Bob Clayton Reflects on Bandstand and Passing of Dick Clark

Dan-Dee Drive In and other memories

1957 Chevy Susan Kayhill

Fred, do you have any old pictures of the Dan-Dee Drive-In Restaurant at 30th & Governor Printz Blvd. I should correct myself and say “30th St. and Northeast Blvd” The Governor Printz starts a little further toward the north. There was a website, Old WIlmington, OldWilmington.net

but I’m not sure that I recall seeing any pictures of the Dan-Dee. There was a steak house next door called Jan’s and there was the B&G Drive-in across the street on the east side of the Northeast Blvd, if I’m correct. I hung out at the Dan-dee when I was in 11th and 12th grades at P. S. duPont High School, I got there very late, most of my peers were home in bed sleeping. I worked at the Life Insurance Company of North America running IBM machines printing out Premium notices from 3pm to 11pm and would stop by the Dan-Dee on my way home. Actually, at that time of night was an older crowd there, so I got to meet and get into trouble with them.

Fred, every third Wednesday at Attilio’s Restaurant located on the corner of South Lincoln Street at Lancaster Avenue, a group of about 25 guys who attended PS duPont in the 50’s get together at Noon for lunch to talk over old times. I stumbled across this group at Richard Tucker’s funeral, Ray Panaro (Swimming Team member) and Ellsworth Edwards ( I ran around with Ell’s younger brother Joe Edwards, who got thrown out of PS and went to Sallies and then Mt. Pleasant where he scored the winning touchdown against PS duPont HS) invited me and I’ve been going for the past few months. My cousin, Bob Hamilton ’58, also is in this group. I think I’m the only person from the class of 1959, but they tell me a lot of the older guys are passing on and they need some younger blood in this group. Just sharing this with you.

PS – Is there an effort to have a P.S. duPont High School Class Reunion – Class of 1959 in the year 2014 which is only two years away? I thoroughly enjoyed the last class reunion and I think I’ve been to every reunion we’ve ever had, but the 50th Reunion was memorable to me. I would like to volunteer to work on the 55th Reunion if there is going to be one. It was good seeing my class mates from the younger years when I attended Harlan Elementary School and Wilmington Christian School at 14th & duPont Streets where Rockford Shoppes are now opposite the Acme store. I also remember walking home on the B&O railroad tracks over the Brandywine River and having to run if a train was coming, I don’t recall there being any side guard rails then. I would jump off the tracks between the WILM radio Station by Rock Manor Golf Course and Oberly Brick yard and come across Miller Road by Ronnie Cohen’s house at the end of 32nd street and then walk across Haines Park to my grandmother’s house where my younger brother Jim Richardson (now married 50 years) and I lived during our younger years. Those houses are still standing to this day. I should have bought my grandmother’s house and rented it out for the past 40 years.

Fred, I’m attaching a picture of my 1957 Chevy in front of 1614 Marsh Road with Susan Kayhill in the picture, the white brick house on the right hand side of the picture is the house I currently live in, 1616 Marsh Road and I’ve been living here for the past 45+ years. My brother Jim has lived in over 30 houses and I’m still in the same house. Times change, people don’t. Notice on the right hand side of the picture the date Sept. 1957….that was the beginning of the 11th grade for our class.

Ray Richardson

Libbie Sommers Soffer Art Exhibition

Dear friends,

Mixed Media Installation

My art installations have been chosen to be part of FIBERPHILADELPHIA 2012, a biennial showing of new fiber art forms throughout the city and suburbs.

Please join me for the following shows:

“ SEEING RED” group show

Penn State Univ, The Gallery/Great Valley/30 E. Swedesford Rd

Opening Reception, Thurs, Jan 26, 6 – 8pm ( I won’t be there)

Jan 17 – Feb 24, M – F, 9am- 6pm

“Clean Shirts and Dirty Business” solo show

The Painted Bride Art Center/ 230 Vine St, Phila, Pa, 215-925-9914

Opening Reception Friday, Feb 3, 5 -7 pm, Gallery talk 6pm

Opening Reception Friday, March 2, 5 – 7 pm, Gallery talk 6pm

Show runs through March 25

“ MENDING = ART” group show

Borowsky Gallery at the Gershman “Y” / Broad and Pine Sts, Phila, Pa

Opening Reception Sunday, March 4, 2 – 4 pm

Show runs through May 6

“ IN STITCHES ” group show

Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences

Loveladies, New Jersey, 609.494.1241

Show opens May 10, 2012

Opening Reception Sunday, May 27, 5 – 7pm

Show runs through June 18

I hope you can be there for some new art forms, smiling faces, and good refreshments….I look forward to seeing you there,

Warmest regards, Libbie Soffer

Juergen Thewes Annual Thanksgiving Wishes

Dear Friends and Schoolmates, Bremen, November 22nd, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving! Edeltraud and I wish you a wonderful family reunion and a great happening with your dear family members. Enjoy the day in grateful remembrance of the first settlers reaching their new home in America and the history of your family and your ancestors that came to the States one day.

We do hope that you all are in the best of health and that you will be able to celebrate Thanksgiving the way you are used to. Our thoughts and good wishes will accompany you.

This year was a special one for us, because we experienced some highlights, but also fateful days. I do hope to be able to inform you later. We had a gorgeous October and enjoyed a flight to Florence, Tuscany, Italy. From Montecatini Terme we were taken on sightseeing trips to pre-renaissance towns like Luccas, Siena, Pisa, San Gimignano, and Volterra. It was a great experience.

I might be able to write more about our trips at a later date.

Again Happy Thanksgiving and the very best to all of you.

Yours,

Edeltraud and Juergen

RR rocks a Bob Dylan Tale

Now we didn’t have Tom Hanks attending PS duPont, however, we did have Bob Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman) who was born three weeks before me on 24 May 1941 coming down to Wilmington, DE and I met him at the Matson Run Newstand across from the old Diamond State Telephone Building at 39th and Washington Streets. Now the question is, Did Bob Dylan marry the girl he was coming to Wilmington to see? Barry S. probably knows the answer to that one….Ciao, Ray…

Yearbook Online

Courtesy of Ray Richardson

Three Classmates Pass Away to start off 2011

Share your memories of James E. Rebman, Judith M. Kendall (Andrews), and Richard S. “Dick” Hahn, Sr.

With gratitude,
We can say we knew them.
They were a part of our lives.
With hope,
We wish their memories live on.

Obituaries

Happy Thanksgiving 2010

Dear Friends and Classmates,

Happy Thanksgiving for all of you and your families. Enjoy the great festivity! Edeltraud and I send you cordial greetings. We do hope that you are in good health, and particular good wishes for those who are not well at the moment. We imagine that you’ll have great family reunions. May it be a great day with fairly decent weather.

As to us: We had a year of changing health. Edeltraud is complaining about her ankle joint fracture; even after one and a half year she still is having therapy. Walking for a long time is not possible, but she is trying to improve this.

We had to stays at Carinthia, Austria, this summer; however, both times weather changed at half-time. We had rain and cold. On August 30th snow had fallen down to 5,400 ft. The temperature sank down to 40° F.

This year’s highlight was my 70th birthday. Edeltraud gave me a surprise party with 40 of my friends. I hadn’t had any idea that that would happen, because I had mentioned before not to celebrate this date at all. My friends gave me money for a special trip of our choice. So we learned of a readers’ trip organized by our local newspaper: 4 days former Breslau ( Polish: Wroclaw ) in Silesia (which had been a German province until the end of WW II; it had been the wheat producer of the German Reich). Edeltraud was born there, so was her mother. In 1974 – in times of the Cold War – we had had a chance to visit the former capital of Lower Silesia with my parents-in-law to find out whether there were any remains of their Breslau flat. They had to realize that their former house had been destroyed during the siege of Breslau by the Red Army in the beginning of 1945. A week ago we didn’t even find the rest of German houses across the street we had noticed in 1974. The only remaining building we found was Edeltraud’s mother’s school building. The positive experience: Wroclaw has been re-erected with remarkable churches and buildings. There are 120,000 students among a population of appr. 640,000.

Our two days’ stay was topped by a wonderful performance of Verdi’s opera ‘La Traviata’. We had a Polish guide who had studied German. He gave us a lot of useful information about the developement of Silesia after WW II and led us to the most important sights. An excusion to former Schweidnitz (Swidnica) gave us an impression of the beauty of the country with its mountain chains.
Edeltraud was reminded of many fairy-tales and stories her grandmother had told her after the war. Finally, it was a trip into our past, and we are encouraged to learn more about the history of Silesia. By the way, several of my former colleagues have their origine in Silesia,too.
To summarize our experience: It was a great trip with nice people on the bus, and we might go to Silesia on our own one day. The distance was 440 miles. We made them in about 10 hours ( breaks included).

We wish you a wonderful Season anmd the very best for 2011. We’ll be thinking of all of you on Thanksgiving Day.

Cordial greetings

Edeltraud and Juergen Thewes

Website reaches 10,000 visit milestone

PSduPont59.com
The 10,000th hit was recorded on class website. Amazing! What’s even more amazing is that about half of the visits were made since last October. Over 1900 pages have been read on the Blog and almost 1500 views of our Class Reunion movies were seen on YouTube. The most amazing thing of all is that we had just over 100 classmates out of now-down-to 275 from 320 attend the reunion.

Now is the time — before memories fade — to send in your own pictures and and class mementos. Contact fkagel@psdpont59.com

Special DVD Presentation “Remembering” now online

For those classmates who were unable to attend the Reunion and would like to see 50 years of memories in 15 minutes, check out the low resolution previews [DVD]. Due to copyright restrictions of the audio on YouTube, for public viewing, I had to replace the audio track of one of the videos with music from the Barber of Seville — buy hey, our lives these past 50 years have been one gigantic opera.

For a copy of the high resolution DVD, contact fkagel@psdupont59.com.