By Edwin Cooney
This coming September 1st, 2018, a Saturday, as the sun approaches the autumnal equinox, you and I, in our homes and in our hearts, will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the first student to our beloved campus. His name was Samuel Stilwell. We know little about him. We wonder if he was known as Sam, a grizzled and perhaps embittered Civil War veteran, or was he called Sammy, a friendly, frolicking happy little boy? Whichever he was, Sam Stilwell was the first citizen of the Empire State whose parents would make a heart wrenching decision each fall over the next 150 years. That decision was to send perhaps their most vulnerable child in some cases hundreds of miles away from home to get an education locally available to that child’s sighted brothers and sisters. For each set of parents and for each child the experience was a little different. For some it was pretty hard to bear, while for others the adjustment came more easily. In fact, for most of us, returning to school following each Labor Day weekend became almost a natural part of our lives. So let us remember for just a few minutes what it was like and what it meant to attend NYSSB.
It is the Tuesday after Labor Day and the vehicle you’re riding in slows down to turn in to NYSSB’s 50 acre campus. Simultaneously, you’re suddenly aware of two contrasting feelings. There’s the lump in your throat because you’ll soon say goodbye to mom and dad. Down in your middle, however, there’s that feeling of excitement and even anticipation for what’s just ahead. As you enter your assigned dormitory, you’re hit by two immediate senses. First, there’s that echo bouncing off the bare cement walls that somehow had escaped your awareness over the summer months at home. Second, there’s that smell and sense of cleanliness about the place. It’s almost the refreshing smell of a new book or automobile.
Before you know it, you’ve been greeted by a houseparent and assigned a room with two roommates. If you’re the first to arrive, you get to pick either the bed by the door, in the middle or by the window. You also get your pick of two drawers in the six drawer dresser. As for your roommates, although a close friend or friends would be preferable, you realize you’ll adjust because those friends will be very close by.
Your sadness immediately after your goodbyes is steadily diminished as your friends arrive in approximately 15 to 20 minute segments of time. There’s much to talk about. You exchange happy summer memories about birthdays, usually birthday presents, vacations, as well as of your and their brothers and sisters. Then there’s the subject of the latest hit songs on the radio. Eventually, you meet and greet the new girl or boy and you’re especially sensitive about her or his homesickness. If the afternoon is bright, you go outside to the playground to swing or just sit under the trees continuing to share your summer experiences.
All too soon it’s supper time. Supper that first night consists of potato salad, baked beans, minced ham or perhaps egg and olive sandwiches, fruit cocktail, a cookie and a glass of milk. You’re greeted once again by familiar waitresses named Bonarigo, Sawyer, Carolonza, Bergman and perhaps Mrs. Russell, the dietitian. Then, it’s back to the dorm and even more arrivals. As the evening passes, you learn secondhand of new faculty and staff personnel. If it’s the year 1957, you learn that the Alumni Association has purchased a set of Big Ben Chimes from the Stromberg-Carlson Corporation in Rochester which will change your environment on campus forever. Also that year, you hear of a new nurse, Ann DeSormeau, and new houseparents named Mr. and Mrs. Ellis. Even more surprisingly, you’re told that Mr. Cimino has gone from being the older boys’ housefather to being the school’s combination guidance counselor and high school world history teacher. You learn further that Mr. Paradise has become both a gym and math teacher.
All too soon, it’s bedtime and you crawl between pristinely cleaned sheets and you whisper into the night with your roommates until suddenly the morning bell awakens you from a sleep you never saw coming. As your feet hit the floor, you really and truly get it that summer vacation is over. You dress and report once more to the dining room to gobble down your oatmeal and prunes, a piece of johnnycake and milk or coffee. Then it’s back to the dorm to make your bed and brush your teeth.
The bell rings at 7:55 calling you to this very room. Here, Principal Edward Brayer or, later, Paul Ruhland greets you and, before assigning you to your homeroom, introduces Superintendent Palmer or Sanborn for a formal welcoming message. If it’s the fall of 1962, you’re introduced to the new senior choir director, Henry Emmans. If it’s 1963, you meet the new industrial arts teacher Charles Rufino, the new homemaking teacher Kathy Butters, and the new science teacher Tom Fridy — you’re told that he has a garden snake named Hector you’re just dying to meet! As for the older boys, they meet Edith Gassman whom many of them will learn to love and cherish just as she loves and cherishes them.
Your grade assignment is no mystery. You learned about that from your July report card. Now, however, the name of your teacher increases the significance of it all. Finally, it’s to your home room where your teacher makes out desk assignments and calls the roll. Next, you receive your first Braille textbook of the season and an intense and rather weighty feeling flavors the atmosphere. Thus, NYSSB’s academic season has begun. Ah! But there’s more to come.
During the days, weeks and months ahead, in addition to academics, you discover once again that life at NYSSB is made up of both the tangible and the intangible. After school, there’s time for riding wagons, scooting on scooters, swinging and sliding in the playgrounds, and roller skating. On crisp fall weekends, you make leaf forts from the many oak and maple leaf droppings. There are fall field trips. If you’re one of the older boys, you sell brooms on the weekend, not only in Batavia, but you actually hitchhike to nearby towns such as Attica, Oak Field, Medina, Clarence, and Perry where you struggle to earn a few dollars. If you’re one of the older girls, you may work in the dining room as a waitress or even learn how to operate the switchboard from Miss Hammond in the superintendent’s suite. There are jack-o-lanterns, and candy at Halloween. As fall becomes winter, huge wooden slides are erected behind each dormitory so that you can take a sled and slide down a slide with sufficient momentum to continue coasting down the hill at the foot of the slide. Additionally, there are weeknight clubs after study hall. There’s reading club, skating club, swimming club, and the most favored of them all being Mr. Monaghan’s recording club — after all, sound is really where it’s at for you! Sooner than you know, it’s another time of year.
Following an all too brief Thanksgiving holiday, the Christmas season is upon you. There are Christmas parties and teas. As a member of the junior or senior choir, you’ll perform in the Candle Light service the last Sunday night before Christmas vacation. If you’re really lucky, you’ll be picked to sing in that small group of the senior choir that closes the program with “Silent Night” that fades into the background for those in the audience with such drama that the chills up and down their spines, along with the tears in their eyes, causes them to hug themselves in their Christmas sweaters while wondering if they’ve just developed a wintertime case of hay fever!
As time passes, you understand that, like every aspect of life, living in a residential school isn’t all fun and games. There are rules and regulations, there are unfair and rigid houseparents and teachers, just as there are friendly and unfriendly fellow students. You’re living after all in a cloistered community. In fact, one of your friends every time he meets someone from off campus says: “I met a citizen today.” Above all, life at NYSSB is indeed challenging.
Hence, on this Friday, June 8th, 2018, as the sun approaches the summer solstice, you and I come full circle. We meet on this stage and in this auditorium where we were assigned our classes, where we performed in the junior and senior choruses, in Mr. Grapka’s orchestra, as well as in plays. From this platform we received academic and athletic awards, thus becoming instant Braille reading and writing notables, track and wrestling stars, singers and even musicians. From this very platform, many of us graduated.
Therefore, from this place, at this time, as President of the NYSSB Alumni Association, I reaffirm, as we celebrate our Centenary, our abiding love and appreciation of our alma mater.
Since 1918, we’ve returned again and again to our alumni home. Born during World War I,, alumni business has beckoned every year except during World War II and, in 1950, during construction of this very building, Severn Hall. We’ve returned in peace and prosperity, during national depression and in times of sadness and uncertainty. We’ve sought to share what resources we possess with the current student body. We cordially invite them to join us when their time at school is complete.
Each year we assign ourselves the task of befriending and nurturing one another so that we may retain the energy to serve as far into the future as possible.
We’ll be here next year, and for years after that. We won’t be hard to locate either, because, after all, you’ll find us aboard “The Good Ship Batavia!”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
* From a speech delivered at the 150th anniversary of the New York State School for the Blind - NYSSB.
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