R.I.P., Carol

Carol, upper left, with our other class officers, 1960-61

I don't believe I'd seen Carol since our graduation from Hiram High School on June 6, 1962. She'd never attended our school reunions (at least, not the ones I'd attended); she was not in touch with anyone I talked to regularly. I have a faint memory that at one of our recent reunions someone had said that she'd tried to get her to come--but ... no.

Carol Rutkus was part of a contingent of about twenty students from Streetsboro who attended Hiram High, 1958-62, when their own high school was having trouble with the State of Ohio about accreditation (I believe). Each day, those students had a fourteen-mile bus ride, each way.

It wasn't easy for them--attending a new school, living in a different town. And not all of us Hiramites were especially ... welcoming. I blush now to think of some of the adolescent cruelties that some of us (myself included) visited upon them.

But gradually things changed. There was some dating. Some of them excelled athletically (and that helped!). Some were excellent students, musicians, artists, human beings. And by the time we all graduated, the relationships had softened--and, in some cases, become intimate.

All the boys had noticed Carol right away. She was--as the picture shows--very attractive, and many of the boys made moves, subtle and otherwise, on her. She remained ... I don't want to say "aloof" because she was very friendly, amiable. But she seemed to know, even as a fourteen-year-old, that a lot of us just weren't worth the trouble. She earned, as a result, considerable respect.

This is evident, as well, in our yearbooks (which exist only for our junior and senior years). She was class treasurer in our junior year; vice-president, senior year. The yearbook that final year notes that she had been a Y-Teen, a class officer our freshman year as well, cheerleader (sophomore), school play (sophomore), yearbook, school newspaper, Rebel Rousers (the pep club), F.T.A. (Future Teachers of America), and an usherette at one of our plays our junior year.

I also was in that play our sophomore year--a piece of piffle called Curtain Going Up, a play about a bunch of high school kids putting on a play. She played someone called "Janet Young"; I played the class clown, "Milt Sanders." I should add something here: The play they were performing was set on a plantation in the ante-bellum South. I played "the old family retainer," a slave; I appeared in blackface. Not the activity I've been most proud of in my life! (I bought the script some years ago but cannot for the life of me find it right now.) I can't remember if "Milt" and "Janet" had any onstage exchanges.

There were several other kids from Streetsboro in the show, and I remember how that experience, for me, eased some of the tension (in me) that ignorance had delivered. We were all just kids trying to find our ways in the dark--and that experience--that play--for me flipped on a switch that never should have been Off.

Carol and I were friendly--but never really "friends" in any kind of meaningful way. We shared some experiences, some school activities. But I was "into" sports and being a professional-athlete-in-training (hah!), and our lives just didn't overlap in all that many ways. But when they did, amity ruled.

Still, in my yearbook, senior year, she wrote a kind comment: "To a nice guy I'll never forget, especially those jokes. Remember me! Best to you always, Carol."

I never did forget her--(and I dread to think what the "jokes" were)--but I never saw her, as I said, after that early June day in 1962.

And so when the news came yesterday--news of her death--I was stunned. It was not just another classmate gone (more than a few have passed away now), but it was Carol, whom I had ever remembered as that young, friendly, vibrant classmate, that student who seemed so ... mature ... in a high school world aswirl with immaturity.

I see in her obituary that she seems to have had a good, productive life. And that is no surprise. She wouldn't have had it any other way. And all of her former classmates, today, feel suddenly older, suddenly more ... mortal.

R.I.P., Carol Rutkus Barker (link to obituary)