Monday at 10:30 am, I found myself at Northwood High School in Silver Spring MD with Bette Brotman Dolan. I went to Northwood as did Bette.
When I was in high school, we both rooted for the Northwood Indians. In these politically more sensitive times it is the Northwood Gladiators. Evidently it is more acceptable to have a nickname honoring people who were often slaves and fought to the death, or killed wild animals, to entertain crowds, but I digress.
There is a Facebook page where former students of Northwood can check into the status of classmates and teachers, or ask questions that typically start with “You went to Northwood High School if you remember <something from the distant past>”.
Earlier this year, a teacher currently at Northwood asked if any graduates were willing to talk to a class about their current profession and to provide advice for students who will be entering the job market in the near-term future. Perhaps a dozen or so former Northwood students answered. By chance the two people who responded who had careers in technology, Bette and I, both graduated in 1966.
Having said that, Bette and I were not close friends in high school. As Bette put it in an email leading up to Monday, while she was academically bright, she pretended not to be as she hung out with the “bad girls”. I am sure that no one would be surprised to learn that I was an awkward, social nerd who hung out generally with other awkward, social nerds.
As Bette pointed out I was a somewhat contradictory personality for nerddom. Thus while I was the President of the Science Club, which you would expect, my friend Art Salwin and I ran a Political Science Club which got kicked out of Northwood for inviting overly controversial speakers (after that we met in the homes of the other club members).
Monday, we spoke to about 20 students, most (though not all) seemed pretty interested and asked us questions about our careers, what classes we took that mattered, and about the choices we made.
Bette mentioned how girls when we grew up had far fewer career options then they do today, and that in addition to her modeling work (!!) her typing and short-hand skills proved useful in obtaining jobs after high school. One of the students asked Bette what short-hand was.
Interestingly both Bette and I agreed that the most important thing from high school was not the classes we took, but rather the teachers we had. And more particularly, those teachers who pushed us academically and gave us a love of learning.
The most remarkable thing about the whole day however, was getting to meet and learn a little about Bette. We had not talked for 47 years (at that age it never occurred to me that I would have any aspect of my life that would be 47 years long), had little contact during high school, and lived radically different lives. She married shortly after high school and had a son from that time; her current marriage of over thirty years is her third (as she put it the third time for her was a charm). I wasn’t married until fifteen years after I graduated, though that marriage also has now lasted over thirty years.
She didn’t finish her college education after graduating from Northwood. However she ended up getting her college degree along with her grandchildren while she ran her own printing company for many years. In a variation, while I got a degree from the University of Maryland, I never finished the doctoral program I started after that; though I got a Masters from the University of Maryland University College around the same time Bette returned to school.
With all of those differences and that large gap in time, it was as if we were close friends who had gotten back together after a long weekend. Comparing our lives, the teachers we remembered, the fellow students we both knew, there was far more in common than differences regardless of the surface differences.
Anyone who thinks that modern social networking has only negative consequences, I can only say that the wonderful couple of hours I was able to spend at my old high school, connecting with someone I probably would have enjoyed knowing fifty years ago would never have happened without the connection of Facebook.
A remarkable Monday, one I will long remember.