***On Friendship-“The Nine”-NQHS Class of 1964

The story of the continuing active friendships of nine of our fellow Class of 1964 classmates at NQHS has intrigued me since I first heard about it back in December. Personally I can think of only one relationship of my own that goes back to high school days. Forget about nine. I have asked around about this phenomenon as well and nobody else can come close to that number either. Amazing. 

I am a little light on details of how it all started, how it continued, and the specifics of what this group has done and is doing.  Fortunately I can make up a story (use some literary license, okay) and maybe they will grace this piece with some real details of their long- standing friendships. Thanks to Phyllis for some of the information below and see Paula Kelly's profile page for recent photos of the honorees. Here is a little bouquet…

Hey, I have just confirmed my 158^th “friend” on Facebook today.  Well not exactly a friend but a woman who knows a woman I “know” whom I “friended” (by the way when did friend become a verb). That latter woman had been added to my “circle” after I confirmed for a man, somebody who actually is a friend of mine. Or rather a person that I do some political work with who has a huge network of “friends” and I now am part of that network. 

By the way many of those 158 friends I don’t know, have never ever met. Many are Brazilian who write in Portuguese and I don’t (I remember a little Spanish so I can roughly translate), and a number are somehow “friends” that are always pestering me to play some foolish on-line game that they participate in. All of this by way of introducing a rather strange idea these days- the idea of real in-person friends. A story about a group of friends, nine women from the Class of 1964 at North Quincy High (listed in the dedication), who have actually gotten together regularly and done stuff, and who have been doing that stuff together for at least forty-five years. Yes, 45 years.

Here’s how it started. One young girl, Phyllis,  met another, Karen, in elementary school, the old Wollaston School, on the playground playing jacks, one won, the loser cried, the winner came over to console the loser and they thereafter were fast friends for life (no one can remember who won or who lost such are the vagaries of time but no matter). Then came dreaded hormonally-driven junior high days at Central Junior High and those two formed a friendship with Janice to gain added shelter against the raging hormones, bothersome boys, and what to do about that “crush” two of them had on one of those same bothersome boys.

At North the group snowballed, picking up the remaining six through attendance in the same classes (some business classes) and this or that school club or event. At North this enlarged grouping came together to try to survive those still raging hormones, figure out what to do about those now not so bothersome boys, and, most importantly, what to do about that “crush” two of them had on one of those now not so bothersome boys. On the whole the group was on friendly terms at North. Maybe not every day in every way girls’ “lav” Monday morning talk- friendly but more than some passing “Hi.” (Or some such equivalent term used to acknowledge another’s girl-ness. Guys gave the ubiquitous nod.)

Then came graduation and the nine were swept away with the winds of change. Swept away to go their separate ways and look forward to more school, work, romances, and marriages. Or so they thought. Later, the year after graduation, 1965, the group came together again at a Christmas party hosted by Millie and that original mist of time from elementary school on thereafter extended itself to the present. There you have it.

Now was what the group met over lunch or some other occasion about some world-historic event, discussing matters of great national and international import. Well, maybe in passing, as those events impinged on their lives and they worried about their love ones going off to war, losing jobs, trying to get home loans, stuff like that. But what drove them was the stuff of ordinary human clay-at first school hassles, going to the Cape on summer weekends, new jobs, trying to move up the ladder, dates, finding some "Mr. Right."  

Then came marriages, marriages hopefully made in heaven, but as was the ethos then made hopefully to last forever. (There is now a famous, class famous, photograph of one of their number's wedding, Paula Palesse's in 2005, so hope springs eternal. See Paula Kelly's profile page.) Unfortunately the group was not exempt from the modern societal norms and not every marriage lasted as long as the friendships. The coming of  children (I will not even hazard a guess at the collective number nor will I grace this sketch with all their names and those of grandchildren for fear of running out of cyberspace) who were a joy (mainly) and animated many a luncheon table hour. Thereafter the telephone wires burned constantly with glad tidings, mainly kid-centered, and sometimes sorrows as parents passed on.  

Later as the kids went out on their own and had their own sets of children for grandmas to fret over, they had an excuse to shop away the hours again and to make Oshkosh By Gosh and the like very profitable. More ominously they talked of new pressing issues such as that tell-tale faraway look on a middle-aged husband’s face which caused alarms to ring. (It is okay to mention this male genetic defect I have had that faraway look myself, three times). That is where the bonds of friendship held firm as they gathered around to protect their own. But that vagrant look on his face passed.

A little later more mundane alarms took center stage as the first signs of that raging illness that catches us all reared its ugly head.  The medical appointments schedule replaced the kids' activities schedule in holding the place of honor on the refrigerator door. The group too began to speak more often of how husbands had become less attentive, more interested in Sunday television sports or strange desires to hit the golf links, although still pledging eternal love. 

By then though with time on their hands and some unused dough now that the kids were no longer a constant drain on the household economy they traveled, travelled by boat, by air, maybe took an automobile trip and investigated those places that they had really meant to see when they were younger but, well, his job got in the way, the kids cried for Disneyland (and in their turn the grandkids), and the time just flew. They travelled to the now obligatory Florida to catch some sun for frozen Northern bones and when they hit fifty four of them for some unfathomable reason (unfathomable to me who gets nervous and expects civilization to expire when a streetlight goes out or when I am more than ten miles from the ocean) went to the Canadian Rockies together. 

Those are the ways the group spent its time together, hanging tough, as one of their number said "through thick and thin" and without a recorded argument if you can believe that. And here they, the “nine,” stand as a monument to some pretty old-time values on a globalized earth gone berserk with “interconnecting,” interconnecting for some purpose, some purpose that I have not quite caught on to, and they probably have not either.

They meet still, to share the latest gossip, to show endless photos of grandkids and trips taken (photo-taking the one blessed thing made easier in the world these days), to plan the next trip to the islands and to occasionally look wistfully at the calendar and wonder where the time went. Know this though in about one hundred years from now when future generations are “connecting” on VirtualRealityBook or some such “social networking” system if they look up the old-time meaning of the word “friend” on some stratospheric cloud archives they will find this very important example of what it was like when real friendships mattered. Hats off to the “nine.”

Excuse me, my 158^th “friend” just sent a message.