MY CLASS, MY COHORT

I’ve always said that life is a game of cards and that what counts is how you play your hand as the cards come down. But I have always tried to separate myself from the others at the card table: my cohort, my classmates -- not as a matter of superiority but as a matter of being unique, atypical, and possibly just not belonging at all. Now I’m going the other way.

I belong to five educational cohorts that I actually consider to BE that: Vernon Grade School, Jefferson High School, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, and Meadville/Lombard Theological Seminary. I went straight on to degrees from all of them, not transferring and not dropping out, though one could argue about Meadville since I had intended a D Min degree and stopped at an M Div, leaving before I quite finished up. Strangely enough, it is Vernon Grade School, Class of 1953, which seems to be the strongest and the most interesting at the moment, though I keep in touch with all five. Never donate though.

Vernon had 76 members at the moment of graduation, though people came and went. (Compare with eight people in my class at Meadville!) Five have died, along with all the teachers that I know of. Fourteen are lost -- no addresses. That leaves 57 and we’ve picked up some fellow travelers from other classes. These folks have an evident need to get together every month. Most live around the area, though almost no one still lives in the old Vernon District. This is because the Vanport Flood of 1948 shifted the black population of Portland so that Vernon is now almost entirely black students. Charles Etta Reed was the only one in our class: adult, knowing, tolerant and far more of an outsider than I ever understood a person COULD be at that point.

The district was originally the little town of Albina and I’m sure that the reason that I’m comfortable in Valier is that it’s quite like the original Albina, vestiges of which remained for decades along Alberta, Killingsworth, and Ainsworth in NE Portland. Maybe that’s what holds the class together: memories of the shops along the streets, first jobs, family life, young friends, even memorable dogs! Churches -- a surprising number of us were the children of pastors. The only classmate who has stayed a steady friend all through the years is Pearl Lee, also our only Asian. Both of us were very close to Joan McGowan, but that ended during the college years, as she predicted it would because she didn’t go.

My mother became a teacher, like Clark Benson’s mother and Everett Payton’s mother, and that meant that they were members of the Portland teacher network, a telegraph system of considerable efficiency. They kept track of Ted Neighbors’ mother somehow. Otherwise, going off to Northwestern -- partly because it was so far and different -- pretty much broke my ties to everyone. After college I didn’t return to Portland. Instead my first teaching job was in Browning, Montana, on the Blackfeet Reservation and that has been my most powerful community ever since, even more than the ministry.

At Vernon there was one Indian teacher, Mildred Colbert, who was Chinook and a vital, driving, intense woman. In those days one passed between classes in a line that was supposed to be quiet and orderly. I well remember standing in line against the lockers because we didn’t meet Miss Colbert’s standards of quiet and orderliness and she wasn’t afraid to tell us so. Today she would not be allowed to be so harsh but we don’t seem to have been scarred. I wonder where she was educated, whether it was in one of the notorious boarding schools. An old maid, she lived in a little house on NE 33rd with her brother (who was often in trouble) and a sister, though as with all Indian families, relatives came and went.

The only Indian students I can remember were Victor and Norma Owens. I had a huge crush on the handsome Victor. Norma was in my mother’s 4-H sewing “club” and my mother was often exasperated with her for one reason and another. They weren’t in our class at graduation. I don’t think they were from a NW tribe and my guess is that they were related to the Indian community that formed around ship-building during the war. Seems like they were Cherokee, but so many people are a “little bit Cherokee” (even President Clinton) that it’s become a joke.

So what effect did these people have on me? I was respectful and a little bit scared of the big handsome guys. Especially wary of the sashaying and sassy pretty girls. Aware that I was pressed into the company of other quiet bookish girls, sort of anachronistic young women, almost like Mormons or Hutterites. There was a certain kind of young man, often small for their age and cuddley rather than muscled, who turned out to be solid family men and high achievers at their jobs. Everett Payton and Clark Benson were sort of like cousins since our mothers formed a bit of a sisterhood, but we didn’t socialize. I can’t think of any Vernon families who had us over for dinner or the like. Everett and I won a prize in the Junior Rose Parade once -- I was Little Bo Peep in blue taffeta and he was in tails, but I have no idea why. I think I still have the blue ribbon somewhere. And, of course, one of my most cherished memories is that Gary Brannan gave me a beaded ring in the second grade (I think) and said that meant we were engaged. Whatever that was.

Janet Wilson is the one who ended up with the job I would have LOVED to have had, up at the zoo. Art Schmidt ended up at the head of Clinical Pastoral Care for the nation, and you have no idea how much that impresses me since I struggled through ten weeks of that training.

This is Art, my rival at grammar, and Jeannie McGuire who keeps the Vernon cohort together. Her dignified and patient dad fitted most of us who needed eyeglasses.

Doctor John Webber took a tragedy and made it into a triumph, remaining a much respected and loved figure among us. And I always had a crush on Tommy Wilhelm, from kindergarten on. When I confided this to my mother during the primary years, she got a wry expression and laughed. The joke was the Wilhelms were major garbage haulers. “You’ll never starve!” she said in approval. People still thought about such things then.

I still might starve. I came down exactly where I wanted to in the end. Pearl Lee came with her family to see me a few years ago. She hadn’t changed a bit. I’ve continued to change -- maybe made a major change since she was here, since I lost fifty pounds to cure Diabetes 2. But here we are as two jolly Vernon grads, two very different paths, and quite different genomes -- yet linked.