It was the second week of September in the year of 1974. The Ali/Forman rumble in the jungle was only a month away. The country was only days away from President Gerald Ford pardoning former president Richard Nixon from going to trial due to his involvement In the Watergate scandals that had engulfed his administration. That particular autumn I was a 14-year-old, five feet tall and 105 pounds quarterback of the J.V. football team matriculating as a freshman at New Paltz Central High School. My first period class, which started at 7:44 am, was Earth Science with the famous Mr. George Campbell as my instructor. George had recently been named by the New York State Teachers Association as ‘New York Teacher of the year.’ In myself and Mr. Campbell’s case when great teacher met apathetic student there was nothing he could do, even with all his amazing teaching skills. If a stubborn me decided I wasn’t interested in the subject matter the teacher didn’t have a chance. Mr. Campbell was a serious educator who did not like his classroom disturbed in the slightest way. But today, for the most attractive girl in the school, he made an exception. The tall young lady with hair the color of the sun was wearing tight blue corduroy slacks a beige pullover, and a sheepish grin. “Excuse me Mr. Campbell, I am on the yearbook staff, and I oversee getting teacher photos. May I please come and take a couple of shots as you teach class.” It turned out to be a morning of firsts. It would be the first and only time I saw George Campbell rattled, and it was my first introduction to the “it” girl of New Paltz High.
Cynthia D. Conner stood approximately five feet nine inches with perfect golden locks that extended halfway down her back to go along with her sparkling blue eyes. She was the hottest young woman this 14-year-old boy had ever seen. “Sure, come on in,” George, who was renowned for his tomfoolery, was now walking towards Cindi with a shit eating grin on his face. “Here sit on the couch, I want the yearbook editor to be in the picture with me. Cindi, who I would learn later, had her own affinity for shenanigans positioned herself reluctantly onto the couch. The awkward, yet still fun loving, photo appeared in the 1975 spring edition of the Huguenot yearbook. The record says fate never gave me a chance to have a conversation with Cindi Conner in high school, or anytime thereafter. Still, she was the kind of beauty and force that made it impossible to not be interested in checking her out. In the school year 1974/75 Cindi Conner was the best looking and most popular person who attended New Paltz High (believe me, she had a lot of competition). I remember thinking what is a little boy like myself doing in the same school with a full-blown woman like Cindi. All those years ago I wondered what becomes of a stunning beauty from a small upstate New York town. Forty-eight years later trolling through my Facebook feed the news flashed before me: Cynthia D. Conner, 65, of New Milford New Jersey, died in a one car accident Saturday morning in an area near her residence.
That morning, 48 years ago, I saw Cindi Conner in her prime. A tall, sexy, life of the party kind of chick. Her looks and her body left her little choice but to learn all aspects of men early. From what I could observe back than by the time Cindi was a senior in high school she had very little use for all things that us regular students were embracing. She dated mostly college boys who had been upperclassmen at New Paltz the previous few years. From everything I saw then, and hear now, Cindi was consistently the life of whatever party. It would not be a stretch to say Cindi was born into a family who was affluent and carried much influence on the local level. Her mom was the daughter of the “go to doctor” in New Paltz in the days when the local physician was the wealthiest man in town. Her Dad was a larger-than-life figure who owned and operated a full-service gas station on the corner of 44/55 just below the hairpin turn. Looking in from the outside Cindi and New Paltz was a match made in heaven.
The striking free spirited teenager and a progressive college town. According to her friends Cindi was part of the New Paltz downtown bar scene at the age of 16. I heard more than one story of her mother, in her bathrobe, storming into New Paltz bars to drag her partying teenage daughter home. She was not the cheerleader type, yet she dated the high schools’ top jocks. I know very little about what happened to Cindi after high school. She married a guy she met at the small private college she went to. The marriage didn’t last too long, and it produced one child, a son. Some thirty years ago Cindi settled in a private gated community in West Milford New Jersey where she was well respected for her bigger than life personality and her devotion to her pets.
There are thousands of small towns across America. We do not get to choose which one we will spend our adolescence. When we start out, we know nothing about the people we will come of age with. When you attend the same high school with a group of people for four years you are automatically linked into a bond that simply will never fade. We got to see each other in our most vulnerable and insecure states. From the surface we knew everything about our classmates. We knew their grades, their friends, what their father did for a living, and who they were dating or wanted to date. We were great at judging surfaces and not so good at understanding everyone’s individual emotional circumstances. We looked to each other to find our own direction. My brother Gary was a senior when I was a freshman, so I had a front row seat to take it all in. I looked to his friends to teach me the ropes. Watching Cindi, my brother, and his classmates find their away around that last year of high school helped me put together an itinerary for my future. Sad, but true, high school for some was the highlight of their lives. For others it was just a necessary step to move on to the next stage. Still, others hated the entire process of the public schools and passed the day away in the “pot lounge.” No matter what our experiences were in high school the details stick in our mind like a heavy weight. I shake my head at how haunted I got about the past events that made the back page of school paper. I can’t help but see Cindi standing in that doorway of Mr. Campbell’s first period Earth Science class. That day it looked like Cindy was happy, but somehow misplaced. She had a bit of an uncomfortable look about her as if she had outgrown her current situation. The former classmates I have spoken to about Cindi have very little information about her life after high school. My recollection that morning was of a young lady in the prime of her life without a clue as to what her next move would be.
For the moment Cindi and I were in high school together we never had enough commonality to share communications. From where I sat, she was a superstar and I was on the bench a long way from getting into the game. It wouldn’t be a stretch to speculate that Cindi’s best years of her life may have already been behind her. I may have been temporarily on the bottom of the high school “cool” spectrum, but I could sense that my time was coming. Everything I have read about Cindi since her passing indicates she was the last person to call it a night. Cindi was the one who wanted to not only take in all the fun, but she also was the first to participate as a major player amidst the shenanigans. Was it possible that morning back in 1974 that Cindi Conner’s best days were behind her? During the Holiday season Cindi Conner’s sudden death comes as another harsh reminder of how fragile our time on earth is. In general terms we never lose interest in seeing what happened to all the supporting actors we came of age with. What did they do for a career? Did they stay local? Family? Did they find the “whatever” they set out to find on their journey? One of New Paltz’s brightest lights was put out in West Milford New Jersey at age the of 65. I would venture to guess that her heart and soul never left New Paltz.
My personal memory of Cindi will always be fixated on that early morning in 1974. A dazzling blond was nuzzling her way onto the couch to play victim to Mr. Campbell’s lechery. It, of course, was all in good fun and I am sure I was not the only student to enjoy the distraction from the days lesson. On paper Cindi leaves behind a son Nicolas, her beloved dog Luna, and a slew of neighbors and friends who described her as a “force of nature.” Her opinions were powerful and unbending, there were no awards in the High School yearbook for her being the teacher’s pet or winning any academic awards, yet her smiling dimpled face is spattered all over the pages of the 1975 Huguenot. I received a private message from a male high school mate of Cindi. It came right at the time I was thinking about putting a story together about Cindi. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to see Cindi at the reunion (New Paltz High had a big reunion this summer), and now that won’t happen. Cindi was always ready for a party. Over the years she became political and had a fallen out with some of her good old high chums over the recent political nonsense.” He went on to say: “We must come to a time of healing. We have more things in common than we do separating us.” My wiser and older friend usually has a good perspective regarding this turbulent and always uncertain world. In death we look for messages, sometimes we can see them clearly and other times we are left empty and confused. Cindi Conner lived life on her terms. Hopefully, she found the peace in her later years that avoided her in her youth. This is one time we can use a premature tragic death to gain a deeper appreciation of where we came from and what we still have left.
RIP Cindi…… You and I have a plethora of New Paltz stories to tell each other when we meet up in the next life.
