By Tina Rodgers Lesher
More than a half century ago, when I toiled on the social pages of the Scranton papers, I occasionally handled a photo of a couple marking their 50th wedding anniversary. I recall my reaction at the time: They are so old!
Only once, I believe, did I see a picture of a small group attending a get-together marking the 60th anniversary of their high school graduation. I remember my exact words to my colleague: How could they still be alive?
Mind you, I was 22 when I began my journalism career in Scranton and thought my fellow staffers, many in their 50s, were heading for rocking chair life.
I recently returned to my hometown to have dinner at The Radisson with a number of others from Marywood Seminary’s Class of 1961. Yes, 60 years to the day we walked across the stage to accept our diplomas from the bishop, we reunited simply to have a few laughs and to reminisce. No rocking chair life for this crew of women who are 77 or 78.
Funny how one harkens back so quickly to those Scranton years. We were among the crowds that fought to get into Yanks Diner or Tony Harding’s on Friday nights. Our sartorial choices were not in the current slacks category---no, we actually sported skirts and stockings. At the Sem, we wore blue uniforms and white blouses with pointed collars. (When I showed up with a button-down shirt, the directress called my mother). For special school occasions we switched to white uniforms and blue beanies with MS printed in front. Such fashion!
Four years of Latin and all I can utter is Veni, Vidi, Evacui---I came, I saw, I got the heck out. I remember the library teacher being upset when she asked us what DDS stood for and I thought it was a dental degree So much for the Dewey Decimal System. I avoided taking chemistry and thus suffered through a college class a few years later.
Because it was a girls’ school we had varsity teams and I had the privilege of being on them. Our field hockey team boasted a perfect record for all four years: we lost every game. In basketball, six players made up a team with the offense on one side of the court and the defense on the other. You could only dribble twice. It was like an activity in slow motion.
When I relate things about my upbringing to my offspring, they fail to believe me: “You never played soccer? Milk was delivered? The doctor came to your house? You could not eat meat on Friday? No cell phones or computers?” When I tell them that sometimes a family would hold a wake for a loved one in the house and not a funeral home, they shake their heads in disbelief. (Frankly, so do I).
OK, times may have changed but we in the Class of ’61 have not. We could still sing every word of our alma mater and even a tune or two from the school’s Sing Song competition that our class won twice. We could swap stories with sharp memories. We could toast our Sem days and raise a glass in memory of classmates gone before us. We could bemoan the loss of the Sem building in a fire. We could laugh about how things were in the old days.
For our get-together, I wore my lovely onyx class ring that I have kept in my jewelry box for six decades. Of course it has moved over to my pinky finger courtesy of that extra poundage I have acquired in 60 years! I plan to wear it again when we get together in five years to mark 65 years out of Marywood Seminary!!
(Tina Rodgers Lesher is a retired journalism professor who resides in Westfield, N.J. )