Oct. 23, 2023 - A COLLEGE YEARBOOK REMEMBERED
John of Rochester….Jo Roff: Pardon the poor pictures, I just took some photos of random pages with my phone late Saturday night.
We padded the staff a bit but we wanted to make sure everyone got credit.
Ted Baenziger and I created this little history of Catholic education from kindergarten through college on one piece of lined yellow paper….genius
Some revolutionaries ended up at Xerox!
Associate editor….yours truly:
"I wish I wish I wish in vain, that we could sit simply in that room once again
$10,000 at the drop of a hat, I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that." Dylan
A drawing by Tommy Beers
At the time Saint John Fisher was an all male school. There were women on campus, but they mostly were secretaries and occasionally teachers. I had a whole section of women in the yearbook because they deserved attention, and sometimes they got attention that they didn’t want.
There couldn’t be any more opposite siblings than my brother, Tom and I. We are eight years apart, and really didn’t interact very much when we were children. He became a mechanic…I was a teacher….he dealt with things, I dealt with ideas and yet, for some reason, the two of us have a bond. We have had many adventures all across America driving people crazy. I love him dearly and we were able to spend last Thursday together tooling around the Finger Lakes in his classy ride. I want him to come to Sicily with me in the spring….he would fit right in!
Our Branchport "tin cottage" is buttoned up for winter…soon the dock will be out and the fishing season comes to an end.
A COLLEGE YEARBOOK REMEMBERED
October 23rd, 2023
Hello Friends,
On Saturday, while working at the store, I received a "Messenger" notification. Someone contacted me wanting to know if I was interested in a copy of my college yearbook. Immediately I thought it was a spam hoax but the person was persuasive and at last I relented. He said he could bring it to me at the store so I felt there was no harm in that. It turns out that he cleans out storage areas and found the 1969 yearbook from St. John Fisher College, and contacted me because I was listed as the Associate editor. Frankly, I do have a copy of that book somewhere around but I parted with 10 bucks because I got involved looking through those memories from 54 years ago….so I figured I could use another copy.
The 1969 yearbook from John Fisher College was epic to say the least. My best friend Scott Schraeder was the Editor and I was the Associate editor. We had a faculty advisor, but unfortunately, he was very ill, and was out for most of the year. We were left on our own to do whatever we wanted. I had the idea that we should make a "book of the year" instead of a college yearbook. We had professional photographers who had a contract for the yearbook but instead of having them photograph clubs, organizations, class groups, teams and faculty members, we allowed them to take pictures of anything on campus that we thought was interesting and creative. These guys were rather stunned that they were allowed to be creative on a job that was so mundane as snapping pictures of smiling teams and teachers. We also had friends who were artists and writers, and we used their creativity and input to make a book that was so outlandish that the school administration refused to send out copies to the community. It was the last week of school when the book finally arrived, and it created quite a controversy. Scott and I holed up in an office on the third floor of the Administration building. We were handing out the preordered books while blasting the Beatles song, “Piggies" out of the windows…..oh, we were so arrogant. In addition to omitting all the traditional pictures, we filled it up with some very questionable text and artwork. One in particular was a "dot-to-dot" hidden drawing of the administration building at the school. When you connected the dots, it showed a dark, mechanical looking building with money going in one end, and little robots coming out the other end with diplomas! Needless to say, a lot of folks were upset…they wanted to know where their picture was and I said "if you were around the school at all during 1969, your picture was in the book….. if your picture is not in the book you weren’t spending time in the right places". Yes, we were arrogant but there is something else in that book that was from 1969….that was hope, hope for change, hope that a new generation could make a world that was free of war, poverty, and oppression. Oh, we were so young…..and so naïve.
As a postscript: The book won an award from Columbia University calling it the most creative college yearbook in America…just sayin’
I have been working very hard the past week to organize all of John’s Corners. I have them all listed by date and given them an appropriate title. As I am now, approaching 300 short essays, I thought I could put them all together in one spot so here they are:
Sincerely,
John Bernunzio
Photos by Dr. Vincent Bitetto
Connect the dots…….read the writing on the wall.
I included this "picture" of some of the luminaries of the campus, and perhaps what they would’ve wanted to do with me after they got their yearbook
On Sunday, Julie and I were privileged to attend a reception honoring the wedding of our good friend, Paul Engels, and his wife, Gail. Paul and I went to grammar school, high school and sometimes college together. We have gotten in lots of trouble over the years and it was always fun! So wonderful to meet his beautiful extended family in Rochester and have some delicious Laotian food.
The ride home was nothing short of spectacular