ALLENTOWN – AHS honors alumni at new event

By Geoffrey Wertime, Staff Writer
   ALLENTOWN — Many schools recognize their top performers in certain fields, chiefly athletics. But a new Hall of Fame at Allentown High School now honors the lifetime achievements of staff, students and community members.
   Four high school alumni, ranging in age and vocation, were inducted into the hall at a ceremony last week.
   ”Having a focus on lifetime achievement, this hall of fame would promote role models for our students and provide an opportunity to have students look ahead a number of years after graduation and to value accomplishments that could be obtained and perhaps even recognized by their alma mater,” said Principal Christopher Nagy.
   At the Nov. 3 ceremony, inductees returned to their former high school guided by current students. Retired state Superior Court Judge Victor Friedman, who graduated from AHS in 1950, said he enjoyed speaking with a few of today’s students.
   ”I was very impressed with how they conduct themselves in the halls,” he said. “I was very favorably impressed by the present student body.”
   Mr. Friedman, 76, attained the rank of captain in the U.S. Air Force before attending Cornell Law School. He went on to practice law for 18 years and served as a Superior Court judge for 22 years.
   The valedictorian of his high school class, Mr. Friedman was heavily involved with life at AHS. A leader in student government and associate editor of the campus newspaper, he said one of the highlights of his time here was advancing to the state finals in an American Legion oratorical contest.
   Mr. Friedman, who now audits courses in his retirement and lives in Moorestown, said he remembers all of his teachers “distinctly,” and praised the school for how it prepared him for the career that was to come.
   ”At Rutgers I met people who had gone to great high schools, prep schools and I felt that I was reasonably well prepared to meet the competition there, having come from a relatively small, rural high school,” he said.
   ”The idea of being involved sort of started at Allentown, and I continued with that in college.”
   Local historian Mary Theoharis Clark, 83, said she was surprised to learn she was to be a part of the first wave of hall of fame inductees. A member of the Class of 1942, she went on to spend almost 40 years working at Allentown High, taking time off only to raise her two daughters.
   ”I was born in 1924 and the high school was built in 1924,” she said, “and I’ve always said we’ve had an association from the time I was born.”
   Ms. Clark got her start teaching when she received a call from the superintendent while home from graduate school for the winter holidays. She spent most of the time until her retirement as a history teacher, and later, at the encouragement of the superintendent, a school librarian.
   Since her retirement, Ms. Clark has continued her study of history, focusing on the borough itself. She has completed about 30 interviews with prominent local figures, and has also become one herself, serving on both the Borough Council and zoning board.
   ”I loved every minute of it,” she said of her time at AHS. “I always said there wasn’t a day I didn’t want to go to work.”
   Valerie Bernhardt of the Class of 1984, is an award-winning opera singer who has performed in Carnegie Hall with the New York City Opera, and now teaches voice at Montclair State University.
   ”I am very honored to be remembered by so many faculty, and to be recognized as someone whose life achievements reflect positively on culture and society,” Ms. Bernhardt said.
   She credited the support and encouragement she received at the school, particularly by choir and theater teacher Mark Megill, with pushing her forward in her career.
   As a junior, she said, she was one of five choir members who tried out for the N.J. All Shore Chorus, and the only one not to be selected. “I was devastated to say the least,” Ms. Bernhardt said.
   But Mr. Megill encouraged her to practice and try out for the prestigious N.J. All State Chorus, she said, and to her delight she was chosen, the only one from the group.
   ”That experience was one of the highlights of my time at AHS,” she said.
   The fourth inductee was Robert C. Pullen Jr. of the Class of 1989, currently director of special programming for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Mr. Pullen has studied music and voice at the Juilliard School and the Princeton School of Music, and graduated from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City. Before starting at the John F. Kennedy Center, Mr. Pullen spent five years working in theater on Broadway and on documentary television with the Bravo network.
   ”It was such an honor to be among the first class of the inducted,” said Mr. Pullen, 37, “just because Allentown meant so much to me, more than anything because the atmosphere that was there during my time as a student was so supportive and encouraging.”
   Dr. Nagy said four more people would be inducted into the hall next year, when guidelines will be expanded to allow deceased alumni to be nominated. Nominees who are not chosen will stay in the pool for the next year, he added.
   ”The pool was very strong and the committee had a difficult task to pick only four,” Dr. Nagy said.