Lynn O'toole:
CLASS OF 1968
Berkeley High SchoolClass of 1968
Berkeley, MO
Lynn's Story
Life
I'm the mother of two sons, two daughters, one son-in-law, and part-time mom to numerous others; grandmother of two beautiful granddaughters; and a Marine Corps spouse, now retired, since 1971. Since leaving Berkeley, I've lived on both U.S. coasts, in Hamburg, Germany, in the mountains, near the beach, in forests, and in the desert. I've visited Guam, Okinawa, and much of Europe and North America. It has been a great ride, so far; and growing up in Berkeley was among the best parts. My parents are now both deceased, but I feel blessed I had them both for over fifty years and they were great parents. I am sad that the sites of so many years of my life are now gone, but life goes on and changes are a part of life. A trip down memory lane can be fun, but the present is where the action is. I am doing my best to continue being a part of it. I've learned a lot since leaving school ... like speaking German well enough to be sociable; riding a motorcycle, as driver, but mostly passenger; and enough about construction to do my own framing, drywall, simple electrical and plumbing, and to know I would rather hire someone ELSE to do it for me. LOL I'll never be mistaken for a computer geek, but can find my way around one well enough to E-mail, surf the net, and have fun with downloads ... pix, videos, et al. I still feel young at heart, even though my body has plenty of aches and creaks to remind me that I'm no longer a spring chicken ... hard to believe that next May it will have been forty years since our class graduated from Berkeley High. How could it have been so long ago, when all of us are still so young? Time is a very strange commodity. Jean Ponze and Wanda Garber are still two of my best, and longest (not oldest) friends even though we hardly ever get to see one another. When the closest you get to live to one another is around a thousand miles, it makes a morning Koffee Klatch or meeting for lunch a little bit more of a challenge than our childhood fantasies had indicated. I still love to sing, and wish our church had a choir like Wanda's church's. She has sung all over the world with hers. Ours here is so bad I don't even want to join it for fear I would open my mouth for more than singing. I don't want to insult anyone ... no matter HOW BAD they may be. Bummer! I have matured spiritually, politically, socially and intellectually. I have done so by trying t...Expand for more
o learn from my mistakes as well as my successes, and from those of others. Why waste time reinventing the wheel when it is more productive to build on that knowledge than repeat it? And, I always try to do what is morally right and pleasing to God. I know I fall short regularly; but, we are all works in progress all the days of our temporal lives. I just keep trying each day to do better than the day before. I pray that life has treated each of you, at least, as kindly as it has treated me. I have been extremely blessed all the days of my life, thus far. The best is yet to come ... not in this life, but in the next. God bless you each and every one. Love, Lynn xoxo
School
I only had one big crush in high school, and that was on Bill Bounds. He didn't feel the same - DARN - so I satisfied myself with being "just" his friend. (By the way, Bill, I confessed my crush on you to Becky when first we met at our twentieth class reunion. She didn't seem the least concerned.)
Jerry DiMercurio gave me my first real kiss. It was our senior year, we were dating, and I had already turned 18. I was very shy about the first one, and he had to gently coax me past my fears to teach me; but, BOY, did he open Pandora's box! I've been kissing ever since with great gusto - and with great appreciation that I had such a sweet and good teacher. Thanks, Jerry!
There were numerous teachers along the way that I learned one special thing or another from; but, the one that stands out the most for me was Barbara Felder, my Jr. year English teacher. She was a prodigy who finished HS, her Bachelor's, and her Master's ahead of the curve and was only 23 when she came to Berkeley (she was so young and cute that many of the Sr. boys thought she was a new student rather than a teacher and were asking her out, LOL); but, she could talk to the common man. I have always had a difficult time with understanding grammar and the parts of speech (thank God that each quarter was half grammar/composition and half LITERATURE, or I would have never passed English), but for the first time in my life she had made them recognizable to me. I was on the cusp of full, and permanent understanding when the school year ended. Unfortunately, I believe to this day, if I had had another month with her it would have been permanently etched into my psychy. Instead, by summer's end I was right back at square one. Oh, well.
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