JUNE 20, 2025

TO RESPOND WITH A COMMENT OF YOUR OWN, PLEASE CLICK ON WHSALUM63@AOL.COM.

Hi Keepers of the Bond Weequahic,  

Seeking support from readers of the “WHS Note:”

Thanks to the generosity of many of our weekly readers, almost $81,000 has been contributed over the last 25 years to the WHS Alumni Association to support the Weequahic Class of 1963 Scholarship Fund (The Fund). Because of your generosity, The Fund has made a difference in the educational and personal advancement of WHS graduates. Please lend your continued individual support by filling out the attached form (Link to PDF) and committing in 2025 to assisting The Fund and helping the “WHS Note” keep us connected every week.

You may have already made a 2025 contribution, via gift or membership, to the WHS Alumni Association. The “WHS Class of 63 Association” is a separate entity, but we do coordinate as to the mailing of the weekly WHS Alumni “WHS Note.” In their joint and separate ways, both groups work to the benefit of WHS’s students and the school’s viability and are both deserving of your support.

Melanie Berzon (66) highlights a special day for a WHS alumnus:

Weequahic alum June Cohen Halio, Class of 1938 (?), turned 104-years-old on Wednesday, June 11th, 2025. If anyone happens to remember June or her sister Alberta Cohen, Class of 1952 (?), please contact June’s daughter Amy at amyhalio@gmail.com. It would mean a lot to them. They lived on Howard Street.  

The picture, below, is of June (center) on her birthday, with me

wearing my Weequahic sweatshirt (lest)), and June's daughter Amy (right).

J. Paul Blake (68) provides another wonderful “Its-A-Small-Weequahic-World” tale:

Ira "Bernie" Jacobsen (51) is the father of Michael Jacobsen whom I’ve known for more than 20 years. In March, while Michael and I were attending the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Public Administration in Washington, D.C., I mentioned my Newark roots and Weequahic High School. Michael immediately shared that his father was a Weequahic alum. Here’s Bernie’s story as Michael shared with me, along with his father’s photo, below. 

I don’t think I would have known my dad had attended Weequahic except when he was in a rehab facility after a surgery in Boston, he and another patient got into a passionate discussion about going there, and were reminiscing about the “old days.” Paul, when I heard you mention it, I mean it’s not a common name, I was startled. He grew up in Newark, went to Rutgers for a year but failed out due to what he explained to me was “being in a play.” But I think it was that he was in a fraternity and maybe chasing too many girls. 

Dad was in Air Force ROTC at Rutgers, but when he failed out, he tested to get into the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and entered the Academy. He left the Coast Guard after 20 with the rank of Commander. He went to do maritime consulting and eventually worked on Shelter Island, New York as the Manager of the North Ferry Company which operates a ferry between the north fork of Long Island and Shelter Island. They also ran the water and sewage utilities for an area of Shelter Island Heights.

In the Coast Guard, he was transferred multiple times, and as a result, I was born in Seattle. He was then transferred to Monterey for graduate school, to New London to teach at the Academy, and then to “HQ,” which was then the Department of Transportation in DC.

I never lived in New Jersey, but we would make regular pilgrimages to visit his parents in Newark and my aunt Sybil, and her family on Staten Island. Sybil Jacobson graduated from Weequahic in 1948 (picture, below). Dad’s obituary appears at Obituary for Ira Jacobson.  Michael & J. Paul

Jac Toporek’s (6/63) request for Jersey Shore memories were as plentiful as the grains of sand at Bradley Beach (excuse the exaggeration:

Judie Tiplitz Jacobs (1/63)

My grandmother, Bessie Tiplitz, lived in Bradley Beach every summer when I was growing up. As children we went to Maple Avenue Elementary School and then onto Weequahic High. Each of her sons and daughter had a room in the house for a few weeks each month during summer where one family (2 adults and 2 children) slept. No air conditioning!  

Walking a few blocks to the beach. getting our badges, dodging the waves in the Atlantic, and playing in the sand under the boardwalk were the best childhood memories! Sharing the summer with lots of cousins, walking to Mamie’s for candy and growing into teenagers and then being able to go where there were dances at the pavilions are fond memories, too. And, of course, the walks on the boardwalk to Asbury Park, and thinking about mysterious Ocean Grove where you couldn’t park your car on Sundays were all part of sweet, innocent, and wonderful summers spent at the Jersey shore.  Judie 

Jack Lippman (50)

We spent August in Bradley in a kochalein (cook alone) on the first block of 4th Avenue. I remember celebrating VJ Day in 1945 with some other kids in an impromptu parade on the boardwalk in which we made a racket clanging garbage can covers. Jack

Mady Bauman Barna (56)

My memories of Bradley Beach were wonderful. The most outstanding, while walking home from the beach with my cousin in August, 1945, two soldiers in a jeep said, “Little girls go home and tell your moms the war is over.

After reading all the Memorial Day notices a while back in the “WHS Note,” I wanted to remember my husband Don Barna, Army Reservist 322 General Hospital, Camp Drum and two-year active-duty Fort Dix and Camp Bulis, San Antonio Texas. Mady

Mel Rubin (56)

There have been so many memorable experiences, but I will go through the more interesting ones. I befriended Barry Pilger (56) at Peshine Avenue School with our friendship enduring all through high school and beyond. He left us way too soon. He is part of my Shore memory.

The statute of limitations has run out so I can own up to this one. Ocean Grove was still a separate entity in my freshman year with strict rules on Sunday. One Sunday, Barry and I shot off fireworks into Ocean Grove from the Bradley side. The only foot bridge was halfway down the lake. By the time the police crossed the bridge, we were long gone. That same summer, Barry, Ken Klein (56) and I decided to form a club; named it “The Jokers.” Mel 

The WHS NOTE is emailed to you by the WEEQUAHIC HIGH SCHOOL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION for the CLASS OF 1963 ASSOCIATION and editor, Jacob Toporek.



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