The NPHS Reunion Interview: Sue Henry Martin, Class of 1968

Sue with her "furry child" Macree in 2014 near Gettysburg, PA.

Describe your career.

I taught high school history and English in Fairfax County (Virginia) Public Schools, retiring in 2005. Teaching was an immensely rewarding and demanding career that in many ways allowed me to relive and truly appreciate how exceptionally fortunate I was to have been a part of NPHS.  

Where have you lived since graduating? 

I attended and graduated Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia. After college graduation in 1971, I lived at home in North Plainfield until 1973, when I took a job in Washington, DC, and lived in several different Maryland cities (Silver Spring, Bethesda, Chevy Chase) and Northern Virginia suburbs (Alexandria, Falls Church, McLean, Arlington). When my husband retired a few years ago, we moved to Pennsylvania and now live in Center Valley (southeast of Allentown).

Who were your friends back in high school?  Are you still in touch with them now? 

I had a few close friends through our high school years — Jeff Sperling (since 6th grade), Laraine Cox and Karen McCleary (since 7th grade), Rosanne DeTommaso, Nancy Reis. I am grateful to have either stayed in touch ever since or reconnected from time to time over the years — we just pick up where we left off last time we spoke or were together. Jeff and I met for lunch this month (July 2018)!  

Do you have any regrets about your experiences during your high school years?     

Very few, but, I learned a lot from those errors in judgment. My high school years were truly wonderful!

Now, 50 years later, has your perspective on your high school years changed at all?  If so, how? 

In high school I knew I had excellent teachers and that I was receiving an excellent preparation.  Now, 50 years later, and, having been a teacher myself, I truly appreciate not only my exceptional teachers, but the talented and good people who were my classmates.  After leaving our 30th reunion, I felt a renewed sense of belonging and pride in being a part of an extraordinary group of intelligent, accomplished, caring and down-to-earth people.  To whom much is given much is expected — I like to think that the Classes of 1968 and 1969 have lived up to that!

What is your fondest memory of your years at NPHS?  

How about a few of my fondest?  

Riding on the bus to away basketball games:  We cheerleaders rode in the front and the players in the back and there was a lot of school spirit and lots of encouragement on the way over and on the return either celebration or consolation and more encouragement.  The sense that we were all a part of something wonderful was palpable and inspiring. 

Great Book discussions:  They were high anxiety command performances but undoubtedly the highlight of my academic experiences — hard work can be fun! 

Singing the Alma Mater at graduation:  Fondest mem’ries round thee linger, cheer our hearts anew. The moment I turned to exit my row for the recessional and faced Rosanne DeTommaso, we both burst into tears of joy and sadness because we were graduating.  

What was the craziest or stupidest thing you did in high school?  

A group of us freshman girls decided it would be fun to sneak up behind upper class boys and rip the loops off the backs of their shirts while yelling “fruit loops”.  We would count to see who had the most, and, it was all meant to be a fun way to make our presence known.  We got their attention, and, most of them laughed it off as us just being silly, but I recall one senior boy making it clear he was not amused, and, he scared me enough to stop right then and there.  Years later I would chuckle and cringe about our audacity and complete oblivion to invading all those boys’ personal spaces.

What was your proudest accomplishment in high school?  

Being chosen to give a speech at graduation.  I still have the typed copy I delivered that evening and read it over from time to time. I must admit I am still proud of it and marvel over the fact that I just sat down and wrote it, pretty much straight from the heart and find the ideas still ring true.  I give credit to the culture of NPHS and my teachers, especially Miss O’Brien and her weekly essays and Great Books required reading, for instilling in me the values and guiding principles articulated in that speech that have served me well ever since. I think the four of us – Karen McCleary, Sue Turnbull, Harry Lewis and myself – felt especially privileged to be able to address our classmates in our own words.  In the days leading up to the ceremony, we met with Mrs. Bevins over in the band room at Harrison School to practice our speeches and get feedback. At that time, and, even today thinking back, it felt like a very special moment for all of us.  Essentially, my speech was about recognizing the incredible gifts our parents’ and earlier generations had bestowed upon us, the importance of upholding certain values, using our talents to make the world a better place in the face of the turbulent times being thrust upon us, and, our responsibility to future generations to ensure their inheritance of our share of abundance. With apologies for a lack of humility — those ideas are pretty impressive coming out of a 17-year-old, and, I give myself some credit for being intelligent enough to craft a compelling thesis. More credit must go to my parents and grandparents, but, much of the credit goes to my NPHS education and the extraordinarily talented teachers who imparted their wisdom, cared deeply about us as human beings, and equipped us with lifelong learning skills.

Who was your favorite teacher? 

I loved school and most of my teachers, so, I have more than one favorite — please indulge me:  Katie Gordon, English 11; Joe Pecoraro, Algebra II; Terry Haines Martin, Bio and Advanced Bio; Judith Ullman, Spanish I and II ; Rose Bellino, Chemistry; Nancy Schuman, Judy Grady and Grace Roff Hodge, P.E.; last but not least, the legendary Marie O’Brien!

What was your worst class? 

That would have to be U.S. History II — with apologies to Ed Stec — a great guy — but I could not stand memorizing names and dates!  I left NPHS swearing I would never take another history class and wound up majoring in history when I was introduced to primary sources and inquiry as method!

What is your most powerful or haunting memory during your years at NPHS?

Irene Hutnick’s death.  She was our cheerleading sponsor and, upon reflection at the time, in the weeks leading up to her death, she seemed unhappy. That she took her own life was inconceivably tragic and difficult for us to understand the pain she must have endured.

Living through the 1967 riots in Plainfield was the first time I can remember being fearful for my physical safety and struggling to understand my parents’ inability to reassure me.  That’s a powerfully haunting memory indeed.  Having been raised as what I would describe as “color-blind,” the presence of the National Guard with their armored tanks at the West End Avenue border with Plainfield introduced me to the disturbing concept of “us against them.”

How did growing up as a child of the 60s – and all the social baggage and impact that it may have entailed – impact you at the time and in your young adult years? 

As a young woman coming of age in 1968, I think I was typical in that I went to college expecting to become an educated wife, and, although I always liked the idea of becoming a teacher, I had no expectation that I would ever have a “career” as anything but a wife and mother.  Attending a small liberal arts college for women changed that slightly as “Women’s Lib” took off. However, most of my classmates and I thought that liberation was for women who didn’t want to be married and raise families. It must have frustrated our professors trying their best to create college-educated professional women, because most of us were only concerned with whether we were going to Charlottesville or Lexington or somewhere else to date the cutest boy at the best fraternity.  Sad, but, true!  "The Feminine Mystique" was required reading for all of us freshman year, but, I recall not taking it too seriously. By graduation, the seeds of my own feminism would take hold and remain firmly planted, thanks entirely to being at a women’s college!

As mentioned above, I felt I grew up color-blind and, as has been mentioned by others in this blog, non-discriminatory regarding race and religion.  I perceived North Plainfield as a community in which respect for others was a universal value.  As a White Protestant female, I knew very little of the sting of discrimination. 

My naivete, particularly towards race relations, was shattered when I arrived in Staunton — birthplace of Woodrow Wilson — and was an eyewitness to de facto segregation and its nuanced injustice. When I began teaching in Northern Virginia in the late 70’s, I was shocked to learn that Fairfax County Schools had only been fully integrated on the secondary level in 1965 — only three years before I attended college.

The anti-war movement was a passion for me, and, although Mary Baldwin College was a relatively quiet campus, many of us did what we could locally to support the effort.  I dragged a friend to a rally in downtown Staunton in May 1971, and, we wound up with our pictures in a story in the Staunton News Leader — much to my delight and her parents dismay.  I wrote my thesis on the history of the contemporary student protest movement and used the archives at Princeton and the University of Virginia for a lot of my source materials.  The History department chair wasn’t too impressed with my work, but my thesis mentor was proud and pleased. It was certainly not my finest piece of writing but I met my requirements, passed my oral defense, and said my piece — no pun intended.

The events and social movements of the sixties and seventies created a paradigm shift of unfathomable proportion that continues to evolve, and, my years at NPHS continue to guide me through this turbulent world of ours. I think that’s pretty remarkable!

Leonard Hall, American University, 1969.
Sue waits for Jeff Sperling's refrigerator to defrost.

The NPHS Reunion Interview: Jack Muldowney, Class of 1969

Jack Muldowney, 2017

Where did you attend college?

I attended Minnesota Tech in Crookston, MN, which was 90 miles from the Canadian border and just east of North Dakota. Population:  roughly 7,000.  I went there with Mike Maresca to play football.  Mike and I became captains of the

Jack (right) with teammate and
future NFL star Jim LeClair (24)

team along with another player. We had the opportunity to play with Jim LeClair who went on to play 12 seasons in the NFL with Cincinnati Bengals and appear in a Super Bowl. Tech was a junior college and after a year-and-a-half I transferred to Trenton State with the help of Frank Tramontano. I played two years there and graduated with a BS in Health and Physical Education. I never got a teaching job.  

So where did you work?

I was fortunate to get a job with Weldon Concrete, I worked for them for 35 years. For the past six years, I’ve worked at Phoenix Sand. I will be retiring at the end of the year

Where do you live now?  Where have you lived since graduating?

I’ve lived in Toms River for the past 25 years.  Before that, I bought the Migdal house in North Plainfield on Greenbrook Road right across from West End School.  Back in the 70s, I shared a house in Bernardsville with former NPHS classmates John Smith, Bob Doda and Bob’s brother Rich.  Lots of good stories there. 

Who were your friends back in high school?  Are you still in touch with them now?

I’ve stayed in close contact with Mike Maresca over the years. I really had a lot of friends in high school.  My closest friends then were probably Gary Garwacke and Al Misko, who passed away in 2015.  I’m glad I had the chance to see Al at his home in Coral Springs, FL, before he died.  

Jack with daughter Trish, Michael Maresca and Mr. Maresca.

The NPHS Reunion Interview: Beverly Gaston Kochard, Class of 1969

Beverly in the office at Allentown College in 1975
where she worked as the first director of the school's college union.

Describe your career.

My undergraduate college years were spent at Moravian College, which was absolutely the right choice for me.  While I’d been involved in out-of-class activities at NPHS, I took it to a whole new level in college and loved every minute.  Somewhere along the way, it dawned on me that I could make this a career.  And that’s basically what I did.  

With the ink still drying on my BA in English, I was hired by Allentown College (now DeSales University) as the first director of their college union.  I served in that capacity for seven years and completed graduate work at Lehigh University, after which I moved on to a sequence of administrative positions elsewhere.   The last 22 years of my 39-year career in higher education were spent as Vice President for Student Affairs at Moravian, and I retired as VP Emerita in 2012.   It was truly an exhilarating ride. 

Where do you live now?  Where have you lived since graduating?

For years, my mother told people that I “went to Pennsylvania to go to college and never came home.”  That’s not really true, and yet maybe it is in that I fell in love with the culture of eastern Pennsylvania and all it has to offer.  My husband, Dale, and I met when we were seniors at Lehigh and Moravian, respectively.  We married in 1974 and have lived in Pennsylvania our entire married life.  Sharing a passion for history, heritage, and antiques, we bought a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in Upper Macungie (near Allentown) in 1990 and have been restoring it ever since.  I doubt we’ll ever be done.

What was your sense of community in your class/in the school at NPHS?

Our class, like most classes, was comprised of groups, but I seem to remember them as being somewhat amorphous in nature, with people moving in and out in accordance with changing interests, activities, goals, and priorities.   As young people do, we passed judgment too quickly at times and missed the chance to develop relationships with others who had so much to offer…and so much to teach us along the way.

Hopefully, we’ve all grown more appreciative of the differences that once separated us.  I’d like to think that, as we approach our 50^th well aware that some classmates are no longer with us, we now see ourselves as one group…one very special club comprised of those who went on a journey together and came out on the other side.

What experiences in high school, positive or negative, helped to shape you as a person?

It was more the composite picture that shaped me as a person…the sum of experiences that I had at NPHS.  Looking back, those years strike me as a time of collecting developmental puzzle pieces that ultimately fell into place over the years. 

Do you have any regrets about your experiences in your high school years?

I think perhaps I stayed too much within my comfort zone… really didn’t take advantage of a time that’s so full of opportunities for personal discovery and growth.

Now, 50 years later, has your perspective on your high school years changed at all?  If so, how?

I’m not sure my perspective has changed, but the specifics have certainly faded.  It’s hard to call it all back into focus 50 years later.

What is your fondest memory of your years at NPHS?

For me, it’s a collective remembrance of the relationships and of the particular people who were such an important part of my life at that time.  I had a lot of friends but probably spent the most time with Christina Soler, with whom I still maintain contact, and Tracy Sylvester, who passed away in 1998.

What was the craziest or stupidest thing you did in high school?

Now, see…this is where it’s helpful to have diminished recall – or selective recall! – in terms of 50-year-old memories.  Let’s just say that I definitely ate way too many onion rings at Opdyke’s on Rt. 22.

What was your proudest accomplishment in high school?

It was being honored by the American Association of University Women and presented with a scholarship during the awards ceremony at the end of our senior year.  I remember filing into the gym and catching a glimpse of my parents off to the side.  That told me something was up, but I had no idea what until my name was called.

Who was your favorite teacher?

Miss O’Brien and Mr. McKenna top the list.   Marie O’Brien’s English classes convinced me that effective writing skills provide a strong foundation for just about any career path, including the one that I ultimately traveled in higher education.  And Dick McKenna’s biology classes ignited a personal interest in genetics that morphed into an all-too-time-consuming pastime of researching my ancestry.

What was your worst class?

That’s an easy one:  chemistry.  I struggled with it in high school and again in college.  PE probably comes in at second place.   In high school, it seemed like I was not good at anything vaguely athletic, which is why I tended to cringe in gym class when Nancy Schuman would yell “Ladybugs!  Hustle your bustles!”  But then Jane Fonda came along, and I learned about exercise one can do in the basement.  Years later, totally hooked on aerobics and Pilates, I find myself thinking how amazed Nancy Schuman would be at this transformation.

What is your most powerful or haunting memory during your years at NPHS?

I recall the moment we learned of JFK’s assassination, of course, and the sadness when a classmate’s brother lost his life in Vietnam, but for me the most haunting memory is probably Bob Gardner’s death in a car accident during our senior year.  We thought we were immortal.  That was a tragic wake-up call for us all.

How did growing up as a child of the 60’s – and all the social baggage and impact that it may have entailed – impact you at the time and in your young adult years?

In retrospect, I was somewhat embarrassingly oblivious to what was going on in the world in terms of social change, political upheaval, and civil rights until I got to college.  Then the blinders came off.  It was impossible to be on a college campus in the early 70s and not sense the societal seismic shift going on all around us. 

My most vivid memories have to do with the Vietnam war.  One is of huddling with classmates in the college union lounge with eyes glued to the TV as numbers were drawn in the draft lottery to see who would and who would not be called to serve; I can still feel the anguish so palpable in that room.  A second is of struggling to decide whether to abandon my spring semester classes and go on strike with many of my classmates out of principle or continue to go to the classes for which my parents had paid a sizable sum.  And a third is of agonizing over the state of our society when Kent State happened. 

During the 1970s, University of Colorado professor Morris Massey produced an insightful video called “What You Are Is Where You Were When.”  The premise, in part anyway, is that members of a generation are shaped by particular defining moments in history that occurred during their growing-up years… most notably during their teenage years.

Just as our parents were majorly impacted by World War II, we bear the imprint of all that occurred during the late 6os and early 70s.  I think growing up when we did pushed us to be more questioning and contemplative.  It challenged us to be more self-aware.  And, hopefully, it made us more compassionate. 

Beverly Gaston Kochard in 2018 at Kiawah Island, SC.

The NPHS Reunion Interview: Karl Krawitz, Class of 1968

Karl Kawitz on the job in 2013 in his role as principal at Shawnee Mission East High School, Kansas.

Please describe your career

When I graduated from NPHS, I attended Baker University (Kansas), where I earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry.   I taught the same subject at the secondary school level for nine years.  While teaching, I went back to graduate school and earned a Master’s and Doctoral degree in Educational Administration with an emphasis on school architecture from the University of Kansas in 1987.  For 30 years, I was a building principal for four different high schools in two major school districts in eastern Kansas.  In addition, I served as a consultant for both school districts assisting in the planning and construction of more than 1.5 billion dollars in new building construction.   In 2004 I was selected as Kansas PTA Educator of the Year and in 2008 I was inducted in the Baker University Hall of Fame (Education), for my career work in the profession.  I retired the first time in 2005 and became an associate professor in educational administration at Baker University where I stayed until 2008. I returned to the same school district I retired from in 2005 and stayed until I retired a second time in 2013.

Where do you live now?  

Along with my wife Patricia, I live in Overland Park, KS, a suburb of Kansas City.  Basically, since graduating from NPHS, I have lived in the Kansas City area. We have two sons, and five grandchildren.

What was your sense of community in your class/in the school at NPHS?

I always thought we had a strong united class and a great school.  Since I lived at the extreme southern/western border of the school district (between North Plainfield and Greenbrook), it was often difficult to interact with other classmates, so at times I really did not feel like I was part of any one group of friends.  For me that completely changed once I was able to “drive” my senior year.  Who can ever forget the Saturday night canteens, dances, and athletic events? 

What experience in high school, positive or negative, helped to shape you as a person?

The one event for me was both positive and negative; however without question, it was profound.  Throughout high school, I was never a serious student.  I enjoyed everything else about school, except going to class.  Early on in my senior year, I was called to the counselor’s office.  The counselor began by asking me what I was planning to do after high school.  I said to attend college (though I had done absolutely nothing to acquire information or apply to any school).  She told me my test scores, class rank, and GPA were not at an

Karl Krawitz, principal of
Olathe East High School,
Kansas (1992)

acceptable level for college admission.  She went on to say, I should consider other alternatives.  To say the least, the meeting made me mad, even though I knew what she was saying was true.  Even though, my grades improved during the second semester it was too little too late to make a huge difference.  With few college and university offerings, I entered Baker University as a probationary student in the fall of 1968.

Do you have any regrets about the experiences during your high school years?

My only regret (besides maybe being a better student) would have been to be a better athlete.  I really enjoyed sports (still do); however I had little talent.  I really enjoyed practices, especially basketball.  

Now, 50 years later, has your perspective on your high school years changed at all? If so, how?

It is somewhat Ironic that I spent 42 years in education based on my overall experience in high school.  Schools (at all levels) place too much emphasis on standardized testing, GPA, grades and class rank.  Many of you would be surprised to know, both test scores and grades are really poor predictors of future success (however measured).  There will be many of you who will not believe research is equally divided on the subject.  This is why schools should never give up on any child.  In fact, schools should be a place where children find hope for their future regardless whether they go to college or not.

What is your fondest memory of your years at NPHS?

My fondest memory was having the opportunity to be a member of the varsity football and basketball team my senior year. Even though I hardly ever played in a game, practice was fun, especially basketball.

What was the craziest or stupidest thing you did in high school?

Writing a forged note excusing my absence from school because of illness.  Got away with it

Breaking in: Karl Krawitz in 1972
at Olathe High School, his
first year as a teacher.

three times.  On the fourth attempt, Mr. Stec just happened to be the teacher handling excused notes that day in the nurse’s office.  Without me knowing, he had seen me the previous day in the afternoon playing pinball at Great Eastern (Anyone remember this store on Highway 22?).  Needless to say, I was caught.

What was your proudest accomplishment in high school?

At the time it was graduation.  Looking back, it was a change in attitude late in my senior year and listening to the advice given to me by so many of you and by some very special teachers/coaches like Howard Porter.