No Friends Like Old Friends

One of the joys of aging is the blessing of decades of accumulated memories. Times with some friends run as continuous threads through many of those years. The continuity of other treasured friendships was interrupted like a dropped stitch in a knitting project. Now with the freedom of retirement, I’ve time to go back, retrieve the “dropped” stitches and pull them back into the fabric of my life today.

I’ve shared my gratitude for reconnecting with Dorn, my college friend from Albright. You’ve also read a bit about my renewed friendships from high school. Now, after two weeks with Mary and Rosemary I reflected further on what a gift it has been to rekindle those relationships. Dormant for fifty years, the friendship among Mary, Rosemary and me was refreshed with little prompting. While we embrace the fun of creating new memories together, we also indulge in some reminiscing.

Our Catholic high school class was small, just 142 students. Rosemary Quinn, Mary Punderson and I, all at the end of the alphabet, were in the same homeroom. In the “first track” we also shared many classes. St. Joseph’s High Scool was only a few years old when we began in September 1968. Funded by its middle class parish sponsor and the tuition our parents paid, money for extracurricular activities was limited. So we got involved on Student Council, the Honor Society and ran track and cross country, the only sports other than basketball and cheerleading available to girls.

We saw each other every day during the school year and our lives during those four years wove in and out of each others. Rosemary and I double dated to the junior prom. Mary and I shared July birthdays.

Then graduation came and maybe we saw each other at a reunion here and there, every ten or twenty years. We all had husbands and kids and disparate careers in three different states. Mary was a New Jersey elementary school teacher and then founding librarian of her school’s new library. Rosemary, in Maryland, was a corporate attorney. I lived in Pennsylvania, a nurse turned health care executive. We pretty much lost touch with each other.

Except for the efforts of Bill and Jeanne Heisler. Bill and Jeanne met at St. Joe’s and were a couple for as long as I can remember.

For forty years after we graduated, Jeanne was the dynamo organizer and impetus that kept our class connected through periodic emails and reunions. She maintained a comprehensive directory of our classmates, tracking down mailing addresses then emails as technology evolved. Bill was her sidekick and assistant. Their commitment kept our class together through the years.

Tragically, shortly after our 40th reunion, Jeanne suffered a debilitating stroke. Bill retired from his job as First Assistant Prosecutor at the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office to care for Jeanne until her untimely death in November 2020.

As 2022, the 50th anniversary of our graduation approached, Bill began to dig into Jeanne’s files wanting to continue the legacy of her efforts. In August 2022, thanks to his diligence, dozens of now gray, older (and somewhat unrecognizable) members of the Class of 1972 gathered for a weekend, culminating in a barbecue in Bill’s yard.

Rosemary, recently widowed, Mary and I, divorced, chatted for the first time in many years. We realized we were all single with a shared desire to travel. Over the next months we met up a few times, plays in Philly and New York, a museum excursion and a weekend at Rosemary’s in Baltimore. It was easy to pick up the dropped thread of our high school friendship. We planned the recent trip to Italy. We are already planning our next chapter. And its all thanks to Bill and all he has done to keep us together!

Gomma a Terra….What’s That?

Road Trip Italian Style

Jill Viggiano