Susan Mazer

Post date: May 18, 2014 9:24:58 PM

Michael, thanks for you thoughts.  I, too, have thought about such things as my life has been like a meandering stream.  I think we can each add to your list of critical events that were world changing.

We were born from the passions of the end of a World War that may have been the last time war was declared, but not the last time a war was fought.   I say this because as we reflect Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq...and as we are waiting as if for a train of destruction to occur again.   For those younger, Vietnam is a dot in a history class that is passed over without questioning why it happened or if it had to happen, without asking enough questions...

My husband, who lived in the South, his graduating class was segregated..prior to Brown v. Wade...so his reunions are quite different.  His father was a Superior Court Judge who, as a strict constitutionalist, refused to enforce bussing.   Because he is a universal soul, we speak often of how his world was and how mine was...so different and not so different.  He traveled to Germany, Sweden, and across land to India, living in Afghanistan for many many month...in the 70's while I was in graduate school fighting the politics of the  Vietnam war from the comfortable, strange, barely integrated campus of Stanford University.  He refused to get drafted so his parents unfunded him.  

Cass Tech was where I found myself among peers, was inspired by my fellow students and learned as much from each of you as I did from any teacher.  Yes, our lives were each so informed by our experiences at CT...I am so grateful we are to meet again.  ..  My best friend at Cass, Pat Terry, is still my dearest soul sister...and with whom we will come to the reunion.  I had no idea what it was like for her to be Black but she attended my brother's Bar Mitzvah (who also went to CT and who wound teaching there prior to Law School).  The world has changed...but our world view is perhaps, at this time, so very large...we can see so much more.

Michael, thank you.