David R. Schneider

Finally took the virtual tour of the school.  Some areas look familiar- some are obviously new.  We attended an outstanding high school although we did not appreciate it at the time.  The tour reinforces the fact that WWHS is the premier high school in Cincinnati. I also have good memories of Choir.  I am amazed by your memories of the city wide event at the Gardens. Although it has been written, thanks to Gail and Dick for starting this site, and kudos for keeping it going after our "graduation."

Dale Gieringer

I remember actually singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic at the Cincinnati Gardens for May Festival when I was in church choir.  That could have been any time from 5th to 7th grade. 

Philip Spiess

Judy:  As a former Middle School teacher (admittedly at a private school), and as one who taught 5th and 6th Graders "World Religions" as part of the Geography curriculum, and as one who had students of all major religious stripes (including non-religious; I'm not sure I had any "anti-religious" students), I'd like to think that most schools and teachers are more tolerant and understanding of where their students are coming from than they were fifty years ago -- but I read in the newspapers about events and incidents at home and abroad -- and I know that ain't happening!

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Dexter - what a fabulous memory you have! So many details!  All I know is it started something like, "It was a rainy, rainy day......" and it had no tune and it was Horrid as you say!  

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Yes, Doug - I cannot listen to the "Hallelujah Chorus" without thinking of Mrs. Murphy and the chorus!

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Judy, what an amazing story about the phrases you couldn't sing in choir!  I was reform and never gave it a thought but so sorry that happened.  It would not be the same today - you'd have been able to be excused and sing a different song.  They weren't sensitive to such things in those days.  

Years ago, when my mom was still alive, I visited Cincinnati where we used to live and I saw many Orthodox Jews in that area.  I think the population changes all the time.  

Dale Gieringer

  In the spirit of introducing a new topic, I am wondering how many of our class tried marijuana while they were at WHHS?   

   Though I've since become an expert on the subject, I knew nothing about marijuana in high school.  I assumed it was something like heroin or Spanish fly that only hoods dabbled in.   Like most in our generation, I discovered it during the great counterculture revolution of 1966-7, listening to music by the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Jefferson Airplane and other psychedelic artists.  Returning from college in 1968 to teach junior high school in Kentucky, I was shocked to discover that drug use and peddling - not just marijuana, but even heroin - had become pervasive in local high schools.  I am thankful that wasn't a problem when we were at WHHS;  it would have been distracting;  we had harmless enough fun with Orange Day and sneaking cigarettes in the parking lot (a vice I didn't indulge in).   Only decades later did I discover that two or three friends from bohemian - beatnik circles had experimented with pot at off-campus parties while at WHHS.   

   So what about the rest of the class of 1964?  What was your experience with pot at WHHS?   I had the opportunity to  poll my Harvard classmates on the subject at our 45th reunion: only one in a room of 100 had tried pot in HS, but the majority had done so by junior or senior year (1966-8).   Most gave it up long ago, but about 20% were still using, many no doubt for its medicinal benefits for the infirmities of old age - arthritis and rheumatism,  cancer, MS, hypertension, auto-immune diseases, neuropathy and chronic pain - the list goes on, I refer you to my Marijuana Medical Handbook.   

  Needless to say, no one is obliged to respond to this post, but it would certainly be interesting to hear what folks have to say.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

My father was a Cincinnati Police detective and my mother was a probation officer at Juvenile Court. I wouldn't have dared try anything like "reefer", having been told that's was the gateway for all sorts of criminal behavior. Somehow I missed any exposure to marijuana and other substances by leaving OSU and transferring to a small religious college in Tennessee. It wasn't until the mid-seventies that I was introduced to pot by a boyfriend.  Unlike Bill Clinton, I can comfortably admit that I DID inhale, but I never could understand why it was such a big deal. I mean, sitting around, munching on anything edible and contemplating grass (pun intended) growing wasn't that much fun. The boyfriend became an ex shortly after he secretly laced a joint with PCP. 

Dexter Roger Dixon

Dale:  I remember going to a few parties given by some of the "beats" at WHHS.  These students were mostly from the class of '67.  They were the ones who dressed a lot in black turtlenecks and black tights.  (Sorry about the generality.)  But at some of these parties some "cigarettes" which had a funny smell were smoked.  I didn't try it because I didn't smoke any type of cigarette in high school.  Those beats were fun, intense and extremely bright people.  Note:  I didn't didn't indulge in "wacky tobaccy" until I was 23 and living in Greenwich Village.

Philip Spiess

Dale:  No, because I didn't smoke to begin with; beer was what most of us were into at WHHS (yes, you were there with us on that one) -- but recall the references to "reefers" in Useless (8th Grade).  I tried smoking a pipe in college (it was supposed to look very professorial in those days, and I had a nice pipe collection), but I couldn't keep it lit, so I gave it up.  I smoked cigars for a while in the 1970s and 1980s (along with Jeff Rosen), but I realized that what I liked about smoking cigars was posing with them -- and drinking Grand Marnier along with the smoking.  I tried chain smoking once, but I could never get those damned chains lit!  (And talk about trying to smoke a ham!)

Oh, yes, at least once in my graduate days at Delaware (actually at student parties in suburban Landenburg, Pennsylvania, where we also had a Hallowe'en event in the Landenburg Cemetery in 1968, with shovels, picks, and . . . but never mind!), I took a puff of something passed to me that I assumed was marijuana (if it was) -- partly because it made me hungry (or maybe that was the booze).  But that was pretty much it -- I've stuck to almost all variations of alcohol as my drug of choice for years now (and not, I regret to say, for medicinal purposes only).

Philip Spiess

Dexter:  As a cultural historian, let me say that that whole all-black clothing Goth thing goes back several centuries with the artistic/literary set, interestingly enough.  I suppose it began with the Plague (cf. Venetian prints of the 17th century or some of Poe's stories about the plague for reference), but it certainly came to the forefront in the 19th Century, first with the Romantics and (later) the Medievalism movement, then with Baudelaire and the French Symbolists in poetry and art (I'll try to find my photograph and post it of me at Drew University's "Black Banquet"), and finally with the fin de siecle and the Decadents in art (notably in Scandinavia, Belgium, and Germany) and in poetry.  If you still want to look avant garde (or at least au courant -- ironic, isn't it, after several centuries? ) in the theater, cafe poetry circles, or concert stage music today, you wear all black, turtlenecks, and, probably, a very long English collegiate scarf around your neck, dangling down at the sides.  Of course, this is partly due to drafty auditoriums and the requirement for all non-performers to wear black backstage, so as not to be seen, but the beat goes on. . . .

Rick Steiner

Dale funny you mention this at this moment. I am sitting in a hotel room with Jan  inTangiers Morocco. 55 years ago I visited here with my mother and it was the first time I have ever seen anyone smoking pot. We were touring the kasbah,and men were smoking there. I was shocked and felt sure they all would be dead within a week. At the university of Wisconsin it seemed that by our sophomore year the entire campus was stoned. Business at the bars dried up, in the beer capital of the united states! The transformation was complete by the summer of love, which I spent in Madison and was the greatest summer of my life. Thank you Sgt. Pepper. I continued to "experiment"and experiment and experiment.

I hope for the day  that Ohio passes at least a medical marijuana bill. I would "experiment "again but now for entirely different reasons.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

No interesting story here Dale - I had no contact with it until college and then it was just beginning to get around.   I met my future husband when I was still 18 and he doesn't smoke or drink so that was that.  

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Dear Phil and Barbara - IMO, unfortunately lines between ignorance of other religions, racism, just plain ognorance, and politics have become blurred in the last few decades. So, in no way will I enter a discussion on Mrs. Murphy's "problem" with me.

You were talking about reading a while back. Does everyone know about AbeBooks online? Free shipping on a lot of titles, and I am always happy with their sellers, but then I always keep my used book selections to "very good" condition or better.....

Regards to you-all

Judy Holtzer Knopf

Steven Levinson

Dale:  Re marijuana, my WHHS experience with it was zippo.  A little bit in college, and less in law school (returning from friends' house on New Year's Eve 1970, Lynn had me pull over on I-94, leaned out the window, and puked her guts out!).  I didn't like the stuff at all, particularly its icky smell.  Bourbon and wine were much more satisfying.  Good drug policy, not to mention the constitutional limits of the state's police power, as you of all people, very well know, is a whole nuther ballgame.  See my dissent in State v. Mallan, 86 Hawai`i 440, 454, 950 P.2d 178, 192 (1998), with which I know you are familiar.

Doug Gordon

Dale, having attended an all-engineering college that was owned at the time by General Motors, I probably don't need to say that the wicked weed was not part of my experience there, nor was any type of political protesting, sit-ins, etc. As one of our instructors noted in disgust when he couldn't get us into discussions about current events, all we cared about was "cars, beer, and girls!"  My first experience wasn't until a couple years after I graduated when I visited a friend who was in a Masters program out at Stanford.

I indulged a few times after that, but not since my 20s if I recall correctly (which is getting harder all the time these days). I never did like the feeling of not being in control of my brain, and that goes for drinking as well.

Larry Klein

Amen to Doug Gordon.  I am a self-control freak, so none of that mind-control stuff has ever been part of my schtick.  The only thing I ever smoked at Walnut was Nelson - on the TRACK! 

I did cater to my boss's wishes once at Texas Instruments in Lubbock, TX when he insisted I join the staff for Happy Hour at a local pub.  About eight tequila sunrises later, I managed to drive my white Grand Am home and splatter spaghetti sauce all over the kitchen.  Never did figure out how I did that, nor did I remember how I got my car in the garage sideways.  This one and the time in Sydney on R&R are the only times I've ever been NOT in control of my actions.  No Larry the lightning bug here.

Gail Weintraub (Stern)

I never did drugs in high school although I learned my lesson about mixing alcohols. Never did that again!!  I smoked marijuana in law school, during my Vista Volunteer days, while living in NYC and protesting the war, on our farm in Northern Ontario, Canada where my late husband and I were subsistence farmers, then for several years after that while living in Northern California. I haven't smoked for a long, long time. I enjoy vodka and good wine. Seven plus years ago, when I was going through chemo, a friend gave me an old metal bandaid container which was filled with homegrown marijuana. I was tempted to try it; but, I felt so lousy that I was afraid to try it, in fear of feeling worse.

Which brings me to a new thread: Who of you have been diagnosed with breast cancer?

Nelson Abanto

Hey Larry,  I think you were smoking something when you had that memory about smoking me on the track!

As for weed, I fall into the group of people who could neveer smoke much of anything.  I made it about halfway though a pack of cigs and about 3 puffs into a joint.  Like many a former president, I couldn't inhale.  Unlike President Clinton, I could never find much use for cigars.

Philip Spiess

Nelson:  You remind me of the heady days when President Clinton was under impeachment for his sex scandals and former Senator Robert Dole was advertising Viagra on television.  My quip at the time was:  "The trouble with the Republicans is they can't get it up, and the trouble with the Democrats is they can't keep it down!"

Philip Spiess

Dale:  With your knowledge and studies into the subject of drug use, you are probably familiar with the Club des Haschischin, which met at the Pimodan Hotel in Paris in the 1840s under the guidance of Dr. Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours, who pioneered new approaches to the study of mental illness, including the use of psychoactive drugs (especially cannabis, datura, and dawamesc).  This is probably one of the earliest examples of European intelligentsia meeting not only to study the effects of hallucinogenic drugs on themselves, but also to use them socially as a recreational vehicle.  (I discount De Quincey and the English Romantic "opium-eaters," as well as the group around Dr. Crawford Long in Georgia which partied with nitrous oxide before the Civil War, as not being in the same league.)

Susan Patterson (Schramm)

Damn, Gail Weintraub Stern, you have lead a very eventful life!  Sorry to hear you had breast cancer, I assume you are in remission.  I am just fascinated with all the varied careers and adventures my classmates have engaged in.  I guess some of us (me) were just happy doing the routine stuff of life while some were pushing the edges.  Well, as Al Thomas' wife used to tell him, someone needs to be the worker bee.  But I do look with envy at your travels and adventures!

Larry Klein

Dang, all this talk about cannabis, Darwinism, scotch malts, opera, HISTORY!  Y'all are gonna make me go visit the library just to keep up.  Whatever happened to NORMAL talk like golf, baseball, football, s3x, etc.?

Nelson - not smoking anything.  I just remember that at the end of the races, Steve and Jean were always ahead of me and you and Carl were always behind me.  I've always been just the middle guy.  There is no doubt, of course, who is the better athlete today.  I'm lucky to climb Mt. Lookout and you're working on Mt. Everest!  You're skiing and I'm shuffling.  You have weathered the years well, my friend.  I tip my hat.

Philip Spiess

Larry, enjoy!  I've just been fascinated by your casual, somewhat acerbic, and definitely funny observations that I've found in these pages.  We all need the "middle" guy to keep us honest.  And speaking of baseball, the fact is that I met my wife in Cooperstown, New York.  I was working for the New York State Historical Association, headquartered there, and she was a student in the graduate Museum Studies program that the Association ran.  I was living behind the National Baseball Hall of Fame at the time, and I was intrigued by Kathy (now my wife), but the truth of the matter is that, at the time, I never got to first base with her.

Larry Klein

Phil - clearly the reason you eventually got her for life.  I've been to first several times, second a few, maybe even a time or two to third, but NEVER to the altar.  I have even been diagnosed by a recent lady friend as suffering from Asperger's Syndrome.  Don't know about that, but I was never wired right for close relationships.

I have to say this "reunion" of sorts has been a real "hoot" (quoting Barbie W on that one).  Dialogues with you and other 'mates have re-opened a few emotions and personal characteristics that I'd allowed to be dormant since I left the workforce in 2003.  Still a bit rusty, but certainly enjoying the activity as you and others apparently are.

Kudos once again to our reunion organizers.