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.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Watch the Body
I arrived as a freshman at the University of Buffalo in the fall of 1971. When I walked into my dorm room (the only triple in the entire dorm) I immediately noticed the stain on the dorm wall over my bed and opposite the main window in the room. I quickly found out that the previous spring the university had student riots that dwarfed those at Kent State but fortunately no one was killed. However, a teargas grenade was shoot through the window of my dorm and permanently stained the wall. Every year for the three years I lived in the room they painted the wall shortly after we left in the spring and by the day we moved in the stain burned through the new paint.
Because of the riots the relationship between students and police was very rocky so the School of Management started the Pilot 100 program:
The rules were such that the police precincts were divided into five levels of crime level. You had to ride in each level once to go onto the next level, with the tactical patrol being the highest. In the next to highest level I actually enjoyed riding with two police officers. I unfortunately do not remember their names. They were a black and white team and the Black officer took home his car on a new innovative from the federal government. They were involved in a car accident while responding to a call and were critically injured. I could have been in the car with them since I rode with them almost weekly. With them I was involved in three episodes that I will write about in this blog. There were two other episodes with the tactical unit that I will also write about. The relationships I developed that year really came in handy both during my volunteer work with the FAST team and the Red Cross Disaster service.
It was a beautiful Friday afternoon and I arrived at the police precinc,t on Main Street about a half mile from Downtown, at 3:45 as ussual to ride with my favorite pair of police officers. They were walking down the stairs from their daily briefing session. They waved and I followed them to their squad car. I got into the back as usual. We drove around for about 45 minutes and it was pretty quite when the call came across the radio for silent alarm going off. With lights and sirens blaring we tore down Main Street and turned the corner to see a body lying on the sidewalk in front of a jewelry store and someone about a block down running. They pulled up and told me to jump out and watch the body. They took 0ff at about 100 miles an hour burning rubber and going after the person running away. When I got out of the car I immediately noticed the man laying there was not moving. I went over and realized he was dead. He was what in those days I would have called old (I was only 18 and anyone over 30 was old) he had a mustache and graying hair. There was a gun laying on the ground a few inches from his hand. Immediately a crowd was starting to form around the body. I did my best for what seemed like hours, but was probably only 2 or 3 minutes, until several more police units arrived and took over the scene. The perp got away.
Nothing like a nice quite spring day in Buffalo.
Because of the riots the relationship between students and police was very rocky so the School of Management started the Pilot 100 program:
I as a freshman rode more then any other student, riding over 75 times. I rode about one third of the time with a female senior sociology student Gretchen. I and Gretchen were featured in a series of news stories carried in both the Buffalo News and the Amherst paper. The headline was "No Those Students in The Back of the Police Car are not Under Arrest".12. Pilot 100: Improving Relations With College Students
(Buffalo, New York)Goals: To allow "Longhairs" to ride along with police to see problems police encounter and to allow "pigs" to learn many students are serious about their academic work.
Strategies: The School of Management/ SUNY Buffalo, through a liaison with Marine Midland Bank, secured cooperation of Amherst Police Department, Buffalo Police Department, and SUNY-Buffalo campus police. All program participants were screened and female students could ride only if accompanied by a male student. The pilot program anticipated 100 students, but in two and a half months, 250 students had participated. Both sides called the program a success, except that students expressed interest in riding only with City of Buffalo police.
The rules were such that the police precincts were divided into five levels of crime level. You had to ride in each level once to go onto the next level, with the tactical patrol being the highest. In the next to highest level I actually enjoyed riding with two police officers. I unfortunately do not remember their names. They were a black and white team and the Black officer took home his car on a new innovative from the federal government. They were involved in a car accident while responding to a call and were critically injured. I could have been in the car with them since I rode with them almost weekly. With them I was involved in three episodes that I will write about in this blog. There were two other episodes with the tactical unit that I will also write about. The relationships I developed that year really came in handy both during my volunteer work with the FAST team and the Red Cross Disaster service.
It was a beautiful Friday afternoon and I arrived at the police precinc,t on Main Street about a half mile from Downtown, at 3:45 as ussual to ride with my favorite pair of police officers. They were walking down the stairs from their daily briefing session. They waved and I followed them to their squad car. I got into the back as usual. We drove around for about 45 minutes and it was pretty quite when the call came across the radio for silent alarm going off. With lights and sirens blaring we tore down Main Street and turned the corner to see a body lying on the sidewalk in front of a jewelry store and someone about a block down running. They pulled up and told me to jump out and watch the body. They took 0ff at about 100 miles an hour burning rubber and going after the person running away. When I got out of the car I immediately noticed the man laying there was not moving. I went over and realized he was dead. He was what in those days I would have called old (I was only 18 and anyone over 30 was old) he had a mustache and graying hair. There was a gun laying on the ground a few inches from his hand. Immediately a crowd was starting to form around the body. I did my best for what seemed like hours, but was probably only 2 or 3 minutes, until several more police units arrived and took over the scene. The perp got away.
Nothing like a nice quite spring day in Buffalo.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)