thisnewday

In the fall of 1962, I was a freshman music major at the State University of New York, College at Fredonia. These days--well, 56 years later--alumni refer to the school simply as "Fred" and that seems to suffice.

But back then I can't even guess how many loan, grad school, and job applications I filled out that required the name to be written out in full. Unless it was destined for an institution headquartered in New York State, I couldn't even use the now-common SUNY abbreviation for State University of New York.

Anyway, one of my classmates, that fall, was a diminuative young woman with an amazing smile by the name of Connie Fleurat. Fredonia was a relatively small school back then, with about the same enrollment as the small-town high school I'd just graduated from, around twelve-hundred total.

And, with freshmen required to be on campus a week ahead of everyone else for orientation, you got to know a lot of the people in your class. By sight, anyway, due to first names being scrawled in black marker on the white brims of the mandatory green beanies.

For me, unlike many of my classmates, there was no "girl I'd left behind." In my hometown or anywhere else, for that matter. There was just me, my Olds Studio trumpet, and, well, those long walks into town--for occasional classes at Old Main or a Friday night movie at the so-called "bat thee-ATE-er"--with those nondescript gaggles of green-beanied freshmen.

Connie, though, was one of those who'd always stood out, even in the universally-loathed green beanie. Meaning that, even though she was in my class, I was never remotely in hers, lol. And it wasn't long before she was frequently seen in the company of a handsome fellow freshman, Peter Michael Goetz.

Later that year, or maybe the next, I happened to attend a production of Moliere's "Imaginary Invalid," put on by the drama department in the auditorium at Old Main. To my surprise and delight, it featured Connie and PMG in the lead roles!

Flash forward fifty-some years to the present, and I'm reading online about the passing of legendary playwright Neil Simon. And, still being marginally possessed of an inquiring mind, I decide to look up "Brighton Beach Memoirs" in that universal resource of scrupulous scholars, Wikipedia.

Where I learned that this was among Simon's later Broadway successes, running from 1983 to 1986 for a total of 1,299 performances. With none other than our old classmate, Peter Michael Goetz, in the role of Eugene Jerome's father.

Now shamelessly surfing, I look up PMG and learn that he and Connie had married in 1966, the year we graduated, and had a couple of kids. No mention of a divorce or any of the other unpleasantness that seems so common to that walk of life.

Next, I felt compelled to look up Connie, herself, and the first article I came across was an obituary for her brother who'd been lost as a result of one of those recent fires in California.

Which, I guess, kind of stopped me for a minute. (Long enough, at the very least, to say that, Connie, I'm truly sorry.) Because when I encounter someone even remotely connected to my own past, I'm always hoping to find that something good has happened in their lives.

For whatever reason, it's comforting to learn that someone, who sort of came from the same place, has nevertheless managed to have a notably happy or successful life.

It could be anything, really, which might be seen as something more than what I've done, or something better than what I've had, in mine.

I'm not quite sure why I find that comforting. If I ever went back to the shrink that I used to see, he'd probably have a field day with that one.

But, having said that, it occurs to me that I've recently seen HIS obituary as well.

I guess what hadn't occured to me, when I was younger, was that getting old meant running out of such reference points for my own life.

Or that maybe I should've spent more of it laying down markers of my own...

LPK
Dreamwidth
8.26.2018