Succumbing to illness after many years, our class spokesman/master of ceremonies, Don vonLiebermann, passed away peacefully at his home in Weston last Friday, April 2. His obituary is posted at westportnow.com which you can read here. From the obit: “Friends are invited to attend a Mass of Christian burial Thursday, April 8 at 11 a.m., meeting directly at Saint Francis of Assisi Church, 35 Norfield Road, Weston.”

A film about the 50’s will be shown this coming week (April 5) at the Westport Library (thanks for email forward, Linda). It’s a 40-minute film followed by discussion. Assuming it’s a legitimate photo of a Westport gas station in the 1950s (click to enlarge), I cannot make out or recall its location. Check buildings in the background. Compo/Post Road? Riverside Ave? Please use Comments link below to reply.

Accompanying the article at westportnow.com is this photo (click to enlarge) showing a gathering of folks at the Compo Barber Shop discussing the 1950s, including our own Vince DePierro and Ed Baer (class of ‘54). The event was hosted and taped by the Westport Historical Society, capturing much of the content for the documentary.

Caption accompanying this photo (click to enlarge): “Part of the standing room only crowd that turned out at the Westport Public Library today for the debut showing of “The End of an Era–Westport in the 1950s,” a documentary by Westport filmmaker Chuck Tannen. The crowd was so great that a second showing had to be scheduled to accommodate everyone… Contributed photo”

[Courtesy of westportnow.com, 3-23-10 and 4-6-10]

Remember Miss Comer’s dance classes? With Don Freeman helping jog my low battery recollection, here is our best effort to date at identifying the young worthies in this group. If you’d like to comment on this post, please use the icon, below, to do so. In that way you can share your comments with the entire class. Thanks to Deanna for hanging on to this gem all these years. Click to enlarge.

[Ed.] I’m assuming the “Tally Ho Restaurant” refers to the one in Fairfield near the intersection of Black Rock Turnpike and the Merritt. Let me know if not.

UPS/FedEx/DHL Delivery Failure . This one’s real. You can verify/read about it here.

This latest virus that’s circulating is the “UPS/Fed Ex Delivery Failure”, initially launched in July, 2008. It will be an email from UPS or FedEx or DHL along with a packet number. It will say that they were unable to deliver a package sent to you on such-and-such a date. It then asks you to print out the invoice copy, attached. The attachment looks like a harmless Microsoft Word doc. In reality it contains a malicious virus named ‘ups_invoice.exe’.

Don’t try to print this. It launches the virus!

Pass this warning on to everyone you know. And by the way, unless you are absolutely sure of the source, don’t ever (knowingly) download a file that ends in ‘.exe‘.

Here, thanks to the contributions of several classmates—and in particular, thanks to the amazing feat of memory of Don Freeman (whom we used to know as Donnie Ohanian)—we have identified everyone in this photo. Or nearly so. Click the photo on the Bedford Elementary School Milestones page to read the names in the caption. We still don’t know if there was another photo taken of another section of the class of ‘49. If anyone knows, or can supply the missing names in the photo, please comment using comment field, below.

About this photo A mystery or two lingers on, all having to do with the date it was taken:

• I received this same photo from both Tom Saviano (I think) and Mike Hyman (from Shirley Rice’s memorabilia collection). There was a handwritten note on the back of the one from Shirley: “Bedford El - third grade”, or words to that effect. Problem: in third grade we were eight years old. These kids appear older than eight, no…?
• Why was a class photo taken in the third grade? Wasn’t the class photo a graduating class tradition? In any case class photos were reserved for the sixth grade at Greens Farms Elementary.
• Why is Len Eskey missing from this photo? (Playing hookey that day? Out sick? Maybe.)
• Speaking of whom (Len), he maintains that both he and Mason Buddy were taller in the sixth grade than either Bernice Allen or Bonnie MacGregor. This photo clearly doesn’t support that recollection.
• Several classmates have suggested that the size of the class in this photo appears to be smaller than what they recall… Were there other sixth-graders who don’t appear here? Don, Len and Noel (and possibly others) have all mentioned the subdivision of the sixth grade into at least two parts: Ms. Stevenson’s and Ms. Lumpkin’s. Is it possible that this is the photo of just one of these sections…? If so—other than Len—who are the missing members of the 1949 Bedford Elementary graduating class…?
• In sum there appears to be more mystery about this photo than why global temps have been declining for a decade, contrary to Global Warming predictions…!? Why can’t we get reliable data any more…? What the hell is going on here…!?

Here’s what would help: If a Bedford El graduate still had a commencement program for the class, similar to those shown on the Staples and Greens Farms Elementary School pages, and would be willing to dig it out and share it.

I found the following information posted at the Rootsweb website. The exact name spelling (Fraser Wood Smith), the fact that the birthdate is in range (August ‘36), and the fact that his Social Security card was issued in CT—all seem to confirm, according to my research advisor, John Ottinger, that this is our guy. I found nothing by way of a supporting obit at either Westport online newspaper (westportnews.com or westportnow.com). Fraser was last living in Arlington, TX. According to the Rootsweb site he died April 7, 2007.

I also found on the Ancestry website a record of a divorce to a Mary J. My memory is hazy on this point but I am pretty sure Fraser was married for a time, and then divorced, to another classmate: Mary J. Faltings. If you have any additional information about Fraser’s life or passing, please use the Comments feature, below, to share with the class.

What I remember as a scout motto was “Be brave, loyal, courteous, kind…”, etc. But that may have been the Boy Scout motto. “Do Your Best” is the current Cub Scout motto. In any case I found this 1947 scouting gem (bottom of page) in a photo album but was unable to identify two of the faces. Maybe one of you can recall…

Will someone please tell us the year in which this was taken? Which class: 6th? Or more like 3rd grade? Please click Comments link, below, to reply. We’ve had this conversation before, and there seems to be no authoritative answer—nor a consensus. Tom Saviano thinks it must be the sixth grade graduating class. In conversations with Len Eskey and others, the thinking was more like third grade. However, neither Tom nor I can recall having photos taken in any year other than the graduating year. Your input, please. P.S. Photos from all graduating classes can be found here.

If we define “the internet” in very basic terms as “computer-to-computer communication” or “intercomputer communication”, then our man, Larry, has every right to be known as the “father of the internet”. Good grief! What an accomplishment by our own classmate! Thanks to Noel (who headed up an engineering firm, himself) for bringing it to my attention. Larry’s latest internet innovation was recently featured on the cover of IEEE Spectrum. To read on, please link to Larry’s Classmate Update page here.

Westport-Now.com Mario Sacco, long-time co-owner of Mario’s Place in Saugatuck, died Sunday (July 5th) while on a visit to Mississippi, according to westport-now.com. The caption for the photo reads:

Black bunting went up today across the entrance to Mario’s Place on Railroad Place in Westport’s Saugatuck section after word was received of the death of longtime co-owner Mario D. Sacco. Sacco, who co-owned the landmark eatery for 40 years with Frank DeMace, died Sunday in Biloxi, Miss. at the age of 92… Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com

Ronnie and I were regular patrons of Mario’s from 1981 to 1995 when living in Westport. Usually seated at the bar at the far end under the TV, Mario would always greet us warmly whenever we came in, even many years after leaving Westport for NH, when we would stop in for dinner or a drink during a Xmas visit. Our heartfelt condolences to Mario’s family, Frank, his partner, and all the staff. Full article here and Westport-News.com article here (thank you, Judy!).