Maine East classmates recall 'Harry' Ford before 'Star Wars' fame
Before the days of YouTube, DVDs or even VHS, a shy teenage boy who went by the name of Harry Ford rolled a film projector cart up and down the hallways of Maine Township East High School in Park Ridge.
As a member of the audio visual club, it was Harry's job to bring the cart from class to class, then thread the film through the reels, whenever a teacher wanted to show a movie.
It was some two decades later when the Class of 1960 graduate - by then a struggling-actor-turned-carpenter in Hollywood - got his big break in front of the camera.
Going by his birth name, Harrison, Ford was cast by director George Lucas in the 1977 blockbuster "Star Wars," which led to staring roles in other cinematic classics, such as the Indiana Jones films, "The Fugitive" and "Air Force One."
Thursday marks Ford's return to the "Star Wars" franchise, reprising his role as Han Solo in the premiere of "The Force Awakens."
Ford's rise to fame came as a surprise to those who knew him those many years ago in high school as a quiet, average student, though some say they could see glimpses of creativity and talent in the future star.
"Harry was quick-witted in his remarks, and at times could be quite funny, and seemed to have a clever mind," said Paul Conti, a close friend from the Class of 1960.
But, Conti said, Ford always maintained a quiet side.
"Harry liked hanging out and being a part of activities, but he seemed many times to have a lot of inward thoughts or feelings he was not going to reveal to a lot of people," said Conti, who now lives in Lake Barrington. "I think he's kept that in his life."
Ford hung around with a group of about five guys - mostly jocks, though Ford wouldn't have labeled himself in that category.
Conti recalls Ford and his other friends regularly coming over to his family's Park Ridge home, where Conti's Italian mother always had a homemade pizza baking in the oven or something else on the stove. The family often played instruments and sang.
But Ford wasn't much of a performer himself. He wasn't in the drama club and didn't appear in any school plays.
The only onstage high school performance classmate Pete Benda can recall is a skit as part of a school variety show.
"They did a parody to a song that was popular at that time. It was four or five guys dressed in Hawaiian or Caribbean costumes. I think they were lip syncing," said Benda, who organized a 55th class reunion last September.
During the reunion weekend, Benda led a bike tour through Park Ridge, stopping to pose in front of Ford's boyhood home at 109 N. Washington Ave. It's two blocks from the home of another famous former Park Ridge resident: Hillary Rodham Clinton, who graduated with the first class at Maine South in 1965.
Ford's role in the variety show would have been one of his earliest forays into the dramatic arts before graduating from Maine East and enrolling at Ripon College in Wisconsin in 1960. He acted in a few plays at Ripon but later dropped out, admitting in a 2000 interview on "Inside the Actors Studio" that he was a "very poor student."
After a few summer stock performances near Lake Geneva, Ford and his new wife, Mary Marquardt, left for Hollywood in the mid-1960s.
While he didn't take to the stage in high school, legend has it that Ford was the first student voice on the school's new 16-watt radio station, WMTH-FM.
"It's one of the many things I wouldn't have been able to remember but for the fact I sat down and read a book about me," Ford said in the 2000 interview.
In its first year, the station broadcast basketball games, "useful study hints" and "music to study by," according to the school's 1960 Lens yearbook, where Ford is pictured with the inaugural group of station staff members.
One of the staff members, Marge Jezierski Love, was the radio station secretary and remembers being interviewed by Ford for an on-air segment.
Love and her twin sister, Christina, were featured because they were English immigrants and Ford wanted to know how they felt about America.
"I knew he was shy then," said Love, who now lives in Wheeling. "He must have had the voice because I remember the interview. He sounded very nice. You couldn't be that shy if you were going to do something like that."
Ford was also a Boy Scout and spent the summer of 1957 as a counselor at Camp Napowan in Wild Rose, Wisconsin, where many Scouts from the Northwest suburbs still go today. A wooden paddle still hangs in the rafters of the dining hall listing the names of that summer's camp staff, including "Harry Ford," an assistant nature counselor.
Christopher Carter, the camp's most recent director, said the story of Ford's time at Napowan is still a part of campfire tales.
Ford, who was 15 at the time, taught reptile merit badge.
Benda, Ford's classmate who now lives in North Carolina, says Ford hasn't attended any high school reunions and has indicated he's not particularly interested in coming. And there aren't any visible reminders or honorary plaques of Ford in the hallways of Maine East.
"His persona is such that he shuns the limelight," Benda said.
Speaking to The Associated Press in 2000, Ford described himself as "a kid who never found a niche."
"I wasn't an athlete. I wasn't a student leader. I wasn't anything," he said. "I was a late bloomer, I think."