Published: April 18, 2007 11:38 pm         

B-Sides: This class of Braves is truly distinct

TERRE HAUTE — Until then, no one knew the quiet kid in the back of the bus possessed such talent and poise.

His shining moment was brief, yet unforgettable.

During a late-1970s blizzard, a school bus full of junior high-schoolers slid off a southern Vigo County road and ended up stranded in a ditch. As the weather outside worsened, the novelty of their predicament turned from fun to panic. Help had not arrived. Some kids started to cry.

Suddenly, amid the chaos, a boy in the back seat pulled his violin from its case and began to play. The kid rarely drew attention at school. But on this snowy day, his bow sent sweet music throughout the bus. His schoolmates were impressed and, best of all, calmed. He played until they were rescued.

“He truly won the day,” recalled Eric Trueblood, one of the other kids on that bus 30 years ago.

Trueblood told that story last week as Terre Haute South Vigo High School inducted him into its Hall of Distinction. It would be impossible to characterize Trueblood’s life as anything less than distinct. The 1988 South grad became a doctor who treated injured soldiers from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and manned the critical-care air transport team during the Hurricane Katrina relief effort in New Orleans.

He bristled a bit when South teacher Dave Heath introduced him to students as, among other things, “a war hero.”

But after Trueblood spoke to the assembly on Friday, Heath — the emcee — rightly persisted. “I’d like to take issue with Dr. Trueblood on one issue. He saved lives on the battlefields. He is a war hero.”

Still, one other valuable message delivered by Trueblood and fellow 2007 Hall of Distinction inductees actor Jose Pablo Cantillo and businessman Carl Cottrell was that inspiration and success stories surround us all. It’s up to us to recognize them.

One such revelation hit Cottrell late in his junior year at South. A fellow junior campaigning for class president asked Cottrell to sign a petition backing his nomination. Cottrell was intrigued by the idea and asked about the process. But the guy curtly told Cottrell, “Just sign it. You can’t beat me.”

The linebacker-sized Cottrell broke into a Robert

De Niro accent as he described to the current South students how that dismissal felt.

“Are you talkin’ to me?” Cottrell remembered thinking, after hearing those words. “You can’t beat me?”

Of course, Cottrell did beat the guy and became senior president of the Class of 1992. And he’s now a marketing whiz for the OLFA division of General Housewares, with credit for more than 100 worldwide product lines, appearances on home-oriented TV shows, and 800,000 miles of air travel last year.

In Cantillo, the students found a very visual embodiment of their potential.

He finished his high school days at South in 1996 as a standout tennis player and student, moving on to the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, where he dutifully completed his intended degree. But along the way, a professor urged Cantillo to take a drama class at IU to sharpen his public speaking skills during financial presentations.

That class revealed a passion simmering inside Cantillo for years.

So instead of heading off to corporate America, Cantillo picked up his IU diploma and diverted to New York to study acting in the renowned Atlantic Theatre Company and Barrow Group Schools. He found an important ally in his future wife, Kristi, whom he met in their high school days at South.

“She didn’t think it was ridiculous,” Cantillo told the young crowd inside the South auditorium Friday.

Obviously, it wasn’t. Last Friday, Cantillo’s latest movie, “Disturbia,” topped all others at the box office, earning $22.2 million in its first week. Cantillo plays as an ill-tempered cop in this teen thriller about a troubled kid who finds more danger by spying on his neighbors.

Cantillo reached this point by persevering. He survived the Catch-22 situation of breaking into the business — a manager won’t represent an actor who isn’t yet in the union, and the union won’t hire an actor who isn’t represented by a manager. He survived living in a rundown New York apartment. He drove seven hours for a 25-second audition and earned a small role in “The Manchurian Candidate.” He found a place to live from “a crazy lady in Los Angeles” on www.craigslist.com after learning that the movie studio required its actors to have a California address. (It amounted to a cot in an abandoned house.)

But now Cantillo has a growing list of TV and film credits that later this year will include “The Cleaner” with Ed Harris and Samuel L. Jackson, and “Ironman” with Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Outside Friday’s assembly, South senior Raven Grant got Cantillo’s autograph and told him her aspirations. Grant, gushing with enthusiasm, explained that she’ll be studying drama at the University of Evansville. Cantillo encouraged her.

As he signed more autographs, Grant said, “I really paid attention to him, because he’s doing what I want to do, and he started out in the same place I started.”

When Cantillo, Cottrell and Trueblood picked up their Hall of Distinction plaques during a dinner Saturday at the Country Club of Terre Haute, each recognized the role those around them played in their success, especially their families. Their wives drew heartfelt thanks, too — Cantillo’s for believing in his dream, Cottrell’s for finding him amid his fast-paced career, and Trueblood’s for holding their home and young family together, while also working as a physician, herself, during his days in the military conflicts overseas.

Trueblood also presented a pin from his Air Force unit as a thank-you to South teacher Dan Wunderlich. Without Wunderlich’s classroom inspiration, this small kid from Prairie Creek might never have realized his talents in chemistry, or earned degrees at Rose-Hulman and IU School of Medicine. Without that, Trueblood might not have saved those lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans.

Sometimes potential reveals itself, just like the fiddle player in the back seat of the bus.

Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.