Forbiden Love

I was the chair of ticket committee at Jamaica High school, The first Junior to hold that position. I inherited it from Bruce Brodsky. Now that may sound like a boring job in High School but remember he who controls the money pulls the strings. We sold the tickets for every school event that had tickets. This included all the sports teams, all the theatrical productions and all the special events. I was responsible for thousands of dollars in revenue. I was also the one who organized the post event parties for the participants. We were given a budget to pay for some of the expenses of the cast parties etc.. So it fell on me to organize all the parties and get togethers. Sometimes we would go to Jan's Ice cream Parlor (I have a major story about Jan's) sometimes we would hit pizza parlors and sometimes we would just go to a local park and hank around and smooze or some would do a little more. Keep reading, that's what this story really is about.

Jamaica High was unique among High Schools in New York City. It was the largest High School with 5800 students (1800 in my graduating class), it was the only High school in New York with a fifty-fifty Black-White ratio. It was fed by three very interesting areas: Jamaica Estates, possibly the wealthiest neighborhood in NYC; Jamaica, one of the three poorest areas in NYC; and Kew Gardens, a community were most of the permanent staff for the United Nations lived. So we had the most international, the richest and the poorest students in NYC mixed in one of the most fascinating melting pots there could be. We had the longest posted Principal, Dr Shucker and the only school in the United States who at that time had an unbroken record of a Westinghouse Science Tallent Search Semi-finalist every year since its inception. We had more PhD's then any other High School in NYC, almost all the Chairman were Doctorates. We were the first( in 1966) High School to have it's own Main Frame Computer an IBM 360 solely for student use. The school started on a staggered schedule between 7 A.M. for the earliest and 11:30 for the latest. The students were statified into seven academic levels from Industrial (non-raegents), General (non-reagents), General Reagents, two levels of Regular reagents, Honor and extra-honor. Overall an amazing school. I just learned they are closing it this year.

Back to our story, There was this girl Michelle, she was the most beautiful girl at Jamaica High School. She was a Senior, a year ahead of me. She was also one of the brightest girls, being in almost all Honor or Extra-honor Classes. She had a bubbly personality. Yes I had a crush on her but felt she was out of my league. She was the type that if we had a Home-Coming Queen she would have been it. She was articulate, gregarious and outgoing. She was an officer of the Student Association and an athlete. It was after a a school event. I arranged for everyone to meet at Cunningham Park, there was a grove near 198th Street and Union Turnpyke that we liked to hangout in. It was about 9:30 and about 40 or 50 kids were there hanging out and doing what High School kids do on a Friday Night after letting off steam at a school event. The amazing thing was that about half the kids were black and half white. It was probably one of the only places in NYC in 1970 that there was mixing of the races to this degree. I was proud that I was a major catalyst of this. Well I was sitting on a bench and Michelle sat down on the other end. We started talking. As time went on I realized she wasn't on the other end of the bench but we were sitting next to each other. Soon we were holding hands and looking into each others eyes. The divides between us, her a senior and me a junior, her the class beauty and me a geek(yes even then we had geeks, I was one of the first), her popular with the opposite sex and me almost dateless in high school. I don't know how it happened but all of a sudden we were kissing. Time flew and the next thing I knew, almost three hours later, it was 1:30 and the last of the people with a car were leaving and we had to go. We both left with a touch of sadness because we both, wrongly, thought that we could not continue our puppy love since she was black and I was white.