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Babylon Class of '47 to attend '07 graduation
Recently enjoying each others company at one of the village's favorite gathering and dining sports, the Greek Garden, three members of the Class of '47 were discussing plans for the 60th reunion party scheduled for the Southward Ho County Club. Over cups of coffee and tea, Joe DeLucca, Tom Morris and Jane Roberts Lewis talked about their own graduation on the stage of Rowe Hall and how Jane had tears streaming down her face that day, saddened by thoughts that close friends would soon be going their separate ways. Today, she was laughing. Tom, president of the Class of 1947 and voted Most Popular Boy, opened his yearbook displaying the first page containing a large photo of the class officers. It included Jane as secretary. She was also voted Most Popular Girl of 1947. Joe, mentioned numerous times in The Trawler - 1947 for his baseball and football feats and his contribution to the senior play, Out of the Frying Pan,"had his copy of the yearbook, too. They had recently met with current Babylon Junior-Senior High School Principal Robert Visbal regarding their participation at the upcoming commencement ceremonies. Many of their classmates had RSVP'd that they would be attending, with some coming from out-of-state. "We have such good memories of our school days," Jane was saying as the two men nodded their heads. "We had fun and got a very good education." Jane has since retired as a school teacher, Tom retired from Newsday as an editor and special writer on Long Island regional planning, and Joe became well-known as a Major League Scout. Included on their list of Class of 1947 "firsts" was an out-of-district prom that was so successful, the seniors felt certain that the classes after them would follow suit, and they were right. Among the "leaders" of the class were Helen Ehrsam Swank, who went on to hold several international positions, including administrator of Cornell University's Southeast Asia Program; Sheldon Salzman, who went on to Pratt Institute for a Chemical Engineering degree, went to work for U.S. Rubber, and later ran the Uniroyal Tire Company; Edythe Stevenson, who after having four children, went to work at a top creative agency where she became vice president and wrote TV and radio commercials, the most famous of which is the "Mikey" ad about the little boy who loved Life Cereal; Robert H. Weeks, who obtained a Masters Degree in Business Administration, was commissioned in 1951, and spent 23 years in the Navy serving on destroyers and submarines and commanding a nuclear fleet ballistic missile submarine; and Patrick Henry, former Suffolk County District Attorney and currently a State Supreme Court Justice. As the three continued to thumb through the Trawler, they came upon a photo of their Principal, Cyrus L.Oyer, who wrote in the yearbook, "You are a credit to our school." An observer at the Greek Garden commented, "You certainly were." And they will continue to be just that, only this time at the graduation of the Class of 2007 where they'll be asked to stand and take a bow as a symbol of Babylon's tradition of education excellence and its continuity of generations. | |||||
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