Our “Class” was a fluid group. Families came to Aruba and were then transferred elsewhere. We spent long vacations overseas, which sometimes meant children went to school in other places for a while, or fell behind if school was missed, the result being that the ages of our classmates varied by probably two years. We didn’t all graduate the same year, but were together at one time or another.

To begin with the ones who were born in Aruba.  Only a few stayed in our group from beginning to end. Xenia Schwartz was born in Aruba, I’m sure, because her mother and my Aunt Suze were close friends and I knew Xenia from the time we were very little. The same with Jim (“Tinker”) Baggaley, who lived in the house immediately to the west of the house right across the street from me (my family lived in Bungalow 268.) We played in the same sand piles, learned to ride trikes and to throw balls on the same street, and fell in the same coral patches. Jean Henderson also was born in Aruba, but her parents transferred to Louisiana after World War II started, when we were in third grade. Bob Drew was born in Aruba, I think, but Bob’s father was transferred to manage a refinery in Carapito, Venezuela, and Bob left us for several grades, later returning. I think Ken Work, Helen Silvers, Patsy Lykins, Kathleen Spitz, Ann Wetherbee, and Zelda Fields were born in Aruba too. Bill and Bob Burbage persuaded their parents to bring them to Aruba shortly after their second birthday, and attended all twelve grades at Lago.

In movies of my fourth birthday party, in November, 1938, I  see John 0’Bnen, Keith Work (not Ken, but Ken may have been there) and Patsy Lykens, distinguished by their light blond hair, but I think John had been born in Argentina where his dad worked before coming to Aruba. Wardie Goodwin is also in the pictures, but he was a neighbor boy who must have been a little older than we, not in the same class in school. Jim Baggeley is there, resplendent with a big cast on his left arm, which he had recently broken. Xenia Schwartz, Jean Henderson, Ken Work, and Kathleen Spitz probably were there. I can’t identify them as yet.

Elvira Macrini, I remember, came when we were in second grade. Our yearbook says Gea Huising was born in Holland, but she must have come to Aruba early because I can’t remember when she wasn’t in our class.

I also have some movies of a trip to Aruba on the “Esso Aruba” in perhaps 1940, showing Ken and his younger brother Keith (probably his older brother “Dippie” too, though I don’t recognize him.) Ken called after receiving my first letter, and said Keith died early this year, here in Dallas. Keith had been in the Army and contracted rheumatic fever, effects of which eventually led to his death following heart bypass surgery. Keith’s death is mentioned in the latest copy of the Aruba Chronicle. It also contains a letter from Gea Huising McGinness. Gea wrote that she has four sons “just about grown.” Gea’s husband, Dave, was in the Lake Fleet from 1951 to 1953, took early retirement in 1988 and is now in business for himself as a machinery and boiler inspector. Gea handles the paper work for the business.

How about Guy Johnson?  It seems to me he was in our class, but I’m not sure. Richard Wiley I remember from early school years and Bea Baldwin. Richard lived near Zelda Fields, I think, because I remember watching Zelda running after him once and tackling him. Larry Morris and Mary Lou Morris came later, also Nancy Morris (a different family), and Ginnie and Emmette Jones (brother end sister.)

A couple of years ago Bea Baldwin’s older brother Paul sent some information to the Aruba Chronicle. I called him and got Bea’s number, and spoke with her briefly. Her family had left Aruba when she was in third grade, and I believe they moved to Wyoming. She said she is now working as an accountant in California, has two grown-up children, and that her husband is a tree-feller. Bea Baldwin and Helen Silvers were friends, and Tinker Baggaley and I sat with them in the front row of the old Esso Club many, many years ago in the days when afternoon serials were shown there (Flash Gordon? I also remember a somewhat later serial, set in Africa, with the memorable quote: “Mahti will never know the secret of the Sword of Tongu!”) When Bea’s family left Aruba, Tinker and I wanted to take her a going-away present. But being perhaps 8 at the time, our finances were nil. The best offering we could come up with was two points cut off the end of the spears of a century plant. They had several little cone-shaped points nestling within each other, which we decided was “A puzzle a great present!” We rode our trikes up the hill to the house where the Baldwin’s lived, and presented the treasures to Bea. She was unimpressed, and when Tink tried to give her a going—away kiss, she pushed us both away!  I hope her tree-feller has better luck!  Helen Silvers used to live in the 600 row, I think, near the Rustads, and across the coral from my aunt Suze and Uncle Claud's house at 505.

Paul Baldwin said that their family moved to Aruba in 1934 when he was three and Bea was a baby. They left in 1942. Their dad’s job was in hydraulics, the business of pumping the various fluids around the refinery. Paul spent 34 years in the Army, rising to the rank of Colonel, and entered Federal Government and then state government employment after retiring from the military.

Recently, Jean Henderson sent a greeting to the Chronicle, giving me a chance to locate her by phone. She’s living in Phoenix with her husband, a retired doctor, and they have four grown children and lots of grandchildren. Her family also left in third grade, and I remember the sense of loss I felt that our class had broken up. She said they left when the War started and moved to a refinery in Louisiana, where she grew up. Jean said she has had some contact with Helen Silvers, the Silvers family also having moved to Louisiana. Helen and I corresponded briefly in 1943-44, but I haven’t had any contact with her since.

I still remember very well when Annie Jamieson arrived, because all of the boys in the class rushed to the house of “the new girl” as soon as we heard about her. There was a similar reaction to Bobbie Hellwig's arrival. We were a little older when Penny Richey arrived, and more subtle, but, of course, interested. Sherrill Jackson’s coming was probably at about the same time as Penny’s. According to our Yearbook, Ann came from Little Falls, N.Y., Bobby came from Waukegan, Illinois, Penny came from Casper, Wyoming, and Sherrill came from Ft. Worth. Ginnie and Emmette Jones came during, or just after, our freshman year. They were from El Paso, Texas, and also had spent some time in Corpus Christi before their dad decided to come to Aruba.

Penny was very active in school and after school activities. A play ground/recreation area was built among the boulders below the Community Church, and Penny was secretary of the group of students that maintained it. She planned dances and other activities there. It was called the Youth Canteen. Wasn’t Jimmy Smith active there too? His family came from Charleston, W. Va., and his sister, Mona Smith, attended the University of Alabama, but I don’t know what happened to Jimmy.

Jimmy DeHahn spent only part of one year with us, I think –eighth grade? Wasn’t he from Kokomo, Indiana, or somewhere like that with an unusual name? He’s in one of the class pictures, and I remember wrestling with him at a Fourth of July Picnic. Porky Rogers is a similarly transitory memory, but may have been in a younger class. Larry Morris, the Yearbook says, came from Glen Cove, Long Island, and planned to join the Navy after high school. Nancy Morris came from Webb, Mississippi, and planned to go to the University of Mississippi to study music (she had a fine singing voice.) Ken Work also planned to join the Navy. Zelda planned to enter Judson College in Alabama to major in home economics and dietetics. Ken and Zelda were very much in love our senior year and married soon afterward. They separated about a year ago. Ken is Eastern US. Marketing manager for an art-education by mail company, and says he likes the work very much.

Sherrill Fletcher Jackson, the Yearbook said, planned to attend Business College in California. Penny tells me that Sherrill has been dead for several years, although I don’t know anything else about her life. Bobbie Hellwig died about a year ago and Penny said it was after a ten year fight against cancer. Sherrill’s younger sister, Mitzi, married Neal Ray and they lived in Wyoming, but Neal died several years ago. Neal and Penny were cousins.

The 1951 Yearbook (“Pan-0-Ram”) said that Gleb Aulow was originally from Waterville, Kansas, so I guess he was born there, but he was in our class as long as I can remember. We sat side by side in second grade and he had more crayons than I did (Do you remember the extra big box with the additional shades of green? He let me borrow some, I think.) His parents were of Russian extraction (it’s only been in the past year that I learned that “Gleb” was the name of Great Russian leaders in the past.)

Gleb became an Air Force officer, and retired after 20 years. He married Rickie Koster and they lived in Key West for a while after retirement, running a sandal shop there which was later taken over by their son, and they are now in Washington State. Gleb’s older sister Maryann called me once and we had lunch together in New York when I worked in a bank there.  Maryann married a modern artist named Kommodor and is still living in N.Y... Mr. and Mrs. Aulow loved kids, and were very popular with all of Gleb’s friends. Mrs. Aulow always had cookies, divinity and fudge on hand for hungry visitors, and each Christmas they held an open house with eggnog and other booze for the adults and liquor-free eggnog for the kids. I remember Mr. Aulow’s playful nature: before any of us knew how to drive a car, once he drove a bunch of us home from a Cub Scout outing, and pretended to make the car go faster by swinging the steering wheel from side to side as fast as he could.

Bob Drew graduated from Tufts University. He was considering dentistry as a career, but changed his mind. Bob spent most of his free time in Aruba on the water. He was very creative in building boats and an expert sailor. After college he entered the spar making business on the Connecticut coast. Later he sold that business and entered another one which specializes in making marketing premiums. His trade association meets in Dallas annually so I get to see him from time to time. His home is in Guilford, Connecticut, overlooking Long Island Sound. He married a college sweetheart and they had four children, but Bob and Carolyn divorced and he remarried. His second wife’s name is Mindy. They enjoy ocean sailing together, have sailed to Bermuda many times, on the west coast of the U.S., and as far as Spain. Bob has a place in Maine where he likes to take the boat in the summer and to which they may eventually retire. Bob's younger brother Butch became a dentist.

Mary Lou Morris writes that she is Receptionist at Brookhaven Hospital in Patchogue, Long Island, N. Y..  She and her husband have been married 36 years and have 7 children (sounds like the record for our class!) She says her brother Larry worked for Owens Corning In Memphis for many years and now has a dry goods store in Tennessee. Larry has 3 children (had 4, one of whom was killed in a truck—auto accident.) Mary Lou said that Chuck Wilson a year or so ahead of us in school was killed in a car accident, being a Kansas state senator at the time. She noted that Emmette Jones passed away a few years ago. Emmette, Larry, and Ginny Jones all joined the Navy after high school, she said. Ginny is married and living in San Antonio. Mary Lou and her husband Steve have a condo in Maryland where they plan to move after retirement. He is a design engineer for automated machinery. Her children have all been successful and are living mostly in Maryland, with one son still on Long Island and one daughter in Dallas. Mary Lou’s daughter Susan is Principal of a Psychiatric Hospital here in Dallas, so I hope to meet her one of these days. Mary Lou and Steve visited Aruba in 1989 visited Nancy MacEchern and had “a lovely dinner at Xenia’s home which is absolutely gorgeous.”

Mary Lou Morris and Millie Anderson helped me locate Ginny Jones and I talked with her briefly over the telephone. She really enjoyed serving in the Navy, she said, but decided to get married after a couple of years, and in those days women couldn’t continue to serve as a Spar if they were married and raising a family. She sags that people have called her Virginia ever since she left Aruba. Virginia had three children by her first marriage and two more in her second marriage, to Carl Everett. Virginia has worked asst. office manager for BMW in San Antonio for ten years, and likes her job. Carl is a route manager for a vending machine company. Virginia’s mother is still living. She said that Emmette died of a brain tumor. He was married, had two sons and a daughter, and was living in Arcadia, California. Virginia has an older brother, who did not come to Aruba with the family, and a younger brother, Danny.

Gea Huising, Elvira Macrini and Joe Carroll were the only members of the class to stay in Aruba after graduation. Gea was originally from Enschelde, Holland. She worked at Lago as a secretary. Her address now is in Rexdale, Ontario. Joe attended Gonzaga University and returned to Aruba as an engineer. He married a nurse named Barbara. And Sue and I enjoyed visiting with them when we went to Aruba many years ago. Joe and Barbara’s little boy was about the age of our son. We met them at a party at Polly Mingus Eriksen’s house where we also saw John and Angie O Brien. Joe and Barbara lived in Aruba for quite a few years, then he was transferred to South Texas. He retired from Exxon and he and Barbara now live in Colorado.

Elvira, like Teddy Gibbons, was advanced out of our class and graduated in 1950. Teddy has returned to Aruba, and once wrote me a letter, but I can’t find it now. He sounded very happy, renewing memories of his childhood on the island. Elvira married Dick South, a young engineer working at Lago, and they stayed there and raised children. Sue and I visited them briefly on our first trip back. Elvira and Dick later moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where she runs a travel business, very successfully, I would assume, based on the piles of work she does in conjunction with Aruba reunions alone.

Xenia went to college in Florida. She and Millie Anderson spent some time after high school working in Venezuela, and then she moved to New York to work. I visited her once at her apartment on 46th Street. She was working at the time as a secretary, I think, but I’ve forgotten for which company. She married Robert Loewengart, who was in the leather business there. Xenia had taken an interest in horseback riding and they met while riding in Central Park. At some point, she traveled across Hungary on horseback, which was special because her parents had been forced to flee their native Hungary in the l930s. She returned to Aruba fairly often, and bought an option on land at Malmok where she later built a beautiful house, just 50 yards from the water. She and Bob divorced, and she married a second time, to Dick Sriberg, who was a wholesale dealer in steel in the Boston area (we went to their wedding, a spectacular lobster - bash in Framingham, Mass.) Xenia and Dick added to the Malmok house and spent time there when they could. Xenia was looking forward to having a baby, but had a miscarriage. She and Dick divorced also, and she built up a business in store window decorating in New York, which she later sold. She spends more time than ever in Aruba now, I’m told.

Nancy Morris’ address was in the Chronicle and I telephoned her home to say Hello. I figured that since she and her husband are in Ft. Worth, just 45 minutes away, we would get to see them some time. However, her daughter Drew answered the phone, and said that Nancy passed away in March of this year. Cancer. I asked if Nancy had used her singing talents much and her daughter replied that No, she had been pretty busy as an Air Force wife for 23 years and had not been much involved in music. Nancy’s husband now works for General Dynamics. I don’t recall when Nancy’s family moved to Aruba, but it must have been after our freshman year. She lived right across the street from Kathleen Spitz and they became good friends. She went steady with Milton Hatfield for a while. Nancy and I dated just once-we went to the Senior Prom together.

Patsy Lykins lived on the 200-row, just down the street from me. Bob Drew, Gleb Aulow, and I had crushes on her from the earliest days, and I ventured to ask her for a date to the movies at the age of eleven. We both enjoyed reading books, and I remember she had loaned me some of her Nancy Drew mysteries, possibly getting Hardy Boy stories in exchange. Then one day l got the courage to ask her for a date-the first for both of us. It was a disaster. When I went to pick her up for the walk to the Esso Club, her mother had helped her get dressed up with what I thought was a particularly funny looking (different from what I was used to) hat or scarf over her head. I thought she looked really strange and was very uncomfortable toward her all evening. She was sweet and happy but I was a boor. I didn’t ask her out again and she had the good judgment to date “older men” after that who treated her better.  Pat left Aruba after ninth grade to go to school in Virginia. Her dad, John Lykins, was transferred to the N.Y. Office of Esso, also spending time in London and Hamburg. Pat attended Vanderbilt, then graduated from Tulane in 1955, later attending the University of Tennessee. She married Carter Patterson in Scarsdale, N.Y., and today lives in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Both Bob and Bill Burbage went to the University of South Carolina. Bill spent two years in the Air Force, 1954/1955, then returned to college, finishing in 1957. Bob finished college in 1955 and went to work for Douglas Aircraft in Los Angeles. In October, l957, Bill went to work for Eastern Air Lines. (I quote from a letter from Bill): “At that time Bob, who was on military leave from Douglas, had completed pilot training and was stationed at Oxnard AFB, Ca. He was severely burned in an aborted take-off accident on Nov. 6, 1957. He was air-lifted to the Brooke Army Hospital in San Antonio where he died Nov. 12, 1957.”  Sue and I visited the Burbage home in Aruba in 1958, and Mr. Burbage told me Bob was able to get out of the wrecked plane, but went back to help his other crew member escape.

Bill Burbage put his flying skills to good use, becoming a Captain at Eastern and flying for the company for many years. Eastern was taken over and raped by Frank Lorenzo, and Bill lost his job recently. Bill visited Sue and me once on Long Island, in about 1962, but I’ve had little contact with him since, except for occasional comments about him in the Chronicle, and a letter he just sent me in conjunction with our “40th”. As far as I know, he has never married. He lives just outside Washington, in Alexandria, Virginia.

One of the things I remember about the Burbage boys was that their father, Vance, believed in the virtue of work in keeping boys out of trouble, so much so that he conceived project after project requiring Bob and Bill to labor for hours, shoveling sand and carrying it around in wheelbarrows, mixing cement and pouring it to install swings for their little brother or to make a patio, and working on the roof of their house. They laughed about it some times, saying their dad had now decided, once all the sand was in back of the house, that it needed to be moved back to the front again. They were very good natured about the work, and the rest of us used to go help them sometimes. Mr. Burbage seemed to be right that the work developed good habits. Bob and Bill were very popular and very well rounded in their abilities. They were good students and terrific athletes too, starring as shortstop and third basemen of softball and baseball teams, excelling at golf, and doing very well in acrobatics from an overhead cross-bar that was installed at the Jr. Esso Club playground. They read Time magazine and were up-to-date on current affairs, and their interest extended to music and everything else going on in the world. They came back to high school after one vacation, raving about music they had heard in a movie about Tommy Dorsey, it was Dorsey’s great arrangement of The Song of India.

Ronald Turners family is Mormon. They were from the St. Joseph, Missouri, area, and returned there upon retirement. Ronald attended junior college in Lamoni, Iowa, then Washington University in St. Louis, and became a surgeon. He married and had four children. Ronald’s dad was a great pianist, and taught Ronald to play. Ronald decided early on that he liked Chopin’s music best, and in high school Chopin was the only thing that he would play - he was great at it. I talked to Ronald recently on the phone, and he says he still plays the piano, but plays a wide variety of composers' works. Bob Drew reminded me, in another call, about how creative Ronald was as a kid. His house stood fairly high on its oil pots, and this gave Ronald room to build cities of sand and dirt in the airspace under the house, always over a network of his fathers garden hoses, so that when the time came, we would all stand back as Ronald opened the faucets and “whoosh” the village would be swept away in a massive flood! Ronald made beautiful model planes, and he and his father made their own telescopes by grinding lenses for days or weeks as they carried lens blanks and polishing compound (a mildly abrasive cream) around in their pockets.

One last memory I have of Ronald is the time he decided to bury a pirate treasure in the big cave southeast of Kaplan’s house. Ronald packaged up something-he wouldn’t tell any of us what it was, to bury as treasure, organized a gang of pirate helpers (including Ray Burson and the Featherstone twins?), and marched across town to the cave wearing a pirate scarf over his head, eye patch, and wooden sword. He and his motley crew crawled down into the cave and I never learned where the treasure had been hidden, or what it was. (I looked, too, but the pirates had covered their traces well, disguising their tracks and digging marks, as any good pirate must.)

I spoke to Jack Horigan briefly over the telephone the other day after Penny gave me his number.  He’s living in Los Angeles, which he says he picked because it came the closest to having Aruba’s weather of anyplace he had seen in the US. Jack went to Yale then joined Union Oil. He had overseas assignments in Central America which he said he loved. The company has been cutting back, however, and they asked him to accept early retirement before he really wanted it. He still has at least one child in college (of a total of four, I think he said), so is finding the adjustment to lower income tough. I’m ashamed not to have learned more, Jack, but maybe you’ll write with more details? Jack left in our junior year of high school, I thin k, to attend prep school.

Jim Baggaley moved to Santa Monica and entered the practice of law. In mid-career, however, he walked into the private partnership he was part of and realized he had lost his memory!  He had to start all over to learn case law, but lost his position in the partnership, moving to a job as editor for the Automobile Association of America. Jim visited Sue and me in New York many years ago and I visited his mother once in Dallas when on a business trip from New York. Later, Sue and I moved to Dallas, but Mrs. Baggaley had moved to a retirement home in Minneola, Texas, by then, and I never saw her or Tinker again. He is married and now living in Pacific Palisades. Jim, John O'Brien, and I lived so close together that we spent a lot of time together in the early years. Most of the memories are pleasant, but I remember one terrible fight Tink and I had in the Carroll twins' sandbox a few houses away from our homes. We both went home crying with our eyes, ears, and mouths full of sand. The Baggaley’s and O'Brien’s lived along the cliff, and we used to fly kites by running along the coral to get them aloft, then they would stay up for hours in the steady Aruba trade wind. The Baggaley’s raised pigeons behind their house, and used to burn their grass lawn occasionally to make it grow better (the only ones I knew who did that.) Mr. Baggaley was a stamp collecting fanatic and Gladys was an avid golfer.

When we were perhaps nine, Tink and I would carry our mother’s oldest, leakiest galvanized washtubs over our heads down to the Little Lagoon, walking (as all the rest of you did) on the asphalt streets with bare feet sizzling. (Remember how hot it was where the little tar bubbles popped?) Once at the lagoon we would launch the tubs from the Pink Island area and drift with the wind out across the shallows as the tubs gradually filled with water and sank. The challenge was to see how far we could get before sinking.

John O'Brien - Many years ago Sue end I returned to Aruba, and were pleased to be invited to Polly and Erik Eriksen’s home for a dinner party. As we got out of our car in front of the house down on the waterfront, another couple arrived. I didn’t recognize the red-headed man who came up to me, offered his hand, and said “Hi! I’m John O’Brien’” John had attended Villanova and entered legal practice in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He married Angie, a lovely woman who was from Puerto Rico (I don’t recall where they met.) They loved coming to Aruba and did so whenever possible. They had four children. At the Eriksen’s part, John and I tried our hand at sailing a Sailfish out across the lagoon and back. Later, back in the States, Sue and I visited John and Angie for a weekend and our kids got to know each other briefly. John had explored many different ways of visiting in Aruba, having staged in an Oranjestad downtown hotel once, then the “El Airoso” inland from Palm Beach and Malmok, then the “Divi Dlvi” when that hotel was new. The first two of these were much more typically Dutch than American in accommodations, so more interesting in many ways. John and I talk on the phone sometimes, and he tells me he retired some years ago, though he and Angie still operate a motel in Lancaster. They have bought part of a timesharing condo in Aruba so can go back often.

John recently reminded me of the time we swam out to the “Captain Rogers”. He has written a short story about the episode, he said, which I will look forward to reading. My brief recollection is this. A tanker had gotten into trouble off Colorado Point and seagoing tugs were rushed out from San Nicholas harbor to assist. One of them, the “Captain Rogers”, snarled its towline in its own propeller and lost power in the worst possible place, right off the point, where the wind and current pushed it up on a reef perhaps 50 yards offshore and big waves proceeded to smash it up. The crew managed to escape to shore, with life preservers. As soon as the weather calmed down a bit, we boys were of course dying to swim out to the wreck and “salvage” any neat souvenirs that might be left aboard. John and I were among a group of perhaps six or eight who went one day.

We were pleased to find it wasn’t too difficult to swim out into the surf and clamber up on the tug, which was leaning over toward shore, waves crashing over it from the seaward side, with the leeward side not far above the ebb-flow line. We climbed around a bit and had a good time exploring the wreck. I remember how creepy the submerged engine room looked. There wasn’t anything portable of value though. It was when we started to go back to shore that things became “exciting”. The undertow was ferocious and kept pulling us back toward the ocean! We struggled and struggled for what seemed a very long time, getting tired but we did have enough experience in the ocean not to panic. We went backward with the backwash when sucked out, especially if we tried to put our feet down, but then got up on top to ride back in with the next cresting wave, kicking like crazy. Little by little, we succeeded. That’s my memory of being scared. I’ll look forward to hearing how John remembers it!

Ken Work was one of the creative writers in the class. I remember sitting in Miss Jacob’s class and laughing aloud at a story being surreptitiously circulated from one desk to another. The story was about the Wonderful Blue Moose or some such inspired nonsense, and Ken wrote most of it, maybe with additions by Bob Drew and others. The moose did all kinds of improbable things, like hiding in the treetops when hunters were looking for him, then bounding from tree to tree when no one was looking. Ken and I were in boy scouts together, and for some reason missed the timing of the 14 Mile Hike that was required for one of the merit badges. Everybody else had gone on one and had a wonderful time, but we came along later, so that Ken and I were the only ones to make the hike when we did it. We marched out along the northern shore of the island in blistering heat with small canteens on our belts and darned little shade or comfort between us and the coconut grove near Boca Prins which was our turn around point. We did find a covered artillery observation platform about half way out, and climbed up to eat lunch (peanut butter sandwiches?) in the shade. We also passed the hulks of brengun carriers left behind by the Scottish Highlanders and later used for target practice by American P-39’s. We refreshed ourselves on coconuts at Boca Prins and then turned back for hotter walking. Mr. and Mrs. Work, I think, came out in their car to pick us up once we got back to the Seagrape Grove.

Ken married Zelda the only romance from our school years that blossomed into matrimony and they were married for over thirty years, raising four children. He lives in Richmond now, and Zelda lives in Madison Heights, Va..  My memories of Zelda include a crush Gleb Aulow and I shared toward her in the War years. We were inspired one day to go the commissary after school, buy several bottles of Cliquot Club Cola and some cookies, and take them to Zelda’s house as a present. She accepted the gift graciously but didn’t invite us in (maybe her parents had said boys couldn’t come in when she was home alone?) and when we said Okay, we'd like to have a drink at least, she said No, she was going to keep the soda to share with her family!  We didn’t take too kindly to that idea, and proceeded to walk over to the Victory Garden planted near the back door, and trample around in it. This brought her out to throw rocks at us, and we ran off in dire dudgeon or something of the kind. She was a pretty good shot with a rock. (Do you remember the World War II Victory Garden idea? It was promoted by Washington as a means of maintaining food production when so much food and materiel had to be shipped overseas to support the war effort. Many people responded by planting small vegetable gardens wherever there was a little space in the yard.)

The next semi-romantic interest I had in Zelda was when Jimmy DeHahn was attending school in Aruba. Jimmy had suffered from rheumatic fever, I believe, and had been sent to stay in the warm Aruba climate for a while, living with an aunt and uncle in the Colony. He was very much interested in Zelda, and he and I used to hang around her back patio. With Lura, we played a sort of post-office game one afternoon, but I don’t remember whether any kissing actually went on. The idea was appealing, any way. Later, in the play-room attached to her garage, we asked Zelda if she’d like to learn how to F—U— (we took turns spelling it out, neither of us having the guts to say the word, but she finished it for us, saying, “No, Marry Lou Morris told me about that!  It makes you have babies!" Ah, me, how bittersweet is the memory of sex education, even more so when the girl already knows more than you!

Harvey Kaplan was kind of a tough kid, I remember, who liked rough and tumble action. At his annual birthday parties, he organized football games (tackle) on the sand and coral area nears the dog cemetery east of the Little Lagoon. He always picked the best athletes (like the Burbage boys) and the strongest guys (like Milton Hatfield) for his team, and left the rest of us to be trampled underfoot by his victorious legions.  No wonder he enjoyed his birthday parties so, and planned for them months in advance! We called him “Tootie” Kaplan rather than Harvey. I don’t know where he got the nickname. One of the most outstanding things Tootie did, from my point of view, was discover a cave in the coral about 50 feet south of his house. There was open, rough coral there, acres of it, full of cactus and that other prickly stuff aptly called “seven—year itch”, and cracked by occasional fractures providing shelter for lizards, spiders, cockroaches, and scorpions (attractive places!).  Most of us didn’t crawl down in the cracks, but Tootie did, and found a hole in the end of one crack that was big enough to shinny into.  As word of the great discovery got around, many of us came to explore. Tootie led the way. You had to lie on your stomach and worm your way along, sometimes crawling a little where there was room to move four legs, squirm around a turn to the right, then duck waddle into a widening area with a 3 foot ceiling, until you reached the big cavern (later fenced in and partly covered when the 1500 block of houses was built) which years before had been a phosphate mine.

Once in the big cave, you could explore for a long distance, but you had to be careful of your feet, because the phosphate miners had bored open wells into the floor to pump up brackish water for the mining. The wells were about three feet in diameter, and pretty deep. There were big rooms with stalactites and stalagmites, long tunnels partly enlarged where phosphate had been cut from the walls, and a little room dripping with water almost like a shower. Normally you entered the big cave through a ceiling opening created gears ago by a cave-in, by climbing down the branches of a big thorn tree that had grown up into the opening from the cave floor. Once you knew about Kaplan’s Cave, however, you had another entry-or, we fancied, a secret escape route, such as in Mark Twains’ story of Tom Sawyer.

Florence Josephson is someone I was mean to. She seemed to like me, but I was always teasing her by taking her bike or cutting her sash or some such senseless cruelty that probably meant I didn’t know how to deal with her sexuality. One time, though, our class spent an afternoon at the open-air movie theater in the Esso Club, working on a program of some sort (maybe one of David Schmitt s “spectaculars”.) There was a big room behind the stage where props and mikes were stored, and as everyone was leaving, Teddy Gibbons and I persuaded Florence to come in there with us. Once isolated, we tried to talk her into taking her clothes off! No dice. She was smarter than we were, and kept us out of trouble. We let her go. Florence was adopted, and I remember asking her once what had happened to her original mother, which made her cry. Her mother had died and the Josephson's had then adopted her. Her adopted mother, “Min” Josephson, was a big woman, and the time I cut Florence’s scarf, Mrs. Josephson came to our house looking for me. She probably would have taken me apart, and deservedly so, but I stayed away until she was gone. When I was in high school, I used to drive by the Josephson house late at night and turn the car radio way up loud, which brought “Min”out shaking her fist one night. I wonder who that dumb, cruel kid was who had the same name as me? And I hope Florence has had a good life.

Michael High was a wild—spirited kid. My one specific recollection of him is of the time he stole booze from Captain Larsen’s boat. Captain Larsen kept a cabin cruiser anchored in the Big Lagoon, and was an avid fisherman. He took a group of men out fishing in the open sea several days a week, and you could often see his boat bobbing around out there like a cork, disappearing behind giant waves and coming back up into view. He brought back lots of fresh fish and was generous with them, so many families shared Capt. Larsen’s Wahoo, red snapper, mahi-mahi (we called it dolphin in those days, but it wasn’t the mammalian type dolphin idealized as “Flipper”.  This was a good-eating variety of chisel nosed fish.) Naturally, the fishermen needed fortification with whiskey or beer to fight the open ocean and the denizens of the mighty deep. It occurred to Michael High that the liquor supply might be easily tapped in the dark of night by someone with a rowboat. He paddled out one dark night. He was detected, however, by Dick Smith, the assistant Chief of Police in the Colony, and Dick managed to position himself on the shore opposite Larsen’s boat and shine his big flashlight, catching Michael in the act of leaving Larsen’s boat. “Stop, you’re under arrest!” Dick shouted. There was a pause, then the reply came back from Michael: "Fuck you, Jack, I’m leaving!” and he proceeded to row straight out to sea!  Dick Smith was a good policemen but a good-natured family man, and I imagine it was he who released the story the following morning, even though in this case he had “lost his man.” Where Michael rowed to, nobody knew. Probably to the reef. He came in before morning and escaped capture.

Maybe I’ll add a few words about myself as if the rest isn’t autobiographical enough! I married a girl I met in college, we spent two years in the Army, and then settled on Long Island where Sue is from and I worked in N.Y..  For 23 years I worked in trust investments and loved it, but hated commuting by train and subway. Finally Sue and I moved to Dallas, where I have continued to work in trust investments with one of the banks here. I still love the work, and love living in Dallas too. The hot weather is much more “normal” related to those early years in Aruba, it's pleasant to hear a fair amount of Spanish spoken in town, and I was amazed to find that “caliche” wasn’t a unique word to describe that yellow clayish dirt we had in Aruba, but is the word they use here in Texas for it too! My cousins Roseanne and Paula also live in Dallas, as does their mother my aunt Mabel Moyer. Sue and I have three children, all grown, the two daughters living in Vermont and New Hampshire respectively, one with twins (boy and girl) 6 months old and one with a daughter 18 months old. Our older girl is a carpenter and homebuilder, and the younger is a social worker. Our son lives here in Dallas and is trying to make a living as a rock guitar player. Sue went back to college as the kids grew up and now is a music therapist in the psychiatric wing of a hospital. We’ve been fortunate to get back to Aruba a couple of times, and are looking forward to what may be the last trip this June. I still play the piano whenever I can, and play a little tennis for exercise. I still collect Curacao stamps, too, having been started down that road by Mr. Baggaley’s “Aruba Stamp Company” in the l940’s!  Biggest regret? Being away from the ocean, and so far from Aruba.

TEACHERS please send corrections and additions!

Do you remember who our teachers were? My memories are fuzzy of some of their names, confused by tricky maneuvers on their part such as getting married and taking on new names. Kindergarten was in a small building across the ball field from where the 2d Esso Club was put, probably a building later used for the Jr. Esso Club. I’ve forgotten our teacher’s name, but remember I loved being there and cried when told the school year was over and we had to go home for the summer!  We had lots of great big building blocks we built forts and castles with, and I recall the boys trying to catch the girls and “imprison” them in the block buildings In later years, big groups of us played “Levie, Levie, One two Three!” in that area at night.

For first grade Caroline Morse (later Mrs. Henschke.) I liked first grade, and liked our teacher. The buildings for first and second grade were in the southeast part of the school yard, one of them on the site where, later, the fancy bicycle stand was put in (before that, we just “roughed it” with kick stands!) About my only memory is in that little building, sitting in a circle, singing a song describing various words and actions as the teacher held up pictures of each object in the song. One line, accompanied by formation of an umbrella with the hands, finished: “And here’s the baby’s umbrella to keep the baby dry!” The closest I could come to that, when I described it to my parents that night, was (making a T with my hands) “Here’s the baby’s Umptiade’” My parents loved that one, and repeated it, which is undoubtedly why I still remember it.

For second grade, my recollection is Miss (Catherine) Lamb who was very nice but sent me home one day when we marched over to the old Esso Club to rehearse a Christmas Play. I was an elf and my mother (like many others) had to sew a brown, red, and green elf-suit with pointed elf-cap topped by a little bell, and with special elf-shoes that turned up at the toes and had bells on them.  My line, after Santa Claus had been kidnapped, was to say “Where have they taken Santa?” It scared the dickens out of me. On the way back to class we were all supposed to stay in line, but Gleb and I were caught pulling pigtails or something. Miss Lamb told me, “Go home, Billy Moyer, and don’t come back until you are ready to be serious, and bring a note from your mother!” I did not go home, but hid in the big boulders below the Church (no Patio in those days!) until the bus went by taking the Good Children home. Then I sauntered home, arriving at the normal time. I did have to confess, however, to get my mother to write the necessary note to get back in school the following day.

For third grade, Myrtle Parham. She really cared about us, and worked hard to drill us in fundamentals, especially in penmanship. Wasn’t it Parker’s Penmanship that we studied?

For fourth grade, Bee Olson. I loved her. She was a good teacher and a very nice person. We spent a lot of time in spelling bees and multiplication table card games that made school fun.
One of the special events of those days was “Back to School Night”. We all made drawings or wrote stories for our parents to see on display. In Miss Parham’s class, we built some sort of extravaganza in a sandbox in the corner. It had Eskimos in it that we made of clay and painted brown, plus kayaks and igloos. We little kids even got to go over to the high school and see what the Big Kids had been up to. It was ever so much more impressive than our part of the school, what with science exhibits and other Sophisticated Stuff. On exhibit in the science room were biological specimens in jars, including an octopus I was especially proud of because my Uncle Lon had donated it to the lab after catching it in the coral upwind from the Little Lagoon. Actually, the truth of the story was that the octopus had caught my uncle instead of the other way around! Lon and my Dad stepped carefully across sharp rock in the dark of night, carrying bait-shrimp in their pockets, casting into deeper water. Suddenly Lon felt something on his leg, and looked down to see an octopus climbing up. He made it back to dry land in four amazing leaps, with the octopus holding tight. They pulled the critter loose and took it home in a bucket of water, later donating it to the school. Evidently the octopus had been after Lon’s shrimp.

For fifth grade Mrs. MacDonald? My parents sent me to Missouri Military Academy for one year and I missed 5th grade in Aruba. Bill Burbage says his mother still has a scrapbook the class put together, with articles by each person about different countries. According to Bill, Mrs. Mac Donald asked, at the end of the year, Who would like to keep the book? Everyone held up their hand except Bob Burbage (class curmudgeon, even at that age!) So Mrs. MacDonald put everyone’s names on slips of paper, put them in a bowl and drew out the winning name-Bob Burbage! Bob had the grace to take it home and save It.

Sixth grade? I remember our room, on the south side of the big, square building with an auditorium on the floor above us, but not our teacher’s name. The biggest adventure I remember in that building was the time Gleb and I crawled up into the attic on a Saturday morning to retrieve all the tennis bells, baseballs, and softballs that ended up there when kids bouncing balls off the side of the building threw a little too high and the balls entered ventilator holes into the attic. We were rehearsing on Friday for a Spanish American program, and unlocked the doors to one of the tubular fire - escapes as we left. The next morning we sneaked into the school yard, shinnied up inside the big tube and climbed the ladder into the forbidden attic. Sure enough, there were balls galore!  We started to collect them but then we heard a sound, maybe one of the janitors! (More likely, a lizard or cockroach, but the sound was amplified up there.) To hide, we lay down behind the 2x4s of the auditorium’s ceiling, not realizing that the plasterboard between the supports would not hold us. The ceiling came crashing down, leaving us hanging by our hands from the 2x4’s. All the balls fell down and we eventually had to let go and drop to the floor. We ran down into the building and out a ground floor door without being discovered, but didn’t remember to pick up any of the bells. The next Monday, when we went to music class, the auditorium was a mess, with plaster all over the floor and a gaping hole in the ceiling. We couldn’t imagine what might have done it!

Seventh grade - This of course, was the beginning of the Big Time when we moved into the long building and had different teachers for different courses. Miss Jacobs was perhaps our home room teacher as well as our Spanish teacher? Dorothea Stadelmann was a tough English teacher who taught us how to outline, to parse sentences, and to write “Ulysses’ Seven Year Binge” as an inspired way of getting us interested in the Odyssey. She made us work hard but, looking back, I think I learned a lot from her. Maude Thomas was of course our business practices teacher of typing, and I even remember her showing us how to write checks and keep account records. Walt Spitzer came in at about that time and taught us science. Mr. Zaner taught math; he had a great sense of humor.

Eighth grade. Was Miss Stadelmann our home room teacher? Miss Barkley was our music teacher. We may have had Miss Hagerhorst for science. Remember Mrs. Hensley coming in as a substitute, and the rebuke she gave Bill Burbage or Ronald Turner for “doubting her word”? She was pretty cross with me for mispronouncing “brazier” when reading aloud of how the ancients heated their rooms. Miss Barkley kidded Bob Burbage for pronouncing the great composer’s name “Johann Sebastian Batch.” Both were just honest mistakes, but Mrs. Hensley in particular was pretty defensive.

Ninth Grade; on to High School, and the New Building! We must have been one of the first classes to move into that building. Ira Hoffman was principal of the whole school system, wasn’t he? I don’t remember having a separate high school principal. Teachers I remember: Clara Gallicani (Spanish), Mr. Wachter (math), Mr. Kreb's (science), Jim Downey (sports), Lyda Varney (English), and Miss Keenan (English.)

Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth. Miss Hutchinson taught history, Mr. Leary joined his brother-in-law Mr. Krebs in Aruba, and taught shop. Andy Pannevis was librarian and directed the Yearbook. Miss Stengel taught English and history. Miss Watts taught music. The high school yearbooks mention other teachers, but these are the ones I remember taking courses from. Mr. Krebs chemistry class was one of my favorites. He let us be fairly creative in cooking up new things with the Bunsen burners. That was where Bob Drew and I made rum, bourbon, and knockout drops (all in small quantities that tasted awful.) Jim Downey kept us busy with a full sports program. He taught us to play tackle football and we tried it for a while until it became clear that every fall on the hard packed play ground caused skin scraping injuries. Then we shifted to “touch.” He put together an active basketball program including games against The Caribe Club, Chinese Club, Lago Heights Club and other teams all over the island, organized a popular boy and girl team bowling league, and brought down specialists in water sports for the summer program which included a rather elaborate water festival. Jim had the good sense to buy up the old Eagle Colony sports club and the houses surrounding it after Shell moved away from Aruba. He has remained in Aruba ever since, always the genial host whenever any of his old students come by to say hello. He had Shorty of Jr. Esso Club fame working for him some years ago when John O’Brien and I visited his club and played tennis.

Bill Moyer

Dallas, 6/11/91