Update 5-14-02


Hey,

A couple more finallys I forgot last week:
       
Most important, the New York gatherings will continue.  The next one, almost before you know it, will be on Saturday, June 1st.  Paul also said that with the summer approaching, he's thinking of expanding to a picnic and maybe a beach outing as well.  And it's likely that a backyard barbecue will also be on the agenda.
When:    Saturday, June 1st, 2002   1:00 PM
Where:   Lily Flanagans, 279 Sunrise Highway, Rockville Centre
Contact: Paul DeMartino: PINA_1@msn.com or 516-799-1590  Or just show up.

Next, I've wiped out the Fast Address Link---because I needed space to post reunion pictures.  So from now on, the only way to get contact information for people is by using the home page link, which, normally, has been at the bottom of this page each week.  And, yeah, as I was quickly reminded, I left it off last week.  Nevermore.  Well, until I forget again.

Speaking of reunion photos, there are now about 150 of them posted on the home page.  Taken by:  RoseMarie Cassillo, Grace Dibble Kincade, Peter Rosen, Eric Hilton, Denise Frango Baxter, Lynn Nudelman Villagran, and Barbara Blitfield Pech.  And I still have another hundred, taken by Judy Hartstone, Robin Feit, and me, which should be posted by some time next week.  After that, if there's something we forgot to photograph, it certainly won't have been for lack of trying.

Also, the posted photos are getting clearer:  I just had a remedial Photoshop session with the recently-retired art director of Motor Trend magazine.  Still, I do have to keep the files small so they'll open on everyone's computers, which is why the pictures are always going to be a bit fuzzy.  (Judy Hartstone says we look better that way.)  Jerry Bittman also mentioned problems opening pages and photos just a few days ago, and I told him what I'll tell you now:  if you're having trouble with a page that doesn't open, or one that sends you an error message or a timed-out notice, just try again.  Sometimes, you can get in immediately.  Sometimes, you have to wait till another part of the day.  AOL is weird.  AOL is temperamental.  AOL has rush hours.  But until we decide we need a real website, at the moment, since I already subscribe to AOL, it's home page is free

Some of the posted photos still need labels.  And some labels, I'm still correcting.  As Nancy Garfield helped me figure out:  Bea Massa has shoulder length blonde hair.  Jerrie Clamp has mid-length blonde hair.  Marion Wachtel has blonde hair somewhere in between those two lengths, but she wears glasses.

And, yes, I've been leaving women's married names off the reunion photos.  Not that I can't remember them.  It's just lack of space.

There's also been talk of a California gathering, sometime between mid-July and mid-August.  We're thinking about a Saturday afternoon and evening in Cambria, a small art-and-tourist town, on the coast close to the beach, about a three-hour drive from L.A., San Francisco, and points directly inland (like Visalia, where Grace Dibble Kincade lives).  I know midsummer seems like a  while off, but if anyone's interested, please let me know so we can think seriously about the possibility.  It would be pretty informal:  you find your own place to stay, and we'd all meet for the afternoon and dinner.

"Why?" as Alan Silver, Ellen Epstein Silver's husband, just asked.  He's completely supportive, but still doesn't quite get the reunion business, having gone to a very large high school with people he didn't previously know.  This past Saturday, when he and Ellen were in L.A. visiting their daughter Jessica for Mother's Day and some of us got together for lunch, Alan said, "You all just saw each other two weeks ago.  Why do you feel the need to see each other again so soon?"  We didn't really have an answer, but Linda Greenberg, Paul Zegler, Ellen, and I had a nice lunch---outdoors, in the California shade.  Linda's husband Steve, Ellen's daughter Jessica and her husband Jeff, and, of course, Alan, made up the rest of the group.  Steve, at least by present reports, was the only person injured at the Long Island reunion---dancing, of course.  Doing something I think called the Scooby Doo.  Scooby Dog?  Hell, I don't know.  In any case, he'll walk again.  In time.

My Classmates.com subscription is just about to run out, and I've been wondering whether it was worth it to pay another thirty bucks since we seemed to have mined its resources pretty well.  But this morning, just checking things, I noticed Roberta Grodin Savarick's name has been added to their list, as well as Janice Savoia Muller's.  I knew Roberta, so wrote her, but can't find Janice Savoia or Janice Muller on any of our class lists.  But if anyone knows, or knew her, please let me know so I can mention you when I contact Janice.  (She currently lives in New Jersey.)  Also, Steve Spector just wrote, "On my return from New York, there was a notice in the local paper announcing an open house at my former law school, where Robert Colman, JD, MBA, Professor of Business Organizations at the law school (Empire College of Law), and also a professor of law and finance at Sonoma State University -- the same school at which Richard Gordon is a Professor of Computer Science -- would speak about the Enron collapse.  Colman is also listed as being the author of Modern Business Financing:  A Guide To Innovative Strategies and Techniques, and former founder and CEO of Oxford Energy Company, an American Stock Exchange company which he ran for seven years.  Now you know everything I know.  Unfortunately, the open house is this weekend, and I'll be in Portland.  But I'll catch up to him sometime, though."

Another note, from Lynn Nudelman Villagran:  It's been nice to make new connections since the reunion.  When I discovered that Robert Buchsbaum is with the Massachusetts Audubon Society, I connected him with a colleague of mine who is a birder and planning a trip this fall to the Galapagos, where Robert has led tours.  They are now e-mailing, and Robert is giving her suggestions for her trip, which she really appreciates.

A fast question from Judy Hartstone:  Could you broadcast this?  Someone at the reunion told me they knew how to contact John Walsh, one of our sixth grade teachers from Forest Road.  I would really like to get that contact information, as would some other people.

And a much longer letter from Alan Moss, Musings from a Former Sleep Deprived Maine Falcon:  Good Morning fellow classmates!  Sorry I have not been in touch but I have been sleeping for the last two weeks in order to catch up on all the “zzzs” I lost during our wonderful weekend!  Boy…I wish THAT statement were true.  Closer to reality is my going to work and play in my little Brunswick, Maine community in a slightly “zoned out” state.  When grocery shopping this past weekend, I glanced at the headlines from the latest issue of the National Enquirer and could have sworn that they read, “Large number of Valley Stream South High Class of 1965, missing for 37 years, found this past weekend at Wyndham Hotel in Long Island.  I was sure it went on to read, “ Reunion class event feared probable result of alien abduction.  Mass hysteria symptoms displayed among entire group members included non-stop talking, eating and drinking, intermittent shrieking, obsessive collective hugging, incessant taking of photographs of each other and frenetic displays of retro forms of dancing such as the lindy and the twist.”  Well…more likely I imagined the headlines, but they certainly came close to my observations, and probably yours too, about our most wonderful time together.  I hope that we have all taken a private moment, in the last two weeks, to reflect on how fortunate it was that the current direction of our lives allowed the sharing of this incredible experience.  During the weekend, I heard a most remarkable story of courage from Grace Dibble, and a tale of respect for the parents of a deceased classmate from Stu Kandel.  More in abundance were tales of falcons growing up, learning about life and responsibilities and dealing with personal and professional challenges in wonderfully positive ways.  I shared recollections and memories with many of my grade-school classmates from good old Brooklyn Avenue and delighted in being part of a wonderful retro-class picture Saturday night at the dinner-dance.  Was I really standing there with Eric Hilton, Diane Fruzetti, Gayle Ulrich, Paulinda Schimmel, Paul Zegler, Grace Dibble, Mary Higgins, Linda Iaquinto O’Hara, my wonderful across-the-street neighbor and childhood playmate, as well as many other folks who were so much a part of my life growing up in Valley Stream in the mid-to-late 1950’s?  And THEN there was the ludicrous tale of a high school falcon who got chicken pox the night of his junior class Ring Dance!  Not very cool and DEFINITELY high stress for his date who had purchased a most beautiful red dress for the occasion.  Well... if the truth be told, that falcon was me, and my date was Peggy Galinger Menaker.  One of the sweetest moments of last weekend, for me, was finally having one of the dances with Peggy that I missed out on 38 years ago.  And Peg…you are still that same beautiful woman, inside and out, that prompted me to ask you to the dance in 1964! Well…lets hear it for baby boomer health and exercise consciousness.  That must be the explanation for my observations that everyone looked just GREAT!  It is a bit hard to believe that the group was comprised of mostly 54-56 year olds, many with grown children and some with grandchildren.  Damn.... we are an incredibly impressive bunch, aren’t we? My recollections of the weekend seem to be a stream of non-stop connections and reconnections with grade school and high school classmates.…all full of such comfort, closeness and warmth.  Saturday night, even though I got into bed at about 2:30, I was not able to sleep and lay awake until about 9:30 the next morning.  My mind was overflowing with the voices and faces that I THOUGHT were no longer an active part of my life or who I had become in the last 37 years.  But yet…there were the images...a wonderfully comfortable walk in the woods and reaquaintance discussions with, among others, Peter Rosen and Robin Singer Taylor, a drive down from Connecticut with Judy Peters Sylvan, fun hot tub conversations with Diane Fruzetti, a wonderful reunion with Stu Kandel, an animated talk with Toni Rea, my English teacher, whose love of the art of written communication would surely influence my life (and many other falcons), a late Saturday night walk with Judy Hartstone when the air outside the hotel was sweet-smelling and a bit chilly and, of course, those two great dinner and breakfast trips to the Paradise Diner with Marc Jonas, Robin Singer Taylor, Emily Ferber Sondheimer, Marilyn Horowitz Goldhammer, Judy Hartstone, Irene Saunders Goldstein, Peggy Galinger Menaker and Judy Peters Sylvan.  The Paradise Diner experience however, would not have been the same without our fabulous (and classic) New York waitress… AHHlene!   A special affectionate acknowledgment to Terri Donohue from her own “Killer Shrew.”  Terri and I used to call each other up on the telephone after school and together we would watch these ultra-cheap, dime-store budget science fiction movies.  I think our favorite was “Attack of the Killer Shrews,” whereas lacking the appropriate funds for decent special effects, the studio powers-that-be tied throw rugs on to the back of collies and taped rubber fangs to their mouths.  VERY scary…. uh… I don’t THINK so!  I hope this note finds all of you in good health and still savoring all the wonderful memories that are now part of our singular and collective consciousness.  Hopefully, our paths and lives will cross again within a very short time.  “Like valiant falcons winging, our dreams HAVE skyward soared…”


Finally, Classmates.com is announcing the 38th reunion of South's Class of '75.  Must be that New Math.

Home Page Link: http://hometown.aol.com/falcons1965a/myhomepageprofile.html


Rich