My recent posting about my 50th high school reunion drew a response I’d like to share.

Barbara Douglas Paulus was graduated from Rich Twp. High School, Park Forest IL, one year ahead of me. She organized her own class’s 50th reunion. Her class was small though and, unfortunately, so was the turnout — so we invited her class to our reunion too. Four of them attended.

Barbara was among those who wanted to come but couldn’t. After I posted my thoughts and feelings (scroll down to “Jealousy and hatred: A high school story”), Barbara responded with the following. I’ve cleaned up the punctuation a little, but otherwise it’s pretty much as she wrote it.

Notes: “Paco” was my name in Spanish class. (I still answer to it. Son Sam calls me “Paco.” So do a few others.) Chicago Heights is the next town over from Park Forest; in the earliest days, “PF” kids had to attend school in Chicago Heights.

Here’s what Barbara wrote. It moved me, and maybe it will move you too.

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Wow! Eye-opening for me. I never thought of you as a nerd, just a very adept person that I shared a brand new school with, and “Paco”, I was in awe of your mind.

I too came from a primarily Jewish neighborhood in Uptown district of Chicago, also with a lot of other backgrounds and success stories mixed in, i.e. …

… Bongiovanni’s of Bongi Trucking (Deep Tunnel, Winston Park and other housing projects), who only had a small taxi business at the time but had the first television set I’d ever seen in 1949 … Jonathon and Betty Hole, who were local actors in Chicago and went out to Hollywood, and who owned a car and dragged me all over with my beloved friend Jennifer, most especially to the Wrigley Building where Jonathon played Hot Shot Charlie on Terry and the Pirates on WBBM … The Friedlanders, who owned our grocery store that lent my Dad money many times, which we repaid, so he could raise his family in our more-than-modest two-room basement apartment, where he and mom slept in an in-a-door bed, and I shared the tiny kitchen quarters with my sister in a single Hollywood bed, and my brother in the 6-year crib, and the baby in a bassinet …

I could go on and on but the point is, when we moved to PF [Park Forest] I really missed the [Chicago] neighborhood. And yes, it was a shock, especially since we were the one of the first residents on Ash Street [in Park Forest], so we went from that cozy [city neighborhood] atmosphere to feeling unattached.

Worse yet, for my Mother at 36 years old, she was the oldest mother, and my Dad was an over-the-road trucker so neither fit the image. Dad was gone 6 days a week so Mom had to turn to PTA and her printed by-line columns in the PF Reporter and the Press [local newspapers] as she was left out of “couple” socializing. Mom was an English major at the University of Chicago before turning to nursing at Cook County Hospital.

However, I watched while our new neighbors’ townhouses were built over mud- and lizard-filled ponds between the newly poured sidewalks, and I absolutely fell in love with Park Forest. I think of our life there as the best of times and so, when I went back to reunions, I went with a heart filled with love and gratitude. I missed the city but learned to love the “country.” When we moved [to Park Forest], not one building — other than the old farmhouse where the Police and Fire Dept were housed on Western Avenue — were in sight.

The hard part for me, personally, was going to Chicago Heights to Jefferson Grammar School and then Washington Jr. High, since [in Chicago] I had walked to school along Sheridan Road and got to come home for lunch. All of a sudden I was on the bus and going to a school where the racial mixture was extreme. I was in a cultural shock as well, but made close friends of all races by 7th grade.

Our Mother didn’t allow us into the city on dates or even shopping. Very rarely was I allowed an after-school activity as my responsibilties were numerous with an absent Dad all week. PF was our world. When I go back to the reunions, I am often astounded at how many of our classmates have never left those small confines. I’m glad I’ve lived around the country (FL, CA twice now!, NV), and even more glad to call PF my “hometown”.

I was always just on the outside of the inner circle of the movers and shakers so, like you, I was shocked when I began attending reunions to learn that I was so well thought of. I never had the right body, the right clothes - my family didn’t own a car. This was a huge hardship on my Mother with groceries to be bought for 5 kids. She pulled them home in a wagon from the Jewel [supermarket] ’til they had delivery, and then she could ride home on the nickel bus that went around town.

I feel badly for the “kids” that don’t attend reunions. As we face the September of our years, those wonderful days of our youth shared in our combined memories bring much joy to my soul, even if I only muse on them once in a while. I tell my two daughters that if I “talk out of my head and heart” in my waning years, not to feel sorry for me; I am reliving my youth and will be relishing every memory.

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Thanks, Barbara.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. This Saturday, come visit the Local Author Festival hosted by Barnes & Noble at the Rio Center, Gaithersburg MD. I’ll be among Montgomery County MD authors signing books and chatting. The bookstore is in the Washingtonian Center (at “the Rio”), 21 Grand Corner Ave., Gaithersburg, Maryland, Tel: (301) 721-0860.