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Vita Mutatur, Non Tolitur

We mourn the passing of our classmate Jack Fahy, and offer our condolences to his family. Jack left us on June 16th, 2025. May God have mercy on his soul.

A memorial visitation was held Friday, October 10th, from 4 - 6 pm, at O'Brien Funeral Home, 2028 NJ-35, Wall Township, NJ.

A mass was celebrated Saturday, October 11th at 11:30 AM. at St. Mark's Church, Wall Township.

Inurnment: St. Catherine Mausoleum in Wall Township.

If anyone has any further information, please let us know. We will post information as we receive it.

In this edition of the '58 Blog...

We are happy to hear this report from from Brian Dugan:

"I had triple bypass on 9/19 and everything is good!

Young Brian is in NYC for treatment today & is also doing well!

Tanks for caring."

The Editor extends a Mea Culpa to Joe Rodino and Norm Sippel for the delay in sending them their Bio Cookies, after they submitted their After '58 stories. To make it up to them, we made it 2-dozen cookies, and we hope they enjoy every one.

Vince & Stephanie finally are out from under their mountain of moving cartons, and report that they are now living in their new home, instead of moving into it. See their report and pics in this edition.

We mentioned the Petroc in the last edition, and we decided to feature an issue from back in the day to begin a segment that reflects on our 4-year experience at Prep. Let us know what you think.

Vince reported on another scam attempt to gain access to the bank accounts of his brother, Sal '61.

Scams & Fraud

We reported on the issue Bob and Eileen Filoramo had regarding a scam that cost them a substantial amount of money.

As we were going to press with this edition, Vince's brother, Sal '61, was involved in a very similar situation, where he was manipulated into giving someone control of his computer who subsequently gained access to his bank accounts. Fortunately, Sal was able to contact his bank and froze the account before any funds were lost.

We found this site that you can visit on fbi.gov that provides information on how to spot frauds and what to do if you are contacted by someone looking to share your screen or otherwise gain access to your accounts.

Petroc Retrospective - Fall Freshman Year

A new world was opening up for us in the Fall of 1954, and one of the tools at our disposal to learn what was going on was Prep's official student publication - The Petroc.

Thanks to Hank Weffing's brother John '60, we have every edition of the Petroc published during our time at Prep. We will be highlighting an issue of the Petroc in each edition of the '58 Blog going forward, and we welcome your comments.

The Editor has been going thru the collection, and advises us that we will see the shift from what we thought was hot when we were freshmen to what we knew was really cool when we were seniors.

Click here to see the first in the series.

Dave let us know that his usual Cape Cod project list has gotten considerably shorter as we all get older. He told us he would have at least two fairly ambitious projects each summer, but not so much this year. Vince chimed in that he decided to trim back his project list years ago.

There was chatter about baseball, and Peter mentioned that this year's play off pitching was terrific, much because of the new young pitchers, who have no trouble throwing 100+ fastballs.

Vince reported that he and Stephanie have made a lot of progress with their new house, and their dream of living closer to the rest of the Grillo family had come to pass. Proof of that was the fact that they have had the family over for dinner twice in the 2 months since they moved, whereas in the past, such get togethers were annual events.

We traded stories about when our families first bought a television in the beginning of the TV era, and who was glued to the radio before there was any content on TV worth watching. The chatter shifted to stories about life in the 50's when baseball players like Phil Rizzuto and Yogi Berra had to have side jobs to make ends meet.

Vince let the gang know that his brother Sal '67 came close to being scammed much like the scam the Filoramos ran into a month ago. However, unlike the Filoramos, they were able to get in touch with their bankers who froze their account, which prevented any funds to be removed.

We signed off with a bit of a lament that there were so few of us on the call. Let's do a better job next month

If you can't make it to an in-person Cuppa, you can join the gang in a Zoom Cuppa, wherever you are. We have plenty of room, and there's no entrance fee. The next Zoom Cuppa is scheduled for Monday, Nov 10th @ 12:00 pm EDT. Vince will send out the meeting invitation with the pass code. Please keep the email!

We held our 67th Reunion Summa Bash on Tuesday, July 15th at Bar-A in Belmar, NJ and it was a great day!

We had a total of 32 attendees, close to the number of folks that attended last year's event. We have enough room at these events for more than 50, and we hope to set attendance records next year.

We gave away some cookies, and reviewed the latest results from our Annual Fund projects. Since 1982, when Prep started keeping records of fund raising events, the Class of '58 has raised more than $1.7M for the Annual Fund, the '58 Scholarship Fund, and various other events. Nice work!

The team at Bar-A did a great job at our event. We met from noon 'til 4:00, had some lunch and spent time together with folks we might not have seen since the year before. We captured some great photos and video, which you can see here.

And so, another reunion is in the books. We'll take a week or two off, and then get started on next year's Reunion. Let's make that one another record-breaker!

Prep '58 Website - It's worth another look...

On a Zoom call in May, we had a discussion about the Prep '58 website, and discovered that several guys on the call did not know that there was such a thing as a Prep '58 website. Some thought that the Blog was the only thing available for viewing.

Vince went thru a very quick report on the website (see image of the Home page to the left) and invited everyone to check out all that's available. And there really is a whole lot to see!

The entire collection of Petroc's from our 4 years at Prep;
the '58 Book Library with reviews by the gang; various photo and video collections, and other features of interest.
We have all six of the photos from our senior retreat at Gonzaga, with most of the guys identified.
G'Kid photos sent in over the years;
Links to the '58 Petrean, past Reunions, the After '58 Bio's, and a whole lot more.

If anyone has a suggestion for another feature for the website, send in your idea to Vince, and we'll give it a look.

Click here to visit the Prep '58 website.

Happy browsing!

We made it to 41 Bio's...

... when we received Bio's from Joe Rodino and Norm Sippel. We hope to get to 50 or more. If you have not sent in a Bio, please take a look at the Bio's we have, and send in one of their own. There's a dozen delicious chocolate chunk cookies just waiting to be shipped for sending in your Bio.

'After '58' got started in March, 2017, when we received this suggestion from Bill Kretzer to collect stories from the '58 gang about what they did after graduation.

"I think there would be a bushel of interest in interviews with each & every ‘58 graduate. I for one, since I went away to college and never returned to NJ, didn’t keep in touch as much as I should have and would be curious to hear how everyone’s life turned out."

The Editor asked Bill to send in his story and that was the beginning of the After '58 Bio era. 8 years later, we are at 41 Bio's. We should be approaching 100 Bio's, and we need your help to get there.

We hope every one of the '58 gang will pick up on Bill's suggestion and send in their story in an email to Vince. It takes no more time to put your story together than it would to tell it to your grandkids, so how about it? We will return the favor by sending a baker's dozen of Stephanie Grillo's famous Chocolate Chunk cookies. We've already shipped out over 500 of the best cookies you've ever tasted, and there's more where they came from.

Take a look at the whole collection of Bio's so far.

Halloween Spider Cookies

Vince's wife Stephanie publishes a Baking Blog - Desserts With Stephanie, featuring 100's of recipes for cakes, cookies, pies and other delicious desserts, and we have been featuring them in our '58 Blog. Her recipes produce delicious results, and are easy to follow.

Her Halloween Spider Cookies get rave reviews every Halloween, so we thought you might like to try it this year. Here's the recipe.

Take a peek at the video in the recipe, and give it a try. If you like it, give it a thumbs up. And if you would like to see more recipes, consider supporting Stephanie by becoming a Subscriber.

Click here to subscribe to Stephanie's channel.

BTW, in addition to my duties as videographer, I offer my services as a dessert sampler 😊. I look forward to them every year. They are delicious and the recipe makes them easy to make. Try it!

Bill Wittman shares a G'kid photo...

"Hi Vince,

I would be pleased for you to add the photo to the G'kids section of the Blog.

The photo is of our 7 year old G'daughter Jolie, at her first sunrise celebration, on the beach at 5:30am. Jolie's pose was a spontaneous reaction when I asked her to enjoy the moment. To make the photo, all I had to do was to put the sun in its proper place.

We are presently enjoying a weeks holiday in Ocean City NJ with Rachel and Mike and their two children. (Hard to believe you created their wedding video almost 9 years ago.)

Hope all is going well for you in your new digs.

With appreciation and thanks,

Bill"

Prep '58 Blog - Sept/Oct 2025