Ed Hoagland:  

I only just realized it will be forty years since our graduation day in 1973. A lot can happen in that amount of time, and for everyone on this page it almost certainly has. My daughter has asked me if I would “go back” if I could, and I always say the past is best left where it is. “Where it is” will be in either a history book or our respective memories. Hopefully both, but no history book will give us a picture of our individual life experiences, so it is to be hoped our memories will be full of exploits and images worthy of a permanent place inside of the old memory bank – what I often refer to as our internal hard drive. Memories, like computer hard drives, can become a bit skittish and less functional as time goes on, so I thought it best to say a few things myself rather than let the dry blather from my Facebook page speak for me. After all of these years, how many teachers do we truly remember well? For me, there are two who stand out clearly. One was never really my teacher, as he was the Football coach, and closest I ever got to the field was playing touch football on weekends. Al Leibowitz, as head football coach and leader of The Penthouse during my four years at NUHS, is, in retrospect, a remarkably intelligent and patient guy who had a heart for kids as wide as the sky. The other was Anna Campanero, who taught English at the school for goodness knows how many years. When I had her class sophomore year, she was then Miss Martini. When my daughter was preparing to enter HS in 2004, I looked up the school and was shocked to see she was still t...Expand for more