Curtis E. Carter:  

Life I was brought up in the '50s and '60s and, like most people from that era, have fond memories of my childhood. I lived near the lakefront at 39th street. Looking back on it, I don't think I would have wanted to live anywhere else in Chicago. It wasn't a wealthy neighborhood, but it was safe and it wasn't a slum. Oakenwald Elem School was a 2-block walk we made in all kinds of weather. Mom was in the PTA, stayed in touch with the teachers and principal so all our grades and attendance were excellent.(!)Tilden HS was an experience. It was in the Stock Yards area -a considerable distance from the lakefront. I attended Tilden on the "Permissive Transfer" system meaning you could attend any public HS in the city as long as you were in good academic standings and the school you were applying to wasn't already over-crowded. This was a very effective way for the city to encourage racial balance and integration within its HS system, and for Mayor Daley to avoid outside Civil Rights organizations demanding court-ordered busing. I never viewed my attending Tilden as a civil rights victory. I was looking for a quality education. It was, in all honesty, the first time in my life that I socialized with Whites and Hispanics on a regular basis. Chicago was and is a "City of Neighborhoods" and I, like all the other students there, was a product of my community and environment from which I had come. There was an occasional racially-motivated incident by a disenchanted handful. But things could always be brought back to normal by the faculty and students. No one was ever seriously injured or shot and killed. We owe that to our individual character and the not-so-self-destructive times we lived in. Since I hadn't grown up in the vicinity of Tilden HS, practically everyone I met there was a complete stranger. I was very quiet, unassuming and low-keyed but managed to make a handful of friends there. I met up with a former classmate while in the Air Force when we were both stationed at RAF Lakenheath Air Base in the UK; I've read about one former fellow-student featured in a magazine article as the Rabbi of a congregation, and have been contacted by e-mail by a former classmate through Classmates.com. So all in all, my "Golden Membership" here hasn't been too bad. School I was very low-key while a student at Tilden. I attended Tilden under the "Permissive Transfer" system since Tilden was not located in the neighborhood I grew up in. I didn't know too many people when I got there so I was pretty much a stranger among strangers. I occupied the bulk of my time in class or studying. I loved playing sandlot baseball back in my old neighborhood, was very nervous about playing baseball for the school, and didn't do too well the one year I tried out for the team. My stea...Expand for more