So I went searching the Internet. And found a website dedicated to those from my high school who died on September 11. Not surprising that there were too many names; I came from a large school with about 5,000 students, and a good number of them remained in New York.
The creator of the website -- a graduate a year before me, I think -- decided to use the page as a necrology for all alum, with emphasis on my cohort. Slowly, I scanned. It was, as I said, a big school; I surely didn't know everyone. What were the odds?
First, Joseph. Joseph! A purely nice guy with a broad smile who played the trumpet really well...we drove to our graduation together, and afterward had a party at his parent's apartment.
Then Jill, a class beauty, taken by cancer. Then Judith, oh no...the older sister of my best friend in whose home during my high school years I spent more time than my own.
More and more names. This one of cancer, when she was nineteen; that one of cancer, he was the brightest of the bright; this one drowned in her suburban swimming pool.
And -- oh -- Miss Hymowitz, my favorite gym teacher, just out of college when she came to us and very, very cool. One day, deep into my senior year when classes no longer mattered, my friend (Judith's sister) and I went to the beach, where we saw Miss Hymowitz...I won't tell if you won't, she said, and we didn't, though we all ended up with lobster skin sunburns that were tough to explain the next day.
Forever they are young, and in seeing them I am, too. We were all going to end the war (Vietnam, then) and never be part of the military-industrial complex or any institution. We cancelled our prom and instead attended protests and had class trip to "Hair." But we never imagined death or cancer or living (drowning!) in a suburb with a swimming pool.
The war that shaped our lives did end. "Hair" is in revival. I live in a quasi-suburb (no swimming pool, but a lawn). And there is still so much time.
Candace
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