School 10 students surprise Belleville scribe

Visiting his elementary after 45 years kindles memories and opens hatch for current batch of students to hear neighborhood history.

School 10 students surprise Belleville scribe
This was the plan: talk to the fifth and sixth graders at School 10 about going to the school a long time ago when I lived in the neighborhood, then read a poem about growing up, then a poem about the soldiers’ memorials, then talk about the 160 men from Belleville who died while in service. Then I’d close with the three men from the neighborhood who perished in Europe during World War II. Maybe the students would come up with a few questions.

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Brown bagging lunch through the years

Coworkers tried not to be obvious as they craned to see if my new wife scored my brown bag lunch orange as my mom had for the past five years. ...

continue reading on Belleville Patch. (NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

Notes:
Paul Calabrese was killed in an auto accident at 18. I was the only one from the School 10 class to visit the wake. Paul is the basis for BUDDIES, (based on actual events, as they say,) which appears in A Father's Place - An Eclectic Collection.

...The last time I saw Paul was the last time anyone saw him. His old man told me how Paul took a curve too fast because he didn’t want to be called “a goddamned chicken by his goddamned buddies.” Paul lost control of the car and went through the windshield. I remember thinking how long his hair had gotten since the mornings I watched him put on his old man’s butcher’s wax before we left for school.... 

Other Belleville Patch stories include School 10 references. (NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

• The First Robin of Spring (part one)
• The First Robin of Spring (part two)

Buccino also wrote about School 10 in Bellwood Crier has been