2-Weequahic Newsletter Fall 1999.Lwp
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WHS ALUMNI ASSOCIATION PLANNING COMMITTEE Co-Presidents: Harold Braff ‘52 Kim Gaddy ‘82 Weequahic High School Alumni Association Treasurer: Yvonne Causbey ’77 1999 Homecoming Events Secretary: Lois Attles-Wyatt Friday, October 29 at 7 PM Committee Chairs: Membership: ALUMNI RECEPTION Sheldon Bross ’55 Adilah Thomas Quddus ‘71 Rutgers Law School Events: 15 Washington Street, Newark Faith Howard ‘82 Newsletter & Tutoring / Mentoring: Phil Yourish ‘64 Saturday, October 30 at 10 AM & 3PM Committee Members TOUR OF WEEQUAHIC HIGH SCHOOL Rita Adams ‘73 Reuben Alston '82 Edna Bailey, (WHS Principal) Marshall Cooper ‘69 Joseph Foushee Lois Blumenfeld Gilbert ‘60 Saturday, October 30 at 1 PM Gerry Greenspan ‘59 Eugene Lawson ‘70 WEEQUAHIC / MORRIS HILLS Myra Lawson ‘70 David Lieberfarb ‘65 FOOTBALL GAME at Untermann Field Aileen Marcus ‘68 Charles Meadows, (Ex-WHS Principal) Denise Muhammad ‘72 Chancellor Avenue in Newark Kevin Scindian ‘98 Charles Talley ‘66 Sam Weinstock ‘55 Abdur-Rahmaan A. Wadud '71 Lorraine White ‘64 Saturday, October 30 at 7 PM ALUMNI BASKETBALL GAME Columbia High School 17 Parker Avenue, Maplewood Hotline #: (973) 923- 7003 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION 1999 SCHOLARSHIP Brother RECIPIENTS and Sister 1 & 2 at WHS Excerpts from of a June 1999 Star-Ledger article by Jeffrey C. Mays KRISTI CULBRETH Kean University It’s no surprise that everyone at Weequahic High will receive almost $100,000 in scholarship money from Project LAWANDA DAUGETT School thinks Chidi Duru, 16, and his sister Chinwe Nmaezi Pride, a 20-year-old Benedict College , SC Duru, 17, are involved in a organization that this year alone heated sibling rivalry. Both are provided tutoring, scholarships SAMANTHA JACKSON seniors at the Newark public and recreational programs for FDU - Madsion high school. He’s valedictorian 5,100 Newark kids age 5 to 18. and she’s salutatorian. His During the past two decades, ATIYA McCALLUM grade point average is 4.1; hers almost 700 students have received scholarships. FDU - Madsion is 3.8. They’ll both attend Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken in the fall. For the Durus, every bit of SHERRY McKOY money counts. In addition to Bloomfield College “Some teachers try to make us Chinwe Nmaezi and Chidi, battle, but it’s not of our free Beatrice and Theo Duru have a will,” Chidi Duru said son at Temple and a daughter at yesterday. The students’ Princeton. “That was one of my mother, Beatrice Duru, concurs. goals - to save my parents some “It’s the strangest thing,” she money,” Chinwe Nmaezi Duru GIVING BACK! said. “They take joy in each said. The future looks equally other’s success. There is no bright for Chinwe Nmaezi and The Alumni Calumet is proud to acknowledge competition. They even help Chidi Duru. After living in Eli Hoffman, class of January 1956 and the each other out.” So when they Nigeria for 10 years and coming Chairman of the Board of the JAQUA both accept their scholarships at to the United States to go to Foundation, for his role in contributing $5,000 tonight’s Project Pride awards high school a few years ago, the in scholarship monies for Weequahic students ceremony, there will be no hard pair had to study hard to get up who graduated in June 1999. feelings, only joy. to speed, and that wasn't always easy. Many of our current Weequahic students who He is the Larry Doby Super have earned the opportunity to go to college do Scholar and will get a check for Less than a month from not go because they cannot afford to. A $5,000 to help with his graduation with her salutatorian primary goal of the Alumni Association is to mechanical engineering studies status firmly in place, Chinwe ensure that all Weequahic graduates who next year. She is the Project Nmaezi Duru was at the public succeed academically have the chance to Pride Scholar and will take library for several hours after further their education at an institution of home $2,500 to help her get a school working on a term paper. higher learning. degree in computer Asked if one of the reasons why programming. she was working hard was to do We also want to thank other alumni who have better than her brother, she sent in contributions for this purpose. If you The Durus aren’t the only ones quickly responded: “I’m trying have access to foundation grants, would like to benefiting from Project Pride. to do good for myself.” Then set up a scholarship fund, or wish to honor a More than 50 college-bound with a smile, she said, “It’s just relative, friend, or teacher by making a Newark high school students a friendly competition.” donation in their name, contact Phil Yourish at (973) 674-7003 or at [email protected]. Welcome Home Philip Roth - Weequahic's Famous Author Roth has written 23 novels including Goodbye Columbus, Portnoy’s Complaint, Zuckerman Unbound, Partimony, Operation Shylock, Sabbath’s Theatre, American Pastoral and his latest book, I Married A Communist. In the 90’s he won the Pulitzer Prize for literature and three other major literary awards hoping to say hello. A sold-out crowd of attachment is a strong one, though it has nearly 500 was there to see the writer, more to do with the past than the present. who came to NJPAC to inaugurate a When I return to Newark these days - three-part series on the Newark of his and I do drift in and out - I seem literature. constantly to be seeing both what is and what was, and it’s the dual nature of my After two documentaries on Roth were perception that mostly determines my shown, the author emerged from thinking about the city and, needless to backstage to say a brief “thank you,” then say, my writing about it. circulated at a cocktail party in the Prudential Hall lobby, where he mingled Q. How do readers from your and posed for photographs, looking neighborhood in the Weequahic section cheerful and at ease. “There are people respond to your work? Do they here going back to grade school,” said recognize themselves as characters? Excerpts from articles written Roth, who now lives in Connecticut. “ I by Carrie Stetler in the Star-Ledger. remember all of them.” I hear sometimes from my old neighborhood friends and, I think, by and For Seymour “Swede” Masin, there was large, that my fictional chronicling of our Familiar Faces Surround even a greater shock of recognition. A shared past strikes them as being not too star athlete at Weequahic High School, far off the mark. My closest old Newark Roth at NJPAC Event he never knew Roth back in the old friends I still see regularly. We talk ... A throng of childhood friends and neighborhood. But in Roth’s 1997 novel, about the Weequahic past a lot of the neighbors showed up Monday night to “ American Pastoral,” the main character time - recollect it and try to understand welcome Philip Roth home to Newark at is Seymour “Swede” Levov, a its special power over us still - and it’s the NJ Center for the Performing Arts blond-haired blue-eyed high school often just this stimulation that gets my (NJPAC), which is featuring a series on sports hero. imagination going. his works entitled Newark Through the Prism of Philip Roth: Artistry, Imagery, On Monday, the 79-year-old Masin Q. In recent books, you seem to be Reality. Roth, 66, hadn’t seen some of introduced himself to Roth. “You put me increasingly returning to the Newark of them since he was a boy in Newark’s on the map,” said Masin, a retired liquor your childhood. Why? salesman from South Orange. “You put Weequahic section. But for 40 years, A. If I have returned to Newark it hasn’t ME on the map,” answered Roth. Both they had been following his literary been in a spirit of nostalgia. I’m of them were right. Roth won a Pulitzer career, and if they hadn’t spotted interested not in using Newark as Prize for the novel last year. And at themselves in his books, they know fictional backdrop but in taking it on as a NJPAC, Masin was a celebrity, too. “ I someone who had. subject. Newark as depicted in autographed a number of people’s Goodybye Columbus, say, is not much programs,” he said. Jay Krafchick was there to say hello for more than an atmospheric aspect of the Ba-ba-lu Mandel, the bongo-playing story. Jewish delinquent from Portnoy’s Roth In His Own Words Complaint... “His real name is Jerry The Newark portrayed in American Greenfield,” now a Livingston resident. Q. How do you feel these days when you Pastoral is very much a character in the He used to play bongo drums on the return to Newark? What are your hopes story, a tragic character. It’s precisely corner of Chancellor and Leslie, just like for the future of the city? the tragic dimension of the city that’s in the book. A. My immigrant grandparents came to brought the city back so strongly into my Newark in the 1890’s and Newark was fiction. How could I fail to be engaged ... Roth stood nearby surrounded by a our family home through the first as a novelist by all that’s been destroyed crush of former Weequahic residents two-thirds of the 20th century, so my and lost in that one place on earth that I know most intimately? Hal and Elaine Braff invite members and their families of the class of 1952 for a tour of the high school immediately following the Homecoming football game Hannah Litzky Captured The Hearts of Her Students A Weequahic Teacher and Counselor for 39 years A reprint of an article by Diane C.