The Class of 1953

Some years back, Ellen and I were driving over to Las Vegas for a fun weekend. On a stretch of road near Barstow, I suggested a sort of game to pass the time as we drove through desert scenery that had become aridly monotonous.

Ellen found a pen and something to write on and, as I drove along, I tried to name all 61 students in my Catholic school eighth-grade class from 1957.

I have kind of a sticky memory for trivia, so I was able to come up with 50+ names before too much time had elapsed. In a way, listing those people was not that hard since we’d spent grades 5 through 8 in the same group and many of us stayed in touch through our high school years and beyond.

Reflecting on that exercise – and just for fun - I decided this past weekend to try and come up with the names of my fourth-grade class from the Corona Avenue School in Valley Stream, New York. The school year, in this case, was 1952/1953…just before I’d switch to the new Catholic school in town to start the 1953/1954 school year.

So we’re talking about a group of kids I went to school with 70 years ago! (I was 8.)

So far, I’ve come up with 27 names.

I think they’re fairly accurate and I have scoured some online alumni lists from a couple of the local Long Island high schools to see if I could uncover some of the names that I’d forgotten. Not much luck with that.

Some of these 27 folks I remember vividly. Some not so much. I suspect their memories of me might follow a similar pattern… if they still linger within those deteriorating crania.

Here are some memories that still seem faintly green:

The most vivid of all is a now 80-year-old (hopefully), named Lynn Becker, who was the prettiest girl in class and probably our best athlete to boot. She was my first real date. My father drove us to the movie theater and picked us up afterward. Quite nice of him, I think. It was probably a double feature, but I cannot remember the movies. Maybe John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man. Seems about right. Anyway, at 9, she was an “older woman.” Most intriguing. Have not seen her since the Spring of 1953.

I remember Alan Wheeler, who lived a few blocks away from me and who’d become a good friend. We used to play pick-up baseball together in the street using a ball that was covered in black tape. Not sure it was truly spherical, either. Alan’s baseball mitt was one of those ancient three-finger jobs that had turned black from a combination of age and Neatsfoot Oil. Probably an Enos Slaughter model. I remember Alan Sullivan, with whom I’d later play rugby in college. In 1953, neither of us had ever heard of the game. I remember a girl named Janet (I think) who sat behind me in class and who had one of those jumbo boxes of Crayola’s with a zillion colors in it – including Burnt Siena and Prussian Blue. I was deeply envious.

In the fall of that year, we had been trooped up to Franklin Avenue (the nearest major thoroughfare) to stand on the shoulder of the road and watch Dwight D. Eisenhower roll by in a motorcade as part of the 1952 Presidential Campaign. We must have been less than thirty feet away as Ike’s convertible drove past with him standing up and waving and wearing a brown double-breasted suit and smiling that electric smile. Funny that I still remember the suit.

I remember occasionally seeing the Superintendent of the School District, Ira Mummert, in the hallway. He seemed ancient. I remember he had spittle strings between his ancient turtle-like lips and never acknowledged us. (Checked him out online and he was 10 years younger than I am now!) I remember Mrs. Dickinson, who was the Principal, and Pat Reardon, who was our super-fit gym teacher. She once got some lip from one of the bigger guys in 6th grade and had him on his back in a heartbeat. I remember our teacher, Mrs. O’Shea, who had dark brown hair and wore horn-rim glasses. I remember blue mimeographed lunch menus for the cafeteria and my first taste of what appeared on the lunch menu as “pizza pie.” I remember walking to school with friends on the first day of class in the Fall and feeling like a member of a Georgia chain gang. I remember playing kickball and punchball in the schoolyard and the bike racks we all used in the long, wooden shed and the dirt ballfield just across the road and the corner of the schoolyard where I beat up the class bully one afternoon in 1952 after a short spurt of intimidation fatigue. The whole class was watching.

Last night I dreamed that I was walking in the old neighborhood and saw a young woman with long black hair walking a dog. The dog was a Collie and the woman looked distantly familiar. “Is that Susan Samuels?” I asked no one in particular. “It’s her granddaughter,” said a voice from somewhere behind me.

?

?

?