The Wheatley
School Alumni Association Newsletter # 239
Generational
Divide; Mr. Wathey; Motorcycles; Shower Curtains; Deceased 1968 Classmate;
Many More Archive Identifications.
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Welcome to The Wheatley
School Alumni Association Newsletter # 239.
Jared Goldstein (1985) Writes - “Were members of classes from the early 1970s so
radicalized by the war in Vietnam that they had Yearbook quotes like:
‘I would rather be a
chunk of concrete than a rifle used in war.’?
When I was in art class
in the early 1980s, I saw tiles on the studio walls that were hippy. Also,
there was psychedelic art in the cafeteria*.
I’m not sure if I heard
the quote from a beloved art teacher who would know, or if I imagined it.
‘Mr. Glennon, the
Principal of the 1980s, in both senses of the word, had that mural painted
over. He described it as Freudian.’
He also brought back
school dances, which stopped in the late 1960s or during the 1970s because
they were too 1950s.
Me and my friends were
doing The Gator, Slam Dancing, and The Pogo to New Wave hits like the B-52s’
Rock Lobster.
Best regards,
Jared Goldstein 1985”
Janet Gohlke Dyer (1962) Writes - “I am glad that someone finally mentioned that Mr.
Wathey was a gym teacher at North Side. I was beginning to think that I
imagined that I had him as a gym teacher. I was so glad when he was Principal
at Wheatley. Great guy.”
1967 - Bruce Orosz - “Hey Art ! After reading about Howard
Kirchick’s (1967) motorcycling near-disaster moment, I
decided to send you mine!
Flashing back to summer
1968, a friend and I each bought a 250 BSA motorcycle in London, and we drove
them across Europe and landed on the Greek island of Mykonos! It was a life
changing experience in many positive ways!
On the way there, I wiped
out on the Autobahn when my engine seized up and the rear wheel locked up
just outside of Frankfurt. Luckily, rain had just fallen, so although I
skidded on my arms and saw sparks coming off the zippers on my sleeve, I
suffered no injuries; I was just a bit rattled . It could have been a total
disaster, but both my bike and I survived, and we continued the journey for
months …..
‘Stayin alive’ 58 years
later ……
Cheers”
1967 - Daniel Silver - Banner Day
Backstory - As I recall, our
winning banner was painted on an old shower curtain liner that during our
pre-suburbia days had hung in the bathroom of my family’s old Manhattan
apartment (just a few blocks from the Polo Grounds: & despite its
proximity to the Say Hey Kid, in those days not at all an upscale address),
where the old-style tub had a wrap-around curtain rod that required an
extra-wide curtain & liner, more or less like this:
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So the shower
curtain & liner were each probably about 72” x 144” — which strikes me
now as just about the measurements of the banner the three of us struggled to
keep unfurled — you & Mitch Stephens (1967) at each
end, respectively, and I in the middle, using all of my nearly 6 feet of body
to keep my forehead just barely above the banner’s top edge — as we paraded
around the Shea Stadium field that day.
Once my family had moved
to Roslyn, William Levitt’s modern bathrooms did not require the
old-fashioned, wrap-around curtain & liner; nonetheless, my Mom had
stored it away out of her concern that our family’s financial situation was
so tenuous that one day we might be forced to decamp back to the Polo Grounds
neighborhood, & so need it again.
In later years, she used
to tell us that when we first moved out to “The Country Club,” the family (3
young kids) survived on canned tuna fish & noodles most days (filling,
good protein source, years before the mercury scares), & she was so afraid
that the stores would come repossess the furniture that she refused to remove
the plastic coverings, much less sit on it.
She tended to hang onto
to anything that she feared she might need again sometime in the future.
(And mirabile
dictu, 10 years later, in August 1964, the need her premonition
had foreseen in fact did arise, though not at all as she had feared.)
–dhs”
1968 - Sally Felton - Deceased -
Email received 11/15/2025
“First, I am not an
alumnus of the Wheatley School; rather, I am the dreaded ‘someone else’
referred to in the final sentences of your latest Alumni Newsletter (# 238),
sending an obituary instead of an autobiography.
Sadly, Sally Felton, a
member of the 1968 Wheatley Class, passed away in Costa Rica on 24 July 2018.
A mutual acquaintance, googling her name just a few hours ago, chanced to
come upon a link to Issue # 82 of your Newsletter, wherein an unidentified
classmate of Sally lamented having lost contact with her. Although I had not
previously been aware that Sally attended Wheatley, the information provided
by the classmate (that Sally was an artist, had trained in Italy, married a
Costa Rican lawyer, and later settled in Costa Rica) leaves no doubt that the
same person is involved. My wife, in particular, was very close to Sally
(they were both into horses), beginning in 1984, when we rented a house from
her in San José. We left Costa Rica in 1990, but we returned for regular
visits until 2013, when last we saw Sally. Sally’s daughter informed us of
her mother’s death.”
1972 - Judith Oppenheim Darrah -
New and Improved (Reprint, With Reaction)
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Judith Now
(2025)
Joanne Festa (1960) Writes - “Congrats, Judith. You look stunning.”
Jo Ann Bregman Miles (1972) Writes - “Congratulations on all of your
accomplishments Judy Oppenheim Darrah! You look stunning!”
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L-R - Floor -
Marcia Friedman Mayer (1963), Leslie Schiller Fisher (1963), Marianne
Lamitola Downey (1963) (?), ???, Jeanne Messing (1961), ???, ???, ???
Chairs - ???, ???, ???,
???, ???, ???, Carol Jalonack Blum (1961), ???, ???
Standing - Donna Kenton
(1963), ???, ???, ???, Jerry Mintz (1961) (?), ???, Tim Jerome (1961) (?),
???, ???, ???, ???, ???, ???, ???, ???, Liz Stone (1963), ???, ???, ???
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L-R - Sitting - Louise
Kampa Triano, Donna Hegyi Gillman, Sally Jablon, Ellen “Ellie” Senft Kochek,
Jane Goldenberg Fire
Standing - Saleem Pernath (then
known as “Gibb Geery”), Eliot “Ike” Evans, Richard Rogers, Neil Firetog,
Robert “Bobby” Bland, Norman Resnicow, Mark Bagdon, Lanning “Lanny” Schiller,
Ken Katz
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L-R Standing -
Greg Linde, Laurie Paisner, Donald Spininger, Larry Copeland, Nancy Weissman,
Charley Cassely, Bruce King, Robin Firetog Glanzberg, Seth
Rosenberg
Seated - Amy Herbst,
Felice Greenbaum Berger, Robin Hegyi Sisskind, Cathy or Carol Drew, Kathy
Kuveikis, Debra Clarke, Mary Costello.
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L-R - Floor - Suzanne
“Suzie” DeVries, Barbara Silber Signorelli, Janette Knowles
Sitting - Janet King, Wendy
McClure, Julie Hoffman Fensterheim, Alisa Schuckman Dultz, Pam Kalish, Amy
Gould, Eileen Weiss Nelson, Beth Malsky Peisic, Irena Jug
Standing - Ronald Bookbinder,
Sharon Lazar, David Greenapple, Scott Lewis, David Chin, David Sigman, Peter
Weinstein, Adam Abeshouse, Tracy Klestadt, Joseph Milana, Wayne Cutler, Lloyd
Rosler
1960 (Elaine Kent Abrams) - “Thank you for your outreach to all of Wheatley’s
classes.”
1960 (John Moncure) - “Thanks for all you do.”
1961 (Camille Napoli Cannizzo) ❤️
1964 (Richard Ilsley) - ❤️
1965 (Elizabeth “Libby”
McCambridge) - ❤️
1965 (Richard Strauss) - “Great job with the Newsletters - thank you for all you
do.”
1966 (Claude Levy) - ❤️
1967 (Doug Brautigam) - ❤️
1968 (Leslie Wolowitz) - “I love reading the Newsletters.”
1969 (Sookey Rosenberg Aldag) - ❤️
1972 (Jeffrey Kargman) - ❤️
???? (Libby ???) - ❤️
Thanks to our fabulous
Webmaster, Keith Aufhauser (Class of 1963), you can regale
yourself with the first 238 Wheatley School Alumni Association Newsletters
(and much other Wheatley data and arcana) at
The Wheatley School Alumni Association Website
Also thanks to Keith is
our search engine, prominently displayed on our home page: type in a word or
phrase and, wow!, you’ll find every place it exists in all previous
Newsletters and other on-site material.
I edit all submissions,
even material in quotes, for clarity and concision, without any indication
thereof. I cannot and do not vouch for the accuracy of what people tell me,
as TWSAA does not have a New Yorker type fact-checking
department.
We welcome any and all
text and photos relevant to The Wheatley School, 11 Bacon Road, Old Westbury,
NY 11568, and the people who administered, taught, worked, and/or studied
there. Art Engoron, Class of 1967
That’s it for The Wheatley School
Alumni Association Newsletter # 239. Please send me your autobiography before
someone else sends me your obituary.
Art
Arthur Fredericks Engoron, Class of 1967
