Time After Time

It was a blast from the past for me this week. I was reminded how time flies by and some of our memories go with it. I always thought I would remember every student I ever taught and they would all be successful and happy.
I met one of my former students and her mom for lunch this week and I was amazed to hear that all the kids I had loved so dearly from the first three years I taught were a mixed bag of super success and failure and just plain everyday folks with kids and jobs.
Roosevelt School had a wonderful family feel to it when I started teaching there. The principal, Ed DeTomaso, was instrumental in making that a fact. We knew the parents of the kids and we had events they were invited to. We had social gatherings of the staff which bonded us together. It was a great place for kids to grow up and thrive.
I was young and naive and thought all those kids would be top shelf. How silly I was not to know that time can damage even the bravest and strongest of children.
On Tuesday, May 4, we went to our old Alma Mater, Kent State University to pay homage to the kids who were slain in the shootings of 1970. It always makes me so sad to go to that event. I didn't really know any of the Kent 4 but Sandy lived in my freshman dorm and I remember her as a pretty girl who always looked like a fashion plate.
Allison was in the freshman dorm where I worked in the cafeteria with my roommate. I always remember her with her flowing long hair with flowers in it(I think that is just a memory I made up in my head) and a peasant blouse and skirt pushing her tray towards us in a most leisurely manner. It is really hard for me to believe that either of those girls were a threat to the US!
I spent the better part of the day today emailing back and forth with my roommate as we struggled to remember everything that happened that day. We can hardly remember how in the world we got home. It was a most surreal day and we remember everything up til then.
Isn't that funny?? The person who got us home is such a faded memory neither one of us is sure who it was.
My roommate didn't know where her sister was and my husband didn't know where his brother was. They were students at the time also. My mother tried to drive to Kent to get us and she had a gun with a bayonet shoved through her driver's window at the border of the town of Kent.
My poor high school age sister and her boyfriend were huddled in the back street and the soldier thought mom was bringing in more dissidents. My little gray haired mother of all people. That's how crazy things were that day.
Time has a funny way of putting most things in perspective. I will never understand how one of my students ended up in jail and I'll never understand why someone ordered those soldiers to fire on a bunch of students.