Teaching a new lesson about old friendships

Early fall is when I often grow nostalgic about school. The familiar yellow buses wending their way through neighborhoods remind us that a new year has begun. Lately, my thoughts have taken me back to Martin Avenue Elementary School in Bellmore. That is where I attended kindergarten through sixth grade.

It was a much simpler time. In those days, boys wore pants (not jeans), girls wore dresses (not pants), and we all wore shoes (not sneakers). Desks were bolted to the floor, students sat upright, hands folded. Misbehavior was rare. Classrooms and even the cafeteria were practically silent.

Every year, live Christmas trees were delivered to the school, set up and decorated in each classroom. Yet it was also the era of air raid drills, ducking under our desks and covering our heads, and of students in every class dutifully lining up to receive shots at the nurse’s office and become Polio Pioneers.

I traveled together with many friends through junior high and the only high school in Bellmore back then, Mepham. With the passage of time, though, we all went our separate ways, and no elementary school friends remain, with the exception of one.

That one special friend is Anita, and we are still in touch today. We met in third grade. I was struck by her red hair, freckles and beautiful smile. My first schoolboy crush! Of course, I never told her. We lost touch, though, as her school career took a different path than mine. She went on to teach special education in Bellmore, and I became a fifth-grade teacher in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. But 20 years ago, circumstances would reunite us, and we have become dear and lasting friends.

We are both educators, eventually becoming supervisors in our respective fields. That is how we met again after so many years apart. Anita had become a clinical professor of psychology at Adelphi University in Garden City, and at that time I was assistant principal at the Saddle Rock School in Great Neck. Anita was supervising a student teacher who had been placed at Saddle Rock. Anita walked up to me and said, “Hello, Victor,” as if a day hadn’t passed since third grade. It was a happy reunion, but we would lose touch yet again until I retired and became an adjunct professor of education at Adelphi. It was there that we would reconnect once more and remain friends to this day.

When we get together, we are never at a loss for words, sharing stories of our families and reminiscing about memories of Bellmore and Martin Avenue School.  We phone each other and correspond with letters – the kind you put stamps on the envelope. Ours is a friendship that had its roots at an elementary school in the 1950s and is still fresh in 2022. Anita and I have returned to school this fall, but, this time, not in the same building. She’s still at Adelphi, and although I still am in Garden City, I'm now an adjunct associate professor in the teacher education program at Nassau Community College.

Oh, there is one more thing that makes our long friendship unique. When Anita and I first met at the Martin Avenue School, I did not dare address her as Anita. She was Mrs. Frey -- my third-grade teacher. We both think that’s pretty special.  

Reader Victor Caliman lives in Kings Park.