To the Editor:

Thanks to North Country This Week for publishing my stories of growing up in 1950s era Potsdam over the past few months.

The memories that flooded out of me like a torrent have been recorded on paper, and my story has been told. Every memory about growing up as a baby boomer in Potsdam that was worth sharing, has been shared –from Diaper Hill to Postwood Park.

I did end up returning to Potsdam in the late 1960s to attend Clarkson University. It was an exciting but turbulent era then—a time of great change on many fronts.

The atmosphere on campus was electric. Students were demonstrating, marching, smoking, and speaking out. We congregated everywhere--often with our professors--to carry on heated discussions about the war, social injustice, the ecology, the Feminist movement, and other weighty issues of the day.

Clarkson offered some liberal-leaning courses—like the one that taught us lessons about institutional racism. It was for that course that I read Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”—a book that changed my life.

The sleepy little town of Potsdam had awakened to the harsh realities of war and a world changing at warp speed. The nightly body counts given on the world news were a constant reminder of the horror that was so far away yet right there in our backyard. There were peace rallies and demonstrations, sit-ins, and flag burning. Students were very concerned with the state of the environment and issues of pollution. I was at Clarkson when the first Earth Day was declared on April 22, 1970.

I was there too when the unthinkable and tragic Kent State massacre took place and our classes and exams were cancelled as students rallied together to grieve and demonstrate their support. Unlike today, the collective student consciousness was consumed with global issues that reached far beyond our individual wants and needs and beyond the confines of a sleepy North Country town. Most of us were not self-absorbed or preoccupied with money and careers. We were trying to solve the world’s problems.

I still return to Potsdam from time to time, but I prefer to remember it the way it was in the 1950s—safe, innocent, and a Camelot in many ways.

Along with my parents, I credit Potsdam for making me the person I am today — for giving me the foundation and the character to have been able to make a small difference in the world.

In July I will be attending a reunion of the Congdon Campus School. I do believe the education I received there made all the difference. The teachers I had like Miss Lavigne, Mr. Eldredge, and especially Mrs. Jackie Jones, had a lasting impact on me—one that transcended academics.

I have lost touch with the friends I went to school with as a child at the Campus School (with the exception of Diana Lawrence), but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that many have been successful and have gone on to leave their mark upon the world.

The Campus School instilled that kind of character. The names Snyder, Barrington, Alpert, Fay, Krebs, Anderson, and Campbell are etched in my memory.

Still I wonder if it’s a mistake to go back and if it would be better instead to just leave my long-ago classmates frozen in time–still innocent and possessing the exuberance of children with futures stretching out before them like the endless horizon.

Sandra Paige Sorell

Formerly of Potsdam