Reunion brings group of ‘Spazzes’ together

Back in 1972, there was a house in town called “Spaz’s House.”
Two of its occupants, and their friends, drove proudly around town in what they called the “Spazmobile.” They’d stop at stop signs, leap out of the Spazmobile, and run around it before jumping back in.
They were called the “Spazzes,” a group of about 10 who hung out together at Fort Frances High School.
“We were a really close-knit group,” said Nancy Gillon. “We just hung out together.”
Gillon, whose maiden name was Hallikas, and fellow Spazzes Jane Overholt (Dolyny), Kathie Zatulsky (Ash), and Nancy Goodridge (Kirk), were reminiscing about the group last weekend when they met up at the FFHS Millennium Reunion.
“We weren’t a wild group–we were actually pretty tame,” Gillon recalled. “It was fun because we were together.”
They were all friends throughout their high school years but it wasn’t until the two years before graduation that the name really stuck. Gillon, Overholt, Zatulsky, and Goodridge remembered driving around town together, or going to sporting events like hockey or curling.
They’d hang around the A&W or the New Lunch Café, where they could buy French fries for a quarter.
Overholt and Gillon had grown up on the same street so they were good friends from the time were really young. They met Zatulsky and Kirk in high school, starting in grade nine typing class, and they really formed the group about two years later.
At the same time, they all had different interests and different classes, forming “sub-groups” in the big group.
“Some of the girls were cheerleaders,” Overholt said. “I was not.
“But because it’s such a small town, we’d always see each other–we had that close feeling,” she continued. “That part was really neat.”
And after graduation, the group split up for college.
Overholt, now a “full-time mom, part-time interior designer,” went to Fanshawe College in London, Ont. the following September and now lives back in Fort Frances. Like most of the others, she was eager to leave Fort Frances and the Spazzes to try something new.
“It was very exciting to leave and spread my wings,” she said.
Zatulsky took a secretarial course at Confederation College in Thunder Bay, where she and Gillon roomed together. She now works for the government here in town.
After completing a degree in marketing management at Confederation College, Gillon moved around for a few years but is now back here and has been teaching in business and co-op at Fort High for the past 15 years.
Goodridge went to school in Duluth and now is a social worker in Kenora.
While the four of them stay pretty close, they’ve lost contact with a few other Spazzes.
As for the name?
“Spaz,” laughed Zatulsky, “like . . . ‘spastic.’ Just a word that we used. Clumsy.”
“We still call each other Spaz this many years later,” Gillon said.