Update 6-23-09

Hi,

A busier week than last for letters.  First, an important clarification:
   
    Bernie O'Brien is alive and well.  I can see how I could have better worded the following -- which I sent out last week and which got a couple of people concerned.  Sorry if anyone else was misled:
        A comment, perhaps on the deaths of former teachers Ruth Bushnell, Charles Messner, and Ralph Foster, shared by Bernie O'Brien in the same Alumni Association Bulletin:  Life is too short to wake up with regrets.  So love the people who treat you right.  Forget about the ones who don't.  Believe everything happens for a reason.  If you get a second chance, grab it with both hands.  If it changes your life, let it.  Nobody said life would be easy.  They just promised it would be worth it.
   
    Next, a couple of comments, neither of them particularly flattering, about Ralph Foster.  Why bother with negative remarks after over forty years?  Well, we've commented before about questionable teaching and guidance practices, so this isn't new.  And they are people's valid feelings.
   
    From Alison Altman:  I sent the Ralph Foster stories from the latest e-mail to my brother, Andy, class of '68, who was on the track team.  The following is his response.  He said it was okay for you to print it, if you want, with attribution.  It may be too much of a downer, but even if you decide not to print it, I thought you may find it interesting, given your experience.
   
    From Andy Altman:  Ralph Foster is very near the top of my list of "people I've known whom I hate the most."  He was a mean and angry SOB -- that was obvious to me at the time -- but I also concluded much later that he was also anti-Semitic.  I think that his anti-Semitism explains why he gave me an especially tough time, even though I was just about the most obedient and least obnoxious individual on the team, and also why he chose Jeff Benson as the "Athlete of the Year" for track during our senior year, even though Jeff was hurt much of the season, and I easily scored the highest number of points on the team that year.
   
    And from Neil Guberman:  I couldn't resist one more Ralph Foster memory.  I was on the track team, and we had a home meet scheduled for a Saturday morning.  As it turned out, there were literally torrential downpours that lasted pretty much from overnight Friday through all day Saturday.  Of course, I didn't bother to go to the meet, assuming it was a washout.
        At school on Monday, there was a PA announcement for the track team to meet after school in the gym.  When the team assembled, Ralph Foster began by talking rather quietly but emotionally about our new track team hero, Tom Connolly.  Everyone else on the team was looking at each other trying to figure out what the heck Foster was talking about as he was saying Tom was the only kid on the entire squad who had any guts.  Then his voice got louder and wilder as his face reddened saying that Tom was the only guy who had showed up for the meet!  We were now really amazed as to who in his right mind would have even gone outside at all that day, much less for an outdoor track meet.  But Foster, in a continued frenzy, then stated  how the other team had no guts, either, because it didn't show up at all.  By now, we were all close to hysteria but had to fight to control it fearing Foster's wrath.  He continued by then astonishing all of us by saying he ran the meet in its entirety, with every event "indoors," and with Tom as the lone participant!  Then at the highest pitch of his rage, calling us all gutless wonders, he uttered this expression which I had never heard before nor have ever forgotten:  "The only excuse for missing a track meet is a death in your family... your own!!"  He was one amazing guy!
   
    [Rich -- But I suspect he wasn't anti-Semitic.  Just nuts.]
   
    In a differently scary way, a note from Robert Fiveson:  Had an interesting birthday yesterday.  My son is here, and we decided a father/son ride over the jungle and around the lake on my gyroplane would be just the thing.  We buzzed the indian village, went up the Chagres river, and flew to the end of Lake Aluhuela.  I had just announced my base approach to land when there was a bang and the engine stopped.  Long story short, I made an emergency landing into a field, and then a bunch of us muscled the machine to the road, and it was towed behind an SUV all through the pueblo back to the airfield.  It was a very scary experience for my son, but for me, it was an excellent example that training, training, and more training can save your life.  Afterwards, we laughed that, yet again, father and son had cheated Death... together.
   
    [Rich  -- As I wrote Robert:  first, I'm glad he's okay, and, second. he'd do anything to have an exciting birthday.  Robert wrote back:  "Careful" is my middle name.  It's what "Sheldon" means in the language of a small tribe in the center of Paraguay.]
   
    Linda Tobin Kettering wrote:  The Senior Awards night at South went very well, and both recipients were overjoyed to receive their scholarships.  I had to leave right after the presentation so, unfortunately, couldn't speak to either winner.  I had wanted to give them your class e-mail address, so they could write and thank the class of '65 and the other supporters.  Maybe you could e-mail Liz King and have her give it to them?
        Also, it was strange not to have Booker there.  But I know he had to be elsewhere.
        Thanks again to everyone who donated money for the awards.  I love knowing that each senior class gets a piece of South High history when the awards are presented.
   
    Booker also wrote:  My wife, Frances, and I promised I'd never miss the Awards night again.  We'll just do both that and our family reunion.  I'll always owe so much to the class of '65 and the other scholarship supporters.
   
    [Rich -- I assured Booker again that we all owe him far more than he ever owes us.]
   
    From Jerry Bittman:  To Barney Zinger -- I finally looked at the picture you submitted in April.  Being fair, I have to admit that Andy Dolich beat me out for the "biggest ears" winner.  Andy recently flew out to Nebraska for a visit... without the benefit of using a plane.  However, I cannot accept the silver medal.  Check out Stephen Spector's lobes.  My lobes might be a little longer, but Stephen's definitely go out further than mine.  Also, did Rich Lobell have any lobes?  I magnified the photo and still didn't see any.
   
    Finally, an article forwarded to Marc Jonas by his cousin.  It's about Hy Rosov, was written by David Schwartz, and was published on June 9, 2009 in the Palm Beach Jewish Journal: 
        He recently won a first place award from the Jewish Museum of Florida for his handmade brass and silver mezuzah.  And he just retired from the Weinbaum Yeshiva High School for a second time, following a six-month, part-time stint teaching English at the school near his home in West Boca.  Ask Chaim Rosov if he sees himself as a sculptor of Judaica or as a teacher -- both of which he has been doing both or more than 50 years -- and the 79-year-old Rosov answers without hesitation.  "Always as a teacher.  To me it's the greatest profession in the world.  You get to influence and mold the lives of children."
        But ask some of the people who know him professionally and each sees Rosov within his or own world.  "He's a wonderful artist," said Marcia Zerivitz, founding executive director and chief curator of the Jewish Museum of Florida in Miami Beach, which has several pieces of Rosov's award-winning Judaica sculpture in its collection.  "I can always tell his quality of work.  It always has so much Jewish knowledge in the artistic work.  His craftsmanship is really superior."
        "He's a consummate educator," said Leon Weissberg, executive director of the Jewish Education Commission in South Palm Beach.  "He loves working with kids.  He's a teacher."  But Rabbi Perry Tirschwell, head of school at Weinbaum Yeshiva High School where Rosov taught full-time for eight years, had a different take on the man he has known for almost a decade.  "Chaim is a multifaceted person.  He bridges many worlds.  Every one of those worlds uses him as its own."
        And that may be the key to knowing the talented Rosov.  And you can add writer, musician, and cantor to the list of his talents.  Rosov has written about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism and won awards in the Levis JCC's Jewish Heritage Writing Competition for short stories about his father and grandfather.  He has played violin in community orchestras in New York and in Broward County, and for 17 years he has been the cantor at the Chabad of West Boca Raton.
        "Rosov made the Chabad's eternal light, decorated the bima, and beautified the aron hakodesh (Torah cabinet) with brass images of the 12 tribes, hand sculpted the Tree of Life," Rabbi Zalman Bukiet said.  "It goes on and on.  He's a talented guy.  The quality of his work is 100 percent because his soul is in his work.  And he has a beautiful singing voice."
        Rosov said that now that he is "truly retired," he will spend more time on designs.  But he will go back to the Weinbaum Yeshiva three or four times during the next school year to lecture about the Holocaust and the history of anti-Semitism.
        "I find it amazing that Chaim is 60 years older than his students and there's an instant connection and a Bond," Tirschwell said.  "There's no generation gap.  We've trying to keep him involved, so we'll make the job very part-time."
   
    The South '65 e-mail addresses:  reunionclass65.blogspot.com
   
   
    Rich