Former Exchange Student Visits New High School Addition

     Costos Kotzambasis attended Grain Valley High School as a foreign exchange student from Greece with the Class of 1966. Erma and Robert Doty and their children were his host family and the Dotys still consider him family. Costas returned to Grain Valley last week and was treated to a tour of Grain Valley High School with his host siblings.
     Students in the 1960s attended the two-story school on Main Street. Costas has been back to Grain Valley over the years and has been in the current high school building, but on touring the latest addition at the school, he was struck by the look and feel of the transformation that the community has taken on in recent years. He marveled at how Grain Valley has grown, and how the new sections of the high school look more like a university than how he remembers high school.
     After graduating from GVHS, Costos went to Cornell University to study Hotel and Restaurant Management.  For the past 30 years he has lived in Australia.
     When Costos arrived in Grain Valley in the 1960s, the population was just a little over 500 people. Today, more 12,000 people live in Grain Valley and many of the landmarks familiar to him from his high school days, such as the old two-story school building on Main, are gone.  
    

Larry Doty, brother; GVHS Class of 1968 (31 in his class), Sandie Brown Doty (Larry's wife); GVHS Class of 1971 (39 in her class), Kathy Doty, sister; GVHS Class of 1973 (31 in her class), Konstantine (Costos) Kotzambasis, AFS foreign exchange student from Crete; GVHS Class of 1966 (32 in his class).