Insight: Remembering kindness and tragedy

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I’m not exactly sure how I became friends with Danny Meyering, but I’m certainly glad I did.

Carlton Webster Junior High School in Henrietta, New York
is where Ed Pierce went to school from 1966 to 1968.
COURTESY PHOTO 

As an eighth grader at Carlton Webster Junior High School in Henrietta, New York in the fall of 1966, I was officially a teenager, and my family had moved to a new community and into a new house where I had my own bedroom. I was attending a public school for the first time at age 13 after many years of being in a Catholic school.

Danny Meyering was a year older than I was and he was always laughing and joking whenever I passed by him in the school hallways. One day in November 1966, Danny and I were assigned to spot other students jumping on the trampoline during gym class. Our job was to stand guard and prevent students from landing awkwardly and bouncing off the edge of the trampoline and injuring themselves.

While doing that he asked who my favorite football player was and when I told him it was Joe Namath, Danny grinned and said, “Mine too.” As the school year went on, he invited me to sit with him and some of his other friends at a junior high basketball game over the Christmas break and I had a blast.

One day over the holidays, Danny walked to my house and my mother made us some lunch. He brought some Marvel comic books with him and after eating, we sat at the kitchen table reading them.

In our first week back to school in January 1967, I noticed a poster outside the school library announcing tryouts for that spring’s school musical “Finnian’s Rainbow.” I thought it would be fun to audition and told all my friends, including Danny, that I was going to try out for the cast. Several classmates told me that afterschool activities were a waste of time, and that I would never be chosen for a part in the musical.

The only one who thought I could possibly win a role was Danny and he took the time to listen to me when I sang my audition song for him “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” from “Finnian’s Rainbow.” He smiled and gave me a thumbs up even though I was horrible.

On the Friday afternoon of the audition, I was very nervous. Waiting backstage, I was shaking and could barely stand. When my name was called, I summoned my courage and walked out into the spotlight to perform the song for the musical’s director.

It didn’t go well. My voice cracked several times during the song, and I also forgot some of the lyrics. Without a doubt, my audition was one huge disaster, and I wasn’t selected for the cast of “Finnian’s Rainbow” when the list was posted on the auditorium door on Monday.

At lunchtime, I sat in the school cafeteria with Danny, and he noticed that I was feeling dejected about not getting the part. He told me that it really didn’t matter and at least I had tried. His comment made me feel better and helped me get over the disappointment I was feeling for flubbing my audition.

A week or so later in January 1967, a huge snowstorm hit the area, and the temperature hovered near zero. Danny decided to go ice skating at the town park on a school night and walked there with a couple of his other friends. On the way home, a driver ran over them with a car and left the scene. Danny was killed and police were searching for the hit-and-run driver.

The next day at school was terribly sad once the word got out about what had happened. It was like everyone who knew Danny was bewildered and shocked and was trying to come to terms with his senseless death. He was the first friend I had known who had died and it left me angry and confused.

A 18-year-old area resident called police and told them she thought she had hit something when she noticed a crack in her windshield. She was arrested by the police and charged with hit and run. Eventually her charges were reduced to leaving the scene of an accident.

Eventually that school year ended, and another started. My classmates and I moved on to 10th grade at Rush Henrietta High School. Danny’s memory and what had happened to him seemed to fade away for many.

Through the years I have thought about him and wondered what he would be doing today or if he would have had a family of his own if he had lived.

I never again attempted to audition for a school musical and instead, I stuck with performing with the school’s chorus. One of Danny’s friends that he introduced me to, Nick Vecchioli, has remained my friend for more than 59 years now.

The passing of time has not diminished my recollection of Danny’s kindness to me all those years ago and although I only knew him for a short time, I appreciated him for always being positive and a true friend, especially when I needed it most. <

Insight: Practicing self-forgiveness

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Fashion designer Kenneth Cole once said he believes much of our lives is about guilt management and he may be right.

Last week I was driving home from work and listened to NPR’s “Life Kit” presentation on the radio about how to make peace with your guilty feelings. It led me to think about my own guilt that I carry with me and why I should just let it go.

The dictionary defines guilt as a moral emotion that occurs when a person comes to believe that they have compromised their own standards of conduct and bear significant responsibility for those violations.

During the “Life Kit” program, two psychology professionals reviewed strategies for coping with the unhealthy emotions associated with carrying around guilt and then discussed how to transform guilt into a positive force. The professionals said that when you realize that you feel guilty about something you’ve done wrong that creates a personal sense of responsibility that works to motivate us to do better in the future.

When I was about the age of 5 or 6, my mother took me with her to the A&P grocery store and while the cashier was ringing up the purchase, I asked my mother if I could have a 2-cent peppermint from a candy display at the checkout. She said no, but I decided to not listen to her and put the peppermint in my pocket. We left the store, I climbed up onto the back seat of our car, pulled the candy from my pocket and was about to unwrap and eat it when my mother suddenly caught me with it.

She grabbed me by the ear and dragged me back into the store. She brought me to the manager where I handed the peppermint candy over to him and apologized for taking it from the candy display. I was distraught and felt guilty about my behavior and vowed never to steal anything ever again. More than six decades later, I’ve kept that vow, but still think about taking that peppermint and what a bad thing it was to do.

Perhaps that is the penance or positive motivation that the psychology professionals claim I have attached to my guilty feelings about taking the peppermint that day so long ago.

Another situation that pops up every so often in my brain is one that took place near the end of the school year once when I was in high school. I was taking a state standardized Algebra test, and it amounted to more than three-quarters of our final grade in that class. One of my classmates, who did not pay much attention in class and wasn’t a very good math student, demanded that I let him copy some of my answers on the test. He sat across the aisle from my desk and wanted me to not shield my test paper if he happened to glance over at it.

This student was known for intimating other students and frequently used violent tactics to achieve his objectives. He was about a foot taller than me then and outweighed me by at least 100 pounds. Right up until the test started, I didn’t know what I was going to do, and I was too embarrassed to discuss my predicament with my father.

I answered the questions on the test to the best of my ability and although I didn’t go out of my way to safeguard my answers during the examination, I also didn’t make it easy for someone’s prying eyes to copy my answers either. I passed the test easily but to this day I do not know if my intimidating classmate passed or failed the Algebra test.

But I have felt some sense of guilt that I could have told him no when he insisted that I help him cheat on that test or that I may have contributed to him trying to cheat on it. I was physically afraid of him and a coward for not standing up to him and my moral shortcoming is something I’ve had to live with for years since that happened.

Neither one of these issues that I have described kept me from going about living my life, so those instances are not toxic guilt for me, but I do think about each one occasionally and kick myself for not doing the right thing either time.

I did make amends to the grocery store manager at the time and because my bullying classmate died a few years ago, I no longer have an opportunity to confront him about what he did or what he wanted me to do on his behalf. It truly doesn’t matter today yet my personal feelings of guilt persist.

The bottom line is that I’m the only one responsible for my own emotions and my own value system and behavior.

Writing all this down and admitting my mistakes does help relieve some of the guilt that I’ve carried with me for these things. I’ve slowly come to accept that my own guilt may be a way for me to express to other people that I do have a conscience and I can clearly recognize the difference between right and wrong. <