Update 2-17-15

Hi,

 

Ah, yes:  Lesley Gore died.  Pretty much our age, 68.  Who knew she was 16 when she started recording and at Sarah Lawrence in the middle of her teenage fame?

 

Also, the reason the subject line now has added “50th Reunion Information” is it was a very good suggestion.  As I’ve mentioned, the newsletters go to about 200 people weekly – 150 from the class of ‘65 – but I don’t know how many people open and read the newsletter.  Someone mentioned this might get added attention.

 

Back on our snow-blown planet:  Boston now has 8 feet of snow.  That’s as high as I can reach, so who knows how Allen Moss, somewhat north of Boston, is doing?

 

From Zelda White Nichols:  I was in the blizzard of ‘77 in Buffalo, New York – our move date to Massachusetts.  And I was in the blizzard of ‘78 in Massachusetts, but I do not remember the blizzard of ‘65.  Mother Nature must have it personally in for us, as my husband and I were also in the No Name Storm, also known as the Perfect Storm, in Massachusetts, and – depending on which article you read – the Cedar Fire in San Diego County was either the largest or second largest fire in the state of California.  We were there, too.  We just celebrated our 10th anniversary in North Carolina, and – so far – weather here has been nice and boring.
    For me, the first harbinger of spring up north was seeing the first robin, and robins fly further south than the Carolinas for the winter, so here, too, I always look for the first one.  There is hope for all of you in the north, as all of a sudden, robins started appearing in droves yesterday.  I was seeing them everywhere.  So spring is coming.

 

Unrelated to weather, from Andy Dolich:  Thank you, Betsy Fels Pottruck, for the information about your former husband and the reminder of the small world we live in, just from connections to South High.

 

An unfortunately false lead from Barbara Blitfield Pech:  I saw this name and photo for a Bill Brady on a friend’s page on Facebook, and I looked him up and sent a note.  I went to Harbor Road School with Bill and see a very strong age and facial connection between this photo and my memory of Bill.  Hopefully, he'll respond, and we can add another name to our mailing list.  What do you think?

 

[Rich – I looked at the picture, thought the guy was maybe 15 years too young, and wrote Barbara that I didn’t remember Bill having light blue eyes.  Now, I don’t remember what color Bill’s eyes were, so it's weird that the guy’s eyes in that photo just seemed instinctively wrong.]

 

Barbara wrote back:  Unfortunately, I did hear back, and he's not our Bill.  And what you wrote isn’t weird at all – I’ve been mentally fixated on Bill’s face from as far back as 2nd grade, with brown eyes.

 

About the upcoming reunion, from Lynn Nudelman Villagran:  I regret to say that I will not be attending the reunion in April after all.  There’s been a change in my extended family’s vacation planning, and I won’t be able to go to New York at that time.  But please extend my best wishes to everyone.  Also, I’m up for getting together with you or anyone who comes up to the San Francisco Bay area.

 

[Rich – As I wrote Lynn, I’ll be fairly close to San Francisco in late April, right after the reunion.   My partner goes to an annual ceramics conference in Davis, and I’m responsible for walking our dogs.  If we left them home, we’d have no home to come back to.  Unfortunately, Lynn and her family will be away at that time.
    But Fran Bellucci Johnson is another potter, and she’ll be much closer to me in Los Angeles for the next month.  So far, I haven’t found anyone who wants to car pool to see her for lunch.  Along the way, I’d hoped to stop off and see Rob Kelman, who’s at the north end of the same valley.]

 

The present reunion list, now at 31, plus three spouses and at least one guest:
 

Joan Aires Cleven                       Friday to Sunday             Hotel 
Alison Altman                            Saturday to Sunday         Hotel 
Jay Berliner                               Saturday night 
Stu Borman                               Friday & Saturday                             and wife Elize 
Barbara Brill Frohman                 Saturday & Sunday 
Carol Bunim Okin                       Friday &/or Saturday       Hotel           and husband Bob 
Peggy Cooper Schwartz             Friday to Sunday             Hotel 
Rich Eisbrouch                          Friday to Sunday             Hotel 
Mary Ferranti Khan                    Friday & maybe Saturday Hotel          and husband 
Alan Finder                               Saturday & Sunday          Hotel 
Henry Gabbay                           Friday & Saturday night 
Peggy Galinger Menaker            Saturday to Sunday          Hotel 
Les Glasser                              Friday & late Saturday 
Neil Guberman                          Friday to Sunday              Hotel 
Art Halprin                                Friday to Sunday              Hotel 
Marilyn Horowitz Goldhammer    Friday to Sunday              Hotel 
Stu Kandel                               Friday & Saturday 
Ira Levy                                    Saturday & Sunday           Hotel 
Laura Littner Fulton                   Friday & maybe Saturday 
Martha Morenstein                    Saturday to Sunday          Hotel 
Allen Moss                               Friday to Sunday              Hotel 
Valerie Nelson Gillen                 Friday to Sunday
Peter Rosen                             Friday to Sunday              Hotel 
Larry Rugen                              Friday & Saturday 
Irene Saunders Goldstein           Friday to Sunday              Hotel 
Bernie Scheidt                          Friday to Sunday              Hotel 
Dennis Shapiro                         Friday to Sunday 
Ray Sinatra                              Friday (maybe) & Saturday

Mary Sipp Green                      Saturday & Sunday 
Danny Stellabotte                     Friday to Sunday 
Louise Wiemer Beckert             Saturday night

 

Finally, another piece of that article about the history of Green Acres:

 

    Nassau County was originally a part of Queens County.  In 1898, however, New York City absorbed (incorporated) the four surrounding counties of the Bronx, Brooklyn (Kings County), Staten Island (Richmond County), and the western half of Queens County.  The eastern half of Queens County, then primarily farmland, became the new County of Nassau. A generation later, with excellent rail service and a parkway system being built by Robert Moses, the county was prime for rapid suburbanization.
    In 1928, Columbia Field airport opened on the far western border of Nassau County, just south of the Long Island Rail Road's south shore mainline.  Long Island was a very important area in the history of American aviation.  Both Grumman and Republic Aircraft were based on Long Island, and Charles Lindbergh's famous transatlantic flight to Paris took off from Roosevelt Field in Nassau County.  Columbia Field, which would become the future site of the Green Acres Mall and Green Acres neighborhood, also played an important role in the development of aviation.  In 1929, the field was renamed Curtiss Airfield, and for several years, it was the largest and busiest airfield on Long Island.  Most famously, the Ninety-Nines, a groundbreaking group of women aviators, first met at Curtiss Field on November 2, 1929.  Famed aviator Amelia Earhart was the first president of the group.  The airfield was short-lived, however, and closed during the height of the Depression in 1933.
    In 1935, with the hope of both jump-starting the construction industry and providing desperately needed housing, planner and architect Clarence Stein, co-founder of the Regional Planning Association, was asked by the Resettlement Administration to help plan new towns near big urban centers.  At this time, Stein was well-known for his collaborations with Henry Wright in the planning of such developments as Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, Radburn in New Jersey, and Chatham Village in Pittsburgh.  More than 20 towns were planned across the country, but only three were built:  Greendale in Wisconsin, Greenhills in Ohio, and Greenbelt in Maryland.  In his book, Toward New Towns for America, however, Stein mentions four planned towns.  The fourth town is his Valley Stream project.

 

[Rich -- Well, now we know where the name Green Acres came from.]

 

The class of '65 50th Reunion:  Friday, April 24 through Sunday, April 26, 2015, Hyatt Regency, Hauppauge.

To make a hotel room reservation:  Go online and search out Hyatt Regency, Hauppauge.  With an AAA card, an AARP membership, or using several other organizational connections, you can get lowest price.  You can cancel the reservation if you need to.

The South '65 e-mail addresses:  reunionclass65 . blogspot . com  (please remove the spaces) 
  
The South '65 photo site:  picasaweb . google . com/SouthHS65  (ditto) 
  
  
Rich