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What do a CNN producer, a former talk radio host and a soft rock disc jockey have in common?

They're all Lakota class of 1988 members who started their careers at Lakota's WLHS 89.9 FM radio station.

"I didn't meet anybody else in my career that had that (high school) experience," said Paul Higginbotham, a talk radio host for 13 years. "Before I started the radio classes with WLHS, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was sort of lost socially and vocationally. I wasn't smart enough to be a geek; I wasn't athletic enough to be a jock; I wasn't handsome enough to be popular."

But, after leaving the program at Lakota, he interned with Gary Burbank at WLW and moved on to Charleston, W.Va., where he was a morning side-kick for a country station and later a host on a morning and an afternoon current events show.

"Radio is half skill and half being comfortable doing it," he said. "It just fit. I fell in love with it and I had success with it."

His best friend Rob Calvert couldn't agree more. The radio DJ said he took the class because it looked like an easy "A." He didn't realize at the time that it would become a passion that took him from WEBN in Cincinnati to a station in Orlando and now to a classic rock job at WMKG in Philadelphia.

His advice to future graduates is to get internships and to work hard.

"After you've done everything you think you can do, what are you prepared to do after that?"

CNN producer Jennifer Pifer said she too learned work ethic at Lakota as well as Midwestern values when she was director of the high school radio station under teacher Kay Taylor.

"It's funny, because I think when I was growing up there, I always wanted to leave, because it was kind of small," she said. "... As I've grown up and gotten older, I've realized how special it was. I felt very secure and loved."

After majoring in history at college in Washington, Pifer worked at multiple radio and television stations before ending up at CNN in 1999. She recently reconnected with classmates by creating a Facebook social networking page about her upcoming July 12 class reunion. Her 500 classmates have changed, but she said reuniting on the Internet has sparked a new bond among them, breaking down old cliques.

"People are celebrating our commonalities," she said. "I've been really impressed with how people that probably didn't hang out in high school together have really struck up friendships."

To get more information about the reunion, e-mail lakotahs_88@yahoo.com.

Contact this reporter at (513) 755-5067 or lhilty@coxohio.com.