CHAPTER 77. 1958-1959
An early event in my senior year did not bode well at first. It was a psychological reminder of my past, the feeling of rejection or isolation. In October we had our class trip to Washington DC, three days and two nights. We signed up in September, turning in doctor’s exams, parent’s permissions and our payments. We also filled out slips for preferred roommates, four to a room. I listed Ray Ayres, Richard Ray Miller and Homer Turner (real first name Howard). Everything seemed in order when we boarded the bus early on October 15, 1958. (My future wife’s 17 Birthday as it were. She was living in Drexel Hill and attending Upper Darby High. She had a poor self-image, but the reality was she was pretty sexy. That is her at age 15 on the right.)
Of course, we knew nothing of each other then. She lived many miles from where I was and went to a large suburban school outside of Philadelphia. while I attended a little country bumpkin institution.
My class and I departed at 7:00 AM. It was a two-and-a-half hour trip from Owen J. We stopped at the Elkton Diner along Route 40 for breakfast on the way.
Our first stop in
Washington was the Franciscan Monastery. I remember two things about it. The first was a tour through these catacombs modeled on ones beneath St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome where they lay to rest dead monks and priests in niches of the walls. It appealed to my morbid side. The second most impressive part upon me was the massive gift shop. I had a hard time accepting a lavish gift shop in a house of worship. It seemed to cheapen the religion. We never had a gift shop in any of the churches I had attended.
So far, so good, I was enjoying the trip. We checked in at the Lafayette Hotel and there was an immediate glitch. They were assigning everyone’s room and at the end of the roll call I was left with no room. I panicked slightly. No, I panicked a lot. I was in Washington with nowhere to sleep. This is the kind of slip up that plagues my life. It is why I am overly cautious today when I book trips or make reservations. It isn’t just because of that class trip. It is because mistakes like this have happened several times in my life.
The chaperones got on it. They told me not to worry. Yeah, easy for them to say, they had rooms. They finally found a room with an extra bed. The three other boys in the room were in the General or Agriculture Sections and I didn’t know them well. They were friends with each other and I was odd man out. It was upsetting, but turned out not such a big deal overall. They went their way during the day and I went mine. I only had to endure them during the sleeping hours. We didn’t have much in common, but they weren’t playing any tricks on me, like the old hand in hot water gag. We got along, even though I didn’t join them in dropping water balloons out our window on passersby below. And none were the Quay boys, whom I believed had dropped out the year before anyway.
This is the my class at the Capitol.
They took us to a lot of places in Washington. They had us to The Tomb of the Unknown, a tram ride through Arlington Cemetery, tours of the Bureau of Engraving, The White House, and The Washington Monument. (Yes I was one of the fools who walked the 900 steps up to the top, which you could do then. Are you still allowed? Of course as I write this the Monument is closed to the public.), The Supreme Court, The Capitol, The Lincoln Memorial, The Jefferson Memorial, The National Cathedral (another religious establishment with a big gift shop), The National Archives and the Smithsonian museums Those wondering why we didn’t visit The Wall should know it didn’t exist. We hadn’t fought the Vietnam War yet.
The two places I remember most were The Federal Bureau of Investigation and The Medical Science Building. The FBI Tour was interesting. We didn’t meet J. Edgar, but we did see the death mask of John Dillinger.
When we entered this building it was into a large atrium. It had a high ceiling and hard walls causing an echo. In the center of the lobby were two statues, one female and one male and both naked.
Most of the girls were clustered around one of these statues and giggling as only a gaggle of girls can giggle. When I got close enough to see over all the shaking heads I saw they had surrounded the male figure and that he was sculpted with an erection. Even as a seventeen-year-old high school senior I retained my naiveté. I was shocked because I didn’t think girls would react this way. I thought they would avert their eyes and hurry past blushing.
I was still going steady with Peggy Whitely but there wasn’t any
special magic there for me. (pictured left, me kneeling before my once and future girlfriends in DC, Peggy Whitely and Sonja Kebbe), I can’t speak for how Peggy felt about our relationship. We had good times together, but it wasn’t working romantically for me. We kissed goodnight, but it was like kissing my cousin. Maybe I should say kissing my sister; my mother and father were cousins. I had two cousins at Owen J Roberts High, but were they Kissing Cousins?
No, not really kissing cousins. My mother and father were second cousins; my Owen J. cousins were first cousins …or were they? They were involved in a family feud that took me years to unravel.
Helen Ann Downing was in my class, but not my section. Her father was Herford Downing Jr. and her grandfather Herford Downing Sr., direct descendants of Thomas Downing for whom Downingtown is named. I knew Helen outside of school from the Wilson family reunions. She was pretty, but I always found her cold and standoffish. Perhaps she was shy, but she certainly wasn’t someone I wanted to date, even if she hadn’t been a First Cousin.
The other was Aubrey Jane White who was a year ahead of me in
school. Her grandfather was also Herford Downing Sr., but her father was Earl White. She was also pretty, very cute. I knew her from the family reunions as well and had always been very friendly with her. She was a warm and gentle person and was someone I would have dated, if she were not my first cousin.
But was she?
There was a schism in the Wilson Family. Ruth Downing, Helen’s mother was the instigator. The objection she made concerned a lady named Sadie Guest being invited to the Wilson reunions. I could not understand why this was a problem. I didn’t really know who Sadie Guest was, but she seemed like a very nice elderly lady. My mother and grandmother were friends with her and they visited with Sadie a number of times. Anyway, the results were that Sadie continued to be invited and attend the reunions and the Downings stopped coming, except for Helen.
So who was Sadie Guest (pictured left), why the feud and what did this have to do with Audrey White? I will have to give a bit of family history to explain.
Let’s start with my great great grandmother Esther Helen Fisher Bicking. She was married to Frederick Bicking (my great great grandfather, of course). Frederick’s father had started paper mills around Downingtown and Frederick was manager of one. His brother or cousin (not sure which) Austin Bicking also had a paper mill in Downingtown. Among Frederick and Esther’s six children were two who would be important to my life, William Frederick Wilson and Emma Bicking Wilson. Both William and Emma would be my grandparents. No, brother and sister didn’t marry each other, but this is where my parents became second cousins.
Emma married Benjamin Franklin Meredith the First. They are my father’s great grandparents, thus both Emma and her mother are my great great grandmothers, also my aunts) Confused yet?
Emma’s brother William Frederick Wilson the Second married
Anna Margaret Dunlap and they are my Great Grandparents (pictured right). William and Emma are also my great uncle and great aunt. William and Anna had six children, three boys and three girls. Esther was the youngest of the girls and my grandmother. They named her after Esther Helen Bicking. Her two older sisters married two brothers, Herford and Ellsworth Downing. The oldest sister married Herford and she was my Aunt Helen Wilson Downing, also named after Esther Helen Bicking. They named my cousin Helen Downing after my Aunt Helen.
Try to keep score here.
My Great Aunt Helen (pictured left with one of her students), was a teacher at Lionville School. Helen died from complications in giving birth to her second child, Emily Margaret Downing Wilson McCauley. Her and Herford’s first child was a son, Herford Jr.; remember him, my cousin Helen’s father? My Uncle Billy, Aunt Helen’s oldest brother adopted Emily Downing making her Emily Downing Wilson. Herford kept the son. Emily would grow up to marry
Herford Sr. remarried. His second wife was Sadie Guest. They had two children of their own, Quinton and Beulah. (Those names sound like characters in a William Faulkner novel. Even the Sadie Guest.) Beulah married Earl Woodrow White and they had two children, Earl “Woody” Woodrow White Jr. and Audrey Jane.
So Audrey isn’t my first cousin at all. She isn’t even a blood relative. I could have dated her.
I still can’t see why all the Sound and Fury over Sadie, Beulah and Audrey attending the Wilson Family reunion. It signified nothing. It wasn’t as if she broke up the marriage. Aunt Helen died and Herford remarried, what’s wrong with that?
named Joan Boder (pictured right dancing with me in 1958) gave several of these. She lived further down Route 100 toward the Village of Bucktown in an apartment.
I was still going drag racing with Rich. I was also going to Downingtown regularly to visit Ronald and Stuart. I even occasionally visited Ray Ayres at his home on the southern edge of Pottstown along the Schuylkill River. Ray had a couple sisters. I believe one was Jean. I liked his other sister, who I thought was very cute. She wasn’t very tall, a very tiny girl. Her name was Dawn (pictured left).
My social life had expanded by twelfth grade. People like Dick Kuntzleman had become a regular part of it. Dick was in my class at school, but he was also a friend of Richard’s so fell into the Richard circle more than the Owen J. clique. His parents own a bar down the road from us called The Country Tavern.
There was now a group of us at school who hung together most of the time. There was a core considered the wits, not in the intellectual sense, but as people who could make you laugh. This consisted of Ray Ayres, Richard Ray Miller, Nancy Bright, Homer Turner, Gloria “Digger” White (her father was an undertaker, so they called her Digger) and me. The rest of our gang was Kitty Caldwell, Suzy Cannell, Veronica Cisarik, Pete Flisock, Clarence “Gus” Goswellin, Phil Hahn, Jon Harris, Judy Keeley, Dorothea Lederer, Jeanette Richards and Buddy Tyson. We were the anti-academic academics. Our classes were fun.
So this was my social life side during my senior year. It sometimes got downright exciting. Sometimes it was very busy. In March, the day after Ray and I did a DJ gig, I was bowling with Ronald and Stuart. The next day, after Sunday School I went riding around with Richard Wilson. The next Friday I was bowling with Ronald Tipton again. On Saturday I attended a MYF Social and on Sunday in-between Sunday School and MYF I spent the afternoon out with Ray Ayres. On Monday I was to see Dr. Mann for my Track Team examination.
On March 19 our school took we seniors for a visit to Temple University in Philadelphia. We were around the Temple Hospital area when Ray Ayres, Richard Ray Miller, Phil Hahn and I went to a restaurant on Broad Street for lunch. We were eating and noticed the walls of the booth were lined with graphic photographs of medical operations. How appetizing.
On March 20 I was bowling again, but this time with Richard Ray Miller. On Saturday the 21 I attended Dawn Ayres’s party and then on Sunday it was back to Sunday School and MYF. On Monday Ray Ayres and I went to the Pottstown YMCA where we worked out in the weight room and then took a swim. These visits to the Y became a weekly thing with us. On the 24th I attended the Gym Show at OJR High in the evening and on the 26th I went to Downingtown to Ronald’s despite a snowstorm and slippery roads. I was back to Ronald’s the next day and we then went and visited Bob Lilly. That Sunday was Easter and my Uncle Bus and Aunt Mary came to our place for a turkey dinner.
I even made a sports team in my senior year. I went out for Track. Mr. Stanley Springer was the coach. I never had him for any classes. His parents owned a general store in Pughtown. On the first day he had tryouts. He had everyone try everything. He wanted me to be a distance runner. In the trials I had ran the best time in the mile. I was very fast. He thought I could be a top-notch miler with a little training. I turned him down.
I hated to run. All a miler ever did was run, lap after lap. I wanted the least amount of running I could get. I choose to throw shot put and discus. The weight guys did the least running of anyone on the track
team. Most of these throwers were big guys. I gained some weight by the last months of my senior year. I weighted 180 pounds when I graduated. That was still light in this area. I also didn’t have a lot of upper body strength. I figured to overcome this with form.
I got beat in every meet. Our whole team usually did, so it wasn’t just me. I must have gone head to head against Stuart Meisel at Downingtown (pictured left). I guess he probably beat me. Our last meet was against Phoenixville High, which was the only meet our team won. I almost won the discus toss there. I did throw the discus the most distance; however, I couldn’t hold my balance and fell out of the circle for a disqualification. Thus came to an end my high school sports career. (Just for the record, I still weigh 180 pounds.)
I did have one failure in my writing requests that year. The Senior Committee asked if I could write the class poem. Sure, why not? They then told me the criteria for the poem. They wanted me to mention each member of the class all 106) with a specific known characteristic. And, oh yes, make it funny.
This was an impossible task. First of all the poem would have to be of epic length. There were 106 seniors. It would be at least 106 lines if I gave a characteristic of each student. Second, I didn’t know my 106 classmates well enough to know everyone’s outstanding characteristic. Third, if I made it funny who was going to take offense and think I was mocking them. Oh, no, I gave it a shot, but didn’t finish. The class poem was 16 lines long and a typical example of these things. It began, “We stand on the threshold of a new career…”
They chose a different poem. Kathe Davis (pictured left) and Elaine Griffith (pictured right) wrote it.
That is what I should have done, scraped the Committee’s request and just wrote about facing our future as we leave dear old alma mater.
I did write something called “A Group of Noisy People”. It was published 52 years after my graduation in “Voices & Friends,” A Little Something Publishing Co., December 2011, Nancy Rosback, editor.
A GROUP OF NOISY PEOPLE
Paean to OJR graduation 1959
what was done
what was said to curtail our character stands a loss,
after all i believe the test of time will prove our
true desire,
though we stand
today as a group of noisy people,
hard to boss,
we set forth upon your world
with a torch of unquenchable fire.
attitudes are spinning within us like children’s tops,
they will be soon forced forward for your witness.
open up your farmers’ eyes and see
this harvest of recently ripened crops.
so unleash it all with a bell of laughter,
open up your ears and hear it peal
from a group of noisy people.
1959
That’s what I should have submitted.
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