Monthly Archives: June 2020

Memories-Childhood

Has Anybody Seen Miss Cahill?

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The facade of Junior High School 143, John Peter Tetard JHS.

From 1954 until 1966, home was in the Kingsbridge neighborhood of Bronx, New York. Elementary school was P.S. 122, Marble Hill Elementary. Junior High School (grades 7,8, and 9) were spent in Junior High School 143. For me, Tetard was about 3/4 mile walk from our apartment on Sedgwick Ave, across the street from the Kingsbridge Veterans Adminstration Hospital.

What draws me to this piece of my story is the note in my previous post about the Liberty Mutual Insurance company making the Statue of Liberty a background for its sales pitch. Then there are Progressive Insurance Company’s nonsensical ads, which seem to reflect no interest in today’s public health crisis.

The string of these ads call to mind my formidable “social studies” teacher, perhaps 8th grade, who taught her students the valuable lessons of New York City life. But these lessons had to break through — to be kind — the lesser developed brains of 12 and 13 year-olds. Yet memory of her as a powerful presence turned out to be ever lasting. And embedded in my memory is the ditty we used to sing about Miss Cahill:

“Six foot two, hair of blue, has any body seen Ms. Cahill?”

We were not, of course, capable of fairness at that age, but the lessons she offered were also memorable: One must, out of courtesy to other subway riders, properly fold the New York Times as one reads the pages (fold each broad sheet in half length-wise, turn them against each other vertically, and then fold the length in half. There must be a You Tube video showing that somewhere); stock market listings in the business section must be read carefully, but all should remember that investments are long-term things, and one should not run one way or the other based on a day’s worth of trading; advertising serves a purpose, i.e., to inform readers about products so they can make informed decisions about purchases.

Am thinking Miss Cahill is spinning in her grave.

Memoiries-Parents, Memories-Childhood

Reposting Thoughts of the Day 70 Years Ago that My Mother and I Arrived in New York City

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Two years ago I offered thoughts on this momentous day in my life and the life of my mother as the US Naval Ship General Stuart Heintzelman arrived in New York City with some 800 WW II refugees from Eastern Europe. For my mother it marked the conclusion of an ordeal in survival begun with escape from Estonia in October 1944 as Soviet troops were closing in on Estonia. ( https://www.fanande.net?p=602 ) For me, about to be six, it was the arrival in a new world to be explored.

In that post of July 2018, I reflected on the state of the Trump administration’s thinking about immigration. Two years later, Covid-19 has given the administration opportunity to harden its position even more. It is deeply, deeply saddening to one who was a beneficiary of America’s generosity.

In rereading that post, I am reminded of the ideals that were espoused about the US immigrant community at the time and the welcoming tradition then said to have made new, prosperous lives possible. Of course, we learned long since that the welcome did not apply to everyone, and the values the welcome was said to have represented did not even apply to all who lived in this nation.

I would learn the limits of those values as I grew up and began to “see the world” as an NROTC midshipman in college during a summer spent on a US warship, the destroyer USS Beatty, DD 756. The eye-opener, as I believe I have noted here earlier, was the ship’s port call in Gulfport, Mississippi, in the summer of 1963. There, having lived in New York City since our arrival, I saw for the first time Jim Crow at work.

Today, I will admit to being disheartened in seeing how much remains to be done in that realm. I am also disheartened by the administration’s approach to migrants.

And, finally, I am disheartened by the way New York’s symbol of welcome has become a prop in an insurance company’s inane commercials, commercials that have the Statue of Liberty in the background but that have nothing to do with “liberty,” the company’s name. What immigrant who sailed past the statue can’t weep at the trivialization of the scene?

I should be (as I always am in other moments) happy about the opportunities that my mother and I had since June 25, 1950. We were blessed indeed. But today, sadness at the steady “passing” of those ideals we then both imagined embraced us and we in turn embraced feels overwhelming.

Next post on a better day.

Readers and friends, stay well.

andy

Greetings2FamilyandFriends, Uncategorized

A Memory from 1993—Parents’ Weekend in Cornell

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Cleaning out a vintage purse, Tracy happened on the program of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity’s weekend in the spring of 1993 for parents of newly joined freshmen of the fraternity, my son Ryan being among them.

A pleasant weekend it was, with dinner cooked by an executive chef and wines served by a sommelier—both with III’s following their surnames. Only in Cornell?

Perusing the program, I found it contained a short essay entitled “The True Gentleman.” It is attributed to a John Walter Wayland (Virginia, 1899), according to a bit on the web from the North Dakota Chapter of SAE, which claims that it is the product of an essay contest held in Baltimore, Md., on the topic of defining the qualities of a gentleman–these are qualities that, naturally, can and should define gentle people of any gender.

I repeat the essay here as it lists qualities that I wish we saw more of in this day and age in our nation, especially in its leadership. Here is the essay:

The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.

– John Walter Wayland (Virginia 1899)

I’m glad that my son was associated as a young man with an organization that embraced them, and I believe he has come to embody them. From a proud father as Father’s Day approaches.

When is Son’s Day anyway?

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