As you flip through the senior section of the 1999 yearbook, there might be some style choices that leap out at you. Maybe it’s the abundance of flannels. Maybe it’s the spiky hair and frosted tips.
Or maybe, it’s Mat von Ehrenkrook, known in his high school days as Binky, with a duct tape suit and two strands of blond hair standing out from a buzz cut.
“I’ve got to tell you, I was a wild one… I’ve got to give it to the teachers for putting up with [me],” von Ehrenkrook said.
The newspaper and yearbooks from that time reveal that he was something of a local legend: blaming a soda machine falling on him for being late to class, inviting a radio host to Homecoming, and appearing in people’s dreams to save them from runaway golf carts. But where did his nickname come from?
“When I was a teacher’s assistant in junior high… I was a TA for a teacher named Mr. Buttons. And Mr. Buttons was all everyone talked about in the hallways. And I got to thinking, you know, ‘People only like to talk about him because his name is so fun to say.’ And so, I decided I would be his TA… and make the underclassmen call me Mr. Binky,” von Ehrenkrook said. “It came from Pinky and the Brain and… I mashed those two together and came up with a fun name for people to call me.”
Currently an art director for Wizards of the Coast, which publishes games like Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, von Ehrenkrook honed his art skills as a cartoonist for this paper. During his time here, he was able to compete at the national high school journalism conference in Washington, D.C.
“It was my first time ever in D.C., and to go with my classmates and see all the museums was super fun. I had… a competition with all the other artists from all the other schools. They didn’t really have a first place. It was just a recognition award, but I was the only one who got that award for being the artist, which was nice. It was real fun,” von Ehrenkrook said.
Another of von Ehrenkrook’s activities as a PHS student was as the yell leader for the senior class of 1999. His time in that role led to lasting effects on pep assemblies that still persist today.
“I am the reason you guys can’t wear Speedos in your assemblies because I decided one year to get everyone excited and wrestle a chair…There was a little WWF [World Wrestling Federation] stage made of stanchions. And I ripped off my shirt, and I was wearing my Speedo that I was given by PHS as a uniform for water polo. And I was just thinking ‘This is basically what the WWF wears when they wrestle,’” von Ehrenkrook said. “I didn’t want to wrestle another person, so I wrestled an inanimate object, which was a chair from the cafeteria, and everyone thought it was hilarious… but all the teachers were aghast, and they were like, ‘I can’t believe he wore the speedo in front of the entire school…’ I don’t think it was that big of a deal, but they didn’t seem to think it was very appropriate, and now everyone has to get their cheers approved by staff before they go into an assembly. So that’s on me.”
von Ehrenkrook also joined the cross-country team, albeit briefly.
“My parents were like, ‘you need to do something in the off season and stay active.’ I got into cross country… I thought it was sort of like the Hunger Games, where you kind of like, run off into the woods and then people push and shove each other to make it through this obstacle course to get to the end,” von Ehrenkrook said. And my first match, I decided that I would sprint into the woods at Wildwood Park, and I hid and I waited for other teams to pass by, and I would jump out of the woods, and I would pull them down to the ground and rub dirt in their face and push them off into the bushes and then sprint down the path and hide in the bushes again. And apparently, that’s not how cross country works at all. I got booted from the cross-country team after that match.”
Despite his misadventures and misunderstandings, von Ehrenkrook looks back fondly on his high school experience and the teachers who helped guide him.
“It’s been such a journey down memory lane… thinking of all the times and horrible, horrible things that I did while I was at school. I’m pretty sure the teachers came together and thought ‘If we don’t let him graduate, he’s going to come back for another year. Let’s just give him his diploma and get him out of here.’ And so because of that, I want to thank all the teachers, I put them through hell, and they did me a service of making sure that I was equipped to go out into the workplace and take the values and talents that I had and apply them to a to a career,” von Ehrenkrook said.
