Kristin Button Wright

Grosse Pointe South High School
Class of 1988

Kristin Wright with her father, Bob Button, about five years ago. *Courtesy photos*

Kristin Wright doesn’t remember a time in her childhood when she didn’t accompany her family to Grosse Pointe South at least once a week.

Her father, Bob Button, a South teacher and adviser to the student newspaper, The Tower, from 1966 to 1994, took her and her younger brother to basketball games, football games, and school concerts regularly.

“Our whole family life revolved around the high school,” she said.

Kristin attended Defer Elementary and Pierce Middle School. By the time she went on to high school, she already felt at home. Seniors on The Tower staff took her under their wing, treating her “like a little mascot,” she said.

During her time at South, her father was named National Teacher of the Year, adding to his legendary status.

“People always ask what it was like to go to high school with your dad, and I always say I don’t know how to answer that because I never went to high school without my dad,” Kristin said.

While she refused on the first day of her freshman year to drive to South with her father, choosing to assert her independence and ride her bike from Buckingham in the Park instead, she quickly “realized that was ridiculous.”

“He was so popular as a teacher that a little bit reflected back on me,” she said. “Students loved him and the students who loved him the most were kind to me, too.”

She did draw the line on enrolling in his journalism classes or participating on The Tower staff, however.

“I lived in fear of having him grade my papers in front of me in the family room in front of the TV,” she said. “Again, I needed that independence. I have thought many times in my adult life that I should have been a teacher and I would have been good at it. But he was such a giant in that field, I didn’t think that I could measure up to the success that he had.”

At the same time, she benefited from his writing expertise, as her father passed on to her at home the same writing skills he taught in the classroom, she said.

This continued up until his death on Dec. 23, 2021; when Kristin started writing fiction around age 40, her father was her copy editor, marking up her manuscripts with a red pen, just as he did for his students each night in the family room all those years ago.

Kristin Wright said that her father would print out each of her manuscripts and place them in a binder before copy editing them with a red pen.

After graduating from South in 1988, Kristin majored in history at Michigan State University. Initially she planned to pursue television broadcast production, viewing it as a more practical field of study.

Her AP U.S. History teacher, Mary Miller, now deceased, was the major influence behind her decision to change her major.

“She was such a brilliant teacher,” Kristin said. “She made history sound like gossip. It was just riveting how she told stories like it was something that happened at a party the night before. I don’t know how she did it, but if I was going to be a teacher, that is how I would do it. She was probably my favorite teacher at South.”

After graduating from MSU in 1992, Kristin worked for a while before attending the University of Michigan Law School, graduating in 1997. From there she headed to a firm in Washington D.C., and completed a federal clerkship before going into private practice at a small town in Virginia, where she handled legal affairs from criminal proceedings to divorce and child custody.

The move to Virginia made sense for Kristin personally as well as professionally, as her parents had moved there during her first year of law school.

While still working full time — for the last 15 years, she has been a staff attorney for Campbell County, Virginia — Kristin started exploring creative writing. As her two sons — Austen, now a high school senior and Matthew, a junior — became more independent, she discovered she had time for her writing, even if it was in her car while waiting for one of her boys to finish soccer practice.

Eventually she found an agent and then a publisher. Her first novel, a small press romantic suspense novel titled Lying Beneath the Oaks, was published in 2019. She later found a larger publisher, an Amazon imprint, to publish a duology of legal thrillers. The first one, The Darkest Flower, came out in 2021 and the sequel, The Darkest Web, is due out in April.

All the while, her father was her biggest fan and continued to edit her manuscripts with his red pen.

Kristin’s advice to high school seniors is to not expect to “have it all figured out in high school. You can find your way to what you’re meant to do in its own time. Life is long. You get a lot of chances to be who you want to be.

“Getting to go to Grosse Pointe South is a gift,” she added. “The preparation there is honestly second to none. I don’t think I realized while I was there just how astonishing it was.”

This first dawned on her when, having taken advanced placement English classes at South, she passed out of MSU’s requisite freshman English class.

“The girls on my floor used to bring me their papers to read,” she said. “I realized I had not appreciated the rigorous grounding I got at South because these girls had not gotten the same at their high schools. They had not been taught to write like I had. Kids who go to South are extremely fortunate to have the education that they have.”

Go to kristinbwright.com to learn more about her fiction.

Beth Pankhurt Moran

Grosse Pointe High School
Class of 1966

Beth Moran, senior year at The High, and today.

Beth Moran has a long history with the Grosse Pointe Public School System. Her father graduated from Grosse Pointe High School in 1936. Beth, too, graduated from “The High” along with her husband, Joe, both members of the Class of 1966. All four of their children graduated from what is now Grosse Pointe South — Megan in 1995, Matthew in 1998, Elizabeth in 2001 and William in 2004.

Childhood sweethearts, Beth and Joe began dating between eighth and ninth grade. Beth attended Pierce Junior High School, while Joe was at St. Clare of Montefalco Catholic School through eighth grade, then attended Austin Catholic Preparatory School for ninth grade before starting at The High in 10th grade.

Upon graduating, Beth attended Western Michigan University for one year, then transferred to Wayne State University, where she remained to complete a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and master’s degree in special education. She and Joe got married in 1973 after dating through high school and college.

Beth began her career teaching third and first grade at Highland Park. She spent the next 22 years at Grosse Pointe Pre-Kindergarten as a preschool teacher, the last 10 as director of one of the two campuses.

In 2000, she started at GPPSS as a special education teacher when Barnes reopened its doors as an early childhood center. After 40 years, she retired.

Beth and Joe split time between their homes in Grosse Pointe Farms, Harbor Springs and Florida. Beth enjoys golf, biking, pickleball and, recently, playing Wordle. Their children live in Chicago, Jupiter, Florida, and between Juno, Alaska and Seattle. They have five grandchildren ages 11, 8, 6, 5 and 4.

Beth’s next passion after teaching is serving on the Board of Directors of the Grosse Pointe Foundation for Public Education since 2012.

“I love it,” she said. “It’s the best board I’ve ever been on. I love the camaraderie and the different professions that people come from. We all have direct strengths.”

For example, her expertise in special education was especially instrumental in her role as a member of the grant committee. Another benefit of reviewing grants is that it allows her “to see all the wonderful ideas that are presented from the staff. Our teachers are innovative and creative and our children are truly benefiting from their dedication.”

Beth is known around town for a multitude of other volunteer work, including volunteering at the gift shop as a member of the Beaumont Assistance League and at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

She also stays connected with Grosse Pointe South by giving tours to reunion classes and enjoys sharing the school’s rich history, crediting South’s Preservation Committee for doing “such a beautiful job.”

“I see the beauty of the school and all the wonderful changes they’ve made,” she said. “You appreciate it more now of course than you did. As a kid, you don’t care about the rosettes in the ceiling.”

During one of those tours a few years ago, she was able to take the group into South’s tower where a tradition is for students to write their names on the walls. There she located her own and her husband’s names.

“We wrote it in chalk, but it was still visible,” she said.

Beth has fond memories of her teachers, including her choir teacher at both Pierce and The High, Herman Clein. Many of the friendships she forged through her school years continue today.

“I loved high school,” she said. “All of my friends still are the friends I had in high school. We just had such a good time. I loved everything about it.”

Chad Hepner

Grosse Pointe South High School
Class of 1993

Chad Hepner, right, with his father, Russ Hepner, who coached Grosse Pointe South varsity football for nearly two decades.

Chad Hepner was named state champion in diving in 1993, the year he graduated from Grosse Pointe South High School.

Nearly three decades later, his son Logan, a junior at Grosse Pointe South, earned the same title in 2022.

A love of sports runs in the Hepner family, with Chad following his own father’s career path as a player and coach. Russ Hepner, a physical education teacher at South, served as head football coach from 1968 to 1986. While he retired from coaching before Chad joined the football program, he was assistant coach under head football coach John Rice, a close family friend and godfather to Chad.

Chad enjoyed a successful football career with the Blue Devils as the first South football running back to rush for over 1,000 yards, among other accomplishments. But it was diving that the state champion and two-time All-American pursued at Michigan State University, where he majored in kinesiology in the School of Education, with a minor in history.

After graduating from MSU and completing his student teaching, Chad spent a year at Kenyon College as the strength coach for the athletic program and the diving coach. In 2000, he was hired as a P.E. teacher at Grosse Pointe South — replacing his father, who was retiring.

“I was happy to come back to Grosse Pointe,” Chad said. “I knew it was a great school system and a great community. I didn’t necessarily plan on coming back here to make it my home, but it worked out and I knew what a great opportunity it was.”

While at MSU, Chad met his wife, Kimberly, a fellow diver. The couple got married in 2002 and currently live in Grosse Pointe Park with their three children, Logan, 17, Wyatt, 15, and Brooke, 13.

Their children are carrying on their parents’ affinity for sports. In addition to Logan’s success as a diver, Wyatt, a freshman, was the only wrestler at the school to qualify for the state championship and finished seventh in the state, earning all-state accolades. Brooke, a seventh grader at Pierce, plays for a high-level travel soccer team and for her school volleyball and basketball teams.

The Hepner family, from left, Logan, Kimberly, Chad, Brooke and Wyatt.

Logan also distinguished himself outside the athletic arena, as one of two South students — and representing 1 percent of 260,000 submissions nationwide — to win a National Scholastic Art Gold Medal in metals.

“That’s an area I don’t know anything about,” Chad confessed about his oldest son’s achievement. “He loves metal working. He started that when he was a freshman. He loves (art teacher) Mr. Szmrecsanyi.”

While Chad began his teaching career at South in the physical education department, the program was cut back his third year and for about 10 years he taught history. For the past six or so years, he has enjoyed a split schedule where he teaches history in the morning and physical education the rest of the day.

On the coaching side, he spent a decade as the boys’ diving coach and started coaching football in 2001. He began as a varsity assistant, then was head JV coach for a few years, stepping in as the interim head coach following the death of the head coach. He continued coaching when Tim Brandon took over as head coach and has served as the varsity defensive coach since 2011. In 2014, he was named the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association Assistant Coach of the Year.

Named head football after Tim Brandon retired, Chad is optimistic about the coming season, especially with the quarterback, running back and some strong offensive linemen returning. At the same time, the team lost some strong players, including nine starters on defense and Will Johnson, who was widely ranked as the No. 1 cornerback in the country.

“We have some work to do, but I’m optimistic because we have some great guys coming back,” Chad said.

In his new role, he hopes to inspire young men the way his head coach, John Rice, inspired him while he was a player.

For young people who are pursuing teaching and coaching as a career, Chad says, “It’s a lot of work, but it’s very rewarding. For me, I know the impact that sports and the coaches had on me growing up. Hopefully this is a chance to have that kind of an impact on kids today.”

School Pointes