Patience graduates high school. MJoTA 2012 v5n1 0620
Patience Caroline Blossfeld Dodgson graduated from Haddonfield Memorial High School yesterday in the midst of a sea of black and red robed friends. Most are off to great colleges, many to the Ivy League colleges, one young lady is off to Westpoint Military Academy, and Patience is off the Drexel University, which has a dragon for a mascot.
Three graduates spoke at the ceremony held on the Haddonfield Memorial High School football field.
The first speaker was the class president, Thomas Twitchell. I remember crossing Spruce Street in Philadelphia to speak with his aunt Suzanne, who told me of his birth. Thomas's mother and brother Andy had visited Mary, another aunt in the Black Forest of Germany 3 years before his birth. I had hired Mary to take my 3 sons to Germany for the summer of 1991, and to stay with them for 10 weeks. Less than 18 months later, Thomas's mother had given birth to another brother, and the older brother was dead from a flash illness. Andy was 3, and he is remembered in the Haddonfield library.
The second speaker, Samantha Gardner, was the class salutatorian, and she mentioned 2 female graduates in her speech. One was Katie Buchheit, who is a professional ballerina. I remember her mother urging us all to clap when she walked in Haddonfield Quaker Meeting. And how sick Katie was in 2000, and not expected to survive. And now she is a ballerina, and off to Cornell University in the Fall. The second female graduate Sarah mentioned was Patience, whom she said managed to inject into every conversation science fiction and comics. Now I know what Patience is known for!
The third speaker was David Jacobowitz. Wow. Patience went to a lot of trouble last year to bake brownies, because she wanted to invite him as her date to the junior prom. It worked, He was, I have seen pictures of them standing stiffly next to each other. Patience had spelled out the terms of the date: he was coming as a friend. She may have scared him.
So who was her date at the senior prom? MJoTAtalks own Carlos! I got some pictures of him with my zoom lens. He is off to Rutgers in the Fall.
I have 4 natural children, and they all graduated from HMHS. The boys all came to celebrate with their baby sister. Angus Pekala (HMHS 1999, SJU 2003, USP 2007) drove from his medical writing job near New York, Miles Pekala (HMHS 2001, LeHigh 2005, LeHigh 2007) drove from making robots near DC, and Allister Blossfeld (HMHS 2007, CCC 2011) cycled in from somewhere.
Ophthalmologist Dr Ray Pekala (Hazleton HS 1969, Yale 1973, TJU 1978) also came to cheer, and so did Gary Smith (Pennsauken HS 1976, CCC 1995), who has assumed the role of American father to Patience, her father is German inventor and athlete Lothar Blossfeld Dipl Physik.
