Growing Old with Class

A commercial has been running on television showing some not-so-young people pretending they have defied old man time. An announcer says something to the effect that the generation that said it would never grow old is proving it.
Some people do enjoy kidding themselves that way but they aren't fooling anyone else. A person can give up this and give up that, eat all the right foods, exercise religiously, apply creams and lotions and perhaps even visit a plastic surgeon, but no one has found a way to keep the clock from ticking.
So what's wrong with growing old? Age should be worn with pride. It shows you fought the battles of life and kept going. Growing old does bring aches and pains and even sickness, but such things are not confined to the elderly.
I'm proud of having survived the Great Depression and a couple of wars, proud that I can remember what I was doing the day JFK was assassinated, the day a man first walked on the moon and all the other events that have occurred in my lifetime. In many ways the road was a rough one, but that's what made it interesting.
The picture above shows my eighth grade class in the spring of 1940. Just think of the things that have happened since the day we gathered in front of the old school on Akron's industrial east side. I wouldn't have wanted to miss a single one of them. I can't imagine pretending they took place before my time.
Some of the kids in that picture are dead now, many are still active. There were 44 in our class so five were absent that day. I'm the tallest one in the second row, the guy with the dopey expression on his face. To my left is Lionel Burke and on my right are Bob Hauck, Nick Zissimopolous and Steve Subichin. Lionel, Nick, Steve and I were in the previous summer's Akron Soap Box Derby. None of us fared well on race day. It was memorable, though.

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