Marianna
High School friend Marianna Shaw Glass died last summer. Marianne Shaw (as she was known to me then) and I met on the athletic field behind Eastern Jr. High School in Old Greenwich, CT on the first day of 7th grade in 1958. We were both 13 years old. The Shaws had just moved from Simsbury, CT and had bought a house in Old Greenwich. Her father worked in Manhattan for an insurance company. He commuted in every day on the train. Mrs. Shaw would meet him at the station in the evenings. Older sister Jennifer attended private school
The major topic of our first meeting was how we had to shave our legs and as neither set of parents would approve of this how would we go about it. Dangerously. By scrounging used blades from our fathers’ razors. Assiduously we shaved our legs. Until one day I cut my leg and had to lie on my bed with my leg up against the wall to stop the bleeding. I still have the scar.
We were both sun crazy. We would start sunbathing in March sitting with cardboard covered in tin foil and well oiled with iodine added to Johnson & Johnson baby oil in the back yard. We both paid a huge price. I have survived cancer five times and Marianna paid the ultimate price last year dying of the complications of leukemia.
Marianna and I were both in the same art classes for years with Mr. O’Hara and Mr. Thurm alternatively in high school. We both were tall and long legged and good at running and trampoline and girls’ hockey. We were both terrific swimmers and used to do our Esther Williams synchronized swimming act at Todd’s Point. We were also very interested in boys. Of the two of us she seems to have had more success with her stable marriage to Stephen for thirty years plus. Marianna was a beautiful teenager. Blond hair, big blue eyes and a to die for figure. She was voted best looking in her senior year.
She was also very sure of herself. She mentioned to my disbelief that my father looked at her inappropriately. This was the first time anyone said something like that but it turned out that my father had a problem and she was absolutely right. It came out many years later that he had abused my younger sister and had made offensive remarks to women friends of my mother’s. But in those days, it was not something anyone discussed.
Marianna had a droll sense of humor. She could be very funny. She christened co-student Ronnie Nizer “Cool Ron Bon in His Nicky Noo Shirt.” This was because he wore Hawaiian shirts way before they were fashionable and topped off with makeup because of his terrible acne. We only discovered later in life that he was gay but then half the men in our senior class were so no surprises there.
There was a third to our team, Sharon Williams, who also felt uncomfortable around my father. And there was a fourth, Sally Plimpton, who was not part of our group but she and Sally became very close in their senior year of high school. As we grew older we drifted apart. I went to London, she went to Parsons School of Design. I wanted to become a graphic artist too but my mother would not let me. She insisted that I go to secretarial college and I insisted that I go to London. Marianna did come to see me in London. Walking through Covent Garden one of the barrow boys shouted “Morning beautiful!” to Marianna and “Hello kipper feet.” to me. She then continued by train to France and Spain. We wrote intermittently.
She met John Hetherington and Adam came along. I was living in Frankfurt and then Tokyo and on a US visit from Tokyo, my second husband and I stayed with them at their town house in Philadelphia. Then I moved to Rome. On a US visit from Rome I had my first bout of cancer which caused me to be at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia in 1976. Alix was about 4 years old. She was living in the IM Pei apartment building by herself now separated from John Hetherington but seeing Stephen Glass strictly as her therapist at the time. I returned to Rome and in 1981 moved to Boston with my one year old son’s father. She and Stephen were to marry in Pennsylvania and we went to their wedding. Sharon Williams and her husband (who has since passed away) were there too. Joseph Kennedy, Jr. was also getting married that day in the hotel we were staying at.
I then moved back to Rome and we slowly lost touch. A letter here and there. A Christmas card. Then nothing. In 1983 we had a 30th Greenwich High School Reunion which would be the last time I spent time with her, Sharon and Sally.
By this time both her grandparents had died and we had a little memorial brunch for them. I think I remember correctly that she was in bed with her grandmother when she died in her sleep. In 1985 I moved to Boston and I found Marianna’s telephone number by asking 411.
Over time, I would call her every once in a while. Finally after a longer than usual period of silence in 1993 I last spoke to her. She then told me of her leukemia and her daughter Alix donating bone marrow; her radiation and chemo and her low blood pressure and the car accident which left her quite seriously impaired. Then silence. But she obviously continued on for a good 20 or so years. Amazing.
I am sorry she passed away last summer. She was very young really but what a courageous fight she waged. She was amazingly talented. Her architectural renderings were some of the best I have seen. My son’s father is an architect and we both worked for many years in Rome for an American architectural firm so I have seen my fair share of renderings and know how outstanding Marianna’s were.
Alix’s baby daughter has her big blue eyes. Nice legacy.