Allderdice ’58 alums reunite to celebrate 70+ years of friendship

Steve Harr and Tom Stutz met as third graders at the former Wightman School in Squirrel Hill 76 years ago and have been close friends ever since.

They are part of a group of 11 mid-octogenarians — all Jewish — who graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in 1958 and recently reunited in Pittsburgh for a celebration of connectedness that has spanned marriages, divorces, births, deaths and other major milestones.

It was the latest in a series of gatherings that began in 1985 when Harr and Henry Slesinger arranged the first get-together in Pittsburgh. They call themselves The Dragons after Allderdice’s mythical mascot.

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“We had stayed in constant contact with one another over the years but wanted to do more than touch base by phone,” said Harr, 84, a retired pharmaceutical company executive who has lived in Boston for the past 55 years. “Our second event was in Martha’s Vineyard, where I have a house, the year we all turned 60.”

Other reunions have been held in West Virginia, Los Angeles, Napa and Sante Fe, and include wives and girlfriends.

“A lot of us have known each other since kindergarten, and Wightman, Colfax or Linden (elementary schools),” said Slesinger, 84, who lives in Manhattan and is the retired owner of a marketing and advertising agency in Phoenix.

The group began to form at Allderdice through various fraternities and sororities, said Carol Steinbach, 84, of Oakland, a retired bank manager. “Squirrel Hill was such a close-knit community back then we would walk to each other’s houses for parties.”

Most of the members scattered for college and careers that have taken them all over the world, which makes reconvening in their hometown even more special.

The week’s itinerary included guided tours of Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, the University of Pittsburgh Nationality Rooms and the Carnegie Museums. At LeMont restaurant on Mt. Washington, the group was reminded of the city’s iconic view while dining on specially prepared vintage treats including toasted pecan balls with hot fudge sauce.

A tour of Allderdice was especially nostalgic.

“It smelled the same — of musty books — and I remembered the names of all my teachers,” remarked Bill Reinfeld, a university economist who divides his time among Boston, Martha’s Vineyard and Taiwan.

“I didn’t remember the hallways being as long as they were,” quipped Slesinger, who found that the visit evoked warm memories, plus an opportunity that had eluded him as a student.

“I was finally able to get up on stage, something I’d always wanted to do, although I think I once played a tree.”

When the group learned about the school librarian wanting comfy chairs for a reading nook and more science books they decided to crowd-fund among themselves to help make that happen, Slesinger said, “as a donation from the class of ’58.”

In their free time, some members visited the graves of loved ones, and went to see their childhood homes, including Stutz, who grew up on Malvern Street and found the same sycamore trees shading the front yard. He also visited a buckeye tree at the Schenley Park Golf Course where he often went to meditate as a teen.

“It was very nostalgic,” said Stutz, a retired lawyer who lives in Los Angeles. “The whole week has been nostalgic. It’s been beautiful.”

It was a touching experience for Robbie Reicher, of Los Gatos, California, a retired chemical engineer who left Pittsburgh in 1962. “The (San Francisco) Bay area is a great place to live,” he said, “but Pittsburgh still feels like home.”

The group reminisced about going to the old Isaly’s at Forbes and Murray to buy Klondikes or a bag of fries, “just before the Sabbath,” Slesinger said.

They recalled walking to school — “for some of us it was a couple of miles,” Steinbach recalled — to convene every morning at “the wall,” a student hangout on Allderdice’s Tilbury Avenue side where some kids, but not this group, went to smoke.

“Cliques form in high school and a big part of it is looks and popularity,” Reicher said. “We were a cool group.”

They used fraternity dues and the proceeds from paper routes and other part-time jobs to sponsor dances in the ballrooms of the Webster Hall and William Penn hotels, and made Saturday night forays to the Crawford Grill in the Hill District to hear live music. “We loved jazz,” said Reinfeld. “You had to buy drinks, so we’d order whiskey sours. We were just 16 but we never got carded.”

Growing up in the 1950s was idyllic, he said. “There were no global problems, no wars. We were all good students from middle-class families and had no worries. We loved to laugh and tell stories. We had creative parties where we made up skits.”

“I cannot tell you how blessed we were. It was a very wholesome time.”

Reunions help members feel connected not just to each other but to that magical era, Reinfeld said. “We still see each other the way we were in high school.”

For Neal Wein, of Los Angeles, and retired from work in media sales, “It was great to see old — and I do mean old — friends again.”

That some of the Dragons have died has brought the group even closer, Reinfeld said. “We have known each other longer than we have known our spouses. We are as close as brothers and sisters.”

And while they are bonded through the past, the group also looks to the future, with talk that the next reunion is likely to be a cruise in two years, Harr said, noting how precious the gatherings are.

“You can make close friends over the course of time, but they’re not quite like the friends you first made 70 years ago and have a shared history with. It’s just something you can’t duplicate.”

“We don’t have to say how much we like each other. It’s understood.” PJC

Deborah Weisberg is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.