An obituary for someone who gave so much | From the editor

Hello, Neighbor

For an instant, it was shocking. When you see a familiar name on the obituary page, I guess it always is.

Eleanor Rosenbaum was her name.

She wasn’t a companion. She is not even someone I can call an acquaintance. It had been 1966 when I last saw Miss Rosenbaum. She taught Spanish to me in my junior year at New Dorp High School.

The Rosenbaum family of Eleanor

I was a first-year student at the old Clawson Avenue New Dorp. Monsignor Farrell was where I spent my first two years before being rudely asked to leave. We disagreed on a fundamental level. The principal, Brother Delaney, recommended that I receive passing grades. Let me put it this way: I wasn’t in agreement with him.

To be honest, I have no idea how the other guys performed so much better than I did. When I started, the school had just opened, there was not even a senior class, and it was still getting established. It seems that teachers came and went on a weekly basis. I had four different algebra teachers throughout my first year. Finally, there was the dignified Brother Delaney himself.

But Monsignor Farrell did me a favor, as you hear so often when someone is sacked.

Without Miss Rosenbaum and a team of exceptional public school teachers, my life would not have been the same.

I nearly missed the opportunity to meet them. When I was kicked out of Farrell, my parents were upset and wanted me to receive a better education. Thus, we went to the Rhodes Preparatory School, located on Manhattan’s West 54th Street.

I was unaware of it at the time—in fact, I had never heard of the book—but Rhodes served as the model for the school in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, which was a last resort for neer-do-wells expelled from other private institutions.

It didn’t matter how bad I was; I was accepted.

When the school president indicated that graduations and proms were held at the Waldorf Astoria, Mom and Dad should have realized something was wrong.

A unique delivery package showed up a few days following our stay. Rhodes was the source.

The next thing I knew, I wouldn’t be attending Rhodes, thus my senior prom wouldn’t be at the Waldorf.

I may not have had the intelligence to handle Monsignor Farrell, but I did have the intelligence to figure out how to spell the issue that Mom and Dad were having with Rhodes…

T U I T I O N. That is, extremely hefty tuition.

The half-page advertisement immediately next to Miss Rosenbaum’s name on the obituary page caught my attention.

It stated, “It’s difficult to forget someone who left you with so much to remember.”

For the past fifty-eight years, Eleanor Rosenbaum has been in my memory. As for my teachers, I have Miss Evanson for geometry, Mr. Bocchino for chemistry, and Mr. Delicio for English.

Without realizing it, I’m positive that those four individuals are the reason I’m speaking with you now. I was not much older than them. I was seventeen. Miss Rosenbaum was twenty-five. At the time, I was unaware of it. Her obituary gave me the answer.) Miss Evanson appeared even more youthful.

Somehow, they made everything so easy. So simple to understand. They were experts in what they did.

Additionally, they had a human side. Not like the first two years I went through. At that first school, there was an English teacher who wandered up and down the aisles asking to view your homework. I should remind you of this at some point. He would knock children off their desks and slap you across the face if you didn’t have it.

That’s what I refer to as a really educational experience.

Brooklyn was where Miss Rosenbaum called home. Ocean Breeze was where I lived. She drove from the Verrazzano to New Dorp every morning via Capodanno Boulevard. Dad took me to New Dorp every morning along Capodanno.

The number of mornings that our paths met was eerie. She frequently witnessed Dad drop me off close to the school. Not too near, since… well, receiving a ride from Dad wasn’t cool in those days, and it wasn’t cool when Dad insisted that I kiss him on the cheek before I got out of the car.

One day, after observing all of this, Miss Rosenbaum softly informed me that she believed my bond with Dad was unique.

In addition to teaching geometry, Miss Evanson was a living example of what makes a good teacher different from one who simply lacked it.

I simply didn’t get along with geometry at Farrell. Father Comiskey, the teacher, predicted that everything would become crystal apparent when the light would go on.

The light never came on. I had a grade in the 30s in Regents.

In New Dorp, I thus went over geometry again with Miss Evanson. The light came on there. Everything was going great until I got back from my Christmas break. I had a new teacher in a new geometry class.

The person who will remain anonymous was terrible. He was also kind of strange. When he became irritated, he had a propensity of using his foot to topple empty desks. I got really bad grades. In order to return to Miss Evanson’s class, I pleaded with my guidance counselor. He declined.

In June, I narrowly passed the Regents, mostly because of what Miss Evanson told me.

Today, Menorah Chapels will host a memorial ceremony for Miss Rosenbaum. I’m not sure if any recent Dorp graduates will be there. Sadly, one of the kids who was lost — me — before he found his way into a classroom occupied by someone who gave so much to remember, cannot be there.

However, I’ll be there in spirit. All I have to do is what I ought to have done fifty-eight years ago.

At last, express gratitude.

Brian

Oh by the way:A meeting convened the other day featured 16 of Staten Island s faith leaders, elected officials and NYPD officials to condemn violent radicalization after the New Year s Day attack in New Orleans. [We are] coming united, for peace, in the way of people who really are ambassadors of peace, Borough President Vito Fossella said. We want to . . . make sure [a terrorist attack] never happens here . . . We do it at different levels, places of faith, but also in the political world. Well done! The right thing to do. But there s always a but I wish the same kind of forum was held after the sick, radicalized mob assaulted the Capitol of the United States of America, trying to thwart the transition of the presidency because they believed the ranting of the man who lost the election that it was stolen from him. And now that same man pledges to pardon those sick mobsters he, and many others, call patriots. Let me ask you this, Staten Island Trump loyalists. Are you really ok with this?