DOVER HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF '69

THEN & NOW
———————————————
GAYLE EMERY
Contact info:
Phone - (212) 308-8956
E-mail - dgmfield@msn.com 

1969	2009

CONFESSIONS OF A DRAMA (CLUB) QUEEN
or
40 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GAYLE EMERY MERREFIELD

Things I have changed my mind about since high school:
    1. Naturally curly hair - asset, not liability
   2. Lipstick named Whiter Shade of Pale - not attractive, at any age

Some things I did during the DHS years:
    3. Ate cold scrambled eggs, dyed green to suggest a vegetable, on stage during the 1966 production of The Miracle Worker. Ken Ollweiler and Pam Locker may have also partaken. Yum.
    4. Took piano lessons from Mr. Shomo, who exposed me to some great music. I enjoyed playing . . . practicing, not so much.
    5. Lived for the annual drama club trips to New York City. Our senior year a few of us went to see a matinee of a new
play with Hal Holbrook. Mr. Kinder, the drama teacher, somehow arranged for Holbrook and one of the young actors to take a few minutes to meet us after the show. I still have the Playbill for Does A Tiger Wear a Necktie?, with autographs from Hal Holbrook and Al Pacino.
    6. Most useful class I took at Dover High: Personal Typing, taught by Tim Brackett. It paid the rent until I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Moving on:
    7. From the department of What Was I Thinking? Launched myself into marriage to a college classmate. Really. We were both 19 and ran out of gas in about 3 years.
    8. Best decision of my early adulthood: Letting go of the 'practice marriage' (1974) and moving from Tallahassee, FL, to start a new life in Atlanta.
    9. Transformational event #1, Atlanta, 1975: Responded to the challenge of a radio ad to become a volunteer reading tutor for illiterate adults.
    10. What it led to: I hit on the notion of speech therapy as a viable and interesting career, even though I'd never known anyone with that occupation.
    11. What I loved about studying speech-language pathology at the University of Georgia (Athens, 1976-1978): Everything. From the first day of classes, it felt like what I should be spending my life doing.
    12. How long I lived in the dropping-off point of the world, Butler, GA (50 miles from anywhere, 100 miles from Atlanta): 10 months. My first job after graduate school, in a rural, way-below-the-poverty level school system. No children were harmed as a result of my ascent up a steep learning curve that year. In fact, I would have stayed longer, except…
    13. Timing is everything [aka Transformational event #2]: I accepted a friend's offer to arrange a blind date with David Merrefield, a reporter and editor, and the rest is, um, history. The best Friday the 13th of our lives. We married a little more than a year later (1979).
    14. Parenting 101: I also became a third parent to David's daughter Sherri, who now at age 39, surprises me with her expressions of appreciation for the part I played in her growing up years.
    15. Transformational event #3: The birth of our son Clark in November 1982. He's a splendid young man and a frequent source of pride to his parents. David likes to say that Clark inherited the more desirable aspects of each of our personalities. He also inherited his father's reporter genes and just completed his Masters degree in journalism.
   16. Transformational event #4: Moving from Atlanta to New York (1984), thanks to a corporate promotion from David's employer, Fairchild Publications.
    17. Place we lived the longest: Staten Island, NY, 22 years; twenty years in the same house. It may be called The Forgotten Borough, but we have good memories.

You'd be surprised how many speech-language pathologists started out with theatre degrees.

    18. What's great about being a speech clinician: it simultaneously summons my inner Stephen Hawking and my inner Meryl Streep. Works out pretty well most of the time.
    19. They pay me to do this? Most work days were so much fun it was hard to believe a paycheck was part of the deal. I developed my skills working in the public schools in Georgia. When we moved to Staten Island, I had long, productive stints with infants and toddlers, and later with preschool special needs students. In 1996 I opened my own private practice, which was rewarding beyond my imagining. I discovered the joys of answering only to myself, and learned that self-employment is best characterized as a time-thief. It was a splendid decade of work and growth. I have been humbled many times over to have been entrusted by parents to help their children.
    20. Proudest professional accomplishment (2005): Becoming one of about 40 speech pathologists world-wide to be trained as an instructor in the PROMPT technique, a system of tactile-kinesthetic input that helps one learn motor movements for speech. [PROMPT is an acronym, see more at www.promptinstitute.com ]. I teach the technique to other speech clinicians several times a year. Through PROMPT I have met some of the finest clinicians in the world, and they are truly my 'tribe.'
    21. Haven't retired yet: In addition to teaching PROMPT, I work with a few children privately in Manhattan. I also work about one day a week for a neurodevelopmental pediatrician. Together we evaluate young children with special needs - fascinating and intense, and it reminds me I'm not done learning.

Live from New Yawk:
    22. Transformational event #5: We sold our house and car, I closed my practice and we left Staten Island for Manhattan (September 2006). Being the custodians of a 90+ year old house wasn't the way we wanted to spend our time anymore.
    23. Don't you miss your house? OR More proof that timing is everything: Absolutely no regrets in moving from a six bedroom house to a one bedroom apartment. That the apartment is spacious and light and has a killer view of the East River and the Manhattan skyline eased the transition, to the extent there was one.
    24. Things I don't do anymore: Shovel snow, rake leaves, worry about roof leaks, trim hedges or drive a car very often.
    25. What I like about living in Manhattan: Everything. It's pretty much as I expected it to be, except better. Doormen are great; we walk/bus/subway everywhere; Irish bars and other sources of sustenance are abundant; we go to the theatre as often as the budget will tolerate it.
    26. Cool stuff about our neighborhood, #1: Two weeks after we moved in, a film crew showed up around the corner to shoot a scene for the Russell Crowe/Denzel Washington movie, American Gangster.
    27. Cool stuff about our neighborhood, #2: The Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre is ½ block away from my apartment. The 'stars of tomorrow' are smoking on the sidewalk as we pass by. Distinguished alumni include Joanne Woodward, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, James Caan, Allison Janney, Christopher Lloyd, Chris Noth, Mary Steenburgen, and just about everyone you've ever seen on CSI or Law & Order. www.neighborhoodplayhouse.org
    28. Cool stuff about our neighborhood, #3: We live a few blocks north of the United Nations. It gets pretty lively with major motorcades, especially when the General Assembly is in session each fall.
    29. Slightly embarrassing detail about our neighborhood: Nancy Grace (of HNN) lives in our building. But we got here first. Actually, her 54th St. persona is superior to her tv persona.

A few final details:
    30. Number of body piercings: 3 - one in each ear; one in my navel, acquired on the occasion of my 50th birthday.
    31. Number of tattoos: 6
    32. Calm down: The tattoos are more like blue freckles. They stake out the perimeter of my left breast, so that well-beamed radiation therapy would ward off a recurrence of the wee bit of cancer that snuck up on me in 1999. So far, so good. I do sometimes wear temporary tattoos to good effect.
    33. Farthest I've ever been from home: Hong Kong (1995, while the Brits were still there). David's work included lots of travel in the '80s and '90s. When we could arrange it, the whole family went along. We had some great experiences together, and this was one of the most memorable.
    34. I have discovered I have a special aptitude for Beach Vacations: We have chased the sun all up and down the East Coast of the US, across the Caribbean, along the Mexican Riviera and once on the French Riviera. I know it sounds easy, but do you have any idea how hard it is to lie perfectly still in the sun for hours on end? To put on sunglasses and sunblock and think of nothing?
    35. Places I'll revisit one day: St. Barth's, Denmark, Italy
    36. Places still on my list: Greece, Scandinavia, Scotland, the Canary Islands, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Africa, Australia, New Zealand
    37. Favorite travels of 2008: Point Reyes National Seashore, Marin County, California. Clark's summer internship at a small newspaper near this magnificent landscape occasioned a wonderful week of visiting and touring the area.
    38. Dark Cloud of 2008: David lost his job, after 29 years with the same publication.
    39. Silver Lining of 2008: David lost his job. Remember, timing is everything. Other things happen. Life is good.

And now it's 2009!
    40. Short term goal: To attend yoga class with enough regularity and patience that I become able to do a headstand in the middle of the room. Maybe by the 2019 reunion.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone in August.

Contact info: Phone - 212.308.8956 Email - dgmfield@msn.com . I have a Facebook page, too

Also see: www.promptinstitute.com