“The Last Square Class”
Go, Bulldogs!
There were 228 of us, with only one Black classmate. The class was religiously and ethnically diverse, but with class divisions: Children of Polish and Italian immigrants in my neck of the woods; more affluent, middle and upper middle class families — the “rich” kids — filled new subdivisions on the other side of the Clarence H. Mackay estate. Mackey was as they say “an American financier” of the Gilded Age, residing in a Downton Abbey-like mansion on the legendary North Shore of “The Great Gadsby.” He was also an antisemite who frowned on his daughter Eileen’s marriage to Irving Berlin.
His estate was Harbor Hill, overlooking Roslyn Harbor. Our high school newspaper was the Hilltop Beacon, our yearbook the Hilltopper. As his estate was being carved into Country Estates, we roamed the grounds, marveling at the rhododendrons and with my scout troop baking tinfoil-wrapped potatoes over camp fires. Today, only the gatehouse remains of the Mackay estate, but the high school connection persists.
The 50th anniversary reunion in 2010 brought us back. I worked on the reunion book, crafting memorial bios of the more than 30 departed, including Mike Crichton, the best-selling author of “The Andromeda Strain,” “Jurassic Park,” and many other blockbuster books that became blockbuster films. “Big Mike” — he was 6 foot, seven inches tall, and naturally a basketball standout — went to Harvard and medical school, but his interest in science turned towards writing rather than medicine.
Out of the milestone reunion came the creation of a Class of 1960 scholarship, to be given each spring to a deserving senior who displayed a commitment to community service. Many of us chipped in to fund the award, and I was happy to be part of the small scholarship committee, though we deferred to the school to make a selection.
In 2012, four of us attended the award ceremony: Fredda Berger Klopher, George Johnson, David Kupersmith, and me. After George, who chaired the committee, died three years ago I inherited the honor. Since then, Fredda has attended the award ceremony at the school. She reports that we are the only Roslyn High School class to award a scholarship. This week, she told the graduating seniors:
“I was privileged to be a member of the class of 1960. I know that year is something you cannot imagine. It was the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, and we were idealists. We we were going to change the world. With age, I have come to realize we cannot change the world, but we can effect change in the small corner of the world we inhabit. Robert Kennedy once said, “Some people see the world as it is and ask why, others see it as it could be and ask why not? I charge you the class of 2026 to do the latter. This exemplifies why the class of 1960 created this award.”
Sixty-five years later, the legacy of the Roslyn High School Class of 1960 lives on.
Go, Bulldogs!
Nice to read this, Gene. I also am a 1960 high school graduate, but from a very different world. I graduated from United Joint High School deep in rural western Pennsylvania. We knew nothing about the civil rights movement that was starting to brew. Few of us went to college. I did, but to a right-wing college where civil rights and other current social issues were not discussed. I chose the college because it was even less expensive than what we called state teachers’ colleges. That was true because it had a very high endowment made possible by a very rightwing trustee. I was not yet a thinking person, so I was unaware of those factors. It was not until I accidentally became a a reporter in Johnstown, PA, that I started paying attention to the world. After three years there, I went to Philadelphia, where movements, ideas and activism were crackling. There I found the roots of my new beginning as a thinking person.
I graduated from high school in 1961. Not 5 minutes ago, responding to a message from a new PhD, I recalled the hopelessness I felt as a young person, and wished that young people now not have to go through the same kinds of barriers I grew up with.
But you know what they say, “Wish in one hand, ktl….”
Gene, I was a graduate of the class of 1970. It was a world on the verge of snark; bathed in earnest protest and a good deal of self-righteousness. I was the organizer of the busses traveling to DC for the ’69 anti-war protests. My greatest accomplishment! Canosa was principal by then and pretty much hated me. I was part of the group that hung a huge banner from the new, ugly face of the school, a naked portrait of the woman he was having an affair with (her former boyfriend, older brother of our class president, spilled the beans.) So when we graduated I approached him warily–and inside the gown of my best friend, who unzipped to let me free. His mispronounced my name wrong — willfully, I’d say–and I told him, “If you mispronounce my name one more time, I’m going to call you Canova”–which I did at a post-graduation event.