BY MICHELLE ROSENBERG
Staff Writer
FARRAH MAFFAI staff Holmdel High School teachers Joe Uglialoro and Bill Loughran sit behind some of the memorabilia compiled for their personal use and for the use of the Bruce Springsteen appreciation club they started at the school. Their memorabilia collection includes books, CDs, DVDs, tapes and books. At right, a billboard in the hallway of Holmdel High School is dedicated to Bruce Springsteen. Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics have always been easy to relate to, but for some of his millions of fans, the music goes much deeper.
Two of those fans are Joe Uglialoro and Bill Loughran, a pair of Holmdel High School teachers who use Springsteen music to help educate their students on various subjects, such as literature and history.
“I noticed that students were connecting more and working harder after being exposed to Bruce,” Uglialoro said. “I’ve had a lot of success connecting with students through this music.”
Uglialoro is a history teacher and football coach at Holmdel High School. He and his Bruce-loving co-worker, Loughran, who teaches English and coaches cross country at the high school, have worked together, along with Loughran’s brother, Dan, to form Spirits in the Night, a Bruce Spring-steen appreciation club.
“About 10 years ago, I came across a book called ‘Born in the USA,’ which made connections between Bruce Springsteen and famous writers like Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln,” Loughran said. “I thought that subject would make a cool elective for the students.”
Loughran and Uglialoro tried to turn the subject into an elective, but the school’s budget had no room to support it. Rather than giving up, they decided to do the next best thing and start an extracurricular club.
Spirits in the Night was formed last year and had a very successful first semester, with more than 40 people of all ages showing up on its first night.
“We thought we would put together a club — not a fan club, but like a teaching club,” Loughran said.
The men are very cautious about calling their creation a fan club because they feel it is so much more.
“It’s not a fan club, it is beyond that,” Uglialoro said. “Springsteen can be used as a tool in the classroom. When students can listen to songs, it helps them relate.”
Last year they applied for, and received, an educational grant through the Holmdel Foundation for Educational Excellence. The grant helped fund the club. They used the money they received to purchase books, DVDs, CDs and other memorabilia. They also used some of their own personal memorabilia to teach the club.
The men created a syllabus for the club, bolstering their claims that it is not just a fan club but an educational experience. They aligned the syllabus with the state curriculum, in the hope that one day this subject will be offered as an elective in the school, Loughran said.
After all was said and done, they held the club’s first meeting on the night of Sept. 23, 2003 — Springsteen’s birthday.
This year the duo applied for another grant, and received almost twice as much money as last year. They now plan to buy enough material so that they do not have to use their personal belongings to teach the club.
Now that the club is back for the second time, the men are looking forward to introducing and discussing the musical phenomenon with more students.
“It’s great to see the mixture of people that grew up on Springsteen, and the students that are hearing it for the first time,” Uglialoro said. “It’s also cool to see parents and kids bond over this.”
The club’s creators all grew up listening to “The Boss,” and find it easy to relate their real-life experiences to those discussed in Springsteen’s music.
“He’s dealing with some big issues when he writes and when he speaks,” Uglialoro said.
“The songs are great because they are about real experiences,” Loughran said.
“His music had an important impact on me. I felt like Spring-steen felt like I felt, had been through the things I had been through,” Uglialoro said.
“I was 8 years old and running with a dime in my hand into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man. I’d sit on his lap in that big old Buick and steer as we drove through town. He’d tousle my hair and say, ‘Son take a good look around. This is your hometown.’ ”
These lyrics are from the song “My Hometown,” which is one of Uglialoro’s favorite Bruce songs, because it reminds him of when he was growing up. His father came into the club as a guest speaker last semester to discuss the song with the students in the club.
“The fact that Bruce grew up locally, and the fact that his lyrics are about local places, adds to the interest of the students,” Loughran said. “When they hear about a place they visit all the time in a song, it piques their attention.”
In addition to listening to the songs and discussing how the lyrics relate to past and present important social and economic issues, the club also takes field trips to some of the places discussed in the songs. They plan to visit Springsteen memorabilia collections, including a private collection housed at the Asbury Park Library.
“The hope of the club is to open people’s eyes to the imagery in Springsteen’s music,” Loughran said. “What I find appealing about him is the literary imagery; I like how his albums tell a story.”
“Kids can relate more to a rock-n-roller than they can to a textbook,” Uglialoro said.
The club will meet once a month in the library of Holmdel High School, Crawfords Corner Road, to discuss the life of “The Boss” and analyze his lyrics and the meaning behind them.
The club is free and open to anyone who wishes to participate. For more information, e-mail Joe Uglia-loro at [email protected] or Bill Lough-ran at [email protected].
“People always ask us if we are doing this to meet Bruce Springsteen, but that’s not what it is about,” Loughran said. “We’re not trying to meet him by this. That’s not our intention at all. We just want the public to know about this.”
“It’s funny, because everybody has their ‘I met Bruce’ story, except us. We are probably the only people that haven’t met him,” Uglialoro said. “He had such an impact on me. I always thought, since I’ve become a teacher, that I can use the music to impact students.”