MORE LINCOLN SCHOOL MEMORIES

On January 1, 1965, I was in the middle of sixth grade when my family moved from Roselle, New Jersey, to nearby Elizabeth. As a parting gift, my art teacher at Lincoln School (now Dr. Charles C. Polk Elementary  School), Mr. Friedman, drew my portrait. In my mad chase to find the photo albums with the Mindlins (see my Tuesday blog post, With a Tear of Joy, dated July 27, 2021), I came across that treasured piece, ripe for a story.

At eleven and a half, I sat by the teacher’s desk as he drew, and my mother, a Lincoln School grad and mother of four, who all walked those halls, came in to say her goodbyes and escort me home. Her pleased look stays with me. She was so happy to have the artist’s rendition of her youngest of the four and only girl while quickly noting that he was not related, although Friedman was her maiden name.

Just on the other side of Warinanco Park, my husband was enrolled at Lincoln School in Elizabeth. Interestingly, he recently joined a Zoom group of friends he went through school with in Elizabeth.

One day, while he was having a private chat with a particular former classmate, he asked me to say hello. I knew Jimmy and was glad to join their conversation. One thing led to another when Jimmy said he started school in Roselle and moved to Elizabeth for second grade. That surprised my husband, who thought that they went all through public school and college together.

When I asked Jimmy where his family lived in Roselle, he mentioned a well-known apartment complex in the area, Warinanco Village, just off the grounds of our beloved park. The park, nestled between Roselle and Elizabeth, was where my husband proposed to me on August 10, 1973. More on Warinanco Park appears in my manuscript, Kitchen Talk: Sharing Family Tales.

Getting back to the conversation with Jimmy, I curiously asked which school he attended in Roselle. My husband sat mesmerized as Jimmy replied, Lincoln. While he and my husband are two years my senior, I asked him who his teachers were in Roselle. It turned out that Miss Cohn was his kindergarten teacher and mine. What I failed to ask was whether he knew that her married name was Mrs. Mark. Nearly in reverse of me, as my maiden name is Mark and my married name is Cohen, with an e.

Jimmy attended Lincoln School in Roselle, which I attended, and then he graduated from Lincoln School in Elizabeth with my husband. Since my husband and I each graduated from a Lincoln School, we once purchased a whimsical wooden façade of a "Lincoln" School. Jimmy is sure to get a kick out of that when he reads my blog post.

Studying the drawing by Mr. Friedman got me thinking about other Lincoln School memories. That made me realize I have more to discuss with others who attended Lincoln School in Roselle. For example, just looking at the headband that he included in the sketch brought a smile to my face. It’s great that I was wearing it that day, but not surprising since I remember how much I liked it.

The music teacher, Mrs. Sarulya, offered to paint our names and a flower on a plastic headband if we supplied the piece. It’s probably somewhere stashed in my memorabilia. We also learned, "America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)." We had to sing the patriotic song individually to determine if we qualified to join the choir.

My memory is that as I stood near the piano, Mrs. Sarulya said that I was the only one in the school who correctly knew every word of the song but, I couldn’t sing, so I didn’t "make the cut." She should hear me in the shower now.

Then there was Mr. Sal, short for Salcito, the gym teacher who regularly had us play bombardment, also known as dodge ball. I recall feeling almost paralyzed in fear of the ball being winged at us petite girls by some overzealous guys. We also learned how to dodge feared nuclear attacks by the Soviet Union.

The gymnasium came equipped with a small section of wooden stadium seats. In regularly scheduled air raid drills conducted at school during the Cold War years, we used them to dodge the threatened nuclear bombs from the Soviet Union.

While on these happy thoughts, let’s call my entry into grammar school emotional. The expression was that I was attached to my mother’s apron strings. The youngest of four, I never experienced being apart from my stay-at-home mommy. I regularly cried in Miss Cohn’s kindergarten class.

The first-grade teacher, with a marked Dowager’s hump, in the days before bone density testing or treatment for osteoporosis, was near retirement age when I entered her class. To give you an idea of her longevity as a teacher, she had my aunt Bea as a student and Aunt Bea was 29 years my senior.

Mrs. Bogart, my seasoned first-grade teacher, once walked into Miss Cohn’s neighboring kindergarten classroom and seeing me with tears, she huffed, “She’s not going to cry in my class.” I fooled her.

Probably the one time I didn’t cry in my first year at school was when my father came to the kindergarten room to show the class how a letter carrier sorts the mail and carries it in a cowhide satchel on his shoulder. He allowed us all to take a turn carrying his big well-worn mail sack down the ramp outside the classroom.

Soon after the immunity from our COVID-19 vaccinations in 2021, Lois DeStefano and I met at Warinanco Park. Towards the end of our 60+ year review, she said that she thinks she remembers my father’s presentation. That took me by surprise.

While Lois is one of my grammar school classmates who made the ranks with me throughout those formative years and remembers me in class, I have no recollection of her. My excuse is that we lived in different parts of town, and I mainly recall the students who walked my route to Lincoln School.

Through social media, we are now happily connected, as my husband is with his childhood friends. See my Tuesday blog post, Lincoln School Days, December 10, 2019, in which I address the former Ila Gerber, Carrie Jen Villavieja and Debra Deasy. Finding Ila, Carrie Jen and Debra, now known as Deby, and being connected with Lois has been magical. After meeting Lois at Warinanco, Ila commented via email from her home in Honolulu, “Lois told me she met you in the park, loved hearing that.”

At Lincoln School, I played the lead in the school play one year. Wearing a hula skirt and lei, I welcomed everyone to Hawaii. Who knew we would have a classmate living in Hawaii one day?

It’s a wonder if my brother Stu’s grammar school friends, Mini (short for Mindel) Krakauer and Howard Kipness, remember me walking into the art room at dismissal time. They were three years my senior and, as I walked down the short ramp from the kindergarten room to meet my brother for our walk home, I found the class seated for detention. Leave it to me; I immediately began to cry.

Seeing me distraught caused Stu to tear up, which caused Mini to cry, and in turn, Howard. With that, the teacher dismissed the class. Stu and I found our mother frantically racing from our apartment to learn the cause of our delay.

Allow me to end with a touching story of walking home from Lincoln School. Deby wrote: “…I remember walking with you on our way home from school and always regret that I had to say goodbye and walk the rest of the way home without your company...”

A whimsical wooden Lincoln School façade sits near my computer - below, see my school picture from kindergarten in 1958-9

Sharon-kindergarten 1958-59. My brother Al says you can tell that I had been crying.