Altoona High School Class of 1961
Forty-Fifth Reunion
Blairmont Country Club
Saturday, August 5, 2006
INVOCATION
Bob LaMorte
Father,
We are thankful for the privilege of being together this evening. Tonight we share our memories – the students, athletes, and friends we once were – reunited for a time, reliving our shared past. Everything that happened during those years played its part in shaping us, so we return to remember the youth we once were. We also honor those who taught and encouraged us. We remember old friends – those with us now, those who were unable to attend, and those who are no longer with us. We strive to strengthen the bond of relationships as we face the future, but always keep with us our ties of the past. We give thanks from our hearts for this meal and the time that we have to share with each other. We ask that all may return safely home in the hope that we will be able to gather together again. Amen.
DECEASED MEMBERS
Tony Labriola
The committee would like to thank Cheryl Wherry’s husband, Pat, for making the memorial for our deceased classmates. Prior to a toast to those members of our class who are deceased, I’d like to pause for you to go around your table and individually mention by name those individuals that you especially want remembered.
....
To you, Sandy Gould, Ken Green, Boog Anthony, Mark Freeburn, Skip Thompson, Artie Musto, and to all of you previously named at the individual tables: On this beautiful summer evening, as the gentle breezes are blowing from the Golden West, we bid our peaceful evening tidings to you, the deceased members of our 1961 Class of AHS.
WELCOME
Tony Labriola
Last night, I was asked by Dick Nixon if I had become a barber like my father, Patsy. I don’t know how many of you remember, but my father had a barbershop, for fifty years, right down the road in Lakemont. I used to be Principal of Lakemont Elementary School. Going into my father’s barbershop was a good lesson in sociology. People from all walks of life would enter his barbershop.
One day, I was in the barbershop and Denny Murray, Superintendent of Schools in Altoona, who is very much Irish, was sitting in the chair. Denny asked my father, “Hey Pat, who are the smartest people in the world?” My father replied, “Denny, please, everybody knows that, it has to be the Italians. You’ve got Galileo, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Joe Paterno. Everybody knows that, it has to be the Italians.”
“Hey Pat, who are the best cooks in the world?” My Dad replied, “Everybody knows that, it has to be the Italians. You’ve got that thick, rich sauce in Southern Italy, that thin, light sauce in Northern Italy, you’ve got Alfredo’s in Rome, Mamma Leone’s in New York, Lena’s Café in Altoona. Everybody knows that, it has to be the Italians.”
Denny asked, “Pat, who are the best singers in the world?” My dad replied, “Denny, everybody knows that, it has to be the Italians. You’ve got that great opera, Pagliacci. Caruso was a great singer, Pavarotti is a great singer. You’ve got old blue eyes, Frank Sinatra, you’ve got Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Perry Como himself was a barber. Everybody knows that, it has to be the Italians.”
“Then Denny asked, “Hey Pat, who are the biggest crooks in the world?” My dad says, “Hey, do you think I know everything?”
I’m a lot like my father, I don’t know everything but, like my dad, I’m also biased about what I do know. One of the things I’ve always been biased about is the high school I attended and the class that I graduated with in 1961. I’ve always treasured the experiences I had with all of you inside that brownstone building.
Over the years, I’ve come to know that the brownstone was not the school. We were the school; all 779 of us.
Last year, I watched the movie Glory Road. It was a story inspired by Texas Western’s 72-65 defeat of Kentucky in the 1966 NCAA Basketball Championship game in Cole Field House at College Park, MD. What was significant about that win was that it was the first time that a Division I school won the championship with a starting line-up of all African-American players.
Tonight, I can tell you that as I watched that game in 1966, I rooted for Texas Western because they were the underdogs, but I was totally unaware as I was watching at that time of the historical significance of that game. And, the reason for that was the school environment that you and I grew up in.
Twenty-two years after the invasion of Poland;
Sixteen years after the defeat of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy;
Sixteen years after Auschwitz and the Holocaust;
Six years after Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat on a bus in Montgomery, AL;
Five years after Dwight David Eisenhower sent Federal Troops to Little Rock, AR to force Governor Orval Faubus to integrate Central High School;
Three months before New Rochelle, NY was ordered by a Federal Judge to desegregate;
Two years before James Meredith entered the University of Mississippi escorted by Federal Marshals;
Three years before Governor George Wallace was foiled in his attempt to block the doorway of the University of Alabama;
Four years before Martin Luther King’s march from Selma to Montgomery; and
Twenty full years before a Federal Judge ordered the desegregation of General Braddock in Pittsburgh, PA by forming the jointure of Woodland Hills;
I graduated with you from Altoona High School in 1961.
I had friends with names like Siegfried Boettjer, Ron Olszewski, Nicky Unger, Sandy Gould, Becky Mattas, Ed Masood, Milford Pittman, Donna Batrus, Ray Caracciolo, Tom Clapper, Joanne Nigro, Linda Shannon, Hank Orberg, Jules Patt, and Ralph Muller. We were the melting pot, and all of you were welcome in my home just like I was welcomed into yours.
We were a special band of brothers and sisters that was then and continues today to be a family. We were nestled in the Allegheny Highlands, protected by the mountain ranges on all sides. We were blest with teachers who talked with us and not to us. Indeed, for us, the education we received and the environment we were exposed to was the Great Wealth of these Highlands.
We did not know discrimination and segregation. We accepted all creeds, color, and nationalities. We were in 1961 what the rest of America, and the rest of the World, had yet to achieve and was aspiring to be. We were a class of equals. We reflected it then and we reflect it again tonight.
So, tonight, as I represent the committee in welcoming you to the celebration of our 45th Reunion as a class, and as we look forward to celebrating our 50th, Golden, Reunion together five years from now, and as the dim twilight softly gathers round our colors, the committee’s wish for all of us is that we continue to flourish as the special band of brothers and sisters we once were and continue to be. And, that as we look forward to our 50th, the committee hopes that the words of Robert Browning from his poem, Rabbi Ben Ezra hold true for us, as I say to you:
Come, come grow old along with me,
The best is yet to be,
Those last of years,
For which the first with all of you were made.
