Hello Class of 62!
Well finally, after many missed target dates, here is the revised and FINAL edition of the promised 'booklet' summarising many of our lives-after-Northview, recollections of our schools days, notes from some of our teachers, tributes to our classmates no longer with us, and lots of photos as we are now and were then!
It's hard to believe that 52 years have passed - and over the past years, since a hastily summoned reunion in London in September 2013 after Brian Eisenberg and Elaine (Oppenheimer) met with Dennis Goldman (who happened to be passing through on his way to Israel) many pieces of information, emails and stories have zipped through the ether. This booklet attempts to summarise it all.
As you know, we both worked many hours to rush out a preliminary version for the Melrose Reunion (Johannesburg, 13 February 2014) which was widely acclaimed and many of our classmates who had not contributed earlier subsequently sent in their personal stories. This edition includes those new contributions as well as a number of other general memorabilia and anecdotes which we thought might be interesting.
Since publishing the Melrose Edition thanks to the collective efforts of many of you we have managed to trace an incredible 78 of 82 class-mates!!, and some whom we had erroneously assumed to be deceased, we pleasantly found to be well and still active. Amongst the people most recently found are Louis Kay (now known as Eliezer Kaynan), Cecily (Cohen) Reed (also a name, as well as various living location, changes) and Bruce Dewar living in the Canadian Rockies.
The In Memoriam section has also been expanded as we managed to get help from so many of you to put something together to pay our respects to our deceased class-mates.
We apologise for the many missed milestones, but we both had many personal events in our lives (most of them happy - marriages, grandchildren births, 70th birthdays, etc.) which adversely affected the time we had available for this project. As we write this we are rushing to get this edition released for the reunion scheduled (thanks to the efforts of Rene Sidley) to take place in Rosebank on Nov 10th, when Lorraine (Friedlander) Bessarabia and Brian Eisenberg will both be visiting Johannesburg.
It has been both fun and sad to learn how each of us has fared; some with much success and happiness and others with some tragedy in their lives. Ian Kennedy has appropriately remarked 'we are all survivors' - no matter how we did academically or sport-wise at school, we shared an important part of our lives together before we set off into the world and are now able, and interested, to report back and share our experiences. The words of our school song (how many remembered that we had one?! - see it in the memorabilia section) proved to be accurate - 'Memories will last, as long as life stays of the friendships of Northview High and those carefree days'.
A great deal of credit also goes to Stan Klaff who for many years had been the master keeper of all facts, master-minded the 25th reunion and has continued playing a key role in helping track down missing individuals.
Brian's vigorous pursuit and constant exchange of email messages exhorting and cajoling the submission of stories, notes, photos and emails, helped by many of you who joined in the excitement, has made this a most energising, enjoyable and interesting task. Supporting Brian, Martin spent many hours creating and updating the website, and enjoying and commenting on the material.
There is unlikely to be another revision of this booklet in the forseeable future - unless we find some glaring errors and omissions which some of you will not doubt point out to us!
We are honoured to be able play the role of editors.
Best wishes,
Brian and Martin
PS. Mention has been made of a 55th anniversary reunion, in 2017. Some plans are already being investigated and everyone will be polled (in January/February 2015) for their thoughts and opinions. Meanwhile pencil something in for mid-late October 2017.