Update 4-18-06

Hello,

A series of things.

From Linda Cohen Greenseid:  I'm writing in to stave off another von Trapp report.  Though I can't believe I just saw them on Good Morning America.  Also, in reply to Robert Fiveson:  Why not add synchronized swimming?  They say you don't hurt anything when you exercise in the pool, and those bathing caps are so attractive.  Maybe we can get Esther Williams to join us.  Is she still alive?
   
    [Rich -- from the web:  Esther Williams (actress/swimmer) -- Alive.  Born August 8, 1923. The swimmer turned star in movies like Neptune's Daughter, married to Fernando Lamas in the '70s, wrote her autobiography, Million Dollar Mermaid.]
   
    From Al Mac Leod:  First, Joe's last name is spelled Hempfling.  He does have a brother,
    Fred, also another brother, George, and two sisters, Barbara and Nancy.  George lives on Long Island, and his two sisters live in Virginia.
        Second, The music program is alive and well at South High.  The band started off its concert at the Empire State Plaza with a rousing rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" and finished with an excellent rendition of "God Bless America."  I must admit, I was pleasantly surprise to see how ethnically diverse South High has become.  The Assembly member from Valley Stream had a photographer there taking pictures.  If you would like a picture, just write to the Assembly member for the district that South High belongs to, and his or her office will be glad to send you a picture.  But someone who still knows the area will have to tell us who that Assembly member is.
   
    From Joanne Shapiro Polner:  I sent a personal message to Booker and apologized for not checking my information, from a classmate on Long Island, about Robert Leist.  I am so happy that Mr. Leist is still with us as I have been trying to find him for years.  Booker gave me Mr. Leist's contact information without my asking.  Now I will communicate with the man who was our music teacher from the beginning of our time at Clearstream Avenue all the way up to our graduation from South.  What a guy!
   
    From Danny Stellabotte:  Just read the reunion update and saw some e-mail address changes.  Please list mine for the next update.  It is now:  allie3j@aol.com   Thank you.
   
    From Judy Hartstone:  I was half expecting to see an obituary for Gene Pitney in the last newsletter.  His "Town Without Pity" was a great slow dance.
   
    [Rich -- I've kind of stopped running obituaries of people we didn't actually know.  But here's what the Associated Press ran about the late Mr. Pitney on Friday, April 7, 2006:
        Gene Pitney, 65, an American-born singer-songwriter and member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, whose hits included "Town Without Pity" and "Only Love Can Break a Heart," died April 5 at a hotel in Wales after playing a show, his agent said.  Mr. Pitney was found dead in his hotel room in Cardiff.  Police said the death did not appear suspicious.  "He was found fully clothed, on his back, as if he had gone for a lie-down," said Pitney's tour manager, James Kelly.  "It looks as if there was no pain whatsoever."
        Mr. Pitney was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on February 17, 1941.  He had his first success as a songwriter with "Rubber Ball," a Top 10 hit for Bobby Vee in 1961.  Later that year, Ricky Nelson had a hit with Mr. Pitney's "Hello Mary Lou."  As a performer, Mr. Pitney had his first success that year with "(I Wanna) Love My Life Away."  But Burt Bacharach and Hal David provided the songs that put Mr. Pitney in the Top 10:  "(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance," "Only Love Can Break a Heart," and "Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa."
       "Only Love Can Break a Heart" was Mr. Pitney's biggest U.S. hit, peaking at No. 2 on the charts in 1962.  The No. 1 song at the time was the Crystals' "He's a Rebel," written by Mr. Pitney.  He had more than a dozen Top 40 hits and even contributed to an early Rolling Stones recording session.  Mr. Pitney waited until 1990 for his first British No. 1 -- he rerecorded "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart" with Marc Almond.  Mr. Pitney also had some success as a country singer, pairing with George Jones to record "I've Got Five Dollars and It's Saturday Night" and "Louisiana Man."  He recorded in Italian and Spanish, and twice took second place at the San Remo Song Festival in Italy.  He also had a regional hit with "Nessuno Mi Puo' Giudicare."
        Gene Pitney was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.  Survivors include his wife, Lynne, who was his high school sweetheart, and three sons.  He lived in Somers, Connecticut.]

    [Rich -- Finally, I've tried to make it a practice over the last several years not to write any more than I have to for the newsletter and not to write about my occasional visits with high school friends.  I think I got bitten once by The New Breman, Ohio, Gazette, maybe forty years ago, when I went home with one of my college roommates for semester break and found my visit noted in the local paper.  Very slow, New Breman.  Still, I spent a couple of hours this Sunday with Ellen Epstein Silver and Paul Zegler.  Ellen was visiting her daughter Jessica in LA, and she'd called Paul on previous visits.  But it was only recently that he mentioned he'd like some company.  So Ellen bought cookies, and she and I went.
        Ellen's fine.  Paul's fine.  There may be some slightly blurry phone/camera photos of the three of us soon on the home page.  First, we have to figure out how to get them out of their phones and through e-mail to my computer.  When she looked at the photos, Ellen said, "Is that your finger blocking the bottom of the pictures?"  But it turned out to be a phone-carrying accessory clip.
        Paul's down to about half his previous size, which you can't tell from the photos because of that clip.  I look short in the pictures because I was trying to keep my face even with Ellen's and Paul's.  Ellen looks like she's about ten years younger than Paul and me, and she certainly has the best hair.
        One of the many things the three of us talked about over those couple of hours was other people from our class.  Missing people.  Not-so-missing people.  People who other people have been wondering about.  People other people have wondered about who've been sighted, but don't really want to be seen again.  Some of this is completely understandable.  People like their privacy.  Still, names came up.  Ken Brown.  Irene Cohen.  Judy Schulman.  Ken Schwartzman.  Gwen Camhi.  Rich Silvestri.  Andrea Gladstone.  Carmine DeSanto.  All alive and well if just a hair out of reach.  And we talked some about this newsletter, and about how many people like to read it, but few want to write in.  Everyone seems to want to know about everyone else but feels that no one would be interested in them.  That may be why our bios are four years out-of-date.  Kind of the Dorian Gray effect Joanne Shapiro Polner mentioned.  It's also why I'm writing now, to fill up space, rather than use it to pass on your messages.
        But this isn't a pep talk or a hard sell.  Just a rumination.  Actually, we've done pretty well figuring out where most of the three hundred people in our graduating class are.  There are technically only about seventy-five people missing.  And my crackpot theory is that for each of those people, someone in our class knows where one of them is.  But sometimes they don't even know that they know or know that these people are being looked for.  My mother had Passover dinner with friends.  She was sitting next to the father of her friends' daughter's husband.  They got to talking about childhoods, and the man mentioned he'd grown up in Elizabeth, New Jersey.  My mother said she'd been there once or twice as a child, because her uncle lived there.  It turns out her uncle lived next door to this man, and the man was able to fill my mother in on some first cousins she'd lost track of fifty years ago.
     And that's how Gwen Camhi walks into a bagel shop for five minutes, and then is tantalizingly lost.  Richard Silvestri's crossword puzzles are spotted, but he stays invisible.  People tell me things, and then say, "Now you better not write about this."  But I'm pretty good about forgetting what I've been told.  Early on, I irritated a few people by quoting from letters I didn't realize were directed solely to me.  Then I remembered what I'd learned about how quickly even innocent information spreads in the theater and the unintended consequences of that.  So if you want to know how other people are, I guess you're going to have to be the "other people" to someone else.  We'll all just have to volunteer information we feel comfortable sharing.  And you'd be surprised how much other people really want to know about their old friends.  They just don't want to ask the questions.]