My 50th High School Reunion. Seriously.

My 50th high school reunion is this year. 

I'm sure everyone who utters this statement feels the same lack of belief that I do.

      I remember running into a group of 50th reunion revelers when I was in college. I was with some of my Long Island high school friends in a Boston bar on  Commonwealth Avenue. We were surprised to find our hangout was filled with old people whose hangout this had been once. They sought us out, bought us drinks, and told us stories of their student days in Boston, around 1914. Fossils, right? I don't remember any of the stories, but one of the guys I was with started calling our elders "White Rabbits."

(As a refresher the reference is to Lewis Carroll who described the 
White Rabbit as "elderly, feeble, timid, and nervously shillyshallying.")

Fifty years later the White Rabbits of that evening reappear in my mind's eye, but I don't see myself or my high school friends among them - and I'm sure those White Rabbits didn't see us as we saw them.
       I wonder how 50 years will look on the expressions of my school friends when I see them - many for the first time since 1965? The classmates I've seen regularly over the years haven't aged a bit from my perspective. Oh, when I first see them coming towards me, maybe, but five minutes into a conversation and nothing has changed. We've shared youth and energy for so long - some of us since Kindergarten - that it is part of who we are when we're together.
      What amazes me is that same feeling has come through the telephone when I've talked to long-lost friends about our upcoming reunion. I don't know what they look like these days, since we're not on face-time nor are we facebook friends, so it's the voice that triggers the link. There's no "quavering," no "shilly-shallying." It's just as we always were.
    Of course, the changes show through: We aren't discriminatory about who our friends are any more. We suffer deep pauses to honor the trials of our lives. We overuse the phrase: "Remember when...." We recall that since our last reunion in 1997, dear ones have died, long marriages have ended, and a multitude of grandchildren have been born.
       But all of that fades away when we allow ourselves the luxury of settling back into the friendship and fun of high school, turning the sturm and drang of it into humor because we were teenagers then, and we also went to a Catholic school where boys and girls attended classes in separate buildings after 8th grade commencement.
      However, in our town, we are fortunate to have a unifying element: The Tender Bar, made famous in JR Moehringer's memoir of the same title. The bar, now known as Edison's, was called Gino's in our iteration of the same place. Today, the bar hosts nearly every Friday night open house for Manhasset's public and parochial school reunions. The layout is exactly the same, and if the music is right, Baby Boomers will be able to imagine "Gary and the Wombats" playing in the back room while we dance away the years into memories.
        These will comprise:
        Performing at or going to the New York World's Fair; imitating the Rolling Stones for a school review; hearing a gifted classmate sing "Let There Be Peace on Earth."
     

      There will be memories of Mission Day, when the boys got to come to the girls' school, or proms at the Garden City Hotel where nuns and brothers greeted us upon entry, or the Boulevard nightclub in Queens where Dione Warwick entertained us in the wee hours after our senior dance.
          Someone will bring up the trip to Notre Dame University; a religious retreat to eastern Long Island; basketball games followed by sock hops in the boys' gym; cross country; baseball; cheerleading; the Tumbling Team; the Magnificat; the Recordare, and the demerits we got for being "out of uniform."  Oh, and a most important fact: The 1965 Girls' School Sports' Night ended in an unprecedented Blue and White tie.
        So, for full disclosure, I wasn't going to go to this reunion until the other day when a friend since Kindergarten called and said: "How many chances are we going to get to go to a 50th reunion?"
        I realized she was right. I wasn't a huge fan of high school itself, (although I taught in the field for 25 years), but I loved the people in that little micro-cosm of life. The girl in homeroom who sat in front of me from Kindergarten through 12th grade. The boy at my first sock hop who asked me to dance. Al, the crossing guard at Northern Boulevard who joked us across the street ("Yackety-Yak"). George at Town Hall Pharmacy who made us prove we had money before letting us in the door. The parents who let us drive their convertibles under starlit skies from Shore Road to Sands Point and back again. The bouncers who let us into Gaffney's, My Father's Place, the Jaunting Car Pub, and the Scratch. The bartender in Gino's who announced my mother had just called to say: "Come home, now!"
        I've decided I want to remember these things with the Class of 1965, the kids who went off to college in full prep school dress, only to return at Christmas in blue jeans and tie-dyed shirts. The ones who went off to pursue a religious life. The ones who went off to war. The ones who became poets, parents, and professors; lawyers, sales reps, doctors, traders, realtors, and heroes. All of us. For this is a chance to look at who we were then, who we are now, and the distance in between - a view that doesn't come often in life.

*****

Also, the Friday night get-together will be November 6, 2015, beginning at 7:30 (pay as you go) at Edison’s (the old Gino’s). One of the beauties of public or private school in Manhasset is we knew each other through siblings and friends. So if you’re a sibling or friend of the Class of ’65, come to the Tender Bar on November 6^th. It would be so great to see you.

***


Suzanne McLain Rosenwasser is the author of several books:

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Churchyard Socials

I enjoy a good cemetery. I’m not sure why. Possibly it’s the silence, or maybe the history, or sometimes just a beautiful fence. For that matter it might be the names, the trees, the mystery, or the location. I’ve planned visits to specific graveyards, and I've stopped the car to peruse a resting ground by a roadside, or to follow arrows to old family plots here and there. I have laughed, cried, worked, and played in cemeteries. 

My novel, Don’t Ya Know, has a cemetery in it that plays an important role in the story: 

“The cemetery stood in a field off the turn-around where the shell road ended, not far from the Shellfoots’ land and a good stretch from Scylla’s Cove below. An expansive wrought-iron fence surrounded a motley outcropping of gravestones. Some of the island’s earliest dwellers were laid to rest there; two graves, with faded names, dated back to the 1730s. Several slates stood like tiny teeth among them. They were markers for small children.”

I incorporated the cemetery into the book after a trip to St. Simon’s Island in Georgia where a friend took me to a family plot, nestled back off a main road at the side of the property where her ancestors lived and died. 

St. Simon's

My friend hadn’t been there in a while, and when we approached she let out a gasp. The burial grounds had been vandalized. The intricately-wrought, iron fence had been destroyed, parts of it stolen for salvage. Several of the grave markers had been pummeled. Recovering from the shock of the sight, my friend introduced the dead, those she knew and those whose stories she had learned. She pointed to a strip of graves at the far end of the plot. The stones were simple, just names and dates - no angels, no scrolls. This is where the  family’s servants were buried, not apart from but honored within the borders of the fence. I was struck by the power of that in contrast to the disrespect dealt by the 21st century grave robbers.

                                                                              ***

On a recent trip to New York, my husband and I stopped at the Records’ Office of Calvary Cemetery, one of the oldest burial grounds in the US which has the largest number of interments: More than 3 million, all Roman Catholics, in 500,000 plots over 364 acres owned by the Archdiocese of New York. There have been four expansions, the last occurring when graves had to be moved to build the Long Island Expressway. My mother’s family members, 8 of them, are buried in “Third Calvary.” The plot was purchased in 1902 by my grandfather, James Joseph O'Neill. A child was buried then. We found this out from a genial, office worker who actually provided great customer service. He looked my grandfather up in a microfiche database and then hauled out a huge leather binder from a vast library. There are no computer records. All information comes from the original files, so precise dates are required. He found my relatives in section 32.

Calvary

It was a misty day in June when we visited. A large, pink marble marker indicates the O’Neills’ resting place. There are no individual names for the interred, but I know who most are. Few of the dead were very old. Most were victims of immigration, tuberculosis, grief, and heredity. I paused for a moment, placing a stone on the marker and murmuring “Thank you." Later I reasoned I was acknowledging how hard their lives had been - theirs and so many of the others whose monuments rose and fell into the horizon of a settling fog that blocked the city's skyline. The scope seemed infinite.

Calvary

                                                                               ***

Several years ago, my sister and I made a trip to Elm Springs which is my paternal grandmother’s birthplace in Columbia, Tennessee. We came on a lark to connect with our heritage, at least the part of it that isn’t second generation, New York Irish. We arrived to discover that the house we’d known from a grainy, black and white photo is an historical site, the headquarters of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Our visit became more solemn.

Elm Springs

We learned Elm Springs, built in 1837 on an old stagecoach road, served as the Confederate headquarters of General Frank E. Armstrong in 1864. We were told by a docent that when the Yankees came, a loyal slave attempted to burn the manse down rather than have it occupied by Union soldiers. For proof, the docent opened the door to a scorched closet. This bore witness to a story our dad had told us, and at that moment we realized we really are a part of this place.

Todd Cemetery, Elm Springs

We asked to visit the family cemetery which sits on a hill to the left of the house. Walking within its stacked-stone walls, we felt an eerie sense of wonder. An obelisk rises from the center of the plot. It honors James Dick Todd, 21, the first to be interred in 1843. There are approximately 11 graves. All are clearly marked with the Todds, Looneys and others who came along. However three of the graves bear only initials: ABW, STW, and MP. There are no records indicating who they are. I’d like to think one of them honors the loyal slave who tried to save Elm Springs from the Yankees.

But I don't know. That's the thing about heritage, one takes what one finds, and unfortunately that usually involves some kind of war. Those stories are told in old cemeteries, too. My paternal tree dates back to the Virginia grave of a great, great (etc.) uncle who fought England in the Revolution. My friend's Georgia family and my Tennessee kin waged a war among cousins, North and South. The O'Neills' fight was with immigration on the streets of New York in the 1890s. And so many wars  followed. Maybe that's what I like about cemeteries: At last, after all of life's turbulence, death has brought an ironic peace.

                                                                     ***********
                           (to be continued, don't ya know. I've visited many a cool cemetery)

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The Wonderful Oneness of All

My grand-daughter has said her first word recently, and it’s:   "Hi!”

Is that a terrific first word or what?

She says it to everybody and everything.  

“Hi!” she says to the lady quietly approaching her cart in the grocery store.  “Hi!” she says to the dog walking toward us on a leash and “Hi!” to the dog’s owner, as he passes by.  “Hi!” to the scarecrow on our neighbor’s lawn and “Hi!” to the creepy ghosts flying from the tree branches.

The baby hears a bird and points up to the tree:  “Hi!” she calls, and “HI!” to the postal lady driving by in the truck and “Hi!” to Sr. Salvador who tips his hat while mowing a lawn.

They all say “Hi!” back in their own way, even the ghostly sheets appear to blow more strongly in the breeze. And it may be just a simple “Hi!” but I’ve seen it make the day of perfect strangers over and over again.

An elderly couple exited a building, assisted by walkers the other day.  Hearing this chirpy “Hi!”, they stopped in their tracks.

“Well, hello, little one,” the lady said. “How nice to hear such a sweet hello.  And with a cheery smile too? Oh my goodness, how lucky I am.” 

The woman chortled and chatted while her husband stood behind her making faces and popping noises from his mouth as he must have done for all the babies in his life. 

My grand-daughter flapped her arms and chortled back:  “Hi!  Hi!” EiEi! Hi!” - adding the signature sound to her ultimate greeting for those who totally experience the joy of being in that moment with her.

I’ve said every month - “Oh she’s cuter than she’s ever been...” but this month - this tenth month has to be the one that tops the others.  If she gets any sweeter, I will melt.

                                                              With her Grandpa, saying "Hi!" to the owl scarecrow 

                                                                         decorating our hometown Main Street

I am grandmother, hear me gush.

Those smiles.  That laugh. Those arms reaching out to me.  That sloppy wet kiss and the instant, down dog that interrupts even the most serious oatmeal box play.  

When I see my daughter, the child’s mother, we just exchange a look of love about this off-spring and then utter,  simultaneously: “I knowwwwww,” shaking our heads with thumping hearts because there are just no words left to say what we’re feeling.

No words except: “Hi!” which just rings through the air with a purity only a baby can give to her first word.

“Hi!” she says to me when I’m feeding her and “Hi!” again -  with a wave this time - when she looks around the corner of her stroller at her grandpop pushing behind. 

“Hi!” to the squirrel who skitters past us on the road. “Hi!” to the breeze when it rustles through her hair.

We are such open spirits when we’re new...when our words are new and the world is new to our new grandparents who see their own children anew with each and every “Hi!”

What is it, I wonder - this wonderful oneness with all - and where, oh where does it go?

Proms, Dione Warwick, and a White '59 Corvette

        

              

                                   

High School teachers attend proms. Before retirement, I had been to more than a few, and at each one - as chaperones - we gaped at the kids doing their things and told our own prom stories. 

These are mine.

St. Mary’s had a Junior Prom held in the boys’ gym when the schools were separated by gender. In my Sophomore year, a Junior invited me. My mother said I was too young to go to a prom and I’m sure I threw a huge fit, but I didn’t go.

In my Junior year, I was dating a Manhasset boy who was a Freshman in college. Since my mother knew his mother, the age difference seemed to pass by without a squabble. The college boy accepted my invitation to Junior Prom in the gym: “An Evening in Paris,” decorated by student council members.

I wore a dotted-swiss dress which came down to the floor and clear up to my neck where it was delicately embroidered with pink rosebuds. It was a hand-me-down from my sister, Mary - a normal, clothing transaction I was fine with my whole life, right up to the day I wore the same wedding gown she had worn. 

As for Junior Prom, the college boy had his own car, so - unlike most of my friends going with boys who weren’t old enough to drive at night - I didn’t have to travel in the backseat while someone’s father chauffeured us to the high school.

There was one problem, however.  My college boy was the ex-boyfriend of one of my BFF’s. She had not taken the breakup well, and when I entered the picture - even though time had passed - she couldn’t forgive me.

I totally got that. Really. I would have hated me, too. 

Consequently, since our other friends understood the issue more clearly than I did in my nubile romantic state, they supported our mutual, heartbroken girlfriend.

That left college boy and me with nowhere to sit at prom.

So we walked around to other tables, saying hello. We danced a bit to “Bobby and the Orbits.” We had our photo taken under a starry blue, eiffel-towered arch and danced some more. That’s all I remember of the night. I know at some point our romance involved the exchange of a heavy silver, I.D. bracelet, some necking at the Westbury Drive-In, and a few nights spent in Gino’s or at the Hilltop (illegally for me).

However, by the spring of my Senior year, all that had changed. College boy was gone, my BFFs were back, and I didn’t have a date for my Senior Prom at the Garden City Hotel. 

Suffice it to say, in 1965 girls didn’t go to proms in groups or pairs.

A few weeks before the big night, I was discussing this dilemma in a kitchen in Sea Cliff where a St. Mary’s friend lived with her parents and two brothers.

Her mother - one of the kindest and most beautiful moms I’ve ever known - said:  

“Well you’ve got to go to your Senior Prom!  It’s something you never forget. Why don’t you go with (not his name) Jay? Yes, that’s perfect!”

And before I knew it, she was calling: 

“Ja-ay?  Ja ayyy?” up the stairs and my friend was jumping up and down, saying: 

“Perfect.  Jay’s the perfect answer. You can go with JAY!”

I was stunned. Jay was a year older than we were and about as close to perfect as one could get.  

His brown hair stood up in a high crew; he had a “great physique” (in the term of the times) and his eyes - well, let’s just say, my friends would be more than honored to sit with me this year.

Jay’s mom came bounding down the back steps - in jeans with her pony- tail bobbing and her smile pulsing all the way through her eyes over to mine.

“Jay just got out of the shower.  He’ll be down in a minute.” 

Before I had a chance to breathe in some Zen at a two-story window looking out over the cliffs onto LI Sound, Jay came down the stairs -  in a tennis shirt that hung out over cut-off jeans. He was rubbing his wet hair with a towel.

“So...Susu..how about I take you to prom?”

I started to laugh and say stupid things about his mother making him ask me - and Jay said:

“It wasn’t my mom that made me ask you, it was her promise that I could take you in her car.”

Well, that may have offended some girls, but Jay’s mom’s car was a 1959, white Corvette convertible - a two-seater with red leather seats.

I went over it in my head:  My date would be Jay - one of the smoothest St. Mary’s guys in the Class of 1964 who would be driving one of the coolest cars ever. It started to make sense to me, so I said: “Let’s go!” 

I wore a butter-yellow dress with an empire waist and soft ruffles at the neck that I’d just worn as a bridesmaid in my brother’s wedding. I also carried a light scarf, as advised by Jay’s mom, so we could ride with the top down. 

Jay wore a white dinner jacket and pinned a Gardenia corsage below my shoulder. 

When we pulled up to the front of the Garden City Hotel, three parking valets ran toward the Corvette to attend to it.

I don’t remember much of the prom itself. I mostly remember driving in that car which took us along the LIE toward Queens at midnight. We were headed to “The Boulevard,” a nightclub.  Dione Warwick was scheduled to perform at 1 a.m. after doing a few other shows first and finding the need to have more than a drink or two while she performed. The last show of her night was for an audience composed of underaged school kids with fake id’s.

I will be kind and say she was over-tired and perhaps alcohol wasn’t the best choice; she was definitely at the stage where one’s words aren’t coming together well.  So, for some reason, she stopped singing and began to tell LONG stories about herself in high school - none of which I recall - but I do remember this: She kept saying she’d cook breakfast for us if we showed up at her house in NJ. She had an assistant write out directions. She was quite insistent about making kids in the audience promise they’d show up.

I never heard about anyone going. I know the kids I was with didn’t even think about it.

We had plans back in Sea Cliff - on the beach below Jay’s parents’ house, where they and some of the other Senior parents were serving breakfast.  

We ate a fine spread and watched the sun come up over the familiar shorelines of our LI Sound. Someone played the guitar, some of us fell asleep, a few had serious conversations with the adults about what our futures held. Others went for walks down along the water.

Jay and I watched it all, and, while the sun rose just a few coves away over our hometown, friends became friends forever - and I never forgot that Jay’s mom was right about some memories living with us as long as we live.

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                                                                                        BOBBY & the ORBITS

Killing Beauty

Another loved Manhasset entry arbor,  Park Avenue

                  STUMPED

The above headline appeared on the front page of the Manhasset Press on March 29, 2013.

The photos beneath it caught my eye because I am a lover of trees - a love which first formed in my Manhasset childhood.

I recognized the lush flowering cherries and pears blooming along Shelter Rock Road immediately and was puzzled by the bleak photo - appearing beneath - of telephone poles, a chain link fence, and - wait a minute, tree stumps?

Pat Grace, Editor of the Press, took the photos and wrote the copy:

“The Cherry and Bradford Pear trees along Shelter Rock Road and Searingtown Road that, more than anything else in Manhasset, once heralded spring - are gone. Stumps line the roads for Spring 2013.”

My heart squeezed as I thought of Manhasset’s dying dogwoods I’d watched disappear decades ago. What disease got these, I wondered?

Then I read on, and it turned out:  Nassau County ordered their removal as part of a $68 million contract with Great Tree Services, Inc.  

Seriously.

One yet-to-be-elected candidate for county comptroller offered this information: “...there is no documentation for the work [Great Services, Inc.] did. They were paid per tree to remove trees and the County did not supervise their work.”

He said what??????  “... paid per tree...the county did not supervise their work.”

The Village of North Hills Mayor, Marvin Natiss, told Ms. Grace that when he questioned the County, he was told only diseased trees were removed. Natiss reiterates what Ms. Grace’s March 2013 photo reveals: All the trees are gone, and, according to this news report, no one knows who authorized the total devastation.

I live in Georgia. Bradford Pears and Japanese Cherry trees abound in our neighborhoods and along our highways and by-ways.  Every year we watch tree crews come through pruning and cutting the bare branches back from the power lines, while doctoring or relieving diseased trees of their pain.

It’s an orderly and informative process that sends us home to do the same with our own cherries and pears - knowing that their limbs are weak and prone to cause storm damage.

My point is: We see this happen annually. Did no commuter, driving from the LIE to and from work, witness what was happening? Did the tree removers come in the dark of night? Did they cut down every fourth tree first, then thin them out until they slowly disappeared, hoping no one would notice?

I wish some hero had jumped from her car and tied herself to a tree with her Spanx while the workers were buzz-sawing their way through two of Manhasset’s most beautiful entry arbors. I know she would have inspired other drivers to join her. 

My Manhasset Press subscription arrives several days behind, so last week’s issue may contain letters aplenty on this topic.  I sure hope so.

This was just a ruthless slaughter in my tree-lover opinion. No wonder honey bees are having a hard time surviving.

Which brings me to an even more difficult loss that follows yet another senseless act perpetrated by humans:

What is it we don’t get about the destruction of natural beauty?

It is what gives all living things breath, joy, and hope. 

When we wipe it away carelessly, we’re denying ourselves the very roots of our sustenance, leaving us, well...yes:  "Stumped."

Consider the honey bees.