Kathleen Naples:
CLASS OF 1970
Platt High SchoolClass of 1970
Meriden, CT
Maloney High SchoolClass of 1970
Meriden, CT
Lyman Hall High SchoolClass of 1970
Wallingford, CT
Richard C. Lee High SchoolClass of 1969
New haven, CT
King Street Primary SchoolClass of 1963
Danbury, CT
Kathleen's Story
Lived in Boston, North Carolina, Los Angeles. Right now I teach high school English on Catalina Island. I always wanted to be Glenn White. I survived the great conflagration last year. I have a spectacular view of the harbor.
Getting divorced. Again. No good at relationships. When I love it seems to end rather badly and involve the law. Although I do still talk to my first true love from time to time. The fam stills lives in Meriden. I go every summer. I can't believe how the hospital and the factories, stores, are all boarded up and abandoned. I go for long walks. Check out the wall of gum near St. Joseph's school. So sad to see those beautiful, old houses falling apart. The ancient, slate sidewalks are still there in some places.
Never finished the dissertation. Bachelors from Salem State, MA, Two degrees from UCLA. One darling son, junior at USC. I started on that late. Most proud of his basketball skills and the fact that he, as an Ork Shaman, achieved level sixty of World of Warcraft- BEFORE the expansion.
I've taught in the public schools of New Haven and Los Angeles, Catalina is part of the public schools of Long Beach. I taught at UCLA for four years; in an all-Armenian school in Hollywood; in an all-boys' Catholic High School for the Archdiocese of L.A. My son went to Jewish day school in Hollywood, a Congregational school downtown near MacArthur Park, and a big Catholic High school in the San Fernando Valley. Much have I travelled in the realms of education. I used to like thinking that when I taught in New Haven, I could see Yale's Harkness Tower from my desk, and when I taught at the Armenian school, I could see the Hollywood sign from my desk. How bicoastal is that. How bipolar too.
I make my classes freewrite at the end of every week. I set them off by invoking the memory of the late, great, Mr. DiFrancisco, classical scholar and Latin instructor. I hold my arm up the way he would just before a speed test of all declensions of the demonstrative pronoun in three genders, and I say, "Class? BEGIN!" and drop my arm, just as the late, great master would do when the minute hand reached 12.
They love it. They get upset if I try to skip it.
I see one can join King Street school as an alumna. I so resent that they knocked down that classic building, threw up a hideous hospital parking lot, then abandoned the whole busine...Expand for more
ss. I loved the windows at Samuel Huntington. I remember staring outside at the trees, when there were beautiful trees everywhere, to try to learn how to draw branches. That was fifth grade.
I taught in one high school in the San Fernando Valley that had windows like that. I had my own window pole there. I loved it- it really took me back. Unhappily, it also reminded many a boy of Kung Fu. That school was beautiful. The Stephen King film, Christine, was filming in their wooden library while I was there. But more than anything else, I remember the day Kennedy was shot. I sat right in front of Mr. Galbraith's desk. I hardly remember the time of year- November. But the school was old, and we had no intercom system. Tommy Chausse was sent to the office for something, and we were doing some work. Tommy came to the classroom door and said "The president was shot!" Mr. Galbraith (we had him for second and sixth grade- he later became the principal of Israel Putnam for many years) looked at him, didn't believe him- nothing like that had happened to this country before, we were only on the brink of the 60's, and he told Tommy, rather sharply, to sit down.
Our principal was one Mrs. Loqusciere, or some such spelling- a "large" woman who always, nonetheless, wore high heels, thus concentrating hundreds of pounds on the balls of her feet in the name of fashion. She had been my mother's grammar school teacher at John Barry in the Italian section of town, Lewis Avenue. Mrs. Loqsciere- probably French Canadian- also wore massive amounts of cologne, misplaced lipstick, and more necklaces than Coco Chanel at the height of her diva apex. We heard her come jangling and clomping down the hall. She stopped in the doorway, and, sobbing, said the president had been shot. No one said anything for a minute. The Kennedy election had been my first involvement in politics. My Polish father was very solidarity-minded even back in the day, and we were Catholic, so in third grade, it seemed like a matter of personal acceptance that he win. So. I said, something like, too bad Nixon hadn't won, then he would've been shot. Galbraith looked at me sharply. I sat at his desk for a reason. They thought I was a problem child at that school.
Maybe I was. But Nixon didn't turn out so well, after all. Did he?
That was a beautiful building, King Street.
Best to all.
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