Hey guys... we need to thank Judy for requesting that this forum be created for us.  Let's see how many of us we can get to join in.

Laurence

Hi Laurence and whoever else looks at this!

I've looked at the Heath School chain with total bemusement.  I don't remember ANY of that stuff.  Zilch, Nada.  Vague memories of a couple of the teachers, e.g. Mr. McInerny, but that's it.  Partly that's because I've never been attentive enough to the everyday world around me, and never very good at remembering everyday incidents.  Maybe partly it's also because a lot of it was part of a Heath School life that, as someone who didn't live in the neighborhood, wasn't really part of what I did.  I'm wondering if others feel the same way.

Even the events of our class are clouded in my mind.  I'm not sure I would have remembered Mrs. Yud's name.  I think I remember that we as well as other classes drove away some nice young math teacher with a name like Miss McClain, and she was replaced by a tough Israeli teacher with a name like Mrs. Olatunji.  But it definitely was not Olatunji!  Nor McClain for that matter, I think.  Does anyone remember?  What I remember is the people, and it's interesting seeing what those who have responded to the reunion e-mails are doing.  I know a bit about a few others, like Richard and Walter.  And saw Julio maybe fifteen years ago, but I'm not sure he'd tell us what he is doing even if Carl Ship found him (which gives you a sense of what he was doing). 

My strongest memories are of 7th grade because it was Bar and Bat Mitzvah year, and I remember feeling very awkward, and the cooler kids (you know who you were) having better parties.  That's particularly in my mind this year because my daughter did hers in October.  Like Laurence I was lucky to find my way to fatherhood fairly late, and it is a great joy.  Party was pretty good too, and, since my wife Sydelle was raised conservative, we are in a gigantic conservative shul and and Abby had to do a LOT more than Mark or I did at Temple Israel.

If any of you make it to the Reunion, I hope you have a great time.  I'll have to miss it, as I'll be on Sabbatical for the first time in my life.  But I'll look forward to reading more about what people are up to.  And any of The Class will always be welcome to visit in beautiful Cleveland (well, Shaker Heights) -- except for next academic year.  It would be good to catch up.

Cheers,

Joe White

Sorry to add one more comment.  Commenting on Julio made me look for him on the web.  Not much there.  But the following may be of interest.  Towards the bottom there are some comments by Julio about his military career.  They are, as one would expect, very thoughtful and interesting.

Cheers,

Joe

http://www.exeter69.org/pres2002.html 

 Ok, guys!  Couldn't figure out how to put our 8th grade pic outside Driscoll on the forum. Somehow it ended up on my profile page so take a look.  Julio-haven't thought about him in years.  He had about 8 different names which he used to rattle off and also made the most beautiful maps in 8th grade. 

Mrs. Yood....Wow! That provokes two distinct memories: 1. those dreaded geography reports. I hated those. Hated is not a strong enough word for what I felt about them and therefore her; however I will love her forever for introducing me/us to"The Great Quillow." That was the first of our theatrical productions, followed by "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Devil and Daniel Webster." (I revisited "Quillow" writing a new script and my son Ben wrote the score and lyrics. It was produced initially in 2003.) Got to go now, more later - Mark

 I, given the anal student that I was, really liked the geography reports.  And I do remember the Great Quillow and A Midsummer Night's Dream in which I played Puck.

So Gail contacted me because she was having trouble getting onto this forum.  I explained how to do it with pictures and diagrams and expect her to chime in soon... but when she gets here... let's all pretend we don't see her!!!!!!!

Laurence

OK OK As I confessed to Laurence, I may not have been the brightest star in the Yud galaxy, but I was fun to be around!   Joseph, do you remember the day that Peter Berube(A Heath School JD) jumped out of the 2nd story window of our math Class?  I think the Israeli teacher's name was something close to Mrs. Ottolinghi. 

Judy, I still remember first hearing about a girl named Faye Katz from you.  Well, Faye moved to South Brookline in HS. We became and still remain very close friends.  I saw Margie Kaplan's parents last May.  A few years ago I temped for the BHS PE Department and ran into Ruth Kaplan, Margie's sister, who was on school committee remembered our class!!  There must have been some lively discussions in that house!  I have some pictures of our 8th grade trip to Montreal,  I will try to remember to bring them to the reunion.  I would like to try to post them here, but I cannot find the "add attachment" button .  Maybe Laurence will be  so gracious as to pull out his BIG RED POINTY THING  again and personally instruct me as to how to include them, I might just give it a go.  L, the pix are on my desktop.  

Mark, I too, hated the written and especially the oral social studies reports.  I remember standing in front of the class for what seemed to be eternity, while Mrs. Yud tried to teach me the correct pronounciation of the word JEWELRY.  Of course I mispronounced it as jew-ler-y, and I could not hear the difference between jewel-ry and jew-ler-y.  Needless to say, I NEVER made that mistake again!  I also remember A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I played Bottom, "Thus die I.  Thus.  Thus.  Thus."  I had a little fist fight with the Stone Wall, did Richard Kazis play Wall?

I run into Alan Dana from time to time.  Although he went to the Rivers School for HS, I think that he would love to join this site.  When I see him again, I'll let him know that it exists.

One of Jeopary's questions last night was...

Answer:  The hammer used when working with metal.

Question:  What is a ball peen hammer?  Go Shop.  Do you all remember boys in Home Ec and girls in Shop?  I loved Shop.  I'll try to remember some more trivia.  I hope to see many of you at the reunion.

XO,    

G

The pall pean hammer.  Remember it oh so well... along with the mellifluous sounds of 23 kids furiously pounding said hammers onto small already lifeless squares of sheet metal.  Who's idea was that?  The discussions on this website, and the flashbacks they stimulate, are colliding with my reality in an interesting way.  Moments ago, I watched from behind as my little 8th grader meandered down the driveway on his way to school, with his heavily weighted backpack over one arm and his just-completed 3D model of the Oxygen atom dangling scientifically from the other.  8th grade was good.

Laurence

 Welcome, Gail.  Yes, Faye and I were good friends at Devotion and I spent quite a lot of time at her house on Stedman St.  That was the place to be!! She also brought me to Camp Tevya which was a huge part of my life growing up. And, yes, I too loved shop.  I thought it was so neat that the girls in our class got to do shop.  I certainly liked it more than home ec.

Mark, you got me thinking about The Great Quillow.  Weren't you Quillow?? Last night in the shower I started humming a tune.  We had a song that went something like: " I am Quillow.  I am Quillow.  I thought of that wonderful word." Is my recollection right??

The teacher who stands out most in my mind from Heath was Mr. Gorman.  Do you remember him? I bet he was fresh out of school and we were brutal to him!! I was particularly bad, so bad that when it came time for my report card he gave me A's in history and geography but 3's in conduct.(You might recall that 1 was the best and noone got below a 2).  Because of the discrepancy between my letter grades and conduct grades, he put asterisks next to the 3's and at the bottom of the report card wrote:  This reflects Judy's behavior.  Needless to say, this did not go over well at home.  

Laurence, you are watching your son go off to 8th grade and looking at high schools.  I am looking at day care centers with my daughter for my 3 month old granddaughter.  Boy, are we at different stages of life.

I hope we can get more participants here.  This is really fun.

hey Judy

Mr. Gorman, what a prize!  Didn't we have a song about him?  Drive on for Gorman, that is the key, that opens the door to the goon so-ci-e-ty.  Green bag and baggy pants, clashing clothes and all, did you ever see him marching down the hall?  This was sung to the tune of "Hey Look Me Over"  which was also used as a campaign song for one of the Kennedys.  JFK for Pres. I think.   We were definitely brutal to Ira  He ended up marrying a math teacher at BHS, (do not remember her name)  I think that they are no longer together.  One day I received a call from a man selling...encyclopedia (s)  He said his name was Ira Gorman.  Of course I replied, "Are you my Mr. Gorman?"  I then went on to remind him of his previous life as our SS teacher!  No, I never did buy a set of books from him.  He was Debbie Levy (D'Arcy's) homeroon teacher back in the day and my alibi whenever I cut class.  Remember those notes:  Gail Prager, report to House Office. 8:05.  MKR.  Thank you Ira G for saving me from hours of detention! 

I have lots of memories of George Viglirolo.  Does anyone remember our class walking around Marlboro Street near Kenmore Square on some sort of walking tour of Boston (maybe to look at the architecture).  We sang "We shall Overcome" at the tops of our lungs!!!  Looking back, maybe not such a smart idea in the mid 60's!

This site was a great idea, Judy.  Thanks for getting it together.

Goodnight for now.

G

Hey all,

I definitely remember Peter Berube, and thinking that helped cause the teacher, whose name I still can't remember (Does Miss Moline ring a bell?) away.  On the Heath School chain the idea that a teacher was driven away by Peter is strongly denied, and it is claimed that the teacher who left was named Mrs. Katz, but maybe two teachers left.  Anyway, Peter Berube out the 2nd floor window is my memory and, if it's Gail's too, I'm sticking to it.

For better or worse Ira probably influenced me.  Not quite as much as Mr. Wright (whom I saw a couple of years ago) but definitely had some formative impact.  I had forgotten his name but not his aspect...  I remember reading the National Review and New Republic, and some sort of college reader on something like Latin America.  This was really sophisticated stuff, far beyond what I've ever heard of in other 7th grades.  The Vietnam War was ramping up seriously and the controversies were on those pages.  Later in life I remember being disappointed to pick up the New Republic and find it had gone neocon and in some ways (but not all) was as bad as National Review.  Though National Review had gone even further right by then, I think.  I hope he found something better to do than selling encyclopedias. 

Mr. V... boy, we had some real matinee idols, didn't we?  But he was great.  Enthusiasm in the classroom counts.  I hope he grew to be a beloved old teacher.

Quillow clearly was the beginning of a life-long avocation for Mark, and it is hard to describe how cool it was to see his son, Ben, play Boq in Wicked here in Cleveland a couple of months ago.  Ben is not only very talented but also accomplished and professional and I just hope that I get to see Abby at Ben or Josh's age and to feel the kind of glow that Mark can feel with his sons.  Shaker Heights has all the 7th and 8th graders in one school, so Abby was in Midsummer Night's Dream this year from a larger group of kids, and she got Judy's role -- Puck.  We always want our kids to surpass us, right?  For acting that should be easy for Abby.  If memory serves, I was Flute, or Thisbe, and got to die in a high, feminine voice.  Judy indeed is at another stage of life -- Judy, are you really out of pediatric practice?  You must have been really good, and I hope you're doing other things with all your talent.  I can't imagine stopping what I'm doing, though that's partly because I have a family to support and no prospect of retiring on my current assets!  But also because, except for the administrative and university politics side, I'm doing work I really believe in.  Which means a little less than half of what I do is work I really care about, and some of the rest is work I think is important, even though I wish someone else were doing it.

It's neat to hear about people.  I haven't contacted Walter because I fear he would not be interested; school of any sort is not one of his favorite topics;  but maybe I'll call him.  Does anyone else remember him drawing cartoons on the windows of buses when it was a rainy day and the windows were fogged up?  I vaguely remember David Champlain doing that too.  I went on the web to search a few names, and couldn't find a current listing for Julio.  Somewhere in the homeland security world at last sighting.  Someone who sure sounds like Rob Lacy is a partner at Sullivan and Cromwell.  Someone who could quite possibly  be Renee is a clinical psychologist in Bellevue Washington.  There are a few David Champlains but not enough information on any of them to guess. 

cheers to all,

Joe

Yes, I think Mr. V, in spite of his oddness, had an impact on all of us.  Remember him pacing frantically at the front the class while reciting Odyseuss' iambic pentameter?  And does anyone remember the rant he went into one day about the over-enthusiastic use of the word "great"?  He implored us to save "great" for times when something truly was great.  My son has resisted my attempts to guide him toward the same lesson as regards the word "awesome", but nonetheless, it is something that has stayed with me all these years.

Here's something else that has stayed with me.  Who can finish the next 3 lines....

- J'ouevre la porte.

-

-

-

And... who said it?

Laurence

 Yes, Joe.  I am indeed retired.  I was in private practice for 22 years and became increasingly unhappy. The office politics were awful, dealing with neurotic parents was becoming increasingly difficult and the worst part was working nights and weekends (especially the weekends.)  So I decided to give it up.  I wasn't sure where I would be headed after that and, as everyone said, it took a few years to "find myself."  At this point my life has a wonderful flow.  I do some math tutoring for disadvantaged kids in the Bronx and in White Plains, I take a Spanish class (wish we had taken Spanish instead of French), I play a sport called platform tennis a few times a week as well as exercise at the gym (very necessary after a severe case of sciatica last fall) and I play bridge about twice a week-an impossible game and one which I will never master.  It certainly keeps the mind going.  And, better yet, I can get up to Boston to see my granddaughter without worrying whether or not I am on call. 

I can't believe Gail remembered that song about Mr. Gorman.  We really were terrible to him.  Imagine my horror after the way I treated him at Heath when I walked into homeroom as a freshman and there he was as my homeroom teacher!! I think he was  horrified also.  

Do you guys remember poetry parties in Mrs. Yood's class? I was on a roll memorizing Lewis Carroll and I can still recite the entire Walrus and the Carpenter as well as Jaberwocky.  My husband is very proud of me for that. 

Now, Laurence, I can't remember who said that line in French.  I am making a stab at Ms. Teal. And I can't finish it.  But...how about this one.  This was what we learned in 5th grade when we were learning how to count in French:

un deux trois

nous irons aux bois

quatre cinq six

cueillir les cerises

sept huit neuf

dans mon panier neuf

dix onze douze

ils seront TOUTES rouges

The things we remember!!!!!!!!!!

np

 One more thing.  Joe, I do remember reading the National Review in 7th grade.  It was way beyond me!!

Judy... I think Miss Teal came later.  I'm pretty sure it was, uh, was her name Miss Alexopolous?... or something like that?  Fifth grade.  Your recollection is quite good.  What I recall is something like... J'ouevre la port... Je ferme la porte... J'entre dans la salle... Je m'assieds... or whatever.

Time is so weird.  The last time I saw you, Judy, was probably graduation day at BHS... and then... blink, you're a retired pediatrician.  Weird.  And where were you the night Spencer woke us up with croupe and my wife starts screaming at me "DO SOMETHING!!!"  Oh wait, my 2am phone call to you would only have further hastened your retirement.  But it sounds like you're in a great place, so there's nothing wrong with that.  By the way, I could use a little help with the quadratic equation right about now.  That was, in fact, my arch nemesis throughout school, now come back to haunt me in the form of 8th grade homework.  Joe, are you doing that fun math now, too?  Abby's in 8th grade, right?

Yes, I totally remember the poetry in Mrs. Yood's class.  I did Jabberwocky and split it with someone else, so I only ended up learning every other verse.  (Saw Tim Burton's Alice... what a waste.)

Laurence

Hello folks!

Could I have been a "chink in the wall"?

I remember I was Oz at Driscoll with Dr Thompson: "I am Oz, great and powerful. Who are you and why do you seek me?"

"Pecos Bill" with marionettes that we made at Heath

My brother brought me a cowboy hat from Boy Scout camp in Arizona. I wore it to Heath. At recess Larry Piatelli grabbed it off my head and stomped on it. I grabbed him and punched him and was sent to Dr Jenkins office. Mr. Mac came and took me out of her office and told me that was great. He'd never seen me exert myself physically like that. I was very confused. And hated all those kids.

Ann D. Fleck with her plaid skirt/kilts and red tool box for fixing musical instruments.

Heath: best brownies i have ever had.

My son Sam, and daughter Laura were graduated from Heath. Every year the art teacher posts historic Heath photos. There is one with us planting a tree. I'll try to get a copy and scan it here.

George Viglirolo I remember top floor Driscoll, English class:  asking for the definition of "venerable".  I eagerly raised my hand and answered "That is a sexual disease".

His dramatic readings of the Beatles songs on a bus going to Montreal.

Foaming at the mouth as he spoke in that wonderful loud deep passionate voice.

more to come...........

Excellent memory.  As I recall, there was something kind of surreal about those Pecos Bill puppets... like it was supposed to be about the tall tails of the early pioneers but mostly our characters just looked really scary.

Yes, Mrs. Fleck was a character.  I remember how she could play every single one of those instruments and made me wish I could, too.  You still have your trumpet?  (My clarinet's long gone but I do play piano a lot.)

Indeed, Mr. V foaming at the mouth... but filled with passion.  I still think twice before using the word "great".

I decided it's time to chime in and say hello to you all.  I need to update my profile but will share some memories I have of our 4 years....I had such difficulty memorizing and performing in front of people that rather than having a part in the play, I provided the welcome and introduction to the Midsummer Night's Dream performance.  This was performed at Baker where someone I knew in a class there told me that their teacher had raved about the performance except for the girl who did the introduction and read every word off note cards.  Oh well.  I hated memorizing the poems as well.  My daughter, Rebecca, loves acting and was Puck in an adaptation of this at her summer program last year.  (I'm probably the oldest first time mom in our class -- Becca is 11 now.)

I do, however, remember Francois Villon's Ballade des Pendus -- Freres humaines qui apres nous vivez, nayez les cours contre nous endourci ... weird!  I remember the 23rd psalm en francais, aussi.

I remember Miss Benmoshe (sp?) an Israeli who taught math in 7th grade maybe? 

I also remember the first day of school, when we were told to find partners for a tour around the school and I knew no one in the class being the only kid from Pierce and Gail Prager came over and asked me to be her partner -- thanks Gail!

I also remember being terribly intimidated in history and geography because of Julio and Rob in particular who seemed to know everything.