Today, I am reeling. I have come to expect bad news in small doses, but this week alone I have had to report the loss of two classmates.

First, I received an obituary photo from Lynn Holland Cohen for Ronda Roby Ellin. Ronda was one of those classmates who I remember passing in the hall clutching a pile of books. I don't think I ever passed a single word with her and yet still feel her loss as the group of all of us gets incrementally smaller. I dutifully report to Facebook (actually, Linda did, after I forwarded the obit to her as I was subbing in the local Junior High School at the time. I sub to stay out of Linda's hair a couple days a week, and because I enjoy tormenting the kiddoes with knowledge, and because I hate subs who are just babysitters).

Just a few days later, I received an email from Peter Dunne of the class of '62 reporting the passing of Bill Altier out in Sheridan WY. When I first began the task of finding everyone in the class, I ferretted out Bill and with a phone number in hand, called him and had an interesting conversation with him about people we remembered in common. I filled him in as best I could, and asked him if I could get him to attend our 45th reunion. He declined, and we parted with his final words to me, "Talk to ya in 5". I guess I won't get that chance. I've had too many of those. I am so grateful to have had the chance to talk to these folks again, but it just makes their loss more intense and regretful.

So I went to the website to lengthen the memorial page by two entries and create the black border around their listing photos and gray out the backgrounds.

As I perform these internet duties, I wonder to myself why I am doing this at all, why maintaining this site is important to me. It is important. It is important not just because I believe in finishing what I started; not just because now I have the time to do it; but because it needs to be done. There has to be someplace on this earth to remember that in 1967, we all left a place that became part of who we were to become. There has to be a place to help us remember all those with whom we shared a common experience. I fully understand that there are some for whom it was not a great experience, but for the majority of us, it shaped us gently and kindly and provided memories that we still think back on fondly.

So as long as my faculties permit, I'll be here reporting on our class. I appreciate you all seeing fit to send me the news. Know that I will report it faithfully and as quickly as life permits.

BTW, don't worry about the glitches on the site. I'm working on it! It's just computer stuff. It never works right all the time. It's Entropy. If not maintained, things go wrong. Talk to you all soon.

Nothing Like a Move to Unearth Lost Memories

As I've mentioned, my folks have relocated from the old homestead in Wayne to McLean VA, and the inevitable downsizing leaves a trail of debris behind. Never one to throw anything away, I made sure that I ended up with a huge box of slides taken during family trips to Florida before the Interstate System (ah, the Boston Post Road and US 1 from Maine to the Florida Keys), their 10 year relocation to Taiwan in the late 60's at the behest of American Cyanamid, and numerous other little vacations to here and there.

So I sat myself down to take a look at the slides, many of which I actually took with my Kowa SLR purchased while a student at Anthony Wayne JHS from Two Guys, and the Nikkormat I got in Japan on my way to Taiwan (again on Cyanamid's dime). Obviously someone else took the photos of the adolescent me that appeared here and there among the other images. Yes, many memories were jogged out of that landfill I call a brain both good and not so good.  

Chris Van Denburgh at peace
with nature and himself

One slide in particular was a slice of reality I had forgotten completely.  It was a picture I took of Chris Van Denburgh. Chris and I hung out together a lot in high school, especially so after graduation that summer before we all headed off to school. We'd pack ourselves into that VW bug that Chris called transportation (his family was always a VW family), and he always managed to stow fishing gear somewhere. I wasn't much for fishing but he'd fish and I'd sit on the shore or bank or wherever we ended up and talk for hours. I think that the time he spent fishing were perhaps the only time he was really content. The summer ended and we went our separate ways, not to see each other for over a year. 

The Chris that showed up at my dorm room in New Haven was nearly unrecognizable. He'd lost an eye from a splinter that flew up during a solo camping expedition but he'd also lost himself as well. We talked for a long time that evening but by the time he finally left, I realized that he was in need of more professional help than a friend could offer. I didn't really know who to contact about his disturbing visit, and in the end, did nothing but worry about what might happen. And it did, and is something about which I will always feel guilty.

I wrote this in July and just realized that I never posted it. So here it belatedly is.

Visiting with Dave

Dave Spae and I were born to different worlds. We were raised differently. We lived differently. We approached the question of the Vietnam war differently. I believed the war was wrong and did my damndest to help end it. Beyond the insane possibility of being an Asian fighting an Asian war, military service was not in my vocabulary. On the other hand, Dave was a marine. A lance corporal who earned a Purple Heart. He never questioned the war. He just fought it. He knew in his gut that without the threat of war there can be no peace. I have come to learn it more intellectually over the years. So in a roundabout way we end in the same place even as we did in school so many years ago. More than anything about our last reunion, I wanted to see Dave again. It never happened because he passed away several months before the event

So when going to visit my folks who recently moved to  McLean VA, there was never any question but that I would visit Dave in his final rest surrounded by other brave men who like Dave, fought their wars to preserve their peace. I went to honor him and to tell him in person how much I regretted that we never got to see each other again. And as I looked across that ocean of white marble, I was reminded to let Dave know that he had been right and that I had been wrong so many years ago, not about the war but about national service. Too soon old, too late smart.

So good bye my friend. I can still see you towering over me in your black leather jacket with your DA hanging over your brow with that big grin across your face. We'll laugh together about life's ironies someday. Till then, I'll make sure to stop by to see you when I'm in DC visiting the folks.

On another matter, I got an email from Gordon Albro who went to that cemetery in Totowa to find Joe Brophy. Gordon reported that he could not find the memorial. He did find several Joe Brophys, just not Our Joe Brophy. So just when I half thought I was done, I'm not. If anyone knows where Joe is interred let me know.

Another Milestone

I know, I know, it's been a shamefully long time since I've plopped myself in front of the computer to dedicate the time to write to you all. Time passes far too quickly anymore.

Nonetheless, I am enduring my surgical recovery from foot surgery (congenital flat feet, age and gravity) which had me off my feet for two months and doing the Walter Brennan impression for a few more weeks yet. I've enjoyed seeing class birthdays, and relocations and kids' marriages and new grandchildren over the past few months on FB. Milestones passing, almost day by day, most happy, some sad. In particular, I'm thinking about Carol Vanderway who recently moved to Tennessee but lost her beloved horse of 32 years.

Now that I'm about ready to bust out of the house like a real boy instead of Long John Silver, (aaargh, Matey), I note a milestone of my own.

In mid 1959, my dad piled us into the car in Stamford, CT for a long drive to the wilds of Wayne NJ. He drove us to a wooded site off Berdan Avenue and stood outside the car with his arms extended and announced that this was where his new office was going to be. American Cyanamid was relocating from rented offices in the Time-Life building in Manhattan to a new headquarters in Wayne. That was my introduction to Wayne. By fall of 1960, I was sitting in a classroom in Anthony Wayne JHS being the new kid.

This winter, after 55 years, my folks are finally moving from our Brandon Avenue home in the old Wedgewood Development up the hill from Mountain View. They have a condo in McClean VA,where my sister and niece reside, that will be their new headquarters. The old Wayne house, the family center for so many years, will probably go on the market in February or March depending on what the realtor can convince my folks to do to the house to make it "market ready".

As they pack and discard ( Unbelievably, they have accumulated more stuff than I have, so you can imagine the sheer volume of stuff contained by that house), memories flow freely. Flexible Flyer sleds, family photos from China, my grandfather's pastels, my mothers Chinese paintings, books books books. Keepsakes from 10 years in Taiwan; all memories from the march of time. Good memories but the same kind of sadness I felt when I saw Anthony Wayne JHS become a senior facility, a gentle feeling of loss to which I am really barely entitled.

On the one hand, I am happy that my folks came to the conclusion on their own that they could no longer keep up with the demands of the big house and yard; that we didn't have to go through that potential struggle. They have arrived at that conclusion with a magnanimity that I don't think I will be able to muster when that same time comes for me. (I've already told Linda I'm not moving again regardless!). On the other, almost ineffably, the torch is being passed to my sister and me. Don't get me wrong. I am fortunate to be born into a long lived family (3 grandparents who were centenarians), and my parents, in their late eightys and early nineties, are cogent, alert and healthy. Like the Beatles refrain: Everyday they got a little bit older, a little bit slower.

So life is change and nothing stays the same, and as my parents prepare for their next chapter, I sit here recovering from an age surgery hoping that I will approach my next chapters with as much grace and poise as my parents. That it may be so for all of my classmates as well.