The Perfect Student : Rain or Shine, Ill or Well, He Never Missed Class

There are conscientious students. And then there is Ganesha High School senior Gregory Tiddle.

Every school day for the past 13 years, come rain or shine, sickness or health, Tiddle, 18, has packed up his textbooks and headed for class.

When he graduates today, it will be with the distinction of being the only student in the memory of officials at the the Pomona Unified School District to have never missed a day of class.

“Everybody laughed at me; they thought going to school every day was a nerdy thing to do,” the Diamond Bar teen-ager said. “But I’m really glad I did it. When I set my mind to something, I don’t let anything get in the way.”

District officials confirm Tiddle’s record. “He’s never missed a day,” said JoAnn King, an assistant principal at Ganesha. “He’s an excellent student and one of our top-notch athletes.”

Tiddle says the vow he made sometime during elementary school has been especially trying this past school year, when giddy seniors who can already taste their freedom have staged ditch days and urged him to miss occasional classes.

But Tiddle, who will study U.S. history at the University of La Verne this fall on an academic scholarship, persevered.

“I had to sit through a lot of boring classes,” said Tiddle, who went to Armstrong Elementary and Lorbeer Junior High schools. Especially excruciating, he said, was an economics class where he would finish the assigned work early and sit silently doing other homework until the bell rang.

Then there was the time during his sophomore year when Tiddle got the flu over a three-day weekend and his temperature shot up to 102. The illness forced him to miss a soccer game and threatened to ruin his perfect attendance.

“My mom said, ‘If your temperature isn’t down by Monday, I don’t care about your record, you’re staying home,’ ” said Tiddle, who maintained a 3.76 GPA on a 4.0 scale and wants to be a high school history teacher.

The teen-ager said he willed himself back into good enough health to satisfy his parents. Luckily, he said, “I don’t get sick often. I’m in pretty good health with playing football, soccer, volleyball and golf.”

Attendance has been touch and go since Easter vacation, when a car crash left Tiddle without his Mazda to get to the high school, which is in Pomona. But he cadged rides from family members and friends.

“The last couple of months it scared me, I didn’t know if I was going to make it,” Tiddle said.

Will he continue his quest for perfect attendance in college? Tiddle, who plans to play soccer for the University of La Verne, hasn’t decided yet.

“With sports and traveling,” he said, “we’ll just have to see about that.”