AUGUST 19, 1961

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

Recently, someone sent me one of those comical on-line quizzes. This particular one included a long list of fads and various other items. You had to indicate whether or not you remembered each item. Perhaps you’ve received a quiz such as this, asking such things as whether you remember P.F. Flyers (a popular children’s sneaker around fifty years ago), Studebakers (an auto make discontinued in the 1960s), mothers darning holes in socks, black and white television stations which spent almost half the day showing a “test pattern”, etc.
The higher the number of items you remember, the older it indicates you are. I remembered MOST of the items, but I did NOT remember the days before refrigerators when people used literal ice boxes (that’s my parents’ era) or cars which did NOT come equipped with turn signals (turn signals came in somewhere in the 1940s). The “winning” category was “Older Than Dirt!” No, I DIDN’T make “Older Than Dirt!” but after you read this posting, you’ll probably think I should have!

Forty-eight years ago today, I attended my first wedding. (I did not go to the reception...my first wedding reception was in 1969, but this was the first time I’d ever attended a wedding ceremony.) The wedding was that of my first-grade teacher. I won’t use the whole names, but Miss “A” married Mr. “G” at a ceremony at St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church in Dorchester. Miss “A” had written the church date and time information on all of her class’s report card envelopes in case our parents wanted to bring us to her wedding. My parents actually WEREN’T much for doing things like that, so I’m surprised they took me, but they did. I can’t remember for sure if my younger brother or sister came along, but somehow I think they did. I can actually still remember that my first grade teacher drove a 1958 brown Ford sedan, and I can still see it parked outside the church that day (probably used by her parents as she must have arrived by limousine). For me, being at that ceremony that day felt like being at the social event of the century. I had never seen my teacher in any setting other than in her classroom teaching, so seeing her in a wedding gown was pretty strange. I still remember the groomsmen putting down the “runner” (which I’m finding is a little less common today) and my father softly explaining to me what it was. Many would think that August is NOT a good month for weddings, being too hot and humid, but as I recall, Miss “A” got married on a very pleasant summer day.

Ironically, my wife and I were married on a Saturday in August, twenty-one years later. THAT day was also very pleasant and not at all hot and humid. Of course Miss “A” was an “old grown-up” to me in 1961, but I now know she couldn’t have been much older than 26. Like most brides, she was radiant and ecstatic. I don’t even recall if she taught at our school during the next school year or not, but I know that by the time I was a 3rd grader she was definitely not there anymore. I don’t recall any contact with her after that. Sometime in the early 1980s, there was a tragic story in the newspaper about a teenage boy who’d been killed in a terrible accident. The Town was listed (as I recall it was somewhere in the Hanson, MA area) and the names of the parents were given. I realized the parents were my first-grade teacher and her husband. How could she have imagined on that happy wedding day that twenty-plus years later, her son would die in a terrible tragedy?

I sent her off a card and note explaining who I was and offering my condolences. I was a little disappointed, but I never received a reply. Could it be that writing to me, and about such a sensitive subject was much too painful? Probably.

In another touch of irony, after many years of school, I realize Miss “A” was not one of my better teachers. Although she DID teach me to read and she did introduce me to arithmetic, she did not have much finesse. Some of my later teachers, including those in Grades 2, 3, and 5 were just plain MUCH more personable and gracious people. As I look back upon it, Miss “A” did some strange things. Back in 1960 and 1961, prayer and Bible reading still took place in the American public school classrooms. We started each day in the first grade with the pledge of allegiance to the flag, singing “America”, and reciting the Roman Catholic version of The Lord’s Prayer. One day, after doing our usual opening exercises, Miss “A” let all the Catholic students sit down. (We made up around 60% of the class.) She then had the Protestant and Jewish kids recite MORE from their own traditions, saying to them, “Haven’t YOU got MORE to say?!” I was too little to understand much about what was going on, but at the time I was SO happy to be Catholic! Another time she asked all of us what our mother’s maiden names were! So, looking back, she was actually kind of weird!

Even so, I remember that Saturday and that wedding ceremony- August 19, 1961 like it was yesterday. And, just think- in 48 more years, I’ll be 102! Maybe I’ll be attending a wedding ceremony that day in a wheelchair and wearing Depends!