Student Exchange Experience Created Lasting Memories
If there is any doubt as to the lasting effects of a student exchange program on its participants, stay tuned. Such experiences stretch back decades in the Huntington School District and for one 1963 graduate his trip continues to be a part of his life and still offers wonderful memories all these years later.
Alumnus Richard Belle sent an August e-mail message to Huntington’s website, which he only recently discovered. The site’s Heritage Museum page especially captured his fancy, including one particular story. “The articles such as the one I’m about to comment on about Ray Hettler, are really interesting,” Mr. Belle wrote.
Mr. Hettler, who came to the district in July 1955 when he was hired as an assistant principal at Huntington High School at the young age of 29 and who later served as principal of Robert K. Toaz Junior High School from 1960 through March 31, 1963 when he left to become principal of Wayland High School in Massachusetts was the focus of a profile on the website earlier this year. He passed away in July 1990 at 64 years of age.
Today Mr. Belle works in Washington, DC as an aviation safety inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration and lives in Hamilton, Virginia with his wife Karen. He has three children. But, he’ll never forget Mr. Hettler or a unique experience he had as a Huntington junior.
“I never attended a school where Mr. Hettler was a part of the staff, but I had an opportunity to meet him in a somewhat unusual circumstance,” Mr. Belle wrote. “In the spring of 1962 I somehow got selected to participate in a ‘Domestic Exchange Program’ which was sponsored by either the Rotary or Kiwanis Club and involved sending some
Huntington High School students to either the Covington, Virginia or Pine Plains, New York schools for a week, and then hosting students from those schools at Huntington for a week.”
Mr. Belle probably didn’t know it at the time, but Mr. Hettler had done a substantial amount of traveling, having toured extensively through most of the United States, Mexico, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and the Philippines. For many years his summers were filled with excursions to far off destinations.
“I went to Covington, and Ray Hettler and his wife were the chaperones who drove us down and back in their personal car,” Mr. Belle said. “I don't have any idea how he got involved (he may have been a member of one of those organizations), but it was a great experience. Mr. Hettler was a great guy, and I'm sorry I never attended a school where he was on the staff, and sorry he has passed away.”
Mr. Belle sent along a snapshot he took of Mr. Hettler and his wife and fellow students Barbara Black, Kate Kurshan, Patricia Klaffky and Doug Bender standing in front of the Hettler’s 1960 Ford Country Squire.
“Believe it or not, I'm still in contact with the student who hosted me in Covington, Virginia 45 years ago,” Mr. Belle said. “I don't know how long that exchange program lasted, but it was a great experience.”
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