It’s Christmas Eve in the year 2024, an eventful year although not for reasons we will be proud to remember, especially in the Middle East.  But it’s still that special season that has been honored wherever men have roamed since we became sentient and noticed the seeming miracle of the twin solstices, the one in the North, with the longest night, and the one in the South with the longest day.  The equator is currently not far from where I live in a wonderful city high in the Central range of the Colombian Andes.  Here, spring reigns eternal.  It’s a city at the southern edge of the Northern Hemisphere.  I guess that at the equator solstices and equinoxes coincide.  I have often wondered what it would be like to live in a home that straddles the equatorial line, one concurrently both real and imaginary.  It must be a magical place.  But, at any rate, for me, solstices as well as equinoxes have always seemed days for introspection and this year I’ve reflected on my friend Bobby, and on the special parochial school in Hollis, Queens, in New York City from which I graduated in late June of 1960, St. Gerard de Majella (we just called it St. Gerard’s).

So, about Bobby. 

I can’t recall his last name.  He’s not in the picture above, he didn’t graduate with me from St. Gerard’s.  He lived with his family over a candy store on Hillside Avenue in Queens Village, New York, between 215^th and 216^th streets I think.  I recall sharing “chocolate egg creams” there.  I lived in the Abbot Arms apartment complex across the street (at least I think that’s what it was called).  We were briefly “best” friends during the 1960-1961 academic year, a very difficult year for me and not just because hormones had kicked into high gear.  That was the year Bill Mazeroski broke Mickey Mantle’s heart, … and mine.  Bobby was Italian and his family was very kind, very warm; very full of joy.  I loved some of the food his wonderful mom made for us but not all of it, not the bull’s balls, … yuck!!!  But I ate them just the same. 

Bobby was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.  He helped me through a rough time.  As had happened all too often, I’d switched schools in the middle of the 1960-61 academic year, having been transferred over my protests by my parents from Jamaica High School, which I really liked and where many of my friends from St. Gerard’s had gone, to Martin Van Buren, a relatively new school where I knew no one.  After almost yearly changes in schools, this was one too many and I finally rebelled.  I informally refused to accept the transfer, instead, riding the New York City subways all day until I was finally caught.  I remember that I’d planned to emancipate myself by becoming a comic book artist and had sent DC Comics an idea for a new super hero I’d drawn, “Ultraman” I think I called him.  Their rejection letter was polite: “they had enough artists and did not generally hire fourteen year olds”. 

I remember that chief among the delights of Jamaica High were two girls, Karen Luckhart (I think that was her last name but I’ve probably misspelled it) and Mary Bakanskas (ditto on the spelling), and I also had a host of other good friends.  One’s name was Tommy Scott, a classmate from St. Gerard’s; we used to hang out together before classes started.  There was also a very pretty sophomore named Cindy who sometimes deigned to join us freshmen at our early morning gatherings.  I remember that she smoked and seemed very mature and somewhat wise.  Smoking created impressions like that back then.  Now, not so much.  And then there was a sort of friend, Johnny Eckelstein, a sort of rival.  He was on Jamaica High’s track team.

I don’t remember anyone from my short stay at Van Buren. 

At the end of that academic year I was off to the Eastern Military Academy in Cold Spring Hills, New York, overlooking Cold Spring Harbor, an old whaling port.  It was my choice and a wise one.  Eastern provided me with an Island of stability as my family fell apart.  My mother and stepfather separated then divorced in 1962 and my younger siblings, my sister Marina and my brother Teddy were also sent to boarding schools, Marina to Sag Harbor and Teddy to St. Basil’s in upstate New York.  Eastern was the first school in my life where I remained for more than two years.  I graduated from Eastern in 1964 and returned to teach there for a decade after college at the Citadel. 

I never saw or heard from Bobby after I left for Eastern but I never forgot him either.

I frequently wonder what happened to all of those people with whom I shared a bit of friendship in that strange year.  I wish there was some way to reconnect but until recently, not even Facebook has helped.  I’ve tried.  I especially tried with respect to those who graduated with me from St. Gerard’s in June of 1960.  Most especially with respect to one with whom I may never have shared a single word.  Patricia Maher was her name and this time I´ve got the spelling right.  I’ve posted on a Facebook page for St. Gerard’s (which ceased operations in 2008 but whose chapel still survives) but have yet to receive any responses.  I’ve heard that former governor Mario Cuomo also went there.  He was one of my law school professors, the one I most admired although his sons have sullied his name.  I think of St. Gerard’s every time I watch Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman in the Bells of St. Mary’s (which I try to do every Christmas).  

I recall the transition from the 1950s to the 1960s at St. Gerard’s and the special message that the Virgin of Fatima had supposedly delivered to a young girl in Portugal, Lucia dos Santos was her name then.  She’d turned the message over, sealed, to the Vatican, and Pope John XXIII was supposed to finally unseal it as 1959 turned to 1960.  I recall the rumor that when he’ read it, he’d passed out and that the message was so troubling that after we’d waited for half a century to hear it (well, not us specifically, we’d only waited thirteen years), we’d just have to keep on waiting.

I remember St. Gerard’s and love it more every year and wonder what ever happened to my classmates, hoping that they’ve all enjoyed happy and productive lives.  But Bobby, I remember him best.  I hope he’s thriving and that he’s had a great life. 

I wonder if he remembers me as well.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.