Ric Davis

I don't remember another much of my first two years. I was too busy trying to understand what the heck I was doing in California after growing up in Pocatello, Idaho.

Talk about culture shock! I spent the first two years at CVHS bumping into things, keeping my mouth shut and head down. I was in a completely foreign world and it took a long time to figure out that I was going to survive long enough to graduate and get on with my real life.

I liked Mr. Schmidt, enjoyed forging the signiture of the Geometry teacher, and there was Mr. Belluomni, the Science teacher. The Boys Dean, I only met once, he was smooth cool. (I was in for forging hall passes.) That, and a gym teacher who put up with just about anything anyone put out. Mr. Marsh?

It was extremely hard to adjust to Clayton Valley High. I had moved four times, been to four schools in two cities, in two states in two years, before I was dumped on the doorstep of CVHS. Just two years before I was living at the edge of town, just 70 miles from Grand Teton National Park. A few miles from the Snake river and a little less from the teepees of the Fort Hall Indian reservation inhabitants. Real American Indians, the ones that were here first, living in squalor in my back yard. Talk about the Peace Corps!

[Ric went to dental school.]

The first thing I did when I was allowed by UCSF, was to volunteer to do free dental treatment on American Indians and Mexican farm workers. The children first and then the adults. Then I went to Africa and did the same on the children of Tunisians. We didn't decimate them, we just sent their kids Coca Cola, same thing we did to the Indians.