Update 3-17-15
Hi,
First, Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
Second, a few more checks for the scholarship fund came in, even though we don’t need any more money. They were mailed before I wrote that we’d reached our goal, and one check took ten days to cross the country, probably because of the snow. I’ll keep the money for next year. This has happened before, and it makes future fund raising easier.
Third, the reunion list is holding at 35 former class members plus 6 spouses and at least one guest. Since the list is the same as last week’s, I’ll save space and not repeat it.
Related, from Joanne Shapiro Polner: At our class of '59 50th reunion, people – not just I – brought some items reminiscent of high school, and it was fun to look at souvenirs from the old days. Below is a list of categories to draw from. If you class of ‘65ers have moved around a lot, your collections – or perhaps, remnants of high school life – may still be at a parent’s home – if those lovely forebears themselves haven’t left Valley Stream and tossed away what you didn’t want to keep at that time. Sorry now that you let mom throw out that whatever?
Did you keep:
small, thick review books for different subjects – did your class use them?
posters from theater plays in school
bi-fold programs from music concerts at school
Did you keep:
small, thick review books for different subjects – did your class use them?
posters from theater plays in school
bi-fold programs from music concerts at school
school rings or other jewelry or bracelets you used to wear
sports things – trophies or trophy name plates, old baseball caps, pennants, or signed balls
any other awards, paper framed or 3-dimensional
parts of costumes
photos not in the yearbook
elementary school autograph books signed by people who also went to South with you
pencils with your name printed on a side in silver, gold, or another color, left over from elementary school
your biology notebook with a letter grade given by Mr. Saffron
other subject notebooks
music written by Mr. Bob Leist
thank you notes from any teacher
report cards
someone else’s garment or garment piece that you “stole” or begged for
T-shirts from any school or local team
sorority and fraternity caps, buttons, jewelry, pledge books – did you still have Greek groups in ‘65?
45s or LPs popular in your graduation year
Playbills from theater trips you made with the English department – did your class do that?
Lastly, acceptance letters to a job or a college from your graduation year
Start looking today. What stuff did you put away? Are you afraid to find that photo of your ’65 “love” but now your friend and treasure trove? Tell him you love him. Tell her you care. Go to your reunion. Be there!
sports things – trophies or trophy name plates, old baseball caps, pennants, or signed balls
any other awards, paper framed or 3-dimensional
parts of costumes
photos not in the yearbook
elementary school autograph books signed by people who also went to South with you
pencils with your name printed on a side in silver, gold, or another color, left over from elementary school
your biology notebook with a letter grade given by Mr. Saffron
other subject notebooks
music written by Mr. Bob Leist
thank you notes from any teacher
report cards
someone else’s garment or garment piece that you “stole” or begged for
T-shirts from any school or local team
sorority and fraternity caps, buttons, jewelry, pledge books – did you still have Greek groups in ‘65?
45s or LPs popular in your graduation year
Playbills from theater trips you made with the English department – did your class do that?
Lastly, acceptance letters to a job or a college from your graduation year
Start looking today. What stuff did you put away? Are you afraid to find that photo of your ’65 “love” but now your friend and treasure trove? Tell him you love him. Tell her you care. Go to your reunion. Be there!
Semi-related, from Barbara Blitfield Pech: Lord knows why my mind has wandered here, and I can't for the life of me remember why I’m even trying to recall what the South cafeteria lunches were. All I can remember besides Ring Dings, Devil Dogs, and the fruit machine is pizza, tuna surprise, and meatloaf. But I’m sure they made other things. Didn't they?
[Rich – other people may have more specific memories, but I just recall the usual, semi-edible cafeteria glop. It’s why I normally packed sandwiches. They were often steak or roast beef – my father believed in red meat for dinner – so I’m sure they cost my parents more than the quarter I would have paid for lunch – later 35 cents.]
Two music links from Zelda White Nichols:
Song on the day you were born – or conceived: playback . fm/birthday-song Hit songs, 1960 to 2013: thenostalgiamachine . com/years/1960 . html(Please remove the spaces in both links)
Song on the day you were born – or conceived: playback . fm/birthday-song Hit songs, 1960 to 2013: thenostalgiamachine . com/years/1960 . html(Please remove the spaces in both links)
Finally, the full first section of that genealogy article, by and partly about Irene Saunders Goldstein:
Love and Genealogy
I cannot count how many times over the years I have expressed how much I love Jewish genealogy. The pleasure of the genealogical chase – and the joy of getting to know cousins and fellow researchers along the way – would have been gratification enough. For the five couples who tell their stories here, genealogy also has brought us love – Irene Saunders Goldstein Couple 1: Irene Saunders Goldstein and Jerry Hantman
Good friends gave me a copy of Arthur Kurzweil’s From Generation to Generation way back in the late 1980s. I could not put the book down, and immediately I plunged into Jewish genealogy. Little did I know what this pursuit held in store for me a quarter of a century later.
As a veteran of many international conferences on Jewish genealogy, I looked forward to the start of the Los Angeles conference in 2010. The day finally arrived, and as I walked through the conference hotel lobby, a man stepped out of the elevator, smiled at me and asked if I knew where Arthur Kurzweil would be speaking in just a few minutes. Did I want to look for the room together?
Well, even if I hadn’t planned to attend Arthur Kurzweil’s presentation, something was so attractive and compelling about this man that I likely would have accompanied him anyway (and anywhere). In a split second I knew this stranger was someone special.
Against all odds, especially at an international conference, Jerry and I discovered that we lived just an hour’s drive from each other in the Washington, D.C., area. As I often say when I recount the story, he might just as easily have lived in Johannesburg!
As we found our way together to the lecture room, we played a bit of Jewish geography. We discovered that he knew my college roommate, who had lived around the corner from him in Columbia, Maryland. And when I told him the name of an old friend from summer camp in New York who had raised her family in Columbia, Jerry’s jaw dropped. My camp friend, it turns out, was the sister of his former wife. (You can’t make this stuff up!)
Naturally, each of us had come to the conference with our own genealogical agenda, but as the week progressed, we ran into each other occasionally and made plans to meet for a meal here and a computer class there. Throughout the conference I could not stop grinning, and I could not catch my breath. I felt 16 years old, not 60+. The week was marred only by Jerry’s intermittent, but severe, back pain, and he disappeared frequently to lie down and rest his discs.
I had secured crack-of-dawn airline reservations to leave for New York the morning after the conference banquet in order to attend a high school reunion. In anticipation of an early bedtime, I planned to skip the dinner, and I had not purchased a meal ticket.
But when Jerry asked if I planned to attend, I lied: “Yes.” And then I had to get busy. I ran to the conference message board, where I found one single notice of one single ticket for sale for the sold-out banquet. I called its owner, and it was still available! Whew!
We sat side by side at the dinner, though Jerry had to move his chair to face the stage for the evening’s entertainment. At one point he turned around to me with a soft, broad smile on his face – and we locked eyes. The moment is difficult to describe in words, but the message was clear. We both knew something special was happening.
As we walked together after the banquet, Jerry asked if he could call me when we got back home. “Of course!” I responded.
But once back at home, no call. Nothing. One week passed. Another week passed. I became sadder and sadder, waiting for Jerry to follow through.
But I began to consider the plot line of the classic movie “An Affair to Remember,” in which a serious auto accident prevented Deborah Kerr from keeping a rendezvous with Cary Grant at the top of the Empire State Building.
“A-ha!” I thought to myself, sort of tongue in cheek. “Jerry must be in the hospital!” Why else would he not have called? We had made such a good connection.
I convinced myself that that was a plausible enough reason for me to try to reach him. I finally placed the call.
In fact, Jerry told me on the phone, he was recovering from two back surgeries since he had returned from Los Angeles. A week or so later, when he felt up to receiving company, I brought him some of my homemade chicken soup. My gesture was marred only by the fact, we discovered at dinner time, that I had brought just the broth – I had left the chicken home in my refrigerator.
Nevertheless, after more than four years of sharing genealogy quests and so much more in our lives, we became engaged this past November and we are now planning our wedding.
Irene Saunders Goldstein, associate editor of AVOTAYNU, is a freelance writer and editor whose special interest lies in helping genealogists write and polish their family histories. Jerome Hantman, M.D., has just retired from the cardiology practice he founded 40 years ago in Columbia, Maryland. The couple lives in Fulton, Maryland.
I cannot count how many times over the years I have expressed how much I love Jewish genealogy. The pleasure of the genealogical chase – and the joy of getting to know cousins and fellow researchers along the way – would have been gratification enough. For the five couples who tell their stories here, genealogy also has brought us love – Irene Saunders Goldstein Couple 1: Irene Saunders Goldstein and Jerry Hantman
Good friends gave me a copy of Arthur Kurzweil’s From Generation to Generation way back in the late 1980s. I could not put the book down, and immediately I plunged into Jewish genealogy. Little did I know what this pursuit held in store for me a quarter of a century later.
As a veteran of many international conferences on Jewish genealogy, I looked forward to the start of the Los Angeles conference in 2010. The day finally arrived, and as I walked through the conference hotel lobby, a man stepped out of the elevator, smiled at me and asked if I knew where Arthur Kurzweil would be speaking in just a few minutes. Did I want to look for the room together?
Well, even if I hadn’t planned to attend Arthur Kurzweil’s presentation, something was so attractive and compelling about this man that I likely would have accompanied him anyway (and anywhere). In a split second I knew this stranger was someone special.
Against all odds, especially at an international conference, Jerry and I discovered that we lived just an hour’s drive from each other in the Washington, D.C., area. As I often say when I recount the story, he might just as easily have lived in Johannesburg!
As we found our way together to the lecture room, we played a bit of Jewish geography. We discovered that he knew my college roommate, who had lived around the corner from him in Columbia, Maryland. And when I told him the name of an old friend from summer camp in New York who had raised her family in Columbia, Jerry’s jaw dropped. My camp friend, it turns out, was the sister of his former wife. (You can’t make this stuff up!)
Naturally, each of us had come to the conference with our own genealogical agenda, but as the week progressed, we ran into each other occasionally and made plans to meet for a meal here and a computer class there. Throughout the conference I could not stop grinning, and I could not catch my breath. I felt 16 years old, not 60+. The week was marred only by Jerry’s intermittent, but severe, back pain, and he disappeared frequently to lie down and rest his discs.
I had secured crack-of-dawn airline reservations to leave for New York the morning after the conference banquet in order to attend a high school reunion. In anticipation of an early bedtime, I planned to skip the dinner, and I had not purchased a meal ticket.
But when Jerry asked if I planned to attend, I lied: “Yes.” And then I had to get busy. I ran to the conference message board, where I found one single notice of one single ticket for sale for the sold-out banquet. I called its owner, and it was still available! Whew!
We sat side by side at the dinner, though Jerry had to move his chair to face the stage for the evening’s entertainment. At one point he turned around to me with a soft, broad smile on his face – and we locked eyes. The moment is difficult to describe in words, but the message was clear. We both knew something special was happening.
As we walked together after the banquet, Jerry asked if he could call me when we got back home. “Of course!” I responded.
But once back at home, no call. Nothing. One week passed. Another week passed. I became sadder and sadder, waiting for Jerry to follow through.
But I began to consider the plot line of the classic movie “An Affair to Remember,” in which a serious auto accident prevented Deborah Kerr from keeping a rendezvous with Cary Grant at the top of the Empire State Building.
“A-ha!” I thought to myself, sort of tongue in cheek. “Jerry must be in the hospital!” Why else would he not have called? We had made such a good connection.
I convinced myself that that was a plausible enough reason for me to try to reach him. I finally placed the call.
In fact, Jerry told me on the phone, he was recovering from two back surgeries since he had returned from Los Angeles. A week or so later, when he felt up to receiving company, I brought him some of my homemade chicken soup. My gesture was marred only by the fact, we discovered at dinner time, that I had brought just the broth – I had left the chicken home in my refrigerator.
Nevertheless, after more than four years of sharing genealogy quests and so much more in our lives, we became engaged this past November and we are now planning our wedding.
Irene Saunders Goldstein, associate editor of AVOTAYNU, is a freelance writer and editor whose special interest lies in helping genealogists write and polish their family histories. Jerome Hantman, M.D., has just retired from the cardiology practice he founded 40 years ago in Columbia, Maryland. The couple lives in Fulton, Maryland.
The class of '65 50th Reunion: Friday, April 24 through Sunday, April 26, 2015, Hyatt Regency, Hauppauge.
To make a hotel reservation: Go online to hyatt.com, click on reservations, choose Hauppauge, and enter the reunion dates. With an AAA card, an AARP membership, or using several other organizational connections, you can get the lowest price. You can also cancel some reservations if you need to.
To make a hotel reservation: Go online to hyatt.com, click on reservations, choose Hauppauge, and enter the reunion dates. With an AAA card, an AARP membership, or using several other organizational connections, you can get the lowest price. You can also cancel some reservations 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
The South '65 photo site: picasaweb . google . com/SouthHS65 (ditto)
Rich
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