09/04/2026
(Administrator Joe Lopchinsky '72) On a personal note. I wasn't the best student at St James. I had other plans... running down the street at 3:15 and not looking back. It took senior year for things to sink in, and for me to realize I wasn't cut out to be a laborer. I saw my friends going off to college, trade schools, and I didn't have the SATs or the money for a 4-year college, so I had to take stock in what was available...Art school was my choice. A commercial art school in Philly. Cheap enough at the time and no SATs needed. I packed up my small collection of art projects from Mr. Brennan's art classes and got an interview with Mr Hussian, the then director of the Art School. Let's just say I was floating when he said I had the talent to be accepted in the program. I found my people, cool creatives, talented artists, and the last of the 60's hippies all in one place. This all happened before computers so commercial art was a hands-on process. Lots of tools, processes, and creative thinking to get results. Learning computers and the software to do the same process was something I had to learn on the fly while working full-time and seeking a place in the Philadelphia sports scene as a graphic designer.
After 40-plus years of being the best creative/artist I could be, I look back and thank "Beans" for his W.C. Fields comment: "You boy, have talent, stop wasting it, being a fool."
P.S. Mr Mooney, please excuse my poor punctuation. Spellcheck is no replacement for studying.
