Hey, everybody. I'm Doug, and that's Connor and
this is a
blockbuster
edition of the Bethel school district presents podcast,
and Connor, I mean that quite literally. Today,
talking about 50 years of summer,
blockbuster movies, which cinematic achievement sold the most
popcorn,
and which ones we haven't seen. You know
I'm gonna love that because I am a
bit of a s file, but in addition
to that, we're also gonna be saying goodbye
to a bethel
institution. I'm Superintendent Tom Seagull retiring after for
23 years, the helm of the battleship Bethel.
During his tenure, the district has seen incredible
change in him, improvement, but before he rides
off into the sunset, we're gonna sit down
with him and talk movies, here a few
fun facts from the past, including which historical
person he'd invite to dinner I love that
you're mixing metaphors is riding off from the
sunset, the battleship Bethel fantastic stuff. We're also
gonna hear from our newly mint interim superintendent,
doctor Brian Lan. But before we get to
all that, Connor, let's play Cisco and Knee
bird and go to the movies.
Alright. Alright. Alright. And this week, we have
the 50 best summer blockbuster list. As picked
by the good folks at mental floss and
Doug, some are blockbuster haven't always been such
a big deal. I'm gonna ask you what
movie kicked off the idea of a summer
popcorn movie? Well, that is a great question,
and I do think mister... Spielberg, had a
lot to do with this. So I'll put
my money on a certain summer beach flick
set in Am island, of course, I'm talking
about jaws and they probably needed a bigger
boat to rake in all that money they
made. Well, Doug, that's a
fantastic guess. Jaws was the summer movie in
19 75. It was the first movie to
exceed 100000000
dollars at the box office. And that's 19
75 money. Imagine what that would be today,
probably like 8000000000
dollars.
It did end up with a final domestic
gross 260000000
dollars show impressive stuff, but according to mental
floss, it wasn't the first summer blockbuster. They
have that 1 starting year before. The summer
of 19 74 with a little flick starring
arm man, Burt Reynolds called the longest
yard. Burt Reynolds man, I saw the Adam
Sandler version of that movie. Well, the Burt
Reynolds movie wasn't exactly a piece of high
art, but the Adam Sandler version is absolute
trash. Wow, that's subtle. Even worse than 2
thumbs down. Well, obviously, we don't have time
to get through all 50 of the films
on this list, So we're just gonna go
a decade by decades, so 10 years later,
it was 19
84.
And fantastic van Hale Album, by the way.
And the summer of Ghost.
Human sacrifices,
dogs and cats living together, a massive area.
Nice job, doctor Van. Anyway, let's jump to
19
94. And this is an easy 1 because
that's either gonna be force, gum or quentin.
Pulp.
I would have said the exact same thing.
Those are the ones that were buying out
for the Oscar, but Oscar doesn't always mean
money.
We're talking summer blockbuster, and the movie to
beat was a little cartoon movie about a
big cat. The ari cats. That's an that's
a obscure pic No. The Lion King. It's
actually the first animated film that appears on
this list, brought in 422000000
dollars at the box office. And Connor,
2 dollars of that were mine. I saw
this movie at a 2 dollar theater. Wow.
2 bucks. Those were the days. Well, Doug,
before we jump ahead to 2004
Here's a couple of facts about this list.
Of the 50, there are 12 superhero movies,
including 4 Batman,
There are a lot of Will Smith and
Tom Cruise movies, including 2 top guns. There
are 3 horror movies, including Ami Horror, the
Omen.
And jaws even though I wouldn't count it
as a horror movie, there are 2 jurassic
parks and only 1 Harry Potter and 1
Indiana Jones. And out of all those 50
blockbuster, 8 of them are animated, and that
brings us back to 2004,
which is 1 of those animated films. Hints?
Yeah. I don't know you got me. That's
really outside my era of expertise for animated
films. It's gotta be Disney pixar though. Right?
It's shrek 2, buddy. How did you not
know that? I've I've never seen shrek too.
Let's just skip ahead. Let's go to 20
14. Okay. This 1, I know you've seen.
It's a superhero flick in which vin diesel
plays a tree.
I know you hate these movies. Guardians of
the galaxy. It isn't indeed Fantastic movie. Who
knows what 2024 is gonna bring to the
blockbuster. We did ask superintendent Tom Siegel to
weigh in on his favorite movie and he
gave us a few, which spoiler alert none
of them appear on this list. Problem is
I have a lot of favorite movies.
And
it probably changes on a day to day
basis.
Right now, it... For some strange reason, the
musical 17 76,
Bob's no online, but I like patton. It's
really a well done movie. Bridge over the
River Quiet is also a really good movie.
Although if your British issued would take exception
to it because
it portrays the Americans like they're the only
good guys around. But, there are a lot
of good movies out there. And on a
particular day without thinking ahead of time is
I'd probably have to say Casablanca.
I'd love that he took the time to
talk to us about movies. Superintendent Sega is
retiring after this year. 23
years of service to the staff, students and
families in Bethel. During the time, he graduated
more than 30000
students,
1300 of them graduated
just a few weeks ago. Yeah. When Tom
started here in Bethel on 2001, our graduation
rate was only around 60 or 70 percent.
Today, we're hovering around 90 percent with our
fifth sixth and seventh year graduates pushing 94
percent. So Super Sega was never 1 to
give up on students just because they turned
18. He has certainly done amazing things for
this district. And the push to make college
more accessible for students was a big thing
for him. Even brought satellite campuses for Pierce
College out to Span Lake High school and
Gram Cap High school with another planned at
the new Bethel High school, which is currently
under construction. Thank you voters.
This idea of college accessibility was something that
was inspired from the accessibility of college when
he was growing up. Well, you're asking me
to think back a long ways.
Basically,
in my family,
we never really talked about...
Not going into college. It was always kind
of an assumption that we were gonna go.
For me it was pretty easy because I
lived in a community that had a college.
Matter in fact, the campus is, like,
3 blocks away from my house.
So it was kind of a natural transition
to know where the college was, be familiar
with it, the admission process was really simple,
and even getting except for the first day
of classes, basically, you walked into a large
auditor. We had a piece of paper to
filled out, you walked around various tables and
at the end of the day, maybe spending
an hour.
You had all your classes lined up, you
knew what you had to pay,
and all those things were taken care. So
it's much simpler than it is
today, which
Frank looking back was a good thing because
I understand looking at like this can be
pretty daunting when you look at all the
details.
But it was clear to me that in
order to have options as to what I
wanted to do, feel and not be
confined
geographically to where I lived
nor boxed into a career or series of
jobs
that
I could do, but would not be interesting
for feeling or challenging.
And then got into college and and finally
at the point where A I found something
that was really interested to me, and nearly
had a double major, but I just decided
I've gotta get this thing finished. So after
about 4 and a half years of college,
I finally wrapped it up with a bachelor's
degree. We've also grown as a disc and
Superintendent Siegel took over, over 5000
students have been added during his tenure here
to accommodate all that growth, 9 new capacitors
buildings were built during his time here with
expedition and the new Bethel high school currently
in the works. It really has
been an interesting journey.
When I first Scott here in particular,
Thompson elementary and Span Middle. Were scheduled in
the 2001 bond simply to be modernized.
And after looking at the conditions of the
building was actually cheaper to build replacement buildings.
And so we actually replaced old Thomson elementary
old Span Middle or junior high at the
time with a brand new buildings that were
much larger than the original. And I have
to tell you the the physical condition of
those 2 buildings are
pretty bad.
Thompson, in particular, I wanna mention they were
built with wooden floors. I understand at the
time the school board back when I was
built. Was very proud that they built the
cheapest
school in the entire state that year. And
is true. You also got what they paid
for.
The floors were plywood and would actually flex
as a personal walk across it, and they
had 1
custodian who actually fell through the floor. So
that gives you an idea of the material
condition
of the building.
And then, as a the old thompson elementary
was being demolished, they had a small cat
caterpillar
I don't remember the number. But it was
a small 1, and it just had to
tap the wall and it collapsed. So the
building was
not particularly in great shape, and it was
a good thing and went away. It's been
replaced by, you know, a seismic,
well built to standard building as all of
our buildings are. Super was also instrumental in
the creation of the Pierce county skill center.
In fact, A lot of people call that
the house that Tom built. You can hear
more about that in last week's episode. And
we don't always just build new schools. Sometimes
we expand and renovate our older schools. And
Super superintendent Siegel said there have been more
than a few times when they got into
those projects where it's actually cheaper to tear
down the building and build a new 1.
Outside of the office, superintendent Ce was a
fossil hound. He would vacation with his digging
equipment. And locate fossils, bring them back and
he would speak to students about it in
school, and he spoke with us about it
here on the podcast. It actually goes back
to when I was a kid,
lived in part of the United States where
there weren't any rocks. I lived in Moore,
Minnesota, which is actually built on the old
glacier lake Ag
but they had 10000 years of
grass growth,
so he had 10 feet of tops soil,
and there was no visible rocks anywhere. So
But it was probably the fact that, you
know, I finally found a rock some places
that fascinated me as a young kid, and
then to read in books that there were
such things as fossils was just
fascinating.
I really didn't have a chance to fossil
on it until
I had a chance to live in the
Denver area.
And there he had actually, you know, if
you were diligent enough to go out and
look and you could find fossils along the
front range of the Rocky Mountains.
And it's been kind of annual trek out
to 1 particular location in Wyoming, and I
did it again this year, at least for
a short period of time,
where I went to fossil hunting and it
came back with
fish. So I'm a kind of a stone
fisherman.
It's just fascinating to find the fossils. There's
also,
pretty good, leaf fossil up in Republic Washington.
There's a public quarry up there. And if
you're diligent, you can find some leaf fossils
that are pretty pretty interesting.
Both eye and my wife would to collect
these and
donate need a significant number of them to
the schools so the kids actually have a
chance to look at a fossil and, you
know, you they could be posed a question,
how is it possible that a ocean going
in some cases or in the case of
some of the crabs we found.
How is it possible that ocean going crab
could be found at
a hundred feet above sea level today?
Or in the case of some, up a
blew pass,
You're up or of thousands of feet. How
was it possible the jurassic
age
leaf that is a plant.
Fern, in particular,
could be found on top of Blue at
pass. And so it is a interesting way
to pose
questions to kids to get them to start
think about what's occurred and the timelines that
we're talking about.
Finally, on an episode from last season, we
asked Super superintendent Sega, our question of the
week if you could have dinner with 1
historical figure, who would it be and why,
and obviously, his answer did not disappoint. Well,
I have to admit I a student of
history and there are a large number of
people that that would be a wonderful opportunity,
but I'd still have to go back to
1 of my favorite
historical figures and that'd be Abraham Lincoln. The
more you read about them, the more you
realize how smart he was
and how he's for trade in movies and
so on and so forth,
probably doesn't really get through to the extremely
complex
problems and solutions that he had to fashion.
He was 1 smart individual and balanced a
lot of competing
issues
and still got through the civil war, and
that was an amazing feat. I'd have to
say Abraham Lincoln.
Superintendent Tom, Sega retire on June t taking
his place will be interim superintendent, Doctor Brian
Lan, Doctor Lan is no stranger to the
podcast, and we're gonna leave you with a
quote from him that I think speaks volumes
to his character and leadership. This was his
answer to the question
who is the most important person in the
district. It depends on the time of the
day. Mister Boyle of who's the most important
person in the day at lunch lunchtime. It's
the person that's serving lunch at, Cougar Mountain
Middle school at about 11:30,
Monday through Friday. At 06:25
when some of our middle schoolers are getting
on the buses, it's probably the bus driver
who's greeting them, who happens to be the
most important person the day. During third period
when I'm having a tough moment as a
student at Span Lake High school. It's probably
mister Form, my teacher in my classroom. The
end of the day, it could be the
people that are greeting me and sending me
on my way out the front door and
hold the door open for me. So it's
any 1 of us on any given day,
and I really mean. All of us play
the most important role in a student's education
in any given time during the day. And
it's important to know that our jobs are
important we matter to the kids here, so
each and every 1 of us.
And that's gonna wrap up this week episode
from all of us here at the Bethel
School District presents podcast.
Thank you to super superintendent Tom Siegel for
your leadership over the years, you will be
missed.
Absolutely. And next week is July fourth weekend,
and we'll have a special re cast of
our interview with 100 year old Bethel Legend
Ed Neil. We hope you join us them.