It’s been a really good week filled with a touch or two of sadness.
It’s really Larry’s fault. Larry is a high school classmate of mine and a couple of years ago he started me on a journey to find those from my misspent youth. It has resulted in a radical change in my life and continues to do so. And so to avenge what he started, I invited him to our high school reunion. But while some of this is Larry’s story, much of that is one for him to tell, or sing about. I will address my own story and, hopefully, touch upon some of my classmates.
On Wednesday, I dragged ‘Vagabond’, my RV trailer, out of its summer residence. The trailer is a symbol of one of those life changes as I have taken it up and down the East Coast despite the incredibly high gas prices we have been experiencing. It is time to travel now, before I am no longer able to do so. The RV park where it was situated closed for the winter on the 15th and I will be going on a journey to “who knows where” in a day or so. At the moment, the plan calls for heading towards the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY followed by a trek to Niagara Falls and then Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But it could just as easily become some rural town in the Carolinas or visiting an old friend in Dallas. One of my classmates, Joyce, put it best in our yearbook when she wrote that her future plans were “subject to change.”
It now sits in a county park as I write at its table and continue to reflect on the way we were and the way we are. The park, Mahlon Dickerson Reservation, is a favorite place of mine as I spent much of last year tent camping there and, despite a minor problem with a bear destroying my tent, I love its solitude. Even as rain pounds my roof, I am filled with a quiet peace, a major contrast from this week when emotions drove me into a near hypomanic frenzy.
The park is rarely used during weekdays except in the summer and here I can walk among the lush fall foliage and allow that peace to descend upon me. It is raining a the moment and the pounding on the roof reminds me I sit here safe and secure – at least for a while – from the pressures the world has in store for me.
On Thursday morning, I picked up Larry at the Newark Airport. Even before arriving there memories of the past started to boil. Having spent most of the last three decades flying out of an airport on Long Island within minutes of my home, I had long forgotten how to get there and had to rely on my GPS system. It took me along a local route through Newark’s Ironbound district, with many traffic lights.
Suddenly, I found myself stopped at Newark’s Penn Station. The last time I had been there was on a hot summer night in July 1967. I had been in an auto accident at the Jersey shore a few weeks earlier and had taken the train there to plead and pay my fine. The return trip took me to Newark, where I would catch the PATH train to Hoboken for my trip back home to Morristown. As I stood on the platform, I noticed a very large fire in the distance. It seemed like a block wide. It was the beginning of the Newark riots between July 12 and July 17, 1967. The six days of rioting, looting, and destruction left 26 dead and hundreds injured. It was the worst of more than 150 urban riots in African American ghettos including Cleveland, Milwaukee and Detroit. There was a lot of political agitation behind this typified by Black Panther Rapp Brown's oft-quoted epithet "Burn, baby, burn." I had lived with and gone to school with African Americans for many years. Two of my best high school friends were Black and the riots changed me in some ways. It was my first experience with black/white fear and for decades I looked at other races with a degree of distrust.
In our high school days, we lived in an area of defacto-segregated housing. The largest Black area was some projects and was in a small dell and was called The Hollow. There were other areas that I had then thought of as “pocket ghettos” where families who could afford to own their own houses lived. My area of houses dating back to the Civil War era, was pretty much white, with the exception of the Jenkins, whose father was a police officer in town. “Sarge” had a son who was our classmate and kept us in line and sometimes gave love and understanding to those who were troubled and needed it, no matter what race. Kids were always welcome when the back yard pool was open and it was a welcome relief in the summer.
The white children of the era thought of discrimination as something from the South, not from Morristown, and it was only later that most of us learned about racism in the suburbs.
There are two African Americans who had a great impact on my life in those days. Michael Sapp and I shared duties as track team managers in our junior year. We usually wound up inside taking care of equipment while the track team practiced. And we would sit and talk and settle the problems of the world. I was invited to his home; he to mine. Early in our senior year, Michael died in an automobile crash. I was astounded to learn that he left behind a pregnant wife. I could never understand why he didn’t share that with me as we sat next to each other every day in homeroom. Perhaps it was race, but I hope not. I think of him often and how such a wonderful young man was lost even before he graduated.
The other boy is David Caldwell. David was one in a series of outstanding Black basketball players the school produced. He was magnificent, leading the state in scoring in his senior year. Lightning fast, he teamed with another guard in mounting a full-court press for the entire game. When one player would steal the ball, he would simply toss it in the air to the basket where the other would lay it up. David also had the most accurate jump shot I ever saw. After losing an early season loss, the team roared through an exciting schedule, winning the county and conference titles before losing in the state championship quarterfinals to a high school in Newark that was the national champion that year. David still had his 24-point average in that game. He was guarded by future NBA Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkins.
Incredibly, David was only 5’6”. There wasn’t a person on the team over six feet tall. I vividly remember watching a game at Bayonne High School. During warm-ups Bayonne trotted out three guys who were over 6’5”. Those of us who took a school bus to the game talked about how this wasn’t going to be our night. David and his teammates absolutely ran circles around these big guys, constantly stealing and scoring. The team scored 100 points and won by at least 40.
David never did well in college. I learned he went to a small college in Southern New Jersey. It was the late ‘60s and drugs were everywhere. I am told that he became involved with them and died way before his time. That one year of spectacular high school basketball being the legacy of his life.
But that one year imparted on me, and I’m sure others, a love for the game of basketball, which remains within us to this day. While I am awed by the incredible skills of people like Michael Jordan, I sometimes think back to a time David took this shot, or stole that bal.
What does this have to do with a high school reunion? It is part of our common experience. It has, in some minor way, made us who we are today. Vietnam, the JFK assassination, The Regan years, wars in the Middle East, computers and the Internet, and much more have become our touchstones. And the touchstones of the Class of ’66 are many.
So I picked up Larry and took him through Northern New Jersey as I drove to my home in Port Jervis, NY. Larry is from Florida and the rich foliage, quiet ponds and steep hills has been something he has long missed. I watched as he was awed by the scenery of his childhood, thoroughly enjoying his enjoyment. He pointed out lakes and streams that I considered ordinary. He also got a kick out of my location, where three states meet along the Delaware River. After picking up some things at my place, we headed for Denville, NJ where we would be staying with another classmate. I made sure he went through Pennsylvania so he could stay he had been in three states that day. And he spoke to others several times about that experience.
While the ride was a touchstone for Larry, it was also a time of reflection for me. While raised in Morristown, I passed places where I had been as a young child. Part of the area was in Culver Lake, the location of a long-forgotten summer camp. And another was Stokes State Forest, where I had camped with various youth groups and later took dates to its serene lake. Many memories came back, both good and bad. For the forest was not only an adventure in my youth, but a place of hiding as my ex-wife and I fought through our divorce. The summer of 2010 was sometimes one of fear as I wandered homeless and lived in a tent. I suffered through the heat of the summer and feared the oncoming cold of the winter as I searched for a more permanent place to live.
That night, several of us had dinner at another classmate’s, Lois. Lois and I were mere acquaintances back in the day. Though we were in the same homeroom, we did not share any classes. But it turned out that she had married a good friend from the high school I attended in the first half of my freshman year. Ross and I were the starting guards on what was possibly the worst freshman football team in the history of New Jersey. I shared last Christmas Eve with her, singing carols at the Basking Ridge town square on the 50th anniversary of the last time I sang there. We have, like many others, developed a friendship based on the merging of experience over the years.
The dinner was lively and we talked until well after midnight, the first of many nights of talk. One of the common touchstones for Larry and Lois was their heritage. While they weren’t close in high school, they shared much. In addition to the tightly closed racial discrimination of that era, there was anti-Semitism. And while most of us as students weren’t aware of it, it surely existed. A classic film of that time, “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” addressed the issue. Although belonging to different temples, the Jewish students tended to stick with one another and the common experiences and memories of friends and events shared between the Larry and Lois made me envious as I never lived long enough in one place to develop such roots. Yet each of them are part of my root system of support these days.
Larry is a folk singer and on Friday he managed to grab a 15-minute spot during a local folk fest, as did the husband of another former classmate. So we went there the next evening. I had heard him play before and thoroughly enjoyed his contribution. But more importantly, I discovered yet another personal touchstone. The open mike was being held at the local Unitarian/Universalist church. It was, in fact, across the street from where Lois grew up.
For me, however, it is the descendant of The Thirsty Ear, a Morristown folk club where I spent many wonderful hours listening to folk music, waiting on tables and occasionally performing poetry and telling tall tales. I talked to several people who remembered the club and they sell water bottles, which feature the ear logo and read “quench your ear” on them.
The classmate whose husband performed was Trylla Thermond. I had a small crush on her during our freshman year when she sat near me in French Class. The years have treated her very, very well and she retains both a beauty and sharp wit. But I remember Trylla most for her courage. She dated a Black classmate and became ignored by the white girls and treated with distrust by the black ones. I admired her courage for being so public about it, especially during times like lunch. The guy she dated was supposed to show up and never did. I wasn’t surprised, but I had been very curious as to what their reactions to one another would be.
After the folk singing, the talking went on into the night. I had to leave early to finish a website and got perhaps a few hours more sleep than they. I needed it.
In the morning, I drove to Morristown High’s football field to set up for the homecoming game. It was the start of my weekend mission. One of our classmates, Ed Hinds, was both a swimming teammate and a friend. His goal was to become a Catholic priest and he did so. His senior paper discussed the difficulties of remaining celibate in a time when teenage hormones were raging.
As a priest, Ed was stationed in several parishes around Morris County, the last one being at St. Anthony’s Church in Chatham. According to police, the church custodian murdered him when it was discovered that the custodian was wanted on several charges of child abuse in Pennsylvania. One of the things the custodian was charged with was impregnating an 11-year-old girl. The custodian stabbed Ed more than 20 times. The murder trial was scheduled to begin the week after the reunion.
Last year, I was able to nominate a friend who was a Vietnam War hero into the school’s “Wall of Fame”. This year I wanted to have at least 50 classmates join in nominating him as a group. I had printed up co-nomination forms for people to sign and some of my classmates showed up at the football game and signed them. I also had some important alumni do so.
Homecoming held its own touchstones for me. I played freshman football but that spring I blew my knee playing freshman baseball. Though I tried out for the football team in my sophomore and junior years, the knee just wouldn’t hold up and I couldn’t make it through practices for more than a few weeks. But I love to watch high school football and especially enjoyed photographing it in later years as a newspaper photographer.
In those days, there was an annual game between Morristown and Dover every Thanksgiving. But sometime in the 1970s, the rivalry ended when the state athletic association instituted a championship playoff format. While always the “big” game of any season, my most vivid memory was in the 1963 season during my sophomore year. Morristown was undefeated that year but in the previous week, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The game was held in Dover that year and the stands were packed. Morristown picked apart Dover, but everyone was very, very quiet. The bench lacked the usual shouting and bravado. The cheerleaders cheered less and the band played less. For our class, it was our loss of innocence. Kennedy inspired young people to be a force in the world and was admired. He had pulled us through the Cuban missile crisis and the threat of nuclear annihilation. And each of us took something from that event. I still mourn Kennedy at times. I recently visited the Kennedy Museum in Cape Cod and purchased a button that reads “If I were 21, I’d vote for Kennedy” – something I wore in 1960 when I went to school in Basking Ridge which was overwhelmingly Republican turf.
Getting back to the homecoming, it was a day for pink. Students, even the guys, were wearing pink tee shirts as part of the effort to combat breast cancer. The shirts had “Morristown Colonials” on the front and the pink ribbon logo on the back and I picked up several for friends as well as a ball cap for myself.
Except for my pickup, there were not other vehicles announcing class years save one. It belonged to an old man named “Dub” who played football in the early 1950s. He has created an exhibit of photos, newspaper articles and other memorabilia and exhibits it every year. His truck is a focal point for many of the older men who show up each year, all of whom lament the loss of the Dover game. Although the Dover game wasn’t the actual homecoming game, it was a reunion time for recent grads that returned from college for the Thanksgiving recess.
The alumni association was there, giving out sandwiches and selling memberships and “bricks”. There is an alumni garden near the field and bricks with the names of those who have passed can be purchased for $75. I went over to the walk and looked for people I knew. I was saddened that some of my teachers’ names were there.
Another thing that had changed was the refreshment stand. Back when I was a student, the Varsity M Club managed the stand with the proceeds going to the club. I remember standing over a huge pot of boiling water trying to keep up with the huge demand for hot dogs at halftime. Now adults who are part of the football booster club run it.
About an hour before game time, music started playing from the speakers and I hated it. It was rap and it certainly was the music of today’s student body. But as game time approached the marching band appeared. The school’s team name is the Colonials and they wear colonial era uniforms. When we were freshmen, we were in a school play called “Take Time Out” which raised funds for new band uniforms. Previously, the uniforms had been more along the lines of a traditional marching uniform, but the ones we raised money for were these colonial ones. I wondered if, over the years, some of those uniforms were the original ones.
But what made me exceptionally happy was the band played the very same tunes they did 45 years ago. Morristown scored an early touchdown and they erupted into the same fight song. I left with a smile on my face knowing something was still the same.
That night was the reunion. There were a lot of “old” people there. About 50 of our classmates and their spouses, with the exception of what I suppose was a trophy wife, exhibited grey hair, wrinkles, larger bellies and other signs of aging. The nametags were copies of our yearbook photos and the names were in small type. We stared at one another’s chests trying to read the name and then reacting with joy and delight upon recognition.
I continued to plead for co-nominators for Ed’s Wall of Fame and almost everyone attending signed on. Earlier in the week, I had been interviewed for an article in the Morris County Daily Record about the push to include Ed. Another person interviewed was Norm Smith, another swim team member, and he brought me an incredible tribute in the form of memories by the people Ed ministered to that was sent to him after the article appeared. To be on the Wall of Fame, the criteria is about what you did after school, not in it, and this documentation will more than be adequate to support the nomination.
A special pat on the back goes to Arnie Lazalow, who has been organizing these class reunions for many years. In addition to arranging the event, he keeps a diligent list of the current status of the members. It was truly a memorable event.
But that class directory also had a list of those who had passed away. I was stunned to find that Debbie Lake, who had doubled at our senior prom with Bill Stevens, Emily Huth and myself, had died. Debbie always wanted to be a nurse, and in those days, with a height of 4’ 8”, it was nearly impossible to get into a nursing school. She wound up going to a small school in Princeton. Bill and I took Debbie back to school one mischief night and I remember foaming a very expensive sports car whose owner left the top open. Take that Preppie!
My best memory of Debbie was her appearance in "Bye Bye Birdie," our senior class musical. One of the characters is a kid brother. After weeks of searching for a boy to fill the roll, I suggested Debbie and we drafted her. She was the right height and did a great job in an era where there was no such thing as microphones. We grew up knowing how to project to the rear of the balcony. I remember once using that voice for a radio commercial and completely screwing up the first take. Another person listed as dead was Phyllis, the female lead from the show. She had enormous talent and died soon after graduation, another victim of drugs. After Debbie and Bill broke up, I dated her and in a post-reunion get-together on Monday night I discovered that she was engaged to Peter, another member of our class before he joined the Army and went to Vietnam.
Most of the people who attended the reunion were not close to me. But as we sort of emerge from our callow youth, we discover the self-centered jerks we were no longer exist. It was fun to share with them. One friend, Andy, is now deeply involved with a drum and bugle corps and agreed to connect with one at a school where I lived during my middle school years. Another, Butch, was pleased that I remembered him not only for his track championships, but also that he was hampered by a hamstring injury in his senior year. I was pleased to discover his uncle, my homeroom teacher, is still doing well and agreed to forward a letter I plan to write to him.
Of course, our class had Vietnam as a touchstone most of us wished we never went near. Many of us served in the armed forces. Some of the talk was about that, but those who were in combat are still reluctant to share the experience. It remains for many something that just must be a closed part of their lives.
And then there was the counter culture. I have to admit being a “wanna-be” hippie. I had a beard and long hair. And I sure as hell tried to score with hippie girls. Yet I was absolutely terrified of drugs. I never tried them. One of the people there, whose name I won’t use to protect the guilty, went way out and embraced all the concepts, including open marriage. It was somewhat of a shock to hear her talk about it, but she is also one of the happiest people I met at the reunion. I guess, like me, she just refuses to grow up.
But there were also people who simply could not be found. And they were some of the people I really wanted to touch base with. There was much “unfinished business” between some of them and myself and I had hoped to share a memory and in some cases, an apology. It is part of making amends and I have to learn to accept that they will never be in my life again.
As the reunion ended, there was a 50-50 prize and I won. I never win stuff like this but somehow I expected to do so. As I accepted the money, I told the class the proceeds would be used to buy a brick for Ed Hinds at the Alumni Walk. Emily, my companion, said to another friend “watch, he’s going to give it away” as I walked up there. She knows me well. I have come to a point where I don’t really give a damn about money as long as I have enough to take care of me and pay the bills.
After the reunion, there was more talking. As we all remembered the past, I found many of us remembered what was important and the other touchstones of our lives.
The next morning, Larry visited his brother. The pair had rarely been together over the years and this was the second visit in a few days. I recognized that there had been some sort of healing. That afternoon, Larry was determined to do more. He visited a classmate who didn’t attend the reunion. He then took Emily and I to dinner and then we dragged Lois and another classmate who didn’t attend the party to a bar for some drinks. I don’t drink and it was the first time I had been socializing in a bar for about 40 years. I placed a photo of us on Facebook and it drew dozens of comments. One was from Terry, who missed the reunion because he is in India with a back injury. It was great to hear from him and sad at the same time as his twin brother was on the list of the dead. The pair were track stars and running backs on the football team. Both had shaved their heads at the beginning of our senior year for reasons I could not comprehend.
On Monday, Larry and I tried to put a website together for his woodturning business. We were just too wacked out and exhausted from the events of the previous days. I took him to the airport and returned to Emily’s house to pick up my stuff before heading towards another road trip. As I left, I couldn’t help but share the words of our alma mater
“When time and fortune cast their spell
And youth’s bright years are o’er
Our memories shall finally dwell
On scenes that are no more
For busy, carefree high school days
And comrades tried and true
For these we lift our songs of praise
Dear Morristown, to you.”
Thank you to all and I hope to see you and many more in another five years. In the meantime, don’t be strangers.
