100 years later, a gift from the past arrives

Sometimes, you get lucky.

That was the theme of a toast I gave two years ago at my Mom’s 100th birthday.

Good luck can happen in a lot of ways. Wanting to do something different for Mom’s birthday (what do you get a 100-year-old, anyway?), I sent emails to the elementary, middle and high school she attended growing up in New London, asking for any information they might still have about her. Even if some records had been lost or destroyed, I figured it was worth a try.

Stephen Tracy, then serving as interim superintendent of schools for New London, received one of my emails. Ever the educator, Steve saw an opportunity for a teachable moment.

Steve gathered a dozen eighth-grade volunteers for an after-school project. His students became detectives, historians and scholars, carefully combing through dozens of dusty bound volumes from the 1920s and 1930s that hadn’t been cracked open in decades, searching for information about Mom. Steve’s students learned that history isn’t a litany of dates and dry facts; it begins and ends with individual lives, personal stories, stories of ordinary men and women.

A week before Mom’s birthday, a large gift box with a red bow unexpectedly arrived from New London. Inside, there were pictures of the students, tomes stacked high in front of them, as they worked on the “assignment,” birthday cards, a CD of the kids singing Happy Birthday, a resolution from the New London Board of Education congratulating Mom on her 100th, and a framed resolution signed by the Mayor of New London declaring Feb. 10, 2018 as Selle B. Shifreen Day.

I was astonished. I knew nothing about what Steve had done.

My little search revealed that Mom had, among other things, been voted “most humorous” in high school (seriously?), took college courses in physics and Latin (who knew?) and had a nickname, “Moonglow” Selle. A popular jazz song in the 1930s, “Moonglow” has an upbeat tempo that’s evocative of romance and hot jazz in the swing era. My imagination could conjure up exactly how she would have looked as a beautiful 17-year-old girl, slender with dark brown hair, dancing to a Big Band’s version of “Moonglow” and dreaming about love.

Mom grew up in the small seaside town of New London, home of the Navy’s first submarine base. She was 8 months old in September 1918, when the first outbreak of the Spanish flu pandemic in Connecticut was reported to have occurred in New London. A month later, the entire state was under siege, with 180,000 reported cases. By the end of the lethal pandemic in 1919, the death toll in the United States was estimated to have reached 675,000.

For the second time in her life, a deadly pandemic is now raging all around her. A century’s worth of experience doesn’t immunize anyone from the ravages of COVID-19. At age 102, all that’s left is hope.

Sometimes, you get lucky.

Consider yourself lucky if you ever meet someone like Steve Tracy, who taught his students (and me) volumes about what generosity really means.

Consider yourself lucky if you have the privilege of bestowing a random act of kindness on a stranger, as Steve did for me. Whether you’re on the giving or receiving end, it’s something that you will never forget.

Consider yourself lucky, above all, if one or both of your elderly parents are still alive. If we’ve learned anything during the past several challenging months, it’s that we can’t take anything or anyone for granted anymore.

Two years ago, my mother donned a plastic rhinestone “birthday girl” tiara as family and friends came together to celebrate her 100th birthday.

Confined to a wheelchair by a broken hip, she heard unbidden those familiar melodic riffs of “Moonglow” that the passage of time had not diminished.

In her mind’s eye, with legs straight and slender, she once again floated over the dance floor as the music played:

It must have been moonglow / That led me straight to you