The Way it was Then - Part #11

 

June 3, 1983

Only Rod Serling was missing

The boy’s face was familiar.

So familiar, in fact, that I almost called him by name.

But the name would have been wrong, because it belonged, not to the young man, but to his father.

Roll back twenty-four years, and it was his father.

Then I saw his father.

He looked older … like I do. After all, twenty-four years since high school graduation … nearly a quarter of a century … there are bound to be changes. But his face was unmistakable.

Anthony, Jr. could have passed for Babe, his dad, if those years hadn’t gotten in the way.

 Just like people tell me my daughters look like I did way back when.

It was eerie, like something out of Twilight Zone.

The occasion was Mike DeNardo’s graduation party, thrown by his mother, Lois (two years ahead of me in school) and father Mike (somewhere further ahead yet). I knew I’d see young Mike’s grandmother and even counted on a chat with his aunts, both also high school contemporaries, but nothing prepared me to come face to face with Babe.

He did as we all knew he would … he succeeded. Not in some glamorous, flashy way that made everyone envy his good fortune or his fame … he simply made a success of his life.

Happily married, two healthy, handsome sons, a good position with IBM, a long-worked-for college degree. All the outward trappings of success.

But we knew Babe would make it because of what was inside.

He had a way of making everyone feel comfortable.

Oh sure, there were the practical jokes, Like the time he and another classmate “borrowed” my car keys and kept me begging for their return till past my curfew (Dad new Babe, so he wasn’t very angry).

But there were never angry times … never any bad feelings left from an encounter with Babe. He was gentle, kind and always ready to be on hand when someone needed a lift, a good word, a friend.

We reminisced a bit during the party and exchanged addresses. We remarked how little either of us had changed. We said all the things people say to one another when they meet after eons.

We kept repeating how good it was to see one another. For me, though, it was more than good. It brought me back to the times when life was filled with the uncertainty of growing up … with the pain of adolescence.

Seeing Babe again made me remember the very bad times in my teenage years … and the very good ones, too.

Always, Babe was part of the good ones.

I hope to see him again before another twenty-five years get in the way. Then, since I’ve sorted it all through and know why the glow sort of hung around long after the reunion was past, I can tell him how much I treasured his friendship back then.

We don’t always get a chance to meet up with someone who was good for us when we needed good.

The least we can do is put our feelings into words.

Age has caused me to forget the exact year we lost Babe, but it was too soon, no matter when it happened.

 

The Way it was Then - Part #10

 

May 27, 1983

 

 What the years have wrought

 I can write about him now.

It took a long time to be able to even think about John without tears.

Then for a long time, after the tears dried, it was tough thinking about him without a deep sense of loss and an anger that he couldn’t be with us.

The anger is gone, but sense of loss will never fade.

John Clements, age 19, was a shining star.

He was part of our Journal family back when we were struggling to stay alive … back when we worked until 6 a.m. to put out a quasi-respectable product.

John loved this work and gave it his enthusiasm, his creativity and his dedication.

Just having him around made days bright.

That all ended in 1978 during John’s Christmas vacation in his first year at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

He was on his way to visit his parents from Medford, where he lived with his grandparents, Rina and John McGrogan.

He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One of those oft-decried, never-abandoned high speed chases between the law enforcement and the law breakers, at speeds up to 115 mph, snuffed out John’s promise. Hit broadside by the escaping suspects, John lingered nearly a week, in a deep coma, before he died.

I still get chills thinking about it.

It seems like yesterday.

Once the shock finally hit … once we who love John realized he was truly gone … we tried to come up with a fitting memorial. What would please John most? What would he have suggested had this horrible thing happened to someone else?

John would have wanted to help someone.

John would have decided to make someone else’s life a little easier in some way.

So, we established the John K Clements Memorial Scholarship Fund, with the annual award of $1,000 to be made to a graduating senior from John’s alma mater, Edgewood Regional. Need, academic qualifications, future plans, scholastic, extra-curricular involvement … all of the criteria that determine the winner should be as closely paralleled to John’s background as possible.

The first year after John’s death, we got contributions to the scholarship fund from people who knew and loved him … their way of paying tribute to him.

Since then, the scholarship has been funded 50/50 by john’s grandparents and The Journal.

Each year, it has gone to a future success story.

Today, the first Clements Scholarship recipient, Michael DeNardo of Blue Anchor, accepts his diploma from Temple University.

We’re as proud of Michael as we were of John. Michael has demonstrated continued initiative and determination. While holding down at least two part-time jobs, plus writing for The Journal, he managed to keep apace with his studies and perfect his chosen craft … broadcast journalism … and without losing his keen sense of humor or his zest for life.

We expect to hear nothing but good things about Mike’s future because we know he’s one of those people who makes good things happen.

Other Clement scholars wait in the wings for the coveted college diploma … Deborah Brooks, Scott Beswick and Fred Hoyle.

In June, we’ll award another scholarship to someone equally deserving.

John never got his chance to make it as big as he would have.

It’s no substitute, and it isn’t much consolation … but there is a measure of comfort in seeing others seize the opportunity and succeed.

Congratulations, Mike!

The Way it was Ten - Part 9

 

May 23, 1983

 The long nose of the law

 How does the old song go… everybody’s doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’ it…?

Ask the owner of any business with a video amusement machine in just about any town in our area.

Without exception, you’ll find that, one at a time, often copying from each other, the towns are getting into the business of licensing the machines (for fat fees, of course) and settling rules (and rules, and rules, depending on the town) about who can have machines, where they have to be and how many there can be.

I have mixed feeling about it all.

First of all, I see it as a businessperson. And I don’t like it at all, while I wear that hat. It’s just another way the towns have of wringing revenue out of an enterprise that is open and vulnerable to being counted, taxes and penalized for existing.

It violates free enterprise and singles out one particular business tool as victim to its financial greed.

On the other hand, I’m a parent. And in that instance, I see it two ways. First of all, I strongly believe that video machines in 1983 are no different than juke boxes or pinball machines were in 1955. Probably the video machines are more valuable in terms of overall requirement for some skill than anything we had available to us when we were pre-teens, but the purpose is the same … something to do.

However, I’m dead set against a video arcade or business watching school-age kids spending hours at a time during school hours, playing machines.

On the whole, though, as a parent, I would want to feel that my daughter could enjoy a quick game of Ms. PacMan while I shopped for groceries in the Acme or wandered around K-Mart for a while… or spent an hour at the mall window shopping. It’s more fun for her and gives me the peace of mind of knowing where she is and that she is absorbed in something she enjoys. And for that reason, I would hate to think the licensing laws would drive the video machines out of the stores, pizza parlors and arcades,

It doesn’t make any sense to me that this type of activity should be required to pay any more than the standard mercantile license fee required by any town for the operation of any business.

Here at The Journal, we conform to the requirements of the Borough of Berlin by paying an annual mercantile fee of $50.00 That entitles us to the services of the borough and gives the borough some return from our presence. Now, thanks to the new law just passed here, not only does the owner of a business pay the mercantile license fee, but an additional $50.00 per machine for every video amusement device in the place.

And I’m not picking on Berlin. In various combinations and varieties, it’s the same in Berlin Township, Clementon, Stratford, Waterford Township and Winslow Township so far. And in each town, the reasons given for singling out the video machine industry is the regulation of the pastime.

Heaven forbid we should honestly say it’s another way to make money for the town!

But the money grabbing isn’t the part that bother me the most.

It’s the downright violation of human rights involved in some of the ordinances being passed in some of the towns.

Clearly, mark that as my personal opinion, please. But consider, if you will, the use of power that permits a town to say yea or nay to the issuance of a license for video machine operation on the basis of the morality of the proprietor of the business.

Since when is it anyone’s concern what one’s moral convictions are?

Business reputation, yes. Investigate all you want how a person runs his or her business with regard to financial stability, ability to keep order and respect the law, prior record of difficulties with the business or its clientele and so on.

But leave the owner’s personal morality out of it.

In many cases, the personal biases of the judges, whether they be governing body officials or police chiefs, may get in the way of any kind of fair decision.

In all cases, one’s personal morality is just that… personal.

Between the individual and his conscience.

Not among the individual, his conscience and the law.