Newsletter for the Alumni and Friends of
Hicksville High School Hicksville, New York

The Editors:
Buffalo Bob Casale '61	Linda (Piccerelli) Hayden '60
Pat (Koziuk) Driscoll '56	Bob (Gleason) Wesley '61

Contributing Editors: Bob Gillette & Walter Schmidt

Webmaster: Roger Whitaker

To contact the editors, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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HICKSVILLE VIETNAM WAR ERA MEMORIAL - PROJECT UPDATE

The final Confirmed List of Names, organized alphabetically by graduating class year, just as it will appear on the actual Memorial is what we will continue to publish from this point forward! To review the final list, please go to this month's Update in the Honoring Our Veterans tab of this issue of HixNews.

Construction progress continues. In addition, another $100 was received in new donations in August! For details, please see the latest Update, as noted above.

As always, should you wish to make any comments on the Project's status, please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

On behalf of the Project Team and wishing all of our readers a good Labor Day Weekend!

The Newsletter

Photo Gallery

Absolutely Amazing!

Birthdays & Anniversaries

Memory Lane

Language of the Old

Do You Remember that Word??? Mergatroyd! Would you believe the spell-checker did not recognize the word Mergatroyd?   Heavens to Mergatroyd!

The other day a not so elderly (I say 75, ahem!) lady said something to her son about driving a Jalopy; and he looked at her quizzically and said, "What the
heck is a Jalopy?" He had never heard of the word jalopy! She knew she was old ... But not that old.

Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle. About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases included: don't touch that dial; carbon copy; you sound like a broken record; and hung out to dry.

Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We'd put on our best bib and tucker, to straighten up and fly right. Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy moley! We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley; and even a regular guy couldn't accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when's the last time anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes, and pedal pushers. Oh, my aching back! Kilroy was here, but he isn't anymore.

We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!"   Or, "This is a fine kettle of fish!" We discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent, as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof! go the words of our youth, the words we've left behind.  We blink and they're gone. Where have all those great phrases gone?  Long gone: Pshaw, The milkman did it. Hey, it's your nickel. Don't forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper. Well, Fiddlesticks! Going like sixty. I'll see you in the funny papers. Don't take any wooden nickels. Wake up and smell the roses.

It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter has liver pills. This can be disturbing stuff! (Carter's Little Liver Pills are gone too!) We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeable times. For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory. It's one of the greatest advantages of aging.

Leaves us to wonder where Superman will find a phone booth? See ya later, alligator! Okidoki. You'll notice they left out "Monkey Business"!!!

We are the children of the fabulous '50s. No one will ever have that opportunity again. We were given one of our most precious gifts: Living in the peaceful and comfortable times created for us by the greatest generation. OK if crawling under school desks for nuclear attack drills. The Cold War is peaceful and comfortable, but the cars and the music were keen!

Casale's Corner

Never Forget Your Friends

A newlywed young man was sitting on the porch on a humid day, sipping ice tea with his Father. As he talked about adult life, marriage, responsibilities, and obligations, the Father thoughtfully stirred the ice cubes in his glass and cast a clear, sober look on his Son.

"Never forget your friends," he advised, "they will become more important as you get older." "Regardless of how much you love your family and the children you happen to have, you will always need friends. Remember to go out with them occasionally (if possible), but keep in contact with them somehow. "What strange advice!" thought the young man? "I just entered the married world, I am an adult and surely my wife and the family that we will start will be everything I need to make sense of my life."

Yet, he obeyed his Father; kept in touch with his friends and annually increased their number. Over the years, he became aware that his Father knew what he was talking about. Inasmuch as time and nature carry out their designs and mysteries on a person, friends are the bulwarks of our life. After more than 70 years of life, here is what he, we, and you will have learned:

Time passes. Life goes on. Children grow up. Children cease to be children and become independent.

And to the parents, it breaks their heart but the children are separated from the parents because they begin their own families. Jobs / careers come and go. Illusions, desires, attraction...weakens. People can't do what they did physically when they were young. Parents die but you move on.

Colleagues forget the favors you did. The race to achieve slows. But, true friends are always there, no matter how long or how many miles away they are. A friend is never more distant than the reach of a need, intervening in your favor, waiting for you with open arms or in some way blessing your life.

When we started this adventure called LIFE, we did not know of the incredible joys or sorrows that were ahead. We did not know how much we would need from each other. Love your parents, take care of your children, but keep a group of good friends. Stay in touch with them but do not impose your criteria.