SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT
While flipping through the pages of my
alumni magazine, a picture of a familiar face jumped out at me: William
VandeVarst, a member of my four-man team that attended the mandatory six week-long
surveying class conducted at the school’s camp located in northern New Jersey during the summer of 1947. His picture
inspired me to phone John Grinwis, another member of the team. We had not seen
or talked with each other in over half a century.
My call surprised him, but he recalled me
immediately, remembering also that we were teammates on our JV basketball team.
After his graduation in 1949, he got a job as an Industrial Engineer with a
small firm in New
Jersey
that made leather seats for the automotive industry. He worked there his entire
career, retiring as the firm’s president. He still lives in the same community
on the Jersey Shore
I mentioned to him an incident that
happened one weekend during summer camp when he drove me home while on the way
home. To save time, he chose to drive over an unmarked rutted dirt forest road
not intended for automotive traffic. The car hit a rock and began leaking oil. I
had not planned on getting stuck in the middle of some New Jersey jungle and having to hike to
civilization that day. John stuffed his shirt into the leaning oil pan and we
managed to get back to civilization. He said he recalled the adventure, but I
think not.
This pleasant exchange came on the heels
of a similar phone reunion I had just a month earlier with Andrew Santulli who
graduated from high school with me in 1944 and from Stevens in 1949.
He told me, “The military did not draft
me so I managed to keep on attending Stevens. I had to work my tail off to earn
the money to pay for tuition and books. Then, after graduating, I couldn’t find
a job. Finally, Babcock & Wilcox offered me a job at their plant located in
the middle of Ohio . To get there, I had to borrowed train
fare from my father. I arrived in Cleveland in the middle of the night, freezing my
tail off, still not certain how to get to Barberton . I asked myself, ‘what the heck are you
doing out here?’ I took the first train
back to New
York .
Fortunately, I managed to get a great
non-engineering job working for the New York Port Authority from which I retired.”
“Do you still play the clarinet as you
did in the high school band?
“You remember that? No, I stopped years
ago.”
Happily married, he had three children,
one of whom died in his arms, a victim of cancer.
He asked, “Do you remember Tom Gorman, our
high school math instructor? He
graduated from Stevens in 1935. I met him at a reunion last year and asked if
he remembered me, saying he had taught me how to play chess. Tom said, “What’s
your name?”
“Andrew Santulli.”
“No, but your name sounds as though it’s
from Hoboken .”
In a whirlpool of reminiscence, my
attention turned next to Paul Willenborg, another Hoboken fellow who graduated with me from four
different schools: Saint’s Peter and Paul Grade, David E. Rue Junior High, A.
J. Demarest Senior High, and Stevens Institute of Technology.
Paul won one of the three scholarships
Stevens awarded in the year we took their competitive examination. He entered
Stevens after completing military service but did not participate in a single
school activity. Our paths rarely crossed during college days.
My phone call to Paul, now living his
retirement years in North
Carolina ,
delighted him. “Joe, I recently mentioned your name to a friend, telling him
that we had graduated together four times.” Paul worked for GE his entire career until he retired
at age fifty eight.
His first wife died some years ago. He
has two married sons, an unmarried daughter and five grandchildren. On a happy note,
he met and married a much younger woman after his first wife died. On a sad
note, his second wife developed breast cancer. On an even sadder note, he said
he has colon cancer. Both he and his wife are undergoing radiation treatments and
are recovering. In 2016, I received an email from him, so I know he had
conquered that disease.
While discussing the scholarship he had
won, he surprised me by saying he used his G. I. Bill benefit to pay for
tuition and books, a much better deal. Under the government plan, he received a
monthly living allowance check. “Me too,” I said. Uncle Sam had funded the
final three years of my college education.
He enthused about his North Carolina life style. “I own a twenty-five foot
cabin cruiser and we sail frequently on a nearby lake that is reputedly the
third cleanest in the nation. I live high atop a mountain in an exclusive condominium
with spectacular views of the wooded hills below. I bought the condo next door
so that we have complete privacy.”
The following week, Paul sent me a
handwritten note and a map of the area where he now resides. He invited me and
my wife to stay with them if we travel that way. His offer touched me.
During our phone discussion, we had
talked about our fourth grade nun, Sister “Cannonball” Clara. This prompted me
to send him my memoir vignette about her. In his note, he said his recollection
of her matched mine. Additionally, his younger sister confirmed our recall, as
she had also spent a year being taught by Sister Clara.
I began to think of some of the other classmates
who started college with me after graduating from high school in 1944. First
and foremost stands Donnie Flechtner, my best friend, who graduated high school
at age sixteen. He had won the second of three scholarships Stevens awarded
that year. Too young to be drafted, he enrolled with me in July 1944, graduating
with a Mechanical Engineering degree at age eighteen, two years and eight
months later. He earned his Master’s degree in ME at age twenty. I last saw him
in 1952, shortly before he enlisted as an officer in the Air Force. Our paths
never crossed afterwards. He died at age fifty, a suicide.
The name, Robert Meyer, popped up in my
memory. He won first prize in the Stevens competitive test, but immediately
entered naval service. Upon his return, he enrolled at Stevens and graduated
with me and Willenborg, also using the G.I. Bill to pay for his education
rather than the scholarship he had won. He joined my fraternity, but did not
socialize too frequently. I have no idea where he learned tennis, but he
captained the Stevens team and won most of his matches, a great left-handed
player. He lives as a recluse in Teaneck , NJ
Leo Critides, another of my high school
class graduates, entered Stevens with me in July 19454 but left after one
semester to enter military service. Upon his return, he decided to attend Seton Hall University Hoboken while employed in various non-chemistry
related jobs in Manhattan . We met in 1994 at our high school
reunion and on one subsequent visit. He married an Irish gal and has a number
of children and grandchildren, all of whom sport red hair.
Cousins Frank and Eugene Pescatore also
began their college careers at Stevens upon graduating from high school. Both
dropped out. Frank went on to join the Stevens faculty as a shop instructor, a
position he held his entire career.
His cousin, Eugene, dropped out after one
semester and went on to become a priest serving in a Hoboken church until ill health forced him to
retire. I recall Eugene as a very good student, small of
stature, shy by nature. I am convinced he made a wonderful priest.
Let me again mention Paul Willenborg.
Despite his business success, he did not forget his Hoboken roots, nor will I. We have too many
interesting memories of our youth, including the days we swam in the
unbelievably filthy Hudson
River in order
to cool off from the unbearably muggy, humid summer days that persisted all
summer long.
A few weeks after catching up with Paul,
my college fraternity had a reunion at Williamsburg which I did not attend. Bob Neill, a
dear friend, acted as the emcee at the concluding banquet. He emailed me a
report of the affair which included the following remarks he delivered at the
banquet: “Joe Finnerty regretted he could not join us this year, but says he
still has fond memories of school and Hoboken . I told Joe to add a can of STP to his
backyard pool before plunging in, a reminder of what it was like to swim in the
oily Hudson River while growing up.”
This slick comment made my day, causing
me to sing, “What kind of ‘pool’ am I?”
▄
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