Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Joel Katz, left, and Steve Alber are among the 27 sixth-graders in the class photo who graduated from Wightman Elementary School in 1957. They have found 24 classmates who will get together in March for a reunion.

By Diana Nelson Jones
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Marvin Bloom got a surprise e-mail a few weeks ago from the kid who sat beside him in a group picture that dates to the year before Sputnik. The message from Joel Katz was about a 50-year anniversary reunion of their sixth-grade class of 27 at Wightman School in Squirrel Hill.

Wightman, which ceased to be a school in 1980, was the sun of their collective orbit "at a time of tremendous hope and optimism," said Mr. Bloom.

It was the memories of being "just kids" before falling into a sea of strangers at Allderdice High that compelled all but three to say they'd be there. The reunion, on March 31, will be in the gymnasium of what is now the Wightman Community Center on Solway Street.

"I found this idea to be an incredible rush," said Mr. Katz, who, like his friend Steve Alber, walked six blocks to school and has helped find classmates. "These are the people I learned to read and write with. What you hope for is to recapture what you were then: a kid with no cynicism."

Most of the children were getting ready to turn 12 at the dawn of 1957. The girls wore saddle shoes. Everyone had a yo-yo. Boys who didn't walk home for lunch carried Davey Crockett lunch boxes.

"I lived three blocks away," said Jeanne Rosen, whose walk passed the post of school patrol guard Jimmy Rosensweet, a classmate. "He would always say, 'I see you're taking your ugly pills.' "

Mr. Bloom, a retired physician who lives in Greensburg, said he was inspired to return to the neighborhood with a camera the other day.

"I rode around and took as many pictures of our houses as I could remember," he said.

A walking tour past all the houses will precede the afternoon get-together in the gym, where some of the food will be tributes to iconic neighborhood places, including Weinstein's No. 10, which Mr. Alber remembers as "corned beef, Russian dressing with cole slaw on rye." The Baltimore Special was a hot dog wrapped in bologna in a bun.

Two-thirds of the class will be traveling from places outside Pittsburgh, including California, Massachusetts, Florida, Ohio, Maryland and Illinois.

Sam Spence, a retired electrician who lives in Bethel Park, said he was surprised when he got a call from a voice that said, " 'This is Steve Alber.' "

"I said, 'What?' I'd had no contact with anyone, none whatsoever" since high school. "He said, 'Would you like to come to our Wightman reunion?' and I said, 'Yeah, I think I would.' "

"Tim Oppenheimer contacted me," said Louis Swartz, a lawyer who lives in Wilkins. Mr. Oppenheimer is credited with the reunion idea and started the ball rolling late in the fall. "I hadn't seen or talked with him in probably 45 years. He found my name on the Internet through Robert Morris University, where I teach.

"I'm excited, much more than I thought I would be."

Because of its social strata and volume, "high school was not a happy place for me," said Ms. Rosen, who owns a sports merchandise company and lives in Carnegie. "But in sixth grade we all knew each other. I recognized everybody in the picture."

The photo, taken in October 1956, shows Ms. Rosen standing beside Marilyn Menges in the back row. They were the two tallest girls in the class.

"I'm the one wearing the 'Adlai' button," said Mr. Katz, an accountant who lives in Point Breeze. He wore it not because of his own political zeal, he said, but because his parents favored Adlai Stevenson over Dwight D. Eisenhower for president in 1956.

One classmate, Patty Thomas, has since died; two are still being sought to invite -- Richard Koch and John Schuster. (If they wish to be found, the contact information is: 412-621-7933 or Rsnancy@aol.com.)

The Squirrel Hill of 50 years ago didn't look as different from today as many neighborhoods do. One of the city's most stable, it did not suffer the out-migrations that eroded so many neighborhoods. As a result, it was not vulnerable to urban renewal. Its structure and civic upkeep has held firm.

But many sites that helped a 12-year-old kid orient his '50s memories are altered, including the school becoming a community center. The penny candy store around the corner, Sodini's with its greasy, hand-cut french fries and "the late-great Weinstein's," as Steve Alber described the deli at Beacon and Murray avenues, have all been supplanted by other businesses.

Mr. Alber and Mr. Katz met at the old school the other day to discuss their classmates, the neighborhood and their reunion plans. The grand entrance used to be grander without the fire-wall separations required today, but the sway-backed steps of the wide staircase attest to 100-plus years of energetic footfalls.

Mr. Alber, smiling fondly, rocked gently on the jade-green steps, saying, "Our feet did this."

Fifty-year-old memories are bound to glow golden if you were a kid with attentive parents in a home you could walk to from school, with a bike or a football to throw in the alley and Saturday matinees no one was afraid to let you walk to without an adult.

"I was an only child, so these were my brothers and sisters," said Mr. Alber. "We all looked through the same lens. I don't think we had a world view beyond the confines of the neighborhood."

"We grew up without a great deal of fear," said Mr. Bloom. "We had to crawl under our desks" for air raid drills, and Cold War words rang in the air, "but Russia was the other side of the world."

"I must have been a Teflon kid," said Jeanne Rosen. "I'm not sure I ever absorbed" any real or perceived threats. "We had fire drills and we had air raid drills. It was just part of what you did."

Scary is the here and now, said Mr. Bloom. "I wouldn't want to raise a kid today. My mother never worried about me being molested or abducted. I rode my bike all over the city.

"I don't think it's through the rose-colored glass of nostalgia to see that those were better times for kids to grow up."