50 Years Later, the Class of '61 Returns Home

Rich Curley and Joan Constantine met in the halls of BHS 50 years ago and last weekend the now long-married couple returned for a tour of the school where it all began.

The building wasn't that different, the two said, but during their 50th high school reunion last weekend, they reflected on what had changed with 87 of their former classmates.

The small village they remembered from their childhood was still there, albeit a little cleaned up and fancier.

Joe Gentile, now living in Deer Park, thought Babylon had changed a lot. "There are too many people now, " he lamented. "It's like a city."

The Babylon High School Class of 1961 gathered last Friday night at the Hibernian Hall for a weekend of remembrance and reconnection. Out of a graduating class of a little over 200, almost half had returned to commemorate the occasion.

Many had never left, or at least hadn't gone too far. Rich and Joan Curley settled in Lake Ronkonkoma, and had been back to an earlier reunion and helped to organize the 50th, a symbolic milestone that drew many back to see what a half century of life looked like for their old friends.

School memorabilia from the early 1960s decorated the room: an old Babylon letter jacket in black and orange didn't seem so different from something you'd see at this year's football games, but a peek at the yearbook revealed a different era.

The pre-Vietnam War and cultural revolution class detailed their plans and dreams in the 1961 Panther Tales. Many of the male students planned to enter the service, and many female graduates reported goals to become teachers, get married, or become secretaries.

Curley remembers an alumna on the reunion tour who recounted a memory of coming to school in a skirt considered too short, and having to kneel down for the requisite inches above the knee skirt test. If the skirt was too short, the female student would have to go home and change.

But for alumna Sue Braddon, of Manhattan, being a female student in 1961 Babylon meant feeling like "the possibilities were endless."

"It was the era of Sputnik, and there was a big push for math and science education. I thought I could do whatever I wanted," she reflected.

Braddon, who ultimately pursued a career in film editing, hadn't been back to the village in some time.

"It's more chi chi now. It's prettier than it was then, although it was pretty then, too. It's less rough around the edges."

Jay Rettaliata agrees that the essence of the town he remembers is still very much the same.

"I moved to Huntington years ago," he said, "but I've been rediscovering my South Shore roots. I try to come to all the high school football games."

Rettaliata remembers growing up in Argyle Park, next to families who'd inhabited the same houses for generations.

"Babylon was small, but not too small. When I got into a scuffle in the alley next to the soda shop [next to what's now Argyle Grill & Tavern] the village police officer threatened to report me to my mom, who he knew personally, of course."

Chris Dodd also remembers the close-knit nature and interconnectedness of midcentury Babylon Village.

"My great-grandfather owned a farm on the east side of Deer Park Avenue. He sold it in 1954 and it became houses. But way back then Houdini would come in on the train and give magic demonstrations to the summer vacationers."

Dodd, who has since relocated to California, remembers a bucolic childhood home.

"I learned to swim in Sumpwams. We caught turtles in Hawley's Lake. I used to work for Robert Moses when he lived on Thompson Avenue. He would call me up, and tell me to come clean his boat before he took it out on the bay with his friends for the day."

Pamella Obrig remembers simple pleasures like the music programs at school and the local after school hot spot, the old-fashioned soda shop that once stood on Deer Park Avenue.

"I traveled the world but I came back," said the retired West Islip school teacher who now lives in Bay Shore.

Esko Taina has also found himself returning many times over the last decades, drawn by a close bond with his former classmates. When he first arrived as an exchange student from a poor, postwar Finland, coming from a home without even a telephone, he experienced a culture shock that was, as he puts it "a good shock."

"Things were much more strict in Finland. Here, there was an easy-going spirit. I brought that back with me and my home high school changed a bit from my experience at Babylon."

Taina, who spent one year living with a host family on Livingston Street, is now a medical doctor who has brought his wife and two daughters to Babylon to see where he lived 50 years ago. He's stayed in contact with his host family, who in turn visited the Tainas in Finland. He remembers the Babylon students and families as being warm and welcoming.

"You know," he reflects, "those guys in there? They've changed, but only their bodies. They are still exactly the same on the inside."