George Turner:  

My wife, Susan and I both work at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights. My wife, Susan is the head of Packer's Upper School. I teach math in the Middle school. I am also the 8th grade head teacher. This primarily means that karmic forces have sentenced me to attend middle school dances for the rest of my life....Basically I have to repeat middle school until I get it right. A sort of educational Ground Hog's Day... I get a little older every year...My students stay the same age and seem to deal with the same problems every year. We were there on 9-11. Our school day was very chaotic. Many of our kid's parents work on Wall Street. Kids would go from total denial to panic and back all day long. As I was watching the kids in the garden paper ash from the towers rained down and jet fighters roared in the sky prepared to shoot down any other airliners approaching the city. Thank God, it never came to that. In the end, none of our students lost any of their parents. We lived in Park Slope then. Our fire alarm went off that day because of the smoke from the towers (6 or 7 miles away!). We did loose neighbors and some of my former students attending Stuyvesant High School a few blocks from the world Trade Center saw things that no one should ever have to see. For weeks following the attacks, the city was quiet. It seemed like everyone went out of their way to help any stranger. New Yorkers have a bad reputation about things like this. It is totally undeserved and in times of need they can step up and perform remarkable acts of kindness. I always dreamed to seeking a simpler life in a small town. I was pleasantly surprised to find life in New York to have a real small town feel. The city really is just a bunch of small towns connected by train. I go literally weeks without getting in a car. My walk to work takes only about 5 minutes. Any type of food you could desire is only a phone call away. We currently live in a doorman building in a new residential area in downtown Brooklyn. Our building used to be the phone company. A doorman building is basically an assisted living facility. We expect to live here until they haul us out in a box. Susan and I have two kids. My daughter, Eva is will be 26 just before our Reunion in June. She finished her Master's degree and is looking for teaching jobs. Right now it looks like she will end up in Grand Prairie of all places. I knew that Eva would be a teacher after watching her deal with students at Packer's summer camp when she was in the 8th grade. She was born to do this. When you teach history and don't carry a whistle, it is sometimes hard to find a job. She's pretty sure she has one, but has to take a test before she can sign a contract. Zeke is a senior at Dartmouth. He is a classics major and is one of the executive editors of the school paper. He studied last year in Italy. I put one of the shots he sent us while he was there. I'm pretty tall, but he...Expand for more