Germantown High School * Philadelphia, PA. * Class of 1957

Dick Mariani

Memories of GHS

--- I really don’t have fond or nostalgic memories of GHS. I don’t have any bad recollection of my high school days, either. High School was just something I did enroute to the rest of my life. Being a shy, nerdy individual, I never socialized much with my classmates outside of school. Sports (track and cross-country) are my best memories of GHS, and I have been a runner ever since. I can still bang out a decent 5K or 10K race (for an old guy). ---As I look back, I owe a lot to many of my classmates for inspiring me by example to academic achievement. Coming from an immigrant family, I didn’t grow up with an appreciation of education. My parents never progressed beyond 6th grade in Italy. My Dad is about the hardest working person I knew. He and I are the best of friends, today, which was not always the case when I was a teen. (Incidentally, he just turned 94, is in excellent health, and still saving money for his old age.) ---I never thought much about college until late in 11th grade. However, I had the example of the Frank Primianos, the Lois Addisons, Valerie Henson, Nadine, Harrison, and others of our class; I found their enthusiasm for education contagious. A college education was a foregone conclusion for them and after awhile I figured out there was a chance for me. With the assistance of a Boy Scout leader, I managed to get my self a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. ---The first two years at Penn were sort of an extension of high school, as I commuted.. I used to see Nadine Nicholson, Cornelia Briskow, Marlene Oscar, and others quite often on the train or on the campus. I think I was the only male from our class to attend Penn, along with a whole gang of our female classmates. ---I owe a lot to my classmates. Many of my ideals and principles today originated in our high school days. I remember being as disappointed as Lois Addison, when our hero Adlai Stevenson lost in 1956. We grew up in the height of the civil rights movement, right after Brown vs. Board of Education. To me it was an idealistic time. We had all kinds of ethnic groups, religions, races, and economic levels represented in our class. To this day, I can’t understand why people of diverse beliefs, backgrounds, religions, and races can’t get along as well as we did at GHS. Or maybe it was an illusion. Or maybe Mount Airy was (and is) an unusual place. ---Lois and Harrison and others have commented on the importance of our teachers in their lives. It’s strange in a way, that I hardly remember my teachers. At the time, I thought of them as people doing a job. But they must have done the job quite well, as I didn’t learn the sciences, and math, and grammar (which were the basis for my future education and career) all by myself. I do remember being inspired by an English teacher in 11A and a History teacher in 11B. But I can’t remember their names. Germantown High School was a good place for us, and today I do appreciate what our teachers did for us.