Fifty years in the making

There’s this little wonderful new store, the Mercantile, in Marcellus. It is that kind of shop where, if you appreciate vintage, you will become starry eyed with remembering. Each piece of the past ignites bursts of recollection, windows into other times…snatches of sweet moments and people.

The main dining room at Tuscarora Golf Club on June 2 created the same feeling, a gentle push back in time, 50 years ago.

Ninety plus people gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the graduation of the Class of ’68. And a good time it was!

The room was alive with the convivial exchanges of the grads and their spouses…and three teachers: the great Mary Baner, the inspiration for many to enter a world of chemistry, the irrepressible Ted Wright whose English classes pointed many to clearer communication and understandable sentences and their anthropology and psychology teacher, me.

I can speak for the other two teachers.  We were impressed. Impressed because of the seamless programming and the preparation that it would have taken to organize this special dinner, impressed because of the sincere warmth of our welcome and impressed because these now very adult people who sat in the chairs of our classrooms all those many years ago, found their experiences in those chairs valuable.

Just as the memorabilia in the Mercantile is able to conjure links to other times,  the room and its conviviality summoned  moments from 50 years ago.

There were the ECMUNC students, Sharon, Frank and Ben watching the world premier of 2001 in New York City and on that very same night pondering the serious and dreadful implications of the assassination of Martin Luther King.

I can see a car wash and bake sale and so many dances organized by John Horsington and his posse to raise money for the school to school program in Brazil and the JFK library in DC.

A lovely young Mary Ellen Stapleton stops me on the stairs to ask if I like George, Paul, John or Ringo best.

And then there was her brother Tim, always smiling as he greets you in the hallways. If you wanted any typing or copying done, there were a number of Ramsdens from which to choose:  Nelly, Jill or Kay.

I smile as I see Linda Efraimson across the room.

What was her nickname? Sweaty palms…because of her demonstration of the Galvanic Skin Response in psych class.

There were ‘68ers from out of town, way out of town and those who had remained to live their potentials here.

Think of Jack Murphy, first of all , smart enough to marry his high school sweetheart, Gail Hunt and the founder and still leader of the “after the ball” party.

The gentleman who asked me if I knew who he was…and I didn’t…was one of my favorites…Jim Carr, the ninth grade boy whose love of learning was breathtaking.

How hard is it for a ninth grade male to bring in copies of Boys Life to illustrate something we had learned in class.

He also installed the gutters in the front of our house. He is a local who just moved to Tennessee.

Marshall Fike was up in front, right next to the microphone where Jim Glover, as class president shared his hilarious version of being an MC.  Marshall became part of one of the shaggiest dog stories ever.

One former student told me that she found important life long meaning in the books that we gave to the students that year.

That is what education is about. My head is still a bit swollen.

I could see Margaret Sennett across the room but with my cane and other inconveniences I never got to talk with her, but I do remember that her mother called me a few years ago to tell me that “her Margaret loved my classes.”

She’s a physician now and I wonder if those classes and others she took in college were of help in her profession.

I can only salute the hard working team that pulled that evening at Tuscarora together as well as get- togethers on Friday night and breakfast on Sunday morning:  Tom Hall, Jill Ramsden,  Jack Murphy, Gail Murphy, Roxanne King, Pat Corbin, Pat Louise, Nellie Ramsden, Tom Maclachlan, Tim Stapleton and Roxanne King.

If I missed any, I apologize…you did your class proud.

A special note to Tom Hall, a fellow volunteer at St. Joe’s, who asked me to help find the addresses of the teachers and to Jill Ramsden who solicitously escorted a rather gimpy me into the building and made sure that I found an easier way out.

So many more to recall, to gather into my 2018 mind as part of the person who I am and in turn to know that I was part of the persons they became. Wow.

These where youngsters in 1968, standing on the edge of their futures and now, as a portion of that has played out, it came to me, that we, the teachers at MCS did a good job with exceptional people.

Now, so many years later, I could revisit an exceptional time in my life and see it through the eyes of my students.

There are few things better