Thank you Linton Class of 1977

Thanks to the organizers of our 35th Linton High School reunion, thanks for the invitation and please accept my regrets for not attending.  I’ll be rejoining my family in France that day after a month apart so my excuse is solid.  Still I cannot believe I’m going to miss it.  I’ll be there in spirit and lately I’ve also been visiting back with our spirits of high school past.  I’ve been thinking about our class, our school, our times, and maybe it’s part of being at this advanced age, but I’m just so grateful.

We had a great school with so much to offer.  We learned about so many things, yes academic subjects but much more, from teachers, from coaches and advisors, and ourselves, our classmates.  Unfortunately I did not learn much European history but that was all my fault, and I want to apologize to Mr. Washington.  My bad.  (Now I even wish I had a tweed suit like his.)  And I didn’t need to be so annoying about it either.  Same to Mr.  Millard and American history.  Was I really that immature and shallow? (No need to answer.)  Dan W. correctly anticipated that when I began teaching high school in 1986 (in Redwood City, CA), my students would return the favor and teach me some lessons in empathy.

Our comprehensive Linton High School had diverse curricular offerings (from calculus to cooking, from sociology to statistics, from botany to business) and extra-curricular offerings, and now I regret that I didn’t explore more of those great programs: drama, music, art, journalism, community service.  Of course I also regret never passing Dating 101 (and its prerequisite Talking to Girls - remedial track)  but that’s another story.  We had diverse programs and a diverse student population, and it took me years to understand how blessed we were in that.  Our Linton and Schenectady community was a slice of America: new immigrants and Daughters of the American Revolution, many races and religions, and economics from Chevy to Cadillac.  Over time as I met the preppies and various cliques with narrower backgrounds, however privileged, I appreciated just how fortunate we were to receive the life lessons we did.  We even witnessed the rapid decline of American manufacturing as the GE workforce dropped, lessons in global economics which other Americans had yet to face or understand.  

What historic, special times we lived and high schooled in too.  We entered Linton in 1974, the month after Nixon resigned and Ford became president.  Then the long Vietnam war ended.  The country was in an extended state of shock from the war, the draft, protests, assassinations, Watergate, civil rights struggles, feminism, sex and drugs.   (Fortunately we were not yet facing that other national tragedy, disco.)  We remember watching Dan Rather on the CBS news reporting the bad news from Viet Nam as a non-embedded journalist.   I like to think we were privileged to learn from those dramatic events but not have to suffer their worst effects, not see our friends drafted and die in war.  We learned the idealism of those times, about peace and love and sacrifice, and the belief that the world can be changed for the better, in a safe place from which we yearned for adventure in the wide world.  But we also maybe absorbed the cynicism, the distrust of authority, the older generation, the establishment, the government.

Getting back to my thank yous, now I understand just how much work and dedication it takes to create and run a decent, functioning, complex organization like our Linton.  All the teachers and counselors (yes and even the administrators) who were dedicated and caring and created their own special havens where kids could learn and grow.  In my case, thanks to my cross-country, track and tennis coaches (Therrieault, Baker, Catino) for showing up, caring, setting high expectations.  Of course we didn’t appreciate enough.  

Being somewhat clueless and underdeveloped, maybe I just didn’t see our cliques.  But when I heard about other high schools and their jocks vs. geeks vs. preppies vs. heads subcults, I was thankful for Linton.  I’m not saying everything was perfect.  But I think we shared something, something of value, in so many ways.

Thanks to Mrs. Allen for tolerating Rob M. and me as we sang Surfer Girl in 10th grade English during her lectures.

Thanks to Mr. Nolan for caring enough to attempt to impress us with his vocabulary and literary references every day (now I can admit I was impressed).

Thanks to Ms. Bruce for believing that Ulysses is a great novel and telling us so with all her heart.  And for being brave enough to take us to Broadway to see Grease, which was amazing.  And wearing a halter top and looking like Diane Keaton.

Thanks to Mr. Mead for inviting me to learn probability and statistics in his class.  Sorry to Mr. Mead for refusing -- finally I understand the importance of probability and statistics -- you were right and I was wrong!

Thanks to Mr. Norton for caring so much about significant figures.  The scientific world still needs to learn this lesson, now in the “information age” we have access to so much data, much of which is insignificant.

Thanks to Mr. Kidd and Mr. Della Salla, and the Plaza Players for inspiring us with their art.  Have we learned that the world must be seen through science and art?  

Thanks to my friends who taught me so much as we grew up together.  Thanks to my cross-country and track teammates for running all over Schenectady with me, from Rexford Bridge (past “Susan is a pinhead”) to Mohawk Mall, from Collins Park to Central Park.  


Thanks everyone.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Yang
Los Ranchos, New Mexico
July 2012