***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..Missing Classmates, Part Two   

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, you will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent by fellow classmates via the class website. So I have taken on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. That is no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Of course not everybody who graduated with me in that baby-boomer times class of over five hundred students had a literary flare or could articulate their dreams in the most coherent way. But they had dreams, and they have today when we have all been through about seven thousand of life’s battles, good and bad, a vehicle to express whatever they want. As I have mentioned before in other sketches I have spent not a little time lately touting the virtues of the Internet in allowing me and the members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964, or what is left of it, the remnant that has survived and is findable with the new technologies to communicate with each other some fifty years and many miles later on a class website recently set up to gather in classmates for our 50^th anniversary reunion.  (Some will never be found by choice or by being excluded from the “information super-highway” that they have not been able to navigate.) Interestingly those who have joined the site have, more or less, felt free to send me private e-mails telling me stories about what happened back in the day in school or what has happened to them since their jailbreak from the confines of the old town.

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren mentioned above, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest. Other stuff defies simple classification such as the following which had been the result of an e-mail exchange with a woman from the class of 1963 who remembered my late brother and who, more importantly, had been on that class’s reunion committee and was using me as a medium to transfer information to our class webmaster, Donna, about finding missing classmates from fifty years ago  which she was having some trouble finding beyond those who had some Internet connection to pursue (again, those who want to be found, not those on the lam for some reason, or those who left the dust of old North Adamsville behind and never looked back):   

[Priscilla had contacted me initially via another class and town-related website when she noticed that I had written something there about my late brother, Prescott, who was supposed to but didn’t graduate with my class and because he had been back a year should have been in Priscilla’s class which is where she knew his name from. Whether they had a romance or something I don’t know but she called him “handsome” (which he was, although totally irresponsible and one who never gave up the corner boy life but graduated, well let’s put it this way, to the school of hard knocks) and other expressions that made me think so but at this remove I did not want to press the issue. I thanked her for her kind words in any case.]       

“Frank, so sorry you lost your brother Prescott, that is a tough one, very sad. My dad's name was Kenneth [a reference to my other late brother]. 

[Our class website has an In Memory section for those from our class who have passed on (over seventy at last count, a shocking number to me, out of five hundred and twenty).]  

I emailed Richard Wallace and he wrote back his sister Sarah died in 2001, at the moment I printed your class missing list I think Saturday or Sunday she was still on there.   Rich said he saw my post and contacted someone, Donna did put in the obit, he would love it if sometime she could add the picture of her he attached. [Donna did.]

[Here Priscilla is giving another specific classmate who passed away.]  

Nora is Delores Clark’s daughter and she told me her mother from your class died 3 years ago. If my validation guy was not busy I would ask him to check further but he is transition to Florida. If Donna wishes she could wait to put her into In Memory. I might call Nora on my own to see how she is.  I was looking for our Carol Cooke [Delores’ sister] never found her, then saw she did not graduate with us. Did I mention earlier for you to tell Donna the graduation list is important as it may show names spelled differently from the yearbook? [She had already checked that list.]

Also emailed Maureen Travis and she will have Sheila sign in, they are married to brothers, and I emailed Maize McBride, will let you know if I hear anything.

The cheerleaders also keep in touch, little cliques or groups, like the brains, and your class has a huge Mass population.  [According to Donna this tip turned into a wealth of connections once she found Jean Kelly who still lives in North Adamsville with her classmate husband. Seems most of them stay in touch with one another.] Remember to tell Donna that we are of the age of retirement and use cell phones which makes it more difficult to find people. [Donna knew this.]  Tell Donna If she is going out-of-state classmate hunting, look at Florida and the Carolinas. [She has.]

 And your Tom Kerry, the famous lawyer (not the one on TV) may be a good contact person, we had a private eye who was invaluable. [Tom who still has offices in town was very helpful.]

Tell Donna you can add people as guest members on the website. [Priscilla for obvious reasons now has that status.] [Fellow reunion committee member] Paul and I were uncomfortable with a few guest requests because they can see your classmate profiles which contain private information so tell Donna she needs to be careful that guests are trustworthy and do not have ulterior motives, plus you can limit their membership.  Paul can be reached on his winter phone in SC which is 864-786-0077. Mine in Maine is 207-4636-1456. Tell Donna she is doing a great job and the website looks terrific. 

Priscilla “