Catherine Agnello:
CLASS OF 1972
East High SchoolClass of 1972
Rochester, NY
Vassar CollegeClass of 1976
Poughkeepsie, NY
Catherine's Story
Life
January 2007. single again and I have resolved to be more careful in my personal life. This evening is an audition for a choral group to which I once belonged between 1981 and 1992. by the time the third baby came along, there was just no time to do the outside types of things. I have also started tutoring 2nd through 5th graders at my church in an after school program and these kids are a riot. They are so enthusiastic and eager to learn new things. We have 15 kids in the group and about 20 tutors, so there is plenty of opportunity to give them individual attention. My own children are doing fairly well. My oldest daughter is struggling with some medical problems right now, but she should be better in a few weeks. My middle daughter has finished her first semester of college and seems to be growing up a bit, although I am sometimes embarassed by her self-centeredness and her lack of respect for other people. My son is fast approaching his 15th birthday and he is still just the sweetest kid you could ever meet. His special ed program provides life skills training each afternoon and he has worked, so far, in a tree nursery, a local Petco and a daycare center. His comment about Petco"Mom, I cannot stand that place, because it is just infested with crickets!!! They won't even let me step on them!" When I explained that the store probably needed the crickets to be alive to feed to some of the lizards, he still grumbled a bit. Work is good, although I am still being supervised by a woman who delights in humiliating her staff and micro-manages everyone to death. I love seeing new faces every day and the material is still interesting, but it is diificult to be treated like a second grader after more than 25 years as a professional. I drive to Rochester from Buffalo just about every Thursday evening to have dinner with my dad, various siblings and their kids. My dad is now 80 going on 60 and his wife's 100 year old mom recently moved into the household. She is a devout Catholic, says three rosaries every day and does not take any medications at all. She is as sharp as a tack, with a great sense of humor. She stands about 4 feet 9 inches tall and can eat like a trencherman, although she is tiny and slight. It's good to see my family this way. As time goes by, I hope to find a man for fun, romance and companionship, but I will not rush. This site has enabled me to find some long ago friends that I have spent many years seraching for, so I am also going to spend some time with them. More later
School
I remember starting high school as an eighth grader, needing a map to find my way around, since there were so many wings to the school. My older brother gave me directions to my home room and classes on the first day and then told me not to bother him while we were in school together. So much for family love, although he was very good to me as we grew up together. I really enjoyed school although I was constantly worried about how stupid my hair looked, and how I was not pretty like the girls who were cheerleaders. My brother helped me to organize my notebooks and folders so that I could keep track of my courses and we all(I have 5 brothers and sisters) did our homework after school in the afternoon. I always needed help in math and chemistry. For those of you who also come from large families, you or your siblings may have known my brothers and sisters, Art was Class of 70, Christine was Class of 74, Richard was Class of 76, Jeanie was Class of 78 and my youngest sister Mary was Class of 1984, the same year my first daughter was born. Every time another one of us started at East High, I am sure the teachers thought"oh no, here comes another Agnello" My favorite teachers were Tom Gillett, Herb Kramer, Frank Muratore, Gil Crane and Mrs Wayne(can't remember her first name) I remember Sam Goodwin and my physics lab partner, Paul Phillips and how he always made me laugh. I remember the Garbarino twins and how Joe was so funny that I could barely keep from falling on t he floor when ever he made jokes and how Chuck was usually mild mannered, except when he talked about beating up members of opposing hockey teams. I remember the war moratorium walk out in the fall of 1970, the cafeteria riot, the deaths of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and the Kent State killings. I remember the school desegregation plan that forced many people from Monroe High to come to EHS and forced a lot of our classmates to go to Franklin. I remember having a crush on David Wesley Williams, and being told by a sister that I could not go out with him, not because of our racial differences, but because I might run the risk of being beaten up by others. I admired the "radical" kids who seemed to have a sharp social conscience, but was always too concerned with making it into the Top Ten of the class to participate. That is a big regret, because I am sure my arrogance about my God given intelligence prevented me from having a lot more friends and fun than I had. I vividly remember Barb Lingg offering to beat the ---- out of me when I first moved to the Browncroft Blvd neighborhood in 1964 because I thought I was such a "smart kid". You live and learn. I am still in touch with many of our classmates who are not listed on this site, including Lise Weisberger, Neil Howk, Betty Bruns, Gail Partyka, who left EHS at the end of sophomore year, Mark LAnze, who lives right here in Buffalo, Ken Rogoff, Kayalyn Marafioti, Larry Neal, Leigh Coon, Mary Santangelo, Matt Osgood, and may others whose names I cannot remember. When I see the budget problems the Rochester city schools are having now, I realize just how lucky we were to go to a school that had such a diverse student population and such a wide range of courses.
College
I now realize that I have not written anything about the college days. I first saw Vassar in May of 1972, after I had already been accepted. I only applied to four schools. I was rejected by Swarthmore and Oberlin and was accepted to Cornell Arts and Sciences and Vass...Expand for more
ar. As soon as I saw the Vassar campus, I fell in love with it. I lived in Raymond House for three out of four years and it was a wonderful dorm. Each floor had its distinct cast of characters and I made a lot of friends by just walking down a hall, wlaking into a room and introducing myself. If I was lonely, and there were many times like that, I would go looking for a new or estalbished friend. Since my hometown was 6 hours away by train, I could not go home every time I was sad or de[presssed. My older brother was at Cornell during my freshman and sophomore years. and he spent many hours on the phone with me, wrote beautiful letters and even let me visit several times. Thanks Arth, those were some of the happiest times of my life. I fell madly in love with my brother's best friend, and to this day I consider him to be " the man that got away".Perhaps because our family sensibility was so European, there was too much of a taboo against getting involved iwth your friend's sister. Not sure about that. My friend Risa quickly became my soulmate and she is still my closest friend in the world. My daughter Claire has often said that she hopes she finds "her Risa". Risa and I have never had an argument or disagreement and we have seen each other through the deaths of parents, the birth of children and countless other tragedies and joys. For me, college was always more about the people, as opposed to the studies. I was a history major and wrote a thesis on the European Witchcraft craze. My student job was shelving books in the English Litereature section of the library and it was my favorite place on campus. What a great job, having great books to persue while chatting with my friends in the libraray. I made so many different groups of friends, it is hard to list them here. The dorm friends were CLaudia Martin, Kathy Haven, Celeste Gnutti, Connie Pelto, Nancy Loewenberg, Henry Valdez, Ariel Hirsch, Mike Garrett, Mitch Hugonnet, Lenny Steinhorn, Ralph Groemping, John Heinegg, Mark Rotenberg, Chirs Lawrence, Roman Harry Rawluk, Bob Marchand, Marshall Hewitt, Mike Civitello, Matthew Engel, Sean Lebow, Murray Jolivette, Joe Mannas Madeleine Neuville and so many others. At the end of my sophomore year, I met Wyn Meyerson. He and I had an uncomfortable period of time as sort of boyfriend and girlfriend , and the last time I saw him, in 1987, he asked me if I had a husband and 2.3 children yet..........He introduced me to Laird Scranton, a campus musical talent. he and I discovered that we had perfectly matched voices and we soon had a gig every week at Frivolous Sal's down the street from the Juliet. I introduced him to my friend Risa and the rest is history. They will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary this year. In senior year, five of us moved out to the townhouses, B-1. I had already met Lydia Cox in Jon Clarke's American History class sophomore year, but we became closer senior year. Lydia and I still talk two or three times a week. Senior year is a blur in my memory. I managed to write my thesis and hand it in on time. That was a big accomplishment. After graduation, I began another surprising chapter of my life. I almost married Giles Scofield, but that's another story.
Workplace
When I first got out of law school, I had a really hard time finding a job. it took me 5 tries to finally pass the NEw York Bar exam(how is THAT for a comeuppance eh?) and for each of the three years that I spend in this quest, it became more and more difficult to persevere, but I did. Must be that old "head like a curb stone" as my dad has always said to me. The problem with being a "smart kid" is that sooner or later you have to fail at something. I also flunked out of the first year of law school, way back when. I reacted by having panic attacks, losing thirty pounds in 4 weeks and then going right back to school. but anyway, my first job was clerking in a law office for $3 an hour. AFter I passed the bar, I got a job in a small firm and worked for 8 years as a real estate lawyer. i quit that job when Dave was born, because having 3 little kids and working full time was too much and my firm would not give me flexible hours. In 1994 I got my current job with the State, which is working as an administrative law jduge for the Department of LAbor and I anticpate that I will stay with this one indefinitely. There is no mandatory retirement age and it will probably keep my brain sharp. My dad still goes off to his law office every day!
A brief update to my life story...while fast approaching my mid fifties, I still do not feel the trappings of age(thank you, Sicilian genes!) Although the economy has been a worry, I have learned how to be more frugal and enjoy living a simpler life. I live with my sweetheart and he has been a good influence on me. I bake all of our bread, we use bio-fuel to heat the house and soon we will plant our garden. Having gone through two divorces since 2005, I have decided what is important to me. In both of those, I walked away without a fight because it was more important to be happy than to be mean. Stuff is not important. Being healthy is important. Being with the people I love is important. Music, reading, walking, biking, cross country skiing, singing, having my children happy and healthy and doing a good and honorable job as a judge is all more important than money or stuff. Think about it people..how many of us have parents that lived theough the Great Depression? I know that my father still has vivid memories of not having enough to eat, not being able to afford new shoes(wearing "city shoes" made out of cardboard)hiding the little bits of coal they had left from the last month when the lady from Welfare came to the house so that they mgiht get a little bit more, not being able to go to a dentist and losing teeth in his twenties... this frightful econmy has taught me to be thankful for what I have. Most important of all in keeping home together is my job, since so many that I love are laid off.. something for us all to think about
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