#1 and #23 Schools, Monroe High, July 2019 R 1/20

I enjoyed #23 school (1946 to 1952, age 7 to 13) and was a voracious reader of the Compton Encyclopedia in the den upstairs, often simply opening one of the 20 volumes to any page and reading on whatever subject started on that page. I also loved reading on our large front screened porch, watching the neighbors walk by, and hogging my favorite wicker rocking chair, or the wicker chaise, devouring Time, Life, Saturday Evening Post and even the Reader's Digest. Deed had installed dark green awnings in the front of the porch, as well as the upstairs front bedrooms, and the porch featured a sisal rug and white wicker furniture with green stick-to-your-legs plastic cushions. This was of course before Deed added central air-conditioning to the house, which didn't come until the late 1950s.

In third grade at #23 school I realized that I couldn't see the blackboard very well and kept walking up to the front of the classroom to read what Miss Nolan had written on it. That resulted in my getting glasses. Even then, I had become somewhat of a serious student, bookish.

I remember watching the funeral of King George VI of England in 1952 when television was relatively new. Everyone in #23 school gathered in the auditorium to watch the event on a black-and-white television. Americans still have a fascination with the British Royal Family – it did not start with Princess Diana. We were rather early in getting television in our home on Berkeley Street, and I remember watching many of the iconic 1950s shows, Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Ed Sullivan, Sid Caesar. Deed, Stuart, Jimmy and I had a tradition of watching Friday night boxing and Saturday night wrestling at 11 PM! Those sports have pretty much disappeared not only from television, but from most of the public psyche as well. We enjoyed watching the wrestler who used the name Ivan Rasputin, since he was in fact married to a distant relative of Deed. And of course, we enjoyed the wrestler with blond hair--- Gorgeous George.

Because of Deed's work in the upholstery business, he always had station wagons, including an awfully bright red and white Dodge wagon that you could see for miles. In high school, Mark and I had a friend, Norby Gerber, whose father owned a dry cleaning establishment, as well as a large Robin eggs blue four-door Cadillac sedan. He would drive us down the street, turning sharply to the left and right so that the car would go up on the two wheels on the left and then the two wheels on the right. Crazy but fun, a precursor to Ardra, our children’s ‘nanny’, who would lean forward in her large convertible with the top down, take a drag on her cigarette and floor it for a "fun" takeoff with the kids in the back seat! No seat belts of course!

Eighth grade was held at Monroe High School, and the actual high school program was 9th through 12th. We had a homeroom in which we would start each day and leave our coats and boots, etc., and then circulated around the school to the classroom of the teacher whose class we were taking. Honora had joined our group of friends at # 23 school when she and her family arrived from Cleveland in about sixth grade. Our friends from # 23 became the core of our friends at Monroe. Honora and l were in the same homeroom, and in 12th grade, the homeroom teacher retired and was succeeded by Ted DeSoto, then about 6 years older than we were! Short and like an army officer, he had no trouble keeping order – and later became the principal. Stuart got to know him as well, since he a few years later delivered Ted and his wife's first baby. Last year, 2018, I attended an off-reunion-year picnic of our class of 1957, and Ted was present. I called Stuart and put them on the phone together to reminisce about the baby, who is now of course a parent as well.

During our eighth grade, Monroe was experimenting in developing an honors program for students. Many of us were interviewed by Dr. Burnsides, a descendent of the general in the Civil War, whose facial hair led to the name sideburns. True. She had a deep southern accent, was very bright and tough. Honora and I and many other friends were chosen for the honors program, including Anne Gratiot (a frequent child-sitter for Jim), Anne Merchant, Bob Goldstein and John Glaser.

There were 12 of each from each grade, and we shared extraordinary teachers on a two grade basis. Ninth and 10th graders were grouped together in one room, 11th and 12th the same, and I don't recall how the teachers taught us so well when we were at different stages in courses. Our teachers were extraordinary: Miss Leary and Mrs. Maxwell for Latin, Jenny Stolbrand for English, Miss Caragher in world history, Lucille Bowen (who was my favorite) for American history, and Carl Lang for American Studies, a 12th grade course created just for us. Carl brought copies of the New York Times for each of us, which started my lifelong reading of that paper. And Lucille Bowen would always puff up her chest, raise her hands to her chest and use the words "THE GREAT" every single time she mentioned the name "John Marshall".

High school was great fun, and I recall it as being an almost classless place, with our being friends with football players, roughnecks, as well as the high ranking academic students. It was a glorious time, and at the beginning of school we would all meet outside, and then congregate at the "400 corner," before going to homeroom. Lunch was in the cafeteria, and we all remember the famous Monroe High School sticky buns, hard to replicate today – and they cost only a nickel.

In high school, we had Jewish fraternities, and I of course joined Stuart's, Sigma Tao Omicron, STO, along with Shelley Sper, John Glaser and Mark Kolko, my three best friends. There were also Hi-Ys, based at the Monroe Avenue YMCA, and I was a member of Beta Hi-Y along with John Glaser. I forgot what good the Hi-Vs did, but they were mostly social and included kids of all types, social classes and from all grades of high school. The Y held dances every Friday night and my dancing partner was a good friend and cheerleader, Barbara Bascom. We had a great time together and met again at a couple of the early reunions. She married a football player who passed away quite some time ago and I've not seen her in decades.

I dated Risa Weinstein, her cousin Sandy Shapiro (married to Stuart's best friend Stan Levin), Marian Rosenfeld, and of course Honora. We all started dating in that era by about 8th or 9th grade, going to movies or parties. Honora was also in the honors program, and became the daughter of the flag, i.e. 12th grade female student whose grade average was highest through 11th grade. I had expected to become the standard bearer (title for boys, daughter of the flag for girls), with the responsibility and honor of holding the American flag at the beginning of each assembly in the school, because my Regents Exams averages were the highest in our class. I was more than disappointed, more like crushed when Don Pfaff was named standard bearer and Bob Goldstein assistant standard bearer. I was so upset that my mother spoke with our chemistry teacher and a good friend Sam Bloom, who talked to the principal, Miss Ethel Sheehan, a tough disciplinarian but strong and very fair leader. She called me to her office and explained that for good or bad the system for determining those honors was measured not just by the Regents exams, but by every test during the year at the end of each half semester, and I lost out by a decimal point margin. At the subsequent assembly at which she introduced the new standard bearers and daughters of the flag, she made a point of stating that five people should have been up there that day.

New York State was then offering Regents Scholarships in the amount of $400 per year for four years, to be used at any university or college in New York State. This was at a time when a full year of college, including tuition and room and board was about $1500 year. Therefore, I applied to Columbia and Cornell, but also visited Hamilton College because Risa's older brother Sherwin was a student there, but in the end I didn't apply there. My mother had gone to Cornell and I remember she and I drove there to visit in Uncle Lesser's new Chrysler Windsor, a gorgeous car.

In the Regents Exam, students were ranked in each county and four of us from Monroe took the four top places. The only prior time that happened was in 1928, when my mother was one of four from East High School who pulled off the same feat. My mother and I also traveled to visit Columbia, and I remember being interviewed by the admissions director, Henry (Harry) Coleman, who later was acting Dean, and spent many years as the Dean of admissions. He was an impressive, cordial, but formal, and classy guy. I remember when leaving his office, I told my mother that I would like to be like him when I grew up. I was admitted to both Columbia and Cornell, but in those days colleges and universities shared data on what was a student's first choice and a scholarship from the institution was given only by the University so designated as one's first choice---which was Columbia.

I ended up there, a wonderful choice, and I remember the first day of freshman week meeting George Nikolaieff, whom I had first met at #23 school in about fifth grade. He and his mother somehow had gotten out of Russia to Canada and then to Rochester. At that point he spoke no English, learned fast and was a good friend. Before high school, he moved to Sodus, New York, and subsequently Mark, Honora and I all went to his wedding in Sodus after we all graduated college.

Monroe would occasionally hold an amateur night for musicians and others who wished to perform, and our friend Shelley Sper, a brilliant, almost wild and crazy musical guy, performed a drop dead version of Liberace at the piano, together with a candelabra (provided by my mother) on top of the piano. After Shelley won first price, we all celebrated at Cupid's, the ice cream and sandwich place across from Deed's upholstery shop on Monroe Avenue, where we would hang out for sodas and hamburgers. As I walked home from Monroe each day, I would of course stop in to see Deed.

My grandparents, along with Aunt Rose and her children, some time prior to high school moved from Joseph Avenue to Oxford Street, a beautiful street with an esplanade filled with Dogwood trees, around the corner from Deed's shop. They had a two-family house, with Grampa and Baubie living downstairs and Rosie and the kids upstairs. I remember the Seders that we used to have at my grandparents' apartment on Joseph Avenue in prior years, and of course my grandfather would run the entire long-version Seder. He came from a rabbinical family somewhere in Eastern Europe, but didn't want to be a Rabbi, so he left the family and came to America, somehow took on the name Eber, perhaps the name of cousins in Rochester. He later applied for citizenship, which wasn't required when entering the country in the 1890s, but he did finally file for citizenship in 1922, and listed his name as Gebert and claimed that he came over on the Lusitania, even though it hadn't been built in the 1890s when he came over.

Our grandmother, originally Bessie Kaplan, arrived in the U.S. at age 15, an age at which young women were normally not admitted alone, but she had an uncle to stay within Rochester. We have no idea what happened to her parents, and know nothing of her life in Poland or Russia, or wherever she came from in Eastern Europe. For some reason and sadly, our family lost touch with the descendants of that uncle in Rochester with whom she lived. He is buried near the Eber-Kaplan family plot at Britten Road Cemetery. Baubie had a loving and warm smile, and I have always regretted not attending her funeral in the midst of my senior year exams in June 1961 at Columbia. I should have missed the exam; I was already admitted to Harvard Law School. Grampa had passed away in 1954, when I was still in high school. His was the first funeral I ever attended.

Some afternoons after high school, after a first stop at Deed’s shop on Monroe Avenue, I would then go to visit Baubie, and have for milk and cookies. She was as sweet and loving a grandmother as one could hope for. Grandpa, however, while fun and smiling, wanted us to be serious students, and would ask me what I learned at Hebrew school, always disappointed in the result!

Deed's father, Morris, died in 1938, and I am named for him with the Hebrew name Moshe. His mother, Jenny, died in 1942 or so but I do have a clear memory of once looking up at her while being held in her lap.

While we never were able to find out much information about Baubie and Grampa and their origins in spite of the impressive genealogical work done by Stuart's son Richard, we have extensive information on my father's family. Our great-grandfather, Louis Kaplan, emigrated from Butrimonys in the Kaunas region of Lithuania with all ten of his adult children and their families between 1890 and 1910. Louis' oldest son, Morris, who was our grandfather, arrived around 1903 with two daughters, the twins Bessie and Pearl (Pallie), and prior to my father being born in 1906. They lived first in St. Mary's and then in Jeanette Pennsylvania, and my father had a close friend there, who visited in Rochester once. Stuart and I talked about driving with Deed to those towns directly south of Rochester but we never did that and have never been there. Deed never exhibited much interest in going back to Central Pennsylvania.

Stuart and Richard visited Butrimonys to learn more about the history, once that nation opened up after the fall of the Soviet Union. There is a book on the subject of that town and its Jewish population. Around 1900 there were about 400 Jews and 400 non-Jews living there, and about the same number when the Germans came through in 1941. By the end of that first day there was only one Jew, who had been out of town. Most of the killing was done by the Lithuanians, as I pointed out in a subsequent speech at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore with Cardinal Keeler present.

The traditional analysis of the Holocaust, as analyzed by Lucy Dawidowicz, in the book "The War Against the Jews" (or was it "why six million died"?), divided European societies during the Holocaust into five categories: perpetrators, collaborators, victims, rescuers and bystanders. I pointed out that the largest group was omitted, the beneficiaries, the people who moved into our distant relatives' homes in Butrimonys, with hot food on the table, clothing, dishes and other household items. Those were the people who benefited massively by moving into better homes than their own.

Louis lived a long life, until 1935, and his descendants in our generation number about 65 around the world, but we only know about 10 or 15. Stuart is named Sinai, for the uncle Sinai, who provided a home to Baubie when she arrived at age 15 in the 1890s.

Reverting to Monroe High School, I wrote for Monroe Life, the school newspaper as a reporter, and my senior year was the editor-in-chief. Honora was the news editor, and we had one major dispute that led to my firing her. I had been a member of the Adelphian Society, which was an academic honor society only for Jewish male students, and I decided that was totally unfair and there should not be a religion-based or race-based organization in the public high school; and I have no idea why that was ever permitted. So, I resigned and refused to allow the newspaper to run an article about who was elected the subsequent year. Honora insisted that it should run, so I fired her. The article never ran, and I reappointed her.

I was also active, as one can imagine, in school politics and the only elections were for class officers and for student body president, vice president and secretary. Honora was elected secretary of the Monroe student council, using the name as she was then known, “Honey” Albert. Mark was elected vice president, and I ran his campaign. We were not allowed to spend any meaningful amounts of money, but were allowed to put posters up all around the school. Tilly Kolko did not want the painting party for the posters to be held in her unfinished basement, but my mother allowed it to be in ours. And Mommy provided chocolate chip cookies most of the time that friends were painting posters for Mark. Our friend Marian Rosenfeld was the first woman to run for student body president, but lost to our friend Don Pfaff.

As editor-in-chief of Monroe life, the school newspaper, I was automatically a member of the Student Council, along with Don, Mark, Honora, and many other friends. I don't remember much of any of our discussions or issues, and it’s not like student governments had much power in those days; true in high school as it was at Columbia.

Don and Bob Goldstein both went on to Harvard, and I have remained in touch with Bob from time to time, who does return to reunions. After the passing of his wife, he married Irene Su, also a classmate in the honors program, after her husband passed away. They live in Washington and are friends of John Glaser. At the Monroe high class of 1957 reunion a few years ago, I was sitting with Bob and Irene and asked where they lived. It turned out they lived two doors from Jon and Jill and the family, and I subsequently took Harry and Ruby over to their house to visit.

If I had more confidence, after the failure to become standard bearer, I might have applied to Harvard, but might not have received sufficient scholarship aid to go there. I did have in the back of my mind that I would not want to spend seven years at the same university, and I was already thinking that I would want to go to Harvard Law School, and that I should go to New York City and to Columbia, which I knew of through an older friend from a family we knew well, Beryl Nusbaum. A little bit of my usual arrogance to think then, in 12th grade, that I would get into HLS?

I joined the Jewish fraternity ZBT, at the urging of Mark's cousin Neil Norry, one year ahead of us, and several of my good friends at college were members of ZBT, including Dan Shapiro, Bob Fisher, Burtt Ehrlich, and others, including Sandy Greenberg in the next year’s class and Robert Kraft in the class after that, along with Harvey Schneier from Rochester, whom I knew in high school, Doug Anderson and others. Harvey and I don't see each other much anymore, but our parents knew each other and I was at his bar mitzvah.

There was always a traditional Thanksgiving weekend game between Brighton and Monroe basketball teams, and I happened to meet Harvey there the year he was a senior in high school. I asked where he wanted to go to college and he said Cornell. I said bad choice, come to Columbia; he said really? I said yes, it's great. He came to Columbia, joined ZBT, went to Columbia medical school, taught there for many years, became a private doctor and Shira was a patient, and then joined Forest Labs as the head of research and regulatory matters, and was highly successful. Twice in his life we were the ‘excuse’ for surprise birthday parties for him, I think when he was 35 and 40, that were put on by his wife. The best was when we agreed to meet him and Barrie Mandel, his wife, at the Four Seasons bar for his birthday. When he showed up of course, there were 15 other friends there, before we went somewhere else for dinner. Harvey and Barrie later lived in one of the very few remaining wooden townhouses in New York, in the shadow of the World Trade Center, and after 9/11, they couldn't return to their dusty home for over a month. I still see him occasionally, but not often enough. He and Doug Anderson were close friends of Robert (then Bob) Kraft at Columbia and in ZBT and subsequently.

Jumping around back to high school, in addition to Cupids, we all went to Don and Bob's for cheeseburgers, and once we reached the illegal age of 16, we went to the Flyers Club for beer or 7 and 7 (or rye and ginger ale), since they served anybody who at least was able to shave.

During the summers and Saturdays during high school, I also often worked for Uncle Less, doing bookkeeping for Aunt Rose, his chief financial officer and bookkeeper, on an old manual adding machine, packing boxes of shoes and clothing to go to his six stores in the towns around Rochester in upstate New York. I learned to pack from his warehouse guy, JD Perry. Perry, as everyone called him, started working for Less at age 18, and continued until Less closed the business, retired and liquidated the stores many years later, when Perry was probably in his 40s. He applied for a job at Stromberg Carlson, and they couldn't believe his resume that he had only held one job his whole life. They called Less to confirm it, and Less gave him a glowing review: always showed up, dependable, personable, cordial, cooperative and honest. He was a good guy and I liked working with him. He taught me how to pack things in cartons and it's how I know how to pack a car well. Also in the summers I would often work in Less' store on Clinton Avenue or St. Paul Street, learning to sell merchandise.

Later, during summers of college, I worked for the US Post Office, a wonderful job because we earned postal worker union wages, and out of thanks for that, I would make a $5 or $10 contribution to the union at the end of each summer, when requested. I would usually substitute for mailmen on their vacations, walking the routes in various sections of Rochester and Brighton. That of course led to my experiences with dogs. One day, on the northern side of Rochester, I was walking down a residential street and saw a German Shepherd push at the screen door while barking as I approached the house. Seeing that the screen door was locked, I simply continued up the path until the German Shepherd went through the screen and into my foot, which I stuffed in his mouth screaming for the later the lady to come get her dog off me. She did and I told her to pick up the mail at the post office as I walked away. I skipped her house and the two next to it the next two days as well.

A better story was in the Ambassador Road section of Brighton, a gorgeous community, when the regular deliveryman warned me that when I showed up to collect the mail at the green mailbox, I should rattle the chain until the Doberman pincher showed up. “Do not touch him or tried to pet him the mailman said and don't even look him straight in the eye” was his warning! “Just open the mailbox, and he will look into make sure everything is okay. Load up your mail and he will lead you around the route. He will in effect be your guide.” As a fresh young guy, I couldn't resist making an unnecessary comment to a woman who was gardening because her little dog was inside the screen door yapping away. “Why can't your dog be nice and polite like this Doberman?” she said “Don't talk to me about that Doberman, yesterday he went through my screen door to attack my little dog!” I felt a little embarrassed, and perhaps learned to keep my mouth shut from time to time, but I haven't succeeded.

In high school, Shelley had a car, and we'd often just drive around. At one point, it was past the time when junior drivers were allowed to be driving at night, and we were approaching an intersection with an older policeman, who was eyeing Shelley. So Shelley of course pulled directly up to him at the intersection, turned to him and said “officer, can you give me the directions to such and such a place?” The officer, flustered, gave the directions, and Shelley promptly drove off!

In those days, our bar mitzvah parties were pretty modest. Our parents put on parties on the Saturday night of our bar mitzvahs was at our Berkeley Street home, with alcohol and food, but certainly no fancy dinners and no music. I do remember shopping for a tie for my bar mitzvah with my mother, because I had one in mind and we went to many stores, the National, McFarlin's, McCurdy's, Sibley's, and I finally found a gold tie with the zigzagging stripe. I saved it, and found it just in time to wear to Emmys bat mitzvah.

When I did serve as a delivery mailman, I was lucky enough to use Stuart's Ford sedan, and of course would drive to the downtown post office, across from where our mother was raised in Rochester. I would always go for breakfast, like the other mailmen, across the street to a hole in the wall, where the favorite breakfast was a bulky roll sliced horizontally and grilled on the flattop stove and buttered. Still a favorite in many sections of the country.

I mentioned that I was a member of Stuart's fraternity, STO, along with Mark, John and Shelley, and every year STO sponsored a sweetheart dance with the Monroe high school and Brighton Hi-Vs and fraternities, and Franklin High as well, nominating candidates. One fraternity nominated Honora, who won. These events were held at the Sheraton Hotel, with full dinners, with a TV or radio personality interviewing the candidates, and a panel of adult Judges then chose the sweetheart. It was a fund-raising drive for the heart disease campaign, and there was a band with live music and dancing. Tickets were not terribly expensive, and the dinner dance was advertised to the fraternities and High Ys and with posters put in store windows. A friend of my father's took the pictures for free for the posters and we had them printed someplace, probably for free as well. I still have the one from our senior year, when Honora was the Sweetheart. As I think back on it, the members of the Hi-Ys were mostly non-Jewish, and the fraternities were all Jewish, but everyone participated in these events without any hostility or concerns.