Reflections on the Class Of ‘47
                                            BennettHigh School
                                             Buffalo, New York
                                                  By John Lee

                                     Oh what a wondrous ethnic stew,
                                      Irish, Italian, German, and Jew.
                                      We arrived in the autumn of 43,
                               And were promised, “The best is yet to be”.

                            We were Levy's, Mangano's, Riley's and Brown's,
                        From streets named for poets and small English towns.
                            From Homer and Hertel, Henley and Highgate,
                              We took the 23 streetcar, and  old number 8.

                        We assembled in homerooms with black-boarded walls,
                            Walked to our classes through monitored halls.
                       We learned history and science and rapid mathematics,
                               Latin and Spanish and English gramatics.

                        We drew angles and circles, and measured diameters,
                           Learned Shelly and Keats in iambic pentameters.
                               Polonius said, "To thine own self be true",
                          (We pledged ourselves to the Orange and Blue).

                              When December blew in at fifteen below,
                        We fervently prayed, “Please God make it snow.
                      The joy in the morning to hear Clint Beulman say,
                      The blizzard has closed Bennett High School today.​

                  We learned to smoke cigarettes, drink beer from a bottle,
                      Tell the difference between a clutch and a throttle,
                         We "necked" with each other in old model cars,
                      And drank (under age) in the neighborhood bars.

                        Our fathers and brothers had left by the score,
                           To fight in a war that would end all war,
                       In strange places we found in a geography book,
                               The Bulge, Okinawa, Tarawa, Tobrook.

                      While we memorized verses from Paradise Lost,
                         We heard whispered horrors of a holocaust,
                           And we asked ourselves with a silent plea,
                            “Is all this really the best that can be?”

                       The scent of gardenias filled prom night dances.
                         We lied to each other in pain filled romances.
                            Stardust and Moonglow, and My Reverie,
                         Sang to us, "This might be the best that can be".

                      Seasons faded into seasons, summers chilled to fall.
                      Winters melted into springs, four brief years in all.
                           Then in June of 47 we were given a degree,
                With the message (in between the lines), “The best is yet to be.”

                        Now as memory speaks in this moment we ask,
                           Is this quest for the future a worthy task?
                             For Shakespheres Hamlet, wasn’t it he,
                                Who queried, "To be or not to be?"

                          After fifty long years is it prudent to say,
                           That the best can only be found in today?
                              So to Shelly a toast from you and me,
                                 The present is all that will ever be.

                                                   ********

                                        In Loving Memory Of
                                     James A. Lee, Class Of 47

                                                    ********