Update 4-1-14

 

Hi,

 

The good news is we quickly raised the remaining $125 for the scholarships.  I got a half-dozen notes on Tuesday and Wednesday promising the money, and the checks were here and deposited on Saturday.  That's the first quarter of the process.  Next, come writing the checks and getting them to Liz King Giordano at South, then the presentation of the awards in June, then the cashing of the checks, which can happen as late as September.  As I've said, I'm always happiest when the money is out of my account.

    For the past eight years, Linda Tobin Kettering has been presenting the awards at South, and once we had the money, I wrote her to see if she was interested again.  She'll let me know when she knows her June schedule.  Otherwise, Liz King Giordano and/or the South music and theater teachers may take over the presentations.  They know the students better, but Linda had a connection to Booker and Vince.

    As far as the future of the scholarships goes:  this year seems to be a good indication that we can continue funding them.  As I mentioned, I was worried because we were losing some supporters, but the number of people who came through this year and this week was great.  One small change:  Amy Miller Cohen, who nicely coordinated the class of '63's donation of $520 towards the scholarships, asked that all that money be used this year.  It's what she'd told her class.  I was planning to use $200 this year and keep $320 as a safety net to be used in the next 2 years.  Instead, I'll use all the class of '63's money and reserve some of the other donations as the safety net.  Next year may be tight for donations because people may be using money to come to the April reunion.

 

Which brings up the 50th reunion of the class of '65.  I didn't even want to think about that till the scholarship funding was assured.  But the reunion is only a year away, so we need to start making plans.  As I've been doing some online hotel research, I sympathized with Robin Feit Baker, Dennis Shapiro, and Paul DeMartino, who found the hotel for our 40th after quite a search.  Terri Donohue Calamari knew of the one for our 37th, and Irene Saunders Goldstein cemented its use again for our 45th.

    The question is numbers:  The more people coming to the reunion, the more formal the plans need to be.  For the 45th, when we knew there'd largely be two dozen people, we gathered at the hotel and at Valerie Nelson Gillen's generously donated house, and then planned things as we went.  You can do that with a smaller group.

    But if we have 50-or-more people, we can't simply walk into a restaurant, even with a reservation.  So we'd need to plan a casual Friday night gathering and a more formal Saturday night party, with a buffet and dancing.  And to attract as many people as possible, we need to keep costs down.  The class of '64 originally announced its Saturday night buffet was $45 per person.  That expanded to $75 when a cocktail hour was added.  I'd like to hold closer to $45 without a planned cocktail hour.  People interested in that can meet in the hotel bar

    Then there are hotel rooms:  The Garden City Hotel was suggested, and people seemed comfortable with its location -- it's 10 miles from South.  But a room costs $300 a night.  By comparison, the rooms in Hauppauge (our 45th) currently cost $160, and those in Huntington/Melville (our 40th) cost $215.  Rooms in decent hotels conveniently near either Kennedy or LaGuardia airports range from $250 to $300.

 

So the first thing we need to know is how many people are coming.  No one needs to commit to anything.  We just need to know how many people are interested.  Say a room did cost $200 a night.  Say the Friday night gathering was pay-as-you-go for drinks and food.  Say the Saturday buffet cost $45 per person, and the hotel was within 15 miles of South.  Again, the dates are Friday, April 24th through Sunday, April 26th, 2015.  Please write and tell me if you're interested.  Thanks.

 

In other notes, from Sara Cohen Harris:  I can't find the Valley Stream video on You Tube.  Any suggestions?  I thought I might share it with my students since I'm always talking about my hometown.  Thanks.

 

[Rich -- My fault:  I should have included the information again.  As Amy Kassak Bentley mentioned, the link keeps changing, so the best way to find the video is to go to YouTube and search on:  Valley Stream – The Evolution of a Hometown

 

From Marc Fishman to Marc Jonas:  I'm sorry to hear about your mother.  Amazingly, my father continues to do quite well.  If it's too hot to walk in one of the nature reserves, he swims at the community pool.  He still writes software for our company, and he recently bought a new car.  At dinner at my sister-in -law's, someone started to quote a poem.  My father finished it and said, "Omar Khayyam."  And I'm thinking, "Who's Omar Khayyam?"

 

From Jay Berliner:  First, I would like to send my condolences to Marc Jonas on the passing of his mother. Although we were friends for a while at a young age, I never knew that his mother grew up over a kosher butcher shop in Boro Park.  My mother also grew up over a kosher butcher shop in Boro Park, Amsterdam and Tabacoff.  My grandfather was Tabacoff.

    On another note, my first earthquake was during my first trip to Tokyo.  I was about 25 and staying in a tower room at the New Otani Hotel on about the 30th floor.  I was in the bathroom when the quake hit.  The tower started to really shake, so I pulled up my pants and started to run for the front door.  Then I thought that there was no way I was going to run down 30 flights of stairs and then out of the way of a falling building. So I calmly went back into the bathroom.  It is a frightening experience the first time.

 

From Zelda White Nichols:  When we lived in Alpine, California, we had two noticeable earthquakes, both at night.  The first time it woke me up, and I thought, “Oh, we're having a thunder storm,” and I went back to sleep.  The next morning I realized we didn’t get thunderstorms as we only averaged 3" - 9” inches of rain a year.  The second time, I thought a big rig had gone by, though it was 3:00 AM.  Then I thought why would a big rig go by at that hour, especially since we lived on top of a mountain in the high desert and the main road dead-ended two miles downhill from us.  Still, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

    The first earthquake centered in the Borrego desert, an area I loved, and the second one out in the ocean.  That one caused an underground leak in our back yard, and that’s when we learned insurance companies don't like water claims, even if they're outside the home.  Fortunately, the leak was found without digging up our entire yard, but our insurance rates doubled, and we couldn’t shop for new coverage for three years.  After that, we learned to be careful when filing water claims.

    My niece lived in Northridge, California, during the '94 Northridge quake and was in a low rise apartment building.  That quake literally knocked her out of her bed.  And for the first two years we lived in California, I daily sang, “I feel the earth move under my feet,” but I never realized it was fire I should be more concerned about.  Mudslides, too:  the recent one in Washington state can happen anywhere that's mountainous, especially after a fire and heavy rain.

 

The South '65 e-mail addresses: reunionclass65 . blogspot . com  (please remove the spaces)

 

The South '65 photo site: picasaweb . google . com/SouthHS65    (ditto)

 

 

Rich