Family Focus
Worth Remembering
Best Elementary School grads to reunite to celebrate their special school.
Eve Silberman
Special to the Jewish News
A
n elementary school reunion?
Many people barely remem-
ber their grade school
teachers, much less their classmates.
But on Sunday, Aug. 16, graduates of
the former Paul L. Best Elementary
School in Oak Park, plus a few teachers
and parents, are gathering at Como's
in Ferndale for a reunion. What brings
them back after 30, 40, even 50 years?
Not the five-day, sleep-away school
camps, unheard of in most schools of
the late Fifties and early Sixties. Not the
October school fair where it seemed
every mom, dad and teacher were either
selling hot dogs, manning the "dig for
gold" booth or hawking plants. Not
the roomy spaces over the cubbyholes
where the kindergartners loved to climb.
The pull is more subtle: the memory
of a progressive and accepting school,
whose dedicated faculty and committed
parents created an environment that
made children feel good about them-
selves.
"When I think back on the days at
Best, I realize we had a special child-
hood," Steve Carabas of Las Vegas wrote
in an e-mail. "We were blessed with all
kinds of wonderful, talented, energetic
people, teachers and parents alike."
Named for a former Ferndale
assistant superintendent, Paul L.
Best Elementary opened its doors in
September 1954 — and closed them
in 1976, when it was converted into
a middle school. (Today, the building
on Rosewood is the John F. Kennedy
Elementary School.)
Its visionary first principal, Scott
Street, was a medaled World War II
vet who wanted to create a school that
reflected the democratic values he had
fought for. It was a time when many
educators promoted "community"
schools, which encouraged kids to
explore and understand both their own
communities and the larger world.
Accompanied by dedicated "room
mothers:' Best students took field trips
to the local bakery, fire station and
visited the International Center in
Detroit. Tolerance was preached — and
practiced. In the late Fifties, when
Former Best Elementary School teacher Larry Sophiea with Lillian Greenhut of West
Bloomfield and her daughter and Best graduate Janet Greenhut of Ann Arbor.
black faces rarely appeared on televi-
sion, Street organized exchange visits
between older Best students and kids at
the predominantly black Grant School
nearby.
"It was a wonderful time in our lives:'
says Lillian Greenhut, a West Bloomfield
grandmother whose three children all
went to Best in the 1950s and 1960s. She
recalls how close she and other parents
felt to the teachers and to Scott Street,
Kadima Benefit
Kadima of Southfield will hold their
annual benefit on Tuesday, Sept. 22,
at the Max. M. Fisher Music Center,
Detroit.
The event will celebrate Kadima's
25th anniversary and the 45th year
of Beatles' music.
Twist and Shout: The Ultimate
Beatles Revue will feature a look-
alike, sound-alike cast that appeared
in the Broadway production
Beatlemania.
The benefit honorees are longtime
Kadima supporters Ann and Norman
Katz, who recently donated the Katz
residential home for Kadima.
who "wasn't a stand-off principal. He
was one of the bunch."
"Our kids excelled at that school," she
said.
Jewish parents like Greenhut had
a special appreciation for Best. Many
knew that before World War II the
Ferndale school district had hired nei-
ther blacks nor Jews. Jewish kids made
up about a third of the population at
Best Elementary. Following intense
Other contributors include the
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
Opera Theatre, Karmanos Cancer
Institute/Detroit, Detroit Symphony
Orchestra and the Jewish Federation
of Metropolitan Detroit.
An afterglow of refreshments will
follow the evening's performance.
Cost of a single ticket is $100.
For sponsorship information or to
buy tickets, contact Paula at (248)
559-8235, ext. 118. Proceeds will
allow Kadima to provide comprehen-
sive mental health services to adults
and children.
parental discussions on religious obser-
vances in school, Street decided to have
a "holiday tree" at Christmas time, deco-
rated with art objects. "We respected
Jewish holidays like Chanukah," said
Dan Karagozian, a non-Jewish business-
man from Fenton and a 1964 Best grad.
In a controversy that made the front
pages, Street was fired in 1959, just two
days after several hundred Best parents
honored him at a banquet. Superinten-
dent Roy Robinson, a supporter, told
reporters that the increasingly conser-
vative Ferndale school board had fired
him because he had campaigned for
progressive school board members.
Greenhut recalls Street's longtime
fight with the board over Best School's
choosing parent-teacher evaluations
instead of report cards. And ironically,
in a school that practiced tolerance,
Street (now deceased) told a former
Best grad, three decades after his firing,
that anti-Semitism had played a role:
Many of his most vocal supporters were
Jewish parents.
But though something was lost when
Street left, the school continued many
of his innovations, such as the school
camps. The atmosphere of tolerance
endured. Some Best kids got a rude
awakening when they moved on to
middle school.
Recalls Mike Gerber, a Farmington
podiatrist and1964 Best grad, said he
felt "like an outsider" at Lincoln Junior
High and at Ferndale High, where he
encountered "isolated incidents of anti-
Semitism."
Reunion treasurer Nadine Zack
Feldman, who will be flying in from
Florida, reports that as the reunion
draws closer, Best grads "seem to be get-
ting really excited?'
And more than one of the middle-
aged (and near retirement-aged) grads
has posted the Best School song on the
Best Web page. It begins: "Best School is
the best school/in the good old U.S.A."
Royal Oak business owner Ilene Hill, a
1968 Best grad, said, "I could sing that
song in my sleep."
❑
For information about the Paul Best reunion,
call Mike Gerber at (248) 840-7628 or e-mail
bestschoo12009@hotmail.com.
August 6 • 2009
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