A Trip Down Memory Lane

Hey gang! Reading Delmar and Paul's letters reminded me of a piece of email I received last week from Kathleen Craven, Jay's wife. It reminded me just how 'well-off' we were.  I live in Plantation, Florida across 441 from Fort Lauderdale and eleven miles north of Miami and I swear to you...(I'm not kidding) EVERY single night on the news another kid has been shot in Miami..at home, at school, even sitting in his front yard as two teens were doing just last night...one dead, the other injured. Just up the road at Deerfield, two teens...one 13, the other 17...were playing with a revolver. As expected, the 13 year old was accidently shot in the left check and it exited out the back of his skull, severing his spinal cord. This is a daily occurrence.  Why were WE so different? Did ANY ONE of us drink? Pot was something we read about in San Francisco. When we danced at our school proms, we cuddled, danced real steps, cheek to cheek.  How often do I remember Miss Pryor coming into the cafeteria during lunch saying, "Butch! Our guest speaker couldn't make it for the chapel program, could you get some talent together and do a show for us?".  I'd stand up in the cafeteria, look around and call upon Marty Brown, Pat Norris, Paul Robere, Bob Rodric...I could go on and on with names as our class of '59 had MORE talent than any class, any time, any where. ALL of us could do something...whether it was music, painting, sports, even scholastics.  There has never been any class to compare with what we had. We didn't have one-tenth of the luxury that today's kids have, but we didn't have to have wealth to have a good time. I can't recall how many students were in our class...but everyone of us knew everyone and we were ALL friends. Of course, a lot of it had to do with our mentors...Miss Pryor, Jay Craven, Dean Henry, Bill Henson, A.R. Casavant...again...on and on.  What teacher DIDN'T we respect and admire? What fellow student wasn't our friend? What teacher didn't do all he could to help us succeed? Again, there's nothing to compare with our class. I must confess, the weekend of our 50th reunion, I got out my annual and spent the entire time thinking about all of you, wishing I was there, and shedding a few tears because I wasn't. It was just a bad time for me. That particular month, my property taxes were  due, as was my house insurance and Florida's mandatory flood and hurricane insurance.  To make things worse, I had SOOO looked forward to playing piano for Marty to sing...a medley of our old 50's ballads, "Hey There", "I'll Take Romance", and so many others she used to sing for all of us.  I was in the bathroom and as I stood up, I felt myself falling backwards and put my right hand behind me to break my fall. (It broke my fall all right, but it also broke my wrist, my ulna, and my radius.) So I wore a cast for eight weeks...the same three bones I'd broken about five years ago. They healed but it would have hurt more had I not been able to play the piano for Marty to sing.  I keep healthy with 22 medications and see my physician every three months. He says I'm in the best shape of my life (as he's been my doctor for the past 28 years...if any of you are having trouble with cholesterol, hypertension, triglycerides, diabetes 2, fibromyalgia, depression, or panic attacks...drop me an email and I'll tell you the meds that 'normalized' these things for me. I'm not kidding, it took years for my doctor to find JUST the right meds where everything is at a normal level.  Some of you know that I was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live IF I took chemo and/or radiation. I thought...'why should I spend my last six months, losing my hair, throwing up, feeling nauseous, weak, etc...so I opted for neither treatment. Call it mind over matter or divine intervention...six months came and went and I was still busy working. I had taken my mind OFF my cancer and filled it with work...doing B'way show after show after show. That diagnosis and my cancer surgery was in August 1974. I'm only revealing this to let you know, there CAN be victory over cancer. That's why from 1980 until 2000, I spent every waking hour helping as many people as I could working at three mental hospitals, nine nursing homes, three substance abuse institutions, Broward County's Drug Court where I tracked 35,000 clients monthly to make sure they were 'clean', Hospice Inc. and two AIDS clinics. I had to pay my debt for conquering the Big C. and it was worth every  minute! I guess I'm still living in the past as I DON'T own a cell phone. I don't belong to Facebook OR Twitter. Email suits me just fine.                                                 Ritch (Butch) Snyder