Here comes Michael Friedman, exiting the Jewish Community Center onto Park Heights Avenue a year ago when he’s approached by a “bearded young man, around 50 or so” who tells him, “My father has something for you.”
The “bearded young man” seems to know Friedman, though the recognition is not mutual. Friedman, 77, spent half a century photographing Baltimore area weddings and bar mitzvahs. He’s recognized by a lot of people.
“The last time I saw this young man,” he says, “was his bar mitzvah. And believe me, he didn’t have a beard back then.”
But the last name rings a bell. He’s David Mitnick, and his father is Searle. In another lifetime, Searle Mitnick and Michael Friedman were classmates at one of Northwest Baltimore’s legendary post-war public elementary schools, Liberty School No. 64, Maine Avenue and Garrison Boulevard near Forest Park Avenue.
And thus began the linking of a lifetime ago with today.
This Sunday, July 17, a few dozen of the 1957 graduates of School 64 will gather at the Bluestone Restaurant. It’s a 65-year reunion, but it now has links to the children at today’s School 64.
Late in the afternoon of that first meeting, Searle Mitnick sent Friedman an email, a photograph of their sixth-grade class. Though the two men hadn’t seen each other in years, it turned out they’ve lived only four blocks from each other. And the old photo linked them across the years.
“It stirred a lot of memories, and a lot of emotions,” says Friedman, who figures he “did about 1,600 weddings and bar mitzvahs” in his half-century as a commercial photographer. He’s now retired.
But the class picture made him think about a reunion. He phoned Mitnick, and they had lunch with some other old classmates.
Their memories went back two-thirds of a century, but they were vivid: of old classmates and teachers, of Saturday afternoons at the Forest Theatre and Sunday afternoons at the Forest Park bowling alley, and school carnivals every spring with candy apples and lemons on sticks — and of that delicate time when they were all shedding the last traces of childhood and plunging into the churning waters of adolescence.
“There was a girl in the photo,” says Friedman. “Carol Chor. I took her to my bar mitzvah. A couple of times, I took her to the Forest Theatre. This was the time when boys and girls were discovering each other.”
And now, rediscovering. As the reunion planning took on life, Friedman found Chor. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Friedman phoned her. They talked about old dates, about their spouses, about Carol’s brother, Irv “Butch” Chor, who died years ago.
“That’s the flip side,” Friedman said. “A lot of the old friends are gone now.”
“It was a wonderful time and place,” said another old classmate, Rabbi Bruce Kahn. Like Friedman, he followed School 64 with years at Garrison Junior High and Baltimore City College.
Kahn spent several decades as the spiritual leader of Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase. He’s now rabbi emeritus there.
“School 64,” said Kahn, “was such a lovely place. It had excellent teachers. It was a neighborhood school that almost everybody walked to. There was a camaraderie that was lovely. And here we were, young kids, discovering life. Everything was a first, going through these crucial experiences, parties, dating, organized sports, musical instruments, scouts.”
Among the classmates was Kahn’s twin sister Bonnie, and Bonnie’s closest friend, Linda Krichinsky.
“And all of it,” says Kahn, “we were on the cusp of such great changes in our lives.”
Childhood morphed into adolescence. The neighborhood changed, too, with the huge migration to suburbia of the 1960s.
School 64 has changed measurably over the years, and that, too, will be marked at Sunday’s reunion.
“Since it was School 64,” says Friedman, “we decided to set the price of the reunion at $64. As the checks started coming in, I realized there would be excess funds and thought it would be nice to donate that money to the school.”
He called the school principal, Dwight Freeman, and asked if they needed anything, “like a computer, or anything appropriate. He said that this coming fall, they were becoming a uniform school and that the funds could help students who can’t afford to purchase a uniform.”
But that was only the start of it. Freeman was so touched by the offer, he invited the alumni from that class of ’57 to come to the school next Opening Day “and make an honor line” to escort new students into the building.
And next June, they’re invited to graduation ceremonies, where they’ll sit on stage, in caps and gowns, and be honored for their generosity by the graduates of 2023.
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