Dan Eichenberger has become an idol among his classmates within his four years of a
student at Melrose High School. Although he is a more soft-spoken eighteen-year
old, Dan has been known to entertain his peers, through both his words and
actions.
Dan has been on three school trips
within four years at MHS. He traveled to Georgia as a sophomore with Ms.
Williams and then ventured to Costa Rica twice -- once his junior year and then
again his senior year. During these three school trips, Dan’s fellow peers
began to realize what an interesting and unique boy he really was. Dan recalls
that it was on his school trip to Georgia that he earned his infamous nickname
‘Beige.’ He and his friends were fooling around on a bus ride in Georgia when
suddenly one friend began singing ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep.’ The friends all joined
in on the song, and finally decided that they wanted to integrate Dan into the
song. Alex Foley, who accompanied Dan in Georgia, remembers that “he still had
his ‘fro,” so the friends changed the song to “ba ba beige Dan have you any
hair? Yes sir, yes sir, enough for a bear.” And history was made. During this
school trip to Georgia, Dan forevermore earned the nickname Beige. When asked
if he enjoyed the nickname, Dan admitted “It’s not my favorite…I’d much rather
prefer to be called Dan.”
The fame of Dan has lived on,
especially on his following trips to Costa Rica. During his time in Costa Rica,
Dan was able to make even more friends, as they soon realized his amusing
character. Dan remembers that on his trip junior year, he even “got really
sunburned at the beach and there was one square on [his] back that didn’t get
sunburnt.” He laughed along with his friends as they applied intense amounts of
Aloe Vera to his sunburnt back.
Dan is not only interesting when on
school trips. In fact, despite having forgotten to put on enough sunblock in
the Costa Rican sun, Dan Eichenberger is very smart, among the top students in
the Class of 2013. He is enrolled in some of the toughest courses at MHS – AP
Psychology, AP Latin, AP Statistics, AP Environmental Science, Honors English,
and Media Literature. His favorite of these classes is AP Statistics, since he
has always been interested in math, and “it is the kind of math [he’s] good
at.” He also partakes in a plethora of extracurricular activities, like Varsity
Lacrosse, Student Government, Peer Mediation, and Latin Club. He has been a
member of all of these activities for four years.
When Dan is not travelling the
world, completing schoolwork, or playing lacrosse, he enjoys hanging out with
friends and “listening to all sorts of music.” He also has four birds – an
eclectus parrot named Clover, a scarlet macaw named Bo, a sun conure named
Pedro, and a blue and gold macaw named Trixie. Because of the birds, the
Eichenberger household is a toasty 80 degrees year-round. He does not like
talking to these birds, because “usually they yell… they don’t yell words, they
just yell loud.”
Dan’s life in Melrose these past
eighteen years has sure been colorful and unique. Still, however, he seems
excited to start a new chapter in his life. Dan has not chosen his college yet,
but is trying to decide between Ithaca College, University of California-
Riverside, University of Albany, and Quinnipiac University. He “would like to
study something math or science related, but is unsure what [he] specifically
wants to study.”
By Betty Anne Richardson
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