PRINTFast times at Hickman High
One high school, three generations. The Asbury men leave a legacy at Hickman
JASON LENHART
Kyle, Greg and Ryan Asbury sport their letter jackets at their home just outside of Columbia. Greg’s boys will graduate from Hickman High School and are both football players, just like dear old dad and their late grandfather.
September 24, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Greg Asbury missed his chance to get out of Columbia. Now he never wants to leave. Asbury earned his diploma from Hickman High School in 1979, exactly 30 years after his father. Like a lot of young adults his age, Asbury scoffed at the idea of sticking around his hometown, but jobs kept him moored in mid-Missouri. Although his wandering was a zigzag path, Greg never really left the city.
“When I went to my 20-year reunion, I said, ‘Well, guys, I never was smart enough to leave Columbia,’” he says. “And everyone I said that to said, ‘Greg, I’m just trying to get back.’”
Greg Asbury (left) graduated from Hickman in 1979, 30 years after his father. Now, Greg’s ...
- Scenes from the Providence Bowl
- Tech-savvy students
- The young and the reckless
- Rumors and realities
- Overcoming obstacles
- The spread
- The Education of Segregation
- Lifelong leaders
- Edged out
- Roosters, cows and mice, oh my!
- Crosstown competition
- Playing the field
- Say what?
- Where are they now?
- On the Job: High School Custodians
- After-school alliance
- Rival Survival
- Through the Years
- High school mascots go head to head
Asbury is now the president of Officer Mechanical, a Columbia-based industrial and commercial mechanical contracting company. His own kids, Kyle and Ryan, are poised to graduate from Hickman in 2010 and 2011, just as their father and grandfather did.
It’s easy for kids to ignore their parents’ stories from the glory days and hard for them to understand how the old coots can desire the small-town life. But for their parents, settling down isn’t such a difficult decision.
The Asbury home is perched on the same land Greg grew up on. That 170 acres and home, a gift from his father who recently passed away, are important to Greg. Beer in hand, he proudly shows off the screened-in porch he recently added so he can enjoy his spacious backyard free from blood-sucking mosquitos.
On a balmy September evening, Greg sits on that porch with Kyle and Ryan. With toothpicks, they nibble at an appetizer of marinated shrimp and reminisce about what’s changed over the years.
Although father and sons have all played football for Hickman, Greg’s athletic stomping grounds were different from the fields that his sons play on. “He didn’t get to play on turf,” says Kyle, a senior strong safety. “And we get to play on turf every day, so we don’t get the bugs or the bad footing.”
An even bigger difference than the quality of the field, though, is that when Greg played, Hickman and Rock Bridge weren’t rivals.
“Our rivalry was Jeff City, and to this day Jeff City is the main one as far as I’m concerned,” he says. “Because (Rock Bridge) was such a smaller school, they were actually in a different class, and we didn’t play them.”
Greg, who makes it to almost all of his sons’ games, is a fan who is just as much a part of the game as the players.
“He’s kind of wild,” Ryan says. He remembers how his dad once got reprimanded at one of Kyle’s basketball games for colorfully disagreeing with the referee. “We can always hear him in the game because he sets himself apart with his yell.”
Kyle agrees: “He’ll yell at the referees if they make a bad call, and he’ll yell at us if we mess up. He just wants us to win really bad.”
And technology? Laptops weren’t even on the radar when Greg was in school.
“When I was a senior in high school, I took a typing class,” he says. “The crazy thing was that half the class was on manual typewriters and the other half was on electric, and we would change every quarter.”
Kyle, who took a typing class in sixth grade, is now in a Computer-Aided Design class. “All of their classes are way more advanced,” Greg says. “I can’t help them with their homework. I used a T-square and two triangles, and they’re on a computer.”
But the best development, as far as Greg is concerned, is the cell phone. “My mom and dad didn’t hardly know where I was, but I’m pretty much able to know where Kyle and Ryan are all the time,” he says.
The boys push back now and then. “Every once in a while when I go out, I’ll say, ‘Dad, just remember when you were 18,’” Kyle says.
“What he did, he knows we’re going to try to do, so he’s hard on us,” Ryan adds.
It’s not all so light-hearted. Columbia is growing, and so is Hickman. The herd of students jostling one another through the school’s narrow hallways has created an environment that can be tense and, at times, conducive to fights.
Ryan remembers eating lunch last year with a friend at Burger King on Business Loop 70 when people started to flood out of the McDonald’s across the street. Somebody had pulled a gun. And the first Friday of classes that year, a kid had brought a weapon to school.
Kyle thinks part of the problem is the growth of the student body and the attitudes students bring with them to the crowded environment.
“I think behavior has changed over time,” he says. “Getting arrested is a big deal. In my dad’s day, you knew the cop who was pulling you over, but now they really crack down.”
Greg just hopes Kyle and Ryan keep their heads down and apply themselves to their schoolwork. He has high hopes for their academic pursuits. For the boys, not finishing college isn’t even an option. Ryan is still undecided on a college as a junior, but Kyle has gotten scholarship offers to play football at a few universities. For him, the trick is to find a school with a football team and a good mechanical engineering program.
“The whole college thing is what’s important,” Greg says, pausing to brag about Kyle and Ryan’s grades. “It’s what’ll get you by these days.”
Despite Greg’s early exit from MU after only one semester for a plumbing job, he’s developed a successful business life. He hopes to eventually do what his father did for him — give some of the family land to his sons. “Of course, when I was 18, all I wanted to do was get away (from the family home),” Greg says. “I spent 18 years trying to get away and the next 18 trying to get back.”
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