Sharing their class

Postwar HHS grads from five years gathering Saturday

By: Dick Brinster
   HIGHTSTOWN — Kenneth Eiker might know more about Hightstown High School than anyone, and he plans to relive many of his memories when the first five postwar graduating classes gather for a reunion Saturday.
   Mr. Eiker spent half his life associated with HHS as a student, teacher and administrator. In that time, he witnessed a change in demographics, but he won’t have any problem relating the people he’ll encounter during the gathering at the Cranbury Inn.
   "When I went to HHS we were strictly a rural community, a lot of farmers," Mr. Eiker said. "It was a very comfortable school where everyone seemed to know everyone else."
   Later, after he became a teacher, that began to change. By 1970, Twins Rivers — which today accounts for about 10,000 of East Windsor’s 25,000 people — had been built.
   "We started getting more of a city environment," said Mr. Eiker, a graduate of the Class of 1947. "We lost that familiarity."
   After graduating from Cornell University, Mr. Eiker took a job here as a teacher in 1957, later served as athletic director and was a guidance director when he retired in 1992.
   He grew up on a farm in Cranbury and can’t recall being hungry as The Depression morphed into President Roosevelt’s New Deal. But Mr. Eiker, now 76, learned early on the meaning of hand-me-downs.
   "I was the youngest of five — three brothers and a sister — and of course my older brothers got first choice on anything new in the way of clothes," he said. "By the time I got the shoes they probably had holes in the soles, and we would use box tops from Corn Flakes and Wheaties and insert them."
   He remembers a time when children didn’t have to be supervised to play games. He was a baseball junkie who also enjoyed Hide and Seek and its derivative Kick the Can. His favorite adult was Arthur Romweber, who owned a grocery store in Prospect Plains and lived in Cranbury.
   "He was a leader of a YMCA group and was very generous with his time," Mr. Eiker recalled. "He would take us to the Princeton U bowling alley he had access to. That was a real treat."
   Like many people in 1945, Mr. Eiker was stunned at the news of FDR’s death just a month before the surrender of Germany. His respect for the president intensified in later years.
   Mr. Eiker was in awe of a man whose paralysis seemed to limit him only in a physical sense as he led the nation through two of its most difficult crises.
   "It was amazing what he was able to achieve on the world scene," Mr. Eiker said. "When he died, I thought, ‘Who are we ever going to find to replace him?’"
Special Deys
   Robert Dey recalls when the school, which now has about 375 students in each of its four grades, was very small and housed in what now is a section of the Grace N. Rogers Elementary School on Stockton Street.
   He can’t help but wonder how many of his old friends will join him at the reunion.
   "We had only 50 students in our class," said Mr. Dey, preparing to attend just the third class reunion of his life. "I would like to see reunions every few years, because at our age we don’t know how many more we have left."
   The former Hightstown resident might not recognize some of his former classmates. There is one he knows well, however.
   "My high school sweetheart is my wife," he said of Marilyn Laird, whom he married in 1963.
   The Deys, both 73, now live in Manasquan.
   They entered the High School in the fall of 1946, when World War II already was over. And Mr. Dey, a retired bank officer, said some of the other new students were a tad older.
   "I remember having service veterans that returned to school to finish their educations," he said.
   The reunion they’ll attend will be only the third since the Deys graduated. The last was in 2000, the 50th anniversary of their class. The only other gathering of that group came 40 years earlier.
   Ms. Dey, who also grew up in Cranbury and later worked as a receptionist, recalls the excitement she felt in high school, especially her days as a cheerleader.
   "My days at HHS were some of the best, and I still keep in touch with many of the friends I made," she said.
   Leo Fenity, a Cranbury resident who turns 76 today, says he won’t perceive the reunion as a celebration, but rather a social get-together that provides an opportunity to remember his years at the school and allow him to renew some valuable friendships.
   But there could be somber moments for this member of the Class of 1948.
   "If I reflect on the fact that some of my former classmates are no longer with us, it does provide a moment of sadness," said Mr. Fenity, who spent 29 years working for IBM in Dayton.
   Like all who’ll attend the reunion, he was born during The Depression but feels fortunate that his father always worked.
   "Accordingly, I was never hungry or without the other basic needs of a Depression child," he said. "Then, the war required some personal sacrifices, and I vividly remember helping my parents with victory gardens."
Sadness and happiness
   There’s certainly no way East Windsor’s Mary Gertzel Grooms, born Oct. 9, 1929, can forget The Depression.
   "I was born just before Black Thursday," she said, alluding to the crash of the stock market on Oct. 24.
   But, like Mr. Fenity, Ms. Grooms, who later worked in the Hightstown rug mill, says she didn’t suffer the way so many Americans did through the 1930s.
   "My dad was a farmer and I still own that property," she explained. "As I was growing up, I never felt deprived of anything."
   Like many in the era of The New Deal, her family raised its own crops and animals.
   "We always had chicken, eggs, milk and meat," she recalled. "We made our own cheese and butter."
   Being a teenager wasn’t so easy, however. Ms. Grooms’ father died in 1943, three years before she received her diploma. She describes the loss as the worst of her life.
   "I had a nervous breakdown when I was 14," Ms. Grooms said. "I didn’t even know what it was, but I didn’t think I could live without him because we were so close."
   Part of her difficulty was the belief her mother would never be able to help the Gertzel children through the ordeal. Sixty-three years later, Ms. Grooms admits to shame about those feelings.
   "My mother is now 97 and she got us through a lot of sad situations," Ms. Grooms said. "She’s a lot tougher than I ever gave her credit for being."
   Ms. Grooms is one of the attendees who won’t have to be introduced to many of her fellow graduates.
   The Class of 1946 had a reunion of its own in August, and Ms. Grooms was extremely happy to see her colleagues and remember a very special time.
   "I loved school," she said. "I cried when I graduated."
A special teacher
   Lorraine Staump Buckelew, now 75 and living in Whiting, was a 49er. No, not the Gold Rush version; just a member of the Class of 1949 who looks back on her school days as a wonderful experience.
   She wishes everyone could attend the reunion and will miss those who have died.
   "It’s very sad when you think that these people will not be there because you knew everybody in the school," said Ms. Buckelew, a retired secretary who grew up in Hightstown. "Nowadays, kids don’t know everyone in the their class."
   She says she and her classmates no doubt will fondly recall teachers Doc Williams and Catherine Copleston. She remembers Mr. Williams as one of the most intelligent people she ever met and Ms. Copleston as a fabulous teacher.
   "She was very, very much the lady, a strict disciplinarian but very kind-hearted," Ms. Buckelew said.
   Ms. Copleston, now 92 and living in Hightstown, didn’t think she had any choice if she was to be a positive educational influence.
   "Well, they weren’t there just to sit in front of you," she said.
   But her connection to the classes didn’t stop after their graduations. The memories remain a part of her life today, and she plans to attend the gathering of her former students, a group Ms. Buckelew says her favorite English teacher never forgot.
   "At the 50th reunion of my class, she brought essays written by students that she had kept all those years," Ms. Buckelew said of Ms. Copleston.
   Ms. Copleston, seated in her living room just a few feet from the spot where she was born in 1914, said the adulation was flattering.
   "It warms the cockles of my heart," she said of the appreciation the students have for her, making the saving of their essays worthwhile. "I decided to keep the work of students I thought was super for their age and ability. I still have those essays."
   Ms. Copleston, who began teaching in 1936 and retired in 1977, said she really loved the joy of seeing the students’ faces radiate when they learned something that surprised them.
   Mr. Eiker recalls that feeling and is excited about the prospect of Ms. Copleston joining the graduates. He knew her as a teacher and colleague, and later was her superior.
   "It was quite a change to stand up at meeting and see her in front of me, in a position where students usually sat," he said.
   Ms. Buckelew will bring with her a letter from Class President Albert Harris, who now lives in Cincinnati and will not be able to attend.
   "Say hello to all the old 49ers gang," he wrote. "We should all be proud and grateful that we had such a wonderful experience — one that would surely be the envy of most kids today."
   Ms. Buckelew isn’t sure what to expect from a reunion of five classes.
   "You walk in and there’s someone you haven’t seen for a while and you don’t recognize them," she said. "You talk to them and then you say, ‘Oh, yes, of course.’ "
   Mr. Eiker knows exactly what he’ll see.
   "There will be a lot of gray hairs," he said of the 1946-1950 reunion. "And there will be a lot of no hairs."