BUCKFIELD — Denise Reehl heard the teachers’ warnings.

“Watch out for these two,” they’d tell Reehl, who showed up at Buckfield High School to help the kids put on a play. “They’re always acting out in class. They won’t sit still for five minutes.”

Reehl ignored the teachers and gave the boys each a spotlight.

One was class clown Michael Miclon, who would later create the Oddfellow Theater, head the Maine Arts Commission and finance and direct his own movie.

The other was a sprite of a kid: Patrick Dempsey.

“He was little,” Reehl said of the boy she met. “He was nothing like he is now, tall and broad-shouldered. He really was this wiry little kid who didn’t sit still.”

In the fall of 1980, he was a high school freshman. Only four years later, he’d join a touring company of Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy.” A year after that, his first movie would debut. All the rest — from “Grey’s Anatomy” to the Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing — were decades away.

In that fall of 1980, he was just a regular kid with a too-cute smile and a let-me-show-you-what-I-can-do attitude.

He wanted to be a movie star, though.

“That’s what Pat’s goal was,” Miclon said. “That’s what he wanted to do. Pat wanted to be in movies.”

First, he had to endure school.

Muddling through

High school wasn’t easy for Patrick.

He was a charming kid, but he had trouble fitting in despite the fact that his mom, Amanda, worked as the school secretary.

“Pat was one of those kids who intimidated all of the guys because he was more relaxed and more forward and more comfortable with the ladies,” said Miclon, who became friends with Dempsey.

“I think it rubbed a lot of the guys the wrong way,” said Miclon, who is a year younger. “So a lot of them tried to beat him up all of the time, or chase him down and stuff him into lockers, stuff like that.

“Sometimes he’d charm his way out of that, too,” Miclon remembers.

Dempsey also has dyslexia, which soured him on academics.

He muddled though, even joining the book club with Miclon.

“He was cute and fun and funny, but he was hard to keep on task,” said Jody Douglass, who ran the club and serves as the school’s assistant librarian. “He never wanted to talk about the book.”

He joined because the book club took four trips a year to see the Portland Stage Company.

“We got to go to plays,” she said.

Arriving on stage

Dempsey was already trying to become a performer.

A junior high teacher, Paul McKinney, had taught him to juggle.

“He got into juggling before I did,” said Miclon, who later became a master juggler. “I was sort of the class clown but I had no directed version of what I was doing. He was the guy who was hosting the talent shows, and he was doing juggling and unicycling and things like that.”

Reehl connected Dempsey with veteran performer Randy Judkins.

The boy sat in on a couple of camps Judkins taught on the circus arts, including riding a unicycle, juggling and clowning.

“He was a quick study,” Judkins said. “He was very physical. I remember being quite amazed at how quickly he learned things.”

When the camps were finished, Judkins agreed to mentor Dempsey.

“He said, ‘How can I pay you for this?’,” Judkins said. “I said, ‘You don’t have to if you just help me rake my leaves.'” His dad would bring him down for a few hours. He’d rake my leaves, and then we’d juggle or ride unicycles.

“He was so young and really so interested and vibrant with everything that he learned,” Judkins said.

Often, Judkins remembers, he showed Dempsey how to do something only once before it was mastered.

“He’d come back the next day and he’d taught himself,” Judkins said. “He spent the time. He just really was diligent abut it.”

To Judkins and his wife, he was like a member of the family.

“We didn’t have kids, yet, so we kind of took him under,” Judkins said. “We jokingly called him, ‘Our son.'”

By 1981, Judkins helped Dempsey work up a short routine. That July, he and his wife drove the boy to Cleveland for the 34th International Juggler’s Convention.

“He did a three-ball and a four-ball routine,” Judkins said. “He lit the place on fire. The judges were really impressed with his energy and skill. He scored very well.”

He came away with a second place in the juniors competition.

Soon, he became Buckfield’s go-to juggler. He had business cards printed up.

They read, “Pat Dempsey JUGGLER.” They also listed other skills: ventriloquism, “puppetts” (sic), unicycling, and clown.

He even gave lessons.

Douglass said her son, Jason, became an early customer.

“He came home one day and said, ‘Patrick Dempsey said he’d teach me to juggle for $5 an hour’ and I said I am not paying $5 an hour for you to learn to juggle,” she said. “So Pat taught him anyway.”

Dempsey also mentored Miclon. Then, the two created an act they called “The Gentlemen.”

Their first performance was in North Turner at the Boofy Quimby Memorial Center.

“I don’t even remember how many shows we did,” Miclon said. “I don’t think it was a lot. I know it was a handful. Pat would come over and we would work on stuff.” Dempsey juggled. Miclon told jokes and gave comedic recitations.

“He was pretty driven,” Miclon said. “That’s why he became such a good juggler.”

Dempsey became single-minded about performing.

“Once you finally have an outlet for it, you don’t want to do anything else,” Miclon said.” That’s the way it was for me, and I know that’s the way it was for Pat.”

Their act ended in 1982 when Dempsey started his junior year of high school at St. Dominic’s Regional High School in Lewiston.

“That sort of ended the partnership,” Miclon said. “We kept in touch a little bit.”

Late in his junior year, Dempsey entered the Talent America competition. He won the talent show’s top prize in Portland and went to nationals in New York.

He won that, too.

Less than a month later, he got an offer to tour with “Torch Song Trilogy.” The job was to replace another teen actor, Jon Cryer (now the Emmy-award winning star of “Two and a Half Men”).

Moving on

Dempsey didn’t accept right away.

The decision over whether to let the then-16-year-old boy tour the country with a professional play weighed on his mother, Amanda. It would be a tough decision for any parent.

“She called me,” Reehl said. “She asked me if I would let my own son go.”

“It would have meant that he quit school,” Reehl said. “He didn’t like school and he wasn’t doing well.”

But it was what he loved, said his old drama teacher.

Reehl took her time.

“The way he learns is not through academics. It just isn’t,” Reehl said. “And this is a passion that he has now. He’s so passionate about doing this, that I guess if I saw my son like that, I would say, ‘Go.’ He could always get his GED.”

“You know, she had a big decision to make and that’s how she made the decision. It certainly changed his life and, now, we can say for the better.”

Dempsey and Miclon continued to stay in touch a little, until Dempsey’s first movie, “Heaven Help Us,” came along.

Dempsey gave Miclon his old juggling equipment and a dove that he’d used on stage. (“I had to give that away because it never stopped cooing,” Miclon said. “It drove me insane.”)

Miclon ran into Dempsey once when he visited home in the early 1990s, and after the movies “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Loverboy” had made him a young heartthrob. They saw each other again during the first charity Dempsey Challenge in 2010.

“It was good,” Miclon said. “He was nice.”

Judkins hosted the gala event at the 2010 Challenge and even performed a doctor sketch with his old student.

“He’s a handsome engaging movie actor,” Judkins said. “He understands what people need. All good performers will know that. He is, I think, a megastar.”

Reehl hasn’t seen Dempsey in decades.

She watches most of his movies and TV shows and is considering a visit during the annual Dempsey Challenge (this year scheduled for Oct. 13 and 14).

“Maybe this year I’ll get to it,” she said. “I would like to connect with him. I think he’s a wonderful guy.”

“I’m very happy that I was in the right place at the right time to help Patrick see what was lying dormant in him,” she said.

Dempsey’s career

Best known as Dr. Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, Patrick Dempsey has dozens of other professional credits, including:

Film

1985: The Stuff, Heaven Help Us

1986: Meatballs III: Summer Job

1987: Can’t Buy Me Love; In the Mood

1988: Some Girls; In a Shallow Grave

1989: Loverboy; Happy Together

1990: Coupe de Ville

1991: Mobsters; Run

1993: Bank Robber

1994: With Honors; Ava’s Magical Adventure

1995: Outbreak

1997: Hugo Pool

1998: Denial; The Treat; There’s No Fish Food in Heaven

1999: Me and Will

2000: Scream 3

2002: Sweet Home Alabama

2003: Lucky 7; The Emperor’s Club

2004: Iron Jawed Angels

2006: Brother Bear 2; Shade

2007: Freedom Writers; Enchanted

2008: Made of Honor

2010: Valentine’s Day; Easy A

2011: Transformers: Dark of the Moon; Flypaper

Television

1986: A Fighting Choice (movie); Fast Times (series)

1989: The Super Mario Brothers Super Show! (1 episode)

1990: General Motors Playwrights Theater episode of “Merry Christmas, Baby”

1993: For Better and for Worse (movie); JFK: Reckless Youth (miniseries)

1995: Bloodknot (movie)

1996: The Right to Remain Silent (movie); A Season in Purgatory (miniseries)

1997: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (miniseries); The Escape (movie); The Player (movie)

1998: The Bible: Jeremiah (movie); Crime and Punishment (movie)

2000: Will and Grace (3 episodes in series); Once and Again (4 episodes in series)

2001: Blonde (miniseries); Karen Sisco (1 episode); About a Boy (movie)

2004: Iron Jawed Angels (movie); The Practice (3 episodes in series)

2005 to present: Grey’s Anatomy (146 episodes in series)

2009, 2012: Private Practice (2 episodes in series)

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