era, but that's due to the evolution of the Internet and privacy issues. The following changes are most notable in this regard:
- No longer posting birthdays and anniversaries (though the ones posted on the old site are still online).
- Email exchanges between newsletter subscribers are no longer posted.
- You can now start and hold discussions using the commenting system built into the site.
- No longer posting "people looking for people."
- The site implements "email cloaking," which means Internet robots cannot scan the site content and get to it.
- Our mailing lists are subscription-only, which prevents spamming to the degree possible with open site registration.
On behalf of the entire website team, I hope you have been enjoying seeing new life breathed into hixnews.com. If you have any recommendations, please let us know by emailing
Yours truly,
Bruce Scherzinger
