President's Report - Gordon State College

11
President’s Report
from the Admiral Farragut Academy in St. Petersburg,
but it was the material from Gordon that caught his
eye. “I said, ‘Boy, that’s a nice place, I’d like to go there
for school.’”
So, as Wines put it, they “signed my butt up.”
Gordon sent his mother a list of things he would
need, like a big trunk, which she filled with the required
items for his first year at school.
Labor Day was when he had to sign in, so he, his
mother and father drove up and spent the night before in
the Barnesville Motor Court. The newness and strangeness
of his surroundings made Wines extra-aware, and
things stuck in his mind. For example, when he remembers
the motor court, he remembers Judy King, “the
first girl in Barnesville I ever talked to.”
He also remembers the drive to Gordon the next
day and seeing South Barracks for the first time and saying,
“I don’t think I want to go there,” and his father
replying, “Yes, you do.” For some reason, seeing the
barracks’ windows open and its curtains billowing out
gave Wines a sense of foreboding, but his father did not
relent. The die had been cast, and on Labor Day, Bobby
Wines was enrolled at Gordon Military College.
“Capt. J.A. Medcalf signed me in, and then we
Sgt. Bobby Wines (standing) explains the operation of a bazooka during a U.S.
Army inspection.
went to see Col. Harris. Everyone had to see Col. Harris,” Wines said. “I remember that
the hallway entrance to his office had a screen door,” which was unusual, but in those days,
there was no air conditioning.
Then Wines was passed on to an upper classman, Bud Tillery, who took him to
his room where his first roommate, Ray Valdivieso was already situated. After Tillery
showed Wines how to fold his clothes and put them in his locker according to regulation,
the two new roommates got acquainted.
Wines was quickly impressed with Valdivieso as
“very much more mature” than he was himself. He
was just a ninth-grader like Wines, but Valdivieso He also remembers the drive to Gordon the next day and
wasn’t brought to Gordon in a car driven by his father.
seeing South Barracks for the first time and saying,
No, he traveled alone by bus, all the way from New
York City.
“I don’t think I want to go there,” and his father replying,
To this day, Wines describes Valdivieso as more
“Yes, you do.”
sophisticated than even the above-average cadet. He
dressed impeccably and already had a sense of “tipping
the maitre-d,” except it was at the Frosty Palace,
So, as Wines put it, they “signed my butt up.”
not Sardi’s in New York City. Wines remembers how
whenever he and Valdivieso walked into the Frosty Palace, Valdivieso would just make
a gesture to the guy at the counter and his order would be on the way, while Wines had
yet to place an order.
The two of them still get together, just like Wines gets together with another former
roommate, Harry Carson, who just so happens to share a birth date including the same year.
Wines remembers the two of them going to Burnette’s grocery store to buy Cheez
Whiz to make sandwiches they toasted between two irons, selling them for 50 cents on