Ever After: Checking in on The Connells’ Cult Classic
The 1993 music video to “’74-’75” featured members of Broughton High School’s Class of 1975. We reached out to see what they’re up to now. by David Menconi
A unique time capsule in local music is The Connells’ video for “’74-’75,” starring the class of 1975 from Raleigh’s Broughton High School. A huge, top-10 hit across Europe, the song is a moody, pensive ballad from the Raleigh rock band’s 1993 album Ring. And a major part of the song’s history is Mark Pellington’s brilliant, high-concept time-traveling video.
Guitarist Mike Connell (whose younger brother, bassist David Connell, graduated from Broughton in 1979) didn’t have a school or year in mind when he wrote this moody song of regret, which declares, “I was your sorry ever after.” He called it “’74-’75” simply because those numbers fit the song’s meter.
Video director Pellington, however, took the title literally. Taking inspiration from the British director Michael Apted’s Up film series (which checked in with a cast of 14 people every seven years over a 56-year period), Pellington juxtaposed Broughton graduates’ 1975 yearbook photos with 1993 video footage of each person.
Mike Connell had been skeptical about the video’s concept, until he saw the results. “I thought it was going to be the corniest thing ever,” he told me when I interviewed him for the liner notes of 2016’s Stone Cold Yesterday: Best of the Connells compilation album. “My attitude changed very quickly when I saw what he did.”
The video’s 18-year contrasts between teenagers and bordering-on-middle-age adults were striking — and a perfect (and subtle) fit for the song’s melancholy tone. It became a poignant cult classic, especially overseas, where fan tribute videos have been common over the past three decades.
When the class of 1975’s 40-year anniversary rolled around, I was part of a crew at The News & Observer that updated the video, adding circa-2015 shots of each subject. More than two decades on from the original video, the subjects all had experienced major life events — children, grandchildren, disabilities and even death — and the mileage showed.
By now, at the class’s 50th anniversary, the subjects are all in their late 60s and mostly retired to varying degrees. Three of them are no longer living. A few have tangential connections to some of the biggest news events of recent years. Some are living dreams, some are just getting by. They’re all at the stage where life is mostly retrospective.
Here’s what they’ve been up to, in order of appearance in the video.
Thomas Ray has been disabled with health problems for years, including the blood cancer myeloma. Since 2020, he has also pursued a lifelong dream of being a novelist, self-publishing half of a 10-book series, Archives of Atlanteas, an alternative science-fiction history. “It’s about a civilization built by the survivors of Atlantis, who now have huge cities and cavern domes up and down the East Coast of North and South America,” he says. “It’s fun. Very involved, a family saga.” The latest volume is “The Fifth Guardians,” out this summer. He also hopes to move to California to be with his partner soon.
Retired since age 62, Langston Craven lives in Aberdeen and has likewise had health issues. “But,” he says, “I am still living and breathing and speaking to you.” He hopes to attend Broughton’s 50-year reunion.
Sanderson High School graduate Anita High-Savage was the video’s only non-Broughton cast member. Retired on disability since 2010, she works part-time giving support to adults with developmental disabilities. She has also been involved with the Martin Luther King Jr. All Children’s Choir for 38 years.
Fortuitously, Beverly Clark Freeman sold her government-contracting consulting firm and retired two weeks before the Trump Administration canceled its contract. She and her husband now split time between Raleigh and “our happy place,” a townhouse near Boone.
Andrew Lewis Bates Jr. declined to be involved in the 2015 video update. He did not return phone calls this year.
After a career in land planning, Steve Gurganus says he’s spending his days “swamped with a backlog at the house, working the last remnants of a day job, paying bills, saving for college and managing kid activities.” He also volunteers at church and “loves seeing Broughton friends from years past.”
The namesake son of a legendary basketball coach at Saint Augustine’s University, Harvey Heartley Jr. starred in basketball there, then worked in banking. He passed in 2016 from the autoimmune disorder sarcoidosis. Saint Augustine’s has since dedicated the entrance to its Julia Chester Emery Gymnasium as the Harvey Delafonte Heartley Jr. Lobby.
David Hoggard actually graduated from Broughton in 1974, a year ahead of the others. But he made the most dramatic “’74-’75” video appearance, in a wheelchair due to aplastic anemia (possibly contracted while he was a U.S. Navy pilot). He died from blood cancer in 2013. Appearing alongside David in the original 1993 video was his wife Susan and their daughter Alison, then 4 years old. Alison lives in Charlotte now with two children, ages 4 and 5. Retired since 2019, Susan spends much of her time painting. She never remarried but has a live-in boyfriend as well as a dog named in honor of her late husband’s favorite artist, Bob Marley. “My husband loved reggae,” she says. “A month after David passed, I went looking for a dog. I wanted a grown female, but I came home with an 8-week-old male puppy. He’s 12 years old now and the love of my life.”
After a career in office management, Jackie Burgess McLaurin is a part-time cashier at Wegmans. She, too, has had health problems including multiple skin cancers. But she fondly remembers “’74-’75” as a lifetime highlight. “Being in that video was fun, the only thing like that I’ve ever done,” she says. “My daughter-in-law saw it for the first time not long ago and told me, You almost look the same.”
Mark Valetta is mostly retired now, but he’s been busy this year with wedding plans for his 30-year-old daughter. He’s also planning a 50-year Broughton class reunion on Oct. 4. “This will be the fourth one I’ve headed up,” he says. “I keep hoping somebody else will take the reins. But I didn’t want to let it pass, either.”
In 2021, Bryan Staton (a former truck driver, disabled since 2009) became the third “’74-’75” cast member to pass. He died from liver cancer.
Worth Byron “Buddy” Bowman III appeared in the original 1993 video holding his twin sons Tim and Joe, now 36 years old. A younger son, David Worth Bowman (who turns 24 this month) was found guilty last year of felony and misdemeanor charges for participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. He was facing a prison sentence before being pardoned by President Trump in January. Buddy Bowman declined to be interviewed for this story.
Married 44 years now, Cathy Chamblee Hartofelis is retired and living in the Onslow County town of Sneads Ferry. “We enjoy life down here, it’s a much slower pace,” she says. “Our biggest outing nowadays is going into Wilmington looking to find a good place to eat.”
Once a fixture on Triangle airwaves, former DJ Frank King graduated to working as a standup comic and motivational speaker about suicide prevention, with multiple TedX Talks to his credit. He used to work a lot on cruise ships until 2020, when he left a ship docked in Cambodia and flew back to America during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. He was accused of flouting quarantine rules in publications including Time magazine. “That was an adventure,” he says. “I was world-famous for about two weeks. Others were leaving that ship, too, but I was the one who got met by the press in Seattle while coming down the escalator. My mistake was speaking to the press about it.” King lives in Oregon with his wife and keeps busy with motivational speaking and competitive weightlifting. His appearance in “’74-’75” makes for a nice calling card, especially overseas. “When I mentioned it to a client from the Netherlands, she started singing that song,” he says. “She knew all the lyrics because The Connells performed at her college way back when. And a friend at a hotel in Israel saw me on TV. He called me up: Dude, why are you on TV in Israel?”
Beyond appearing in “’74-’75,” Paul Cooper is a key figure in The Connells’ history: he produced their first demo recordings in 1984. Music remains Cooper’s passion, with live-sound engineering and recording sessions, but a career in computers paid his bills. His two grandchildren (ages 10 and 2) live with their mother in Montreal. And he says he’ll “definitely” attend Broughton’s 50-year reunion this year. “I don’t hang out with anybody from high school,” he says. “But it’s good to see people even if we don’t have anything in common anymore.”
In 2015, Joni Coburn was working for the state department of motor vehicles and trying not to be impatient while waiting for grandchildren. Now retired, she has one biological grandchild and another from a son-in-law’s previous relationship. “My 7-year-old grandson reminds me of my son and my dad,” she says. “He’s absolutely adorable, too.
This article originally appeared in the June 2025 issue of WALTER magazine.
