It Was the Best of Times,
It Was the Worst of Times.
by Andrea Graham

xxxxSomeday maybe I'll figure out why my J.B. days are stored in Technicolor on the zip drive inside my head, while college is a faint blur. It's unlikely, though, since I also can't fathom why I still remember the lyrics to every sappy Johnny Mathis song we used to slow-dance to.

xxxxThe Class of S'62 came of age during a time when some of us learned quickly just how much Ozzie and Harriet was a figment of Hollywood's imagination. My grade school classmates and I came from a nearby campus where family religious affiliation determined irrevocably whether a little girl became a Bluebird or a Brownie. The only children of color there called Nat King Cole "Dad". Academics rivaled the best private schools, as public money flowed freely to further enrich the already advantaged. By comparison, J.B. seemed worldly, exciting, even a little bit dangerous.

xxxxOur collective metamorphosis from children to teenagers was, of course, precipitated by puberty and the newly elevated status of the opposite sex in the natural order of the world. But my J.B. years were also a time of cultural awakening, intellectual curiosity and the beginning of introspection. The snapshots in that photo album of my memory are still, today, as colorful and vivid as the billboards punctuating the skyline along Sunset Boulevard.

xxxxJudy Garland's farewell concert at the Hollywood Bowl. A sellout crowd, the tickets as big a score as the Stones and Grateful Dead would become. We took the bus to the Bowl by ourselves, thrilled with our seats in the next to last row of the cavernous amphitheater. It started to rain very softly. No one rose to leave, and Judy, ever the trouper, wouldn't disappoint. The grownups took out cigarette lighters, illuminating the Bowl with hundreds of tiny flickering flames. The kind of memory that makes you feel really old when your summer intern asks who this Judy Garland person was.

xxxxGina Blumenfeld is absent for weeks. Her father has died. HER FATHER HAS DIED. How could someone so young lose their father? I don't know what to say to her when she returns to school, a black cloud shadowing her movements. Have I been unduly sheltered, unable to comprehend losing someone I love? And to realize now of what James was going through, loss without benefit of closure.

xxxxA small gathering at our house on Mansfield. Gary Gach, Ken Sarno, Susan Friedland. Lively discourse, as always; four budding politicians dressed up like 13-year-olds. My parents admit later that they were huddled on the other side of the wall, eavesdropping, marveling at how dissonant the viewpoints and vocabulary were with our tender years.

xxxxWe go on a group date -- a tradition I'm told has come back -- to the Westside Jewish Community Center where Peter Rashkin's father is starring in Death of a Salesman. I am entranced by the tiny makeshift stage that resembles a boxing ring, the actors so close we can touch them, my introduction to Willy Loman. I am stage-struck.

xxxxJournalism class. Lou Ann Berardi, one of those great teachers who looked straight at you, hoping you'd succeed, and had trouble camouflaging her sense of mirth. Learning to master the technique and discipline of journalistic writing that gave me more tools to build my career than I ever acquired in college. Thanks, Mrs. Berardi, wherever you are.

xxxxSaturday night, my parents have company. The telephone rings shrilly about 11 o'clock. A classmate, known for her flair for the dramatic, is threatening suicide. We are barely 14. She is home alone. I interrupt my mother--always a cool head-- and anxiously hand over the responsibility, as if we are a relay team. She intervenes. Nearly 20 years later, during a chance encounter with my friend's stepfather at a reception for a play he has directed, I learn that she eventually did end her life. I am not surprised.

xxxxLepska Verzeano, most unforgettable person, vibrating with passion about math and everything else. My imagination runs wild with the very thought of her having a secret life with the notorious Henry Miller. I am in awe. So is everybody else. Learning the binary system before its time, as if it were a foreign language. Once triumphantly mastered (no small effort), I take it home to my mathematically gifted father to stump him ñ at least where math was concerned -- for the first time ever.

xxxxMary Lou Gordon announces dramatically that she has changed her name to Merrilu. I quickly decide that if Lucy Baines Johnson can make national news by renaming herself Luci I will reinvent myself as Andi. Many years later, hearing my teenage moniker above the crowd at our unforgettable reunion, I look around, wondering whom they are addressing.

xxxxA neighborhood classmate and I sometimes study together. An A student, incredibly disciplined about homework, she always seems overly anxious about upcoming tests. Slowly, I realize what I am sensing is not anxiety but raw terror. Unspeakable penalties for failing to get good grades. There is something terribly wrong in that house.

xxxxWinter, 1961. The first day of A-8. A major milestone. In the conservative nature of J.B.'s administration, girls are prohibited from wearing lipstick until this momentous day. Our friends at other schools can't believe how square this is. We agonize over whether to coat our virgin lips that day with pink or orange. Revlon stock goes up.

xxxxEach of us has a scrapbook of such memories. J.B. then was where many of us learned, to our astonishment, that we weren't the center of the universe. There was a world of knowledge we hadn't begun to tap. There were experiences our parents hadn't introduced us to, whether it was Pablo Casals playing the classical guitar or the Dodgers playing the Yankees. Math didn't necessarily require the digits one through nine. Just perhaps, Atlas Shrugged might not have been the most brilliant novel ever written. Our friends lives weren't nearly as terrific or as awful as our own, depending on the minute, the hour, the day. In short, we were simply in training to be adults, parents, scholars, mentors, citizens, thinkers, builders, leaders, innovators, neighbors and friends. And, in retrospect, we were very lucky.

A commercial writer and long-time entrepreneur, Andrea Graham is a partner in Graham Silberg Sugarman, Inc., a national marketing consulting and advertising agency. Their Los Angeles headquarters are walking distance from J.B.

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