I vividly remember my first day at the Pennington Grammar School on Monday, June 18, 1962. While my mother was in the Principal’s office checking us in, they asked all three of us to stand outside against a brick wall adjacent to the playground. Some of the kids stopped playing to come over and say “hi.” The others just stared at us. It felt like I was on display. Kent and Brad kind of just stood there with me leaning against the wall. It felt very surreal and almost an out of body experience. I didn’t want to say anything because I was sensitive about my stuttering. Mrs. Colby was my teacher for that one week before the summer of ’62 began. She said she would be retiring. The classroom was a lot more modern than I was used to as it had just been built several years before as a addition to the original school. The first day of school was really different for me. After we did the Pledge of Alligence, the Mrs. Colby brought out a copy of The Bible and said, “Who wants to read this morning?” She looked at me and said, “Marc, would like to read a passage?” I managed to say without stammering, “not today.” She said she understood, and a student came up and read a verse. That was never done in Upton! At one time during class a student asked to go the the lavatory. It sounded like “laboratory” to me, and I never heard a student ask go there before. So later in the week, I asked to go to the bathroom, and got some snickers from the class when I was corrected.
That summer I pretty much hung around with Brad and Kent. We explored the tree nursery and rode our bikes around our new little town. There were some nice neighbors on the other side of the street, the Yosts, who had a pool and invited us over to swim, which was a great thing. My parents instructed us to never ask to swim, no matter how hot it was. If they wanted company, they would invite us over. We also met an elderly couple also across the street, the Bates. He was the retired Commissioner of Prisons under Herbert Hoover. We called him Commissioner Bates. We had no idea we were living close to a man who so revolutionized the prison system, that when he passed away about eight years later, his obituary would be in the New York Times and Time Magazine. My parents discovered a Unitarian Church to join in nearby Princeton which we began to attend. The church was of modern A-frame architecture that was not only a different design than we were used to, but the ideology of the congregation was different as well. Joining that church would end up being a event that would impact my whole life.

NEXT UP – Stories from Pennington: The Missle Crisis

The Pennington Grammar School where I attended grades four througb sixth from 1962-1965. It was a short walk from our house. It is still in use in 2014 and two of my nieces attending there recently.