June 10, 2007 -- IF thinking back to your high school years brings the same bittersweet memories I have, you'll see how sad it is to wake up one day and to realize your old school will soon cease to exist. Lafayette HS in Brooklyn is part of my DNA. It's my youth - and the city of New York is erasing it.
But they can't touch the memories. I can hear the music, The Penguins singing, "Earth Angel, Earth Angel/ will you be mine." Or the incredibly untalented Johnny Ray scratching, "If your sweetheart sends a letter of goodbye/ It's no secret, you'll feel better if you c-r-r-r-r-r-y."
Walking in the halls of Lafayette in those days, it was as if you'd stepped onto the set of "Grease." The halls were filled with black-leather-jacketed would-be tough guys singing, "Life could be a dream / Sha Boom / If I could take you up in paradise up above / Sha Boom"
There was a magic in Brooklyn in those days - and a big part of that magic, for me, was the high school called Lafayette.
Now, in the mother of all dumb moves, they're closing it. The Board of Education, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have thrown up their hands and admitted the bad kids have won. No mas, they cry. We're closing the school.
Why? Well, the Department of Education cited Lafayette as having below-average four-year graduation rates and academic performance. Then there are the fights and kids being picked on and serious racial disturb- ances . . .
If those are the criteria, Lafayette should have been closed 50 years ago. There's nothing wrong today with the school that a few good teachers and some strong security presence can't cure.
Nothing has changed to call for this move. When I went to Lafayette, as many as 20 percent of its boys quit school before they turned 16. They got working papers and mostly went to work on the docks - lifting, hauling, pushing and straining.
At that same time, Lafayette graduated a kid named Fred Wilpon, who went on to become a New York leader and now owns the Mets. Ask him about Lafayette.
OK, another kid there then, named Frankie, is now part of the witness-protection program. He admits he whacked eight or nine other mobsters. But another Lafayette grad is Sandy Koufax - arguably the greatest pitcher in history and one of the nicest people in the world.
A lot of kids who went to Lafayette got into trouble and "went away." But the same school graduated more Major League Baseball players than any in New York, including Ken and Bobby Aspromonte and John Franco.
Lafayette was the high school of artists Peter Max and Maurice Sendak, actors Paul Sorvino and Art Metrano, singer Vic Damone, sportswriters Phil Pepe and Larry Merchant and financial wizards and community leaders like Michael Steinhardt and Frank Borelli.
In a speech at a reunion some years ago, one distinguished graduate recalled how, as a young Jew at Lafayette, he was picked on and was beaten up by the Italian kids every day at 3 o'clock. His name was Larry King. (I came up to the podium to speak and told King that he had been avenged. I'm an Italian married to a Jewish woman, Judy Licht - and every day at 3, she beats me up.)
Lafayette has always been a tough school with a low graduation rate. I know. I barely made it out, with a 59 average. I cut classes; I shot craps in front of the school.
And, yes, I accidentally knocked over the principal, Mr. Grady, when I was running away as he broke up one of our crap games. (One of others in that game became a successful doctor. Two others are successful businessmen. One is a retired policeman; another, a retired fireman. Six of the other seven turned out fine. The seventh, I've heard, served some time.)
I went back to Lafayette a few years ago to speak at the graduation. I'd heard and read all the stories about how the school was "Horror High." What I found was a school that hadn't changed that much from my time - except for the diversity of the students. The graduating class was made up of Italians, Jews, African-Americans, Asians, Russians and Poles.
After my speech, an African-American woman asked me to pose for a picture with her son. She was proud as she could be. Her eyes were so filled with tears she had trouble looking through the camera's viewfinder. "He's my first to be going to college," she said - then put her hand on the shoulder of her little girl and added, "but he's not going to be the last."
That's the Lafayette I'll always remember: a tough school - but a great school, where every student tasted life.
Lafayette was and is in a poor, working-class neighborhood. It will never be at the top of the list for brains. But it will not take a back seat to any school in this town for heart.
I want my school back.
Jerry Della Femina is chairman of Della Femina Rothschild Jeary and Partners Advertising.
