Page 170 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
1975, and from Marcia’s tone when she said my name, I knew that Linda was gone. She was thirty-two. Marcia lights a Yahrzeit candle for her every year.
• Marcia and Linda had a third friend, Grace Vincent, whom I knew, liked, and socialized with, but she wasn’t as close to me as they were. (I did speak to her at length on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the graduation of the Class of ’61.) I believe that Gracie’s mother had died when Gracie was younger. When her father, a policeman, was killed, Gracie was parentless. She spent one year, prior to mov- ing to Kentucky to be with family, living in the small apartment that was occupied by her best friend, Letty Konigsberg (a wonderful, freckled redhead in our class, whom I also knew and liked a lot), and Letty’s parents, who took Gracie in. Letty’s older brother, Allan, was no longer living there. He was then in the midst of starting a career as a comic writer and standup comedian named Woody.
• Prior to graduation I was given the Dean Vlahides Award, which was bestowed upon the graduating student who best exemplified some stuff that I don’t recall, but it probably came about because I had been the Mayor. Thus, my name was painted on the Honor Roll, which was affixed to the wall that was—I say with a smile—directly opposite the entrance to the offices of Dr. Bernstein. When I visited Midwood with my children at the time of my sixtieth birthday, my name was still there.
• Graduation, which I learned was more properly referred to as “com- mencement,” was a black-robed affair that took place out of doors on what was undoubtedly the hottest day of the year. Temperatures were in the upper nineties. It was, as you would imagine, a bitter- sweet day, but I remember only one aspect of it with any clarity. It was so hot that a fairly large number of girls dispensed with wearing their dresses—and some, their dresses et cetera—under their com- mencement garb.
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