Rites of Passage Everyones life has key rites of passage, from the time of our birth until we take our final breath. These include the first day of school, various graduations, your wedding day, landmark birthdays, your first job, the birth of your first child, and, if youre very lucky, the birth of your first grandchild. Im going to add another important rite of passage to the list, and its this: making it to your fiftieth high school reunion. Earlier reunions may have focussed on who looked the youngest or the thinnest, or was the most successful, or had the hottest date. But by the time of your fiftieth, the attention shifts, and it becomes more about the struggles we have each had to overcome to reach that special milestone. My fiftieth high school reunion was held last weekend at a Hilton hotel near our little town of Glen Rock, New Jersey. People came from all over the country to mingle with their fellow classmates and celebrate. The evening began with an invocation by Pastor Dale Cranston, a distinguished classmate, whose work admirably focusses on helping the marginalized members of his community. He reminded us of the forty fellow classmates who hadnt lived to see this day but had passed on to the other side. At my table of mostly women, Yvonne Evans caught my eye as we tried to keep our tears in check as we were flooded with thoughts of our two brothers who had recently died suddenly: her brother, John, a fellow classmate, and my brother Warren, a 1967 GRHS graduate. The photo boards we had spent hours putting together earlier in the day included one for classmates who had Gone Too Soon. Included on this board was my best friend, Kathy Dietz, and France Jossen, the lovely exchange student who lived with Jane Turners family. Many other photos displayed were of earlier times during our school years, from kindergarten through senior year. There was a lot of overlap, of course. On display was a prom photo that included both the gorgeous Jackie Costello and the exquisitely beautiful CeCe Richardson, both of whom have died since our last reunion. There was a group photo of our Girl Scout troop standing on the steps of the nations Capitol building, with the late Janie Hawes and her mom, our scout leader. (I still remember every word of the song we made up to commemorate the occasion and sang endlessly on the long bus ride from Glen Rock to Washington and back.) The earlier photos were a hit, too. Its amazing how someones face in kindergarten can still be instantly recognizable some 63 years later. The flash dance organized by Marilyn Gennaro Ingulli and her spouse, Charlie, (GRHS class of 1961), went off without a hitch. When the deejay segued into Twist and Shout afterward, Barbara London shot up from our table and began gyrating vigorously on the dance floor. Watching her, one would never think she was a retired curator at MoMA and current professor at Yale. There is nothing like hearing songs from the soundtrack of our youth to get our aging bodies to feel young again. I deliberately abstained from dancing for much of the evening, feeling self-conscious about the weight Ive gained since the death of our oldest son in the summer of 2013. And then, in an extraordinary act of kindness, our reunion guru, Stan Viglione, headed straight for me, took my hand and said quietly, I didnt know until I read your memoir that you never went to a prom. I want to make that up to you now. And so Stan and I danced. Such a sweet gesture, born of a single sentence in one paragraph of a 200-page book. There was another poignant moment I want to share. As Sandi Ingulli and I were setting up the many display boards, news articles and memorabilia before the start of the main event, I noticed a grand piano in one corner of the room and wondered if anyone would be playing it. Towards the end of the evening, Alan Taylor, wearing a rakish black hat, his body now fragile after many decades fighting multiple sclerosis, sat down and began to play. And just like that, the noisy room quieted down as this man, this doctor from Texas, put all his energy and considerable talent into producing sweet, soulful music for his fellow classmates. It was a perfect ending to such a memorable evening. I was too overcome with emotion to thank him properly at the time, so I want to do so now. Thank you, dear Alan, for adding such a beautiful element to the evening. And thank you, too, to all the many organizers of this event: Nancy and Stan, Anne and Vicki, Martin and Sue S., Leonard and Mike, Sue M. and Marilyn. To succeed, an event like this takes hours and hours of meticulous planning and organizing. Working together, they all did a bang-up job. As the evening wore down, the celebration continued with the universal theme, Were still here. Still here, and still crazy after all these years. Hail, hail rock n roll, and the GRHS Class of 1964.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 21:10:15 +0000
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