photos courtesty of M-J Kline

None other than Mary-Jo Kline (SHS57) and Bill Cook (SHS58)
photo taken at Light's Bakery - August 22, 2003

ver the several or so years that I have been doing the Southside alumni web sites, I've received a lot of help from a lot of people. It's always difficult to single out just one. But I have been known to do that and here I go again. This time it's Mary-Jo Kline. I have known Mary-Jo since I was in knickers. And if you'll glance at the black and white photo included here, you'll see that my memory serves me quite well on this.

Mary-Jo and I are in the front row at the left, seated next to each other. I am the one in knickers and Mary-Jo is on my left. The occasion was the Goodwin twins' third birthday. I was 6 years old and Mary-Jo was 7. The Goodwins (SHS61) are in the back row - Jerry and Carole - fourth and fifth from the left. Also in the photo are some of the neighbor kids - the Howes (Nancy, SHS57, and Sharon, SHS 61), Margie Brown, Martha Reed (SHS60), Sandy Fahrenholtz and others that I recognize, but can't put a name to.

About 58 years later, that would be in August 2003, Mary-Jo and her husband, Ted Crackel, and my wife, Wynne, and I got together for breakfast at Hillary's favorite Elmira restaurant, Light's Bakery on 2nd Street. We had each just sped across the country in our automobiles (Ted and Mary-Jo from Missouri visiting Ted's family - Wynne and I from Colorado visiting Wynne's family) while playing telephone tag on our cell phones - meeting up, in of all places, where the Kline's and the Cook's had begun making their acquaintanceships so many years before - good old Elmira, NY.

I am grateful to Mary-Jo for the many contributions of photos, stories and encouragement I have received from her with SHS58.org and it's associated sites. And I just couldn't resist telling everyone that and using a couple of her photos with which to say it.

Thanks, Mary-Jo, for your friendship and your help.

Bill Cook, SHS58.ORG
May 27, 2004

click here for more early Elmira photos of the Goodwins