A Trip Back in Time

On a warm, humid Sunday in August, beneath a sky that threatened rain, Audrey and I visited the Hebrew Cemetery in Rock Island, Ill.

Taking a handful of black stones — and, oddly, a golf ball — from a bucket, we walked to the far end of a row, to the gravestone that marks where her parents are buried.

Circumstances four years ago prevented a planned unveiling for my mother-in-law’s portion of the stone, so Audrey scheduled a Zoom call for family to join in chanting the Kaddish and reminiscing.

Afterward, we placed the black stones on the gravestone. I placed the golf ball above my father-in-law’s name. I think he would have appreciated that.

As we walked across the cemetery, to the graves of Audrey’s paternal grandparents, I noted the names on other markers, many known to me as friends of her family.

Lastly, we placed stones on the grave of her infant brother, who lived only a few days, and Audrey placed a stone on the grave of a friend’s infant brother.

The cemetery visit came toward the end of a weekend trip back in time, as it were.

On the Friday night, I posted on Facebook: “If you ever truly want to feel out of place, attend the reception at your spouse’s 50th high school reunion.”

Over the years, I’ve met a handful of Audrey’s classmates, but I stayed on the edge of the reception, watching as the Rock Island High School class of 1976 renewed acquaintances — aided by name tags that helpfully included a photo of what the wearer looked like in high school.

Later that evening, as the reunion moved informally to the lounge of the hotel where many were staying, I was welcomed into the fold and — putting faces to names I’d heard about over the years — listened as one old story after another was told.

As a few of the guys relived decades-old memories of their days on the baseball team, it was easy to think of Bruce Springsteen’s song “Glory Days.”

At some point, I said something that suggested I had knowledge of the history and geography of this community, anchored by cities on the Illinois and Iowa sides of the Mississippi River.

This is where the Mississippi River curves east-west. Metaphorically, the lesson in that geography is that life takes unexpected changes in course and there is much to learn if you follow the flow.

This is where I began my professional career 48 years ago, as a newspaper’s night side police beat reporter. For two of my five years there, my beat was the city of Rock Island.

I met Audrey in this community, two days before the 1980 election, when (filling in for a colleague) I covered a political event that she organized. We married five years later.

I’ve never attended my own high school reunions, but I came with Audrey because of the personal and professional significance this area holds for me, and — not knowing when we might return — an opportunity to visit the cemetery.

The building adjacent to the cemetery was, for many years, the home of the Tri-City Jewish Center, the Conservative congregation where Audrey became a bat mitzvah.

(The name Tri-City pre-dates the area becoming known as the Quad-Cities, which actually is comprised of two cities in Iowa and three in Illinois. The name Quint-Cities never took hold.)

This building, the “new” Jewish Center (as distinct from the “old” building in downtown Rock Island) is now home to a public library branch and a YMCA.

A couple of years ago, the congregation moved across the river to Davenport, Iowa, where it shares a building — and a rabbi — with a Reform congregation that moved out of its long-time Davenport home, because declining memberships made maintaining their own buildings financially unfeasible.

The day before our visit to the cemetery, a couple of Audrey’s high school classmates placed stones on the graves of their parents and grandparents. They also left stones at the graves of Audrey’s parents.

That’s the kind of Jewish community they grew up in, one where decades after Sunday school and Hebrew classes, decades after bar and bat mitzvahs, you lay stones on the graves of a friend’s parents, because growing up you knew these adults and remember those times.

Though the reunion participants are in their late 60s and scattered about the country, the affection they maintain for their hometown, for their school, and for the experiences of their youth (including those particular to the Jewish classmates), was evident throughout the weekend.

There was a moment, during a Saturday night dinner cruise on the Mississippi River, when, as the “Rocky” class of ‘76 pressed together for photographs, I stood alone and looked back-and-forth at the banks on the Iowa and Illinois sides, appreciating the personal and professional distance I have traveled since arriving that summer long ago.