I was a teen-ager with America's oldest teen-ager

I just returned from five days in New York City. Coincidentally, I was meeting my friend Judy at MOMA on Thursday, when I picked up a copy of USA Today and learned that Dick Clark had died. I say coincidentally because Judy and I were teen-agers with a truly teen-age Dick Clark in our hometown of Mount Vernon, New York.

Now that I am back home in Miami, I am sitting at my desk with my high school yearbook, it's cover emblazoned with "Maroon & White - 1947". Those were A.B. Davis High's school colors, and that was the year Judy, Dick Clark and I graduated. There are lots of pictures of a teen-age Dick in my yearbook because he was a mover and shaker even then. The attached is actually his yearbook photo.

Dick was president of my graduating class, and voted, according to an article in the New York Times, "Most likely to sell the Brooklyn Bridge". I remember him best as Head Cheerleader at a time when Judy and I were both baton twirlers at football games and band parades. Our friends, the identical Sonnenblick twins, Jean & Muriel, waved maroon and white banners. Sounds corny today, but in Mt. Vernon, in the mid-40's, it was considered very desirable to be any of the above.

Dick lived in an apartment complex called Park Lane, a block north of my apartment home at 531 E. Lincoln Ave. I tell you that because Judy and I walked several miles each morning to high school, toting our notebooks and school books on one hip, talking for the most part about boys, boys boys. Deep we weren't. Inevitably, Dick Clark and his best friend, Andy Grass, would be walking in front of us, taking the same early morning trek. Cool kids walked. Nerds took the bus. We considered ourselves very cool although I don't think that designation had come into popular usage yet.

Years later, when Dick became a celebrity with his American Bandstand and went on to become a titan in the music and entertainment industry, I often mused about how we never would have guessed that that nice guy we said hello to every morning and was part of our everyday world, would someday become "The Dick Clark" the whole world knew and admired.

Gee, had I not been so busy talking to Judy, I might have thought about dating Dick instead of just smiling and passing him by. A missed opportunity, to be sure. I see by the Times article he had three wives and I've had two husbands, so I don't think I'll worry about it. But it did make me sad to hear of his passing.