Update 6-24-14

Hi,

First, a quick report on the Hyatt Hotel in Hauppauge.  I was on Long Island briefly Friday night so detoured to check out the remodeled hotel.

It's pretty much the same as it was when we were there for the 37th and 45th reunions.  The big difference for our purposes is the ground floor bar's been expanded and is now used as the main restaurant, and the downstairs, much larger, Terrace restaurant is only used for breakfast.  That means we don't have the immediate, public back-up for the party Saturday night if we overflow the bar or some people want a more formal meal.

But the new bar/main floor restaurant is bigger than it was, and I was told there's an adjacent room that gets opened when the bar/restaurant is getting crowded.  The hotel stopped keeping the downstairs restaurant open for lunch and dinner because there wasn't enough business, and on Friday night at 10, the bar/restaurant was only 1/3 full.  And this was the first weekend of summer.  In late April, Friday night is likely to be the same or slower.

There were also no events in the dozen banquet rooms on Friday night, and I'm not sure how different that will be in late April.  The bar/restaurant stays open till 1 AM, and the kitchen serves till midnight, so we have a comfortable place to meet on Friday night.  We did this for the 45th reunion, after intending to meet at the bar and then move to an outside restaurant.  We were so happy, we simply stayed.  I believe there were about 15 people with us that night, so we can easily expand the group.  There's no hotel charge, and people can order and pay for what they choose to eat and drink.  They can also just hang out, and it will cost them nothing.

There's also a comfortable seating area next to the bar/restaurant:  2 large, back-to-back, L-shaped couches, maybe 8 feet on each side, each around a large coffee table,  and a single straight couch with a smaller coffee table and a couple of armchairs.  On Friday night, the more private L-shaped couches were mostly empty, and a family of 6 was eating pizza while sitting on the straight couch and arm chairs.  That couch is less private because it's directly across from the hotel registration desk, maybe a dozen feet away.  Still, there were only two clerks at the check-in desk, one of whom had plenty of time to answer all my questions.  This is great party room.

Saturday night, we should be able to do the same thing.  Nothing should have changed with the bar/restaurant in terms of the crowd, and there should be a larger, somewhat different group of South people who are only coming for Saturday night.  So they won't be bored by being in the same place as the night before, and the people who were there on Friday will be happy to see the new people.  The huge advantage of this is we're putting down no money up front, so we're not racing to reach a deposit.  Also, people can show at the last minute up without causing any logistical problems, and they can stay for as short a time as they'd like without feeling they've wasted any money.  People could even slip into the public bar/restaurant and look at old friends without identifying themselves and then slip away.

The only disadvantage is there's no music.  But seeing that at the 37th, Linda Greenberg's husband badly hurt his ankle dancing with the energy of an 18-year-old, maybe that's not a bad thing.

As for the weekend:  for people who don't want to leave the hotel area but don't want to eat at the restaurant/bar, as I mentioned, the downstairs restaurant is open for breakfast.  And there's an indoor pool, a small gym, tennis courts and an 18-hole golf course.  There's also an outside pool with tables around it, and another group of outside tables nearby.  I've been warned it could rain in late April, but it also could be sunny.

That's pretty much it.  There don't seem to be any drawbacks to this approach, it's worked in the past, and it should work again.

A couple of other quick notes, first, from Martha Morenstein.  This came titled "Once An English Teacher, Always..."   I do hope YOUR response to young Jonathan Persaud was misspelled in YOUR weekly missive.  My red pedagogical pen must inform you that you should have written "YOU'RE welcome" to the Vince Tampio Scholarship recipient.  No thanks necessary, but YOU'RE indeed welcome.  Yes, you are.  Be well.

[Rich -- Yep, as I wrote Martha, "Thanks.  I was rushing to get packed and out of here at 5 AM Tuesday, and I didn't proofread carefully enough.  Though with my eyes as they now are, I might have missed the typo anyway.  In any case, I'll correct my mistake in the next newsletter."

Amy Miller Cohen also noticed my mistake and wrote, and I told her the same thing.  Also, I'm simply slowing down.  I've mainly come east this trip to visit my mother.  She's 86 and in the mid-stages of Alzheimer's.  While we were sitting on rockers in front of the assisted living home, I asked which way we were facing.  She didn't know, but since it was mid-afternoon, I could tell by the shadows we were facing east -- I remember that much of my scout training.  So I pointed right and said, "That must be south."  My mother thought for time, and even though she can't remember much else, she said, "No, that's north," and, of course, she was right.  Except for the fact that this former hotel is a bit expensive for my savings, maybe I should take up a permanent place on that rocker.]

From Zelda White Nichols:  I was stunned when I originally heard of the death of Robin Feit Baker.  She was a close playmate of mine in elementary school, and she and her mom were both such positive influences on all us kids.  We stayed friends in high school but then lost touch in later years.  I have been thinking of Robin often over the last year, and I, too, cannot come to terms with the fact she is gone.  She was much too young to say "good-bye."  In losing Robin, a piece of innocence of youth was lost, too.  She affected too many lives in such a positive way to ever be forgotten.

Finally, from Ed Albrecht:  Those are some great pics of the before and after D-Day.  I am familiar with a few as I used a couple to post on D-Day. My uncle Charles Munroe, paratrooper, US Army, jumped into Normandy on June 6, 1944, was wounded in the rear on the way down, hit the ground, and was carted off to a ship to be evacuated back to the States.  He always said, "It was the shortest European trip I ever took."  My uncle full Colonel James J. Mallen, US Army, one of the liberators of Paris, pulled a Nazi banner off the wall, stuffed it in his shirt, and brought it home.  He gave it to me as a souvenir many years later.  I imagine in one way, shape, or form, war has just about touched everyone.

The repeating upcoming reunion information:

 

The class of '64 reunion:  Friday, October 10, 2014, 6 to 11 PM.  $70 per person, cash bar.  Hyatt Regency, Hauppague, New York.  Committee phone numbers:  Tom McPartland  570-223-2577.  Ken Silver: 631-463-2217.  Bette Silver: 631-463-2216.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Rich