Douglas Allen Young

Happy birthday, Namsoo!

I first met Allen in 11th grade chemistry class--initially with Mrs. Rosenfeld and later with Mr. Tansley. He was teased relentlessly by the overstocked football team players with the "Bozo" routine, which eventually led to a fight in the hallway after one class between Allen the biggest teaser. The fight was a draw and neither was seriously hurt. That was enough to to earn him a degree of respect. Allen later leveraged his unwanted nickname when he ran for a seat on the student counsel, which he won (I voted for him). We stayed friends through our senior year, though only saw him at reunions afterwards. I made extra time during one of my teaching trips to the Pittsburgh area a couple of years ago to visit him and wife at their apartment followed by dinner at one of their favorite nearby restaurants. I hoped to see them again at our 50th reunion but his health issues prevented that. He was a kind soul, always took the high road, and was a class act. He will be sorely missed by me and many others.

Posted on: Apr 22, 2024 at 10:12 AM

Posted on: Apr 21, 2024 at 8:19 PM

One of my hobbies is railroading in all forms--real, modeling, history, photography. authoring magazine articles and books, and doing presentations on various topics. One of my sidebar hobbies in this space is dining artifacts--most notably china and menus used on the dining cars. The weekend prior to our 50th reunion, I was invited to do PowerPoint lecture presentations on the subject--complete with sample show-and-tell pieces-- at the B&O Railroad Museum in downtown Baltimore MD. I thought they'd have me do this in a conference room, but instead they set me up in the middle of their main 1884 roundhouse building, right on the turntable! I'm wearing an authentic B&O RR head waiter's jacket, Navy blue trousers and bow tie, white shirt, and brass buttons for the jacket I was able to find on eBay. About half of the china pieces in the display were from the museum's collection, while the rest were from my own collection. I may be officially retired now, but I still keep busy teaching project management courses to adults, fitness training and railroading stuff!

Posted on: Nov 08, 2023 at 3:16 PM

Wedding photo of Maureen and me, October 22, 1983. She went to Nazareth Academy in NE Philly for high school, which was where the smart Catholic girls went. Kinda made sense that we'd be a good pair intellectually, and as it turned out, in every other way a couple can be! Ironically, the odds of me ever seeing a day like this were very remote during my youth, as I had a very sullen and sour attitude about family life, including dating, marriage, raising kids, etc.--all due to my early family turmoil which I noted in my opening comments. From around age 11 through 21 all I wanted to do was live on an isolated mountaintop away from everyone. I never dated--no proms, no dances, no nothing during that entire time. Going to CHS, which was an all-boys school in our time and not co-ed like it is now, made it easier to avoid the ladies. My late maternal grandmother, who I lived with while at CHS and college, actually asked me point blank one day if I was gay, since I never went on any dates with girls! I wasn't gay (nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't me), but my attitude needed a serious adjustment. I didn't finally go out on my first "date" of sorts until I was working at my first full-time employer--a lunch outing in July 1978 with a newly hired receptionist. I didn't make much traction in the mating game until I got desperate--I ran a personal ad in Philadelphia Magazine in the September 1981 issue. I think I spent around $35 for the ad. Didn't expect any responses--and got 20! Turned into what I called my "dating boot camp"! The 8th response was Maureen. We met in person for the first time at Mace's Crossing Pub in downtown Philly, and that's when the magic started. Still happily married after 40 years! I've really lived two completely different lives. All of this will be included the book I'm hoping to publish next year.

Posted on: Nov 06, 2023 at 2:32 PM

If I seemed rather quiet, shy, anti-social and non-participative during our junior (my first) school year at CHS in 1972-73, there was a reason for that--growing up in an insane, poor and violent family, which included a stay at a kid's home, tends to do that to people! Either that or it turns them into insane and violent psychopaths themselves! A few of you may remember me, but most won't and that's okay since I largely kept to myself during high school--especially my first year. I started to integrate more fully my second (senior) school year. As a consequence, I've gotten to know more about my classmates at reunions than when I was in school!

My father was already psychotic and undergoing counseling before he met my mother, but neither he nor his parents let her know about it, so she learned the hard way after they got married in 1954. I was born 2 years later, which only made things worse. My sister was born 3.5 years after me, which made life even more untenable, as my father's pedophilia issues began to surface. After he was arrested and jailed in the early 1960s, he was told to either move away and get professional counseling, else face criminal prosecution from neighborhood parents. My parents chose door #1, so we moved away. My mother tried the best she could to hold everything together, but just after JFK was shot and killed, my father got in trouble again so she finally realized that hjer own children were at risk so it was time to leave and ultimately divorce him. We temporarily lived with my mother's parents in Mt. Airy in Philadelphia for about 6 months starting in December 1963 until she was able to buy her own property--a storefront apartment building on Germantown Ave. I went to Henry Houston Elementary School for the remainder of 2nd grade through the 5th grade. I would have continued on further there except my mother suffered the first of 3 major mental breakdowns in the fall of 1966. By the end of the school year in the spring of 1967, she was incarcerated in a mental hospital--severe paranoid schizophrenia was the diagnosis. My sister and I lived part of the summer with our grandparents, but then they sent us to a children's home in August. We stayed there until the courts awarded custody to my father and stepmother in Radnor township. We all argued in court that going back to my father was a bad idea, but the court ruled against us. The next 3 years became the most miserable years of our lives (we called them the "Dark Ages"), as our fears of our father's bad behavior were confirmed (he hadn't changed a bit), and his new wife was just as psychotic and violent as he was. I estimated that over that 3 year span I was beaten over 1000 times between them for various "infractions". By age 14, in the summer of 1970, I reached my breaking point and ran away from home. i initially went all the way to Valley Green in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, but that wasn't a viable long-term living arrangement, so eventually ended up back with my mother, who had since recovered from her 2nd mental meltdown, and had married and then quickly divorced by stepfather--an ex-con who was shot trying to flee a burglary years before, but who had gone straight since. Of my 4 parents and stepparents, he was by far the sanest and kindest one, but the one who I barely knew. I went to Leeds Junior High for the 9th grade, and since I didn't know about CHS's enrollment process, missed the opportunity to attend there for the 10th grade, so instead went to Germantown Lutheran Academy, Later that fall, my mother suffered her 3rd mental collapse--worse than the prior 2-- and ran away from us in early 1972 before we could get her back into the mental hospital. We wouldn't see her or know her whereabouts for the next 9 years. My sister and I lived by ourselves in the upstairs apartment of our mother's property for the next several months. My grandfather paid the monthly rent for the storefront lease to me, and I paid the bills. He also gave me some added money from store profits to help pay for food. I also worked part-time jobs after school hours and weekends and sold whatever was of value in our mother's house to raise cash. I basically ran the house at age 15 as we went to school. A couple of weeks after my mother ran away, my father found out that she had done so, and showed up at my mother's home with my stepmother with the intention of taking my sister and me back to live with them in Radnor again. He had gotten my mother's keys to her property, let himself in, but I chased him and my stepmother out with a baseball bat, and subsequently changed the door locks. That was the last day I ever saw him alive. Continuing to live by ourselves might have lasted for years, except that my grandfather became ill in the summer of 1972--initially diagnosed as hepatitis, but later was confirmed as stage 5 colon cancer. He had earlier helped me enroll at CHS, so I started attending there for my junior year in early September as he lay dying in the hospital. He passed during the school strike at the end of September. My grandmother and I then cleared out their store, abandoned my mother's property, and my sister and I moved back in with our grandmother for the 3rd time in our lives. Our grandmother was very depressed, and we feared she might lose it entirely and ship us back to our father, but fortunately didn't go that far. I became sick with asthmatic bronchitis that winter and used the holiday break and strike time to recover. At first I wondered if I'd even make it at CHS--new school, didn't know anyone except Namsoo Dunbar (we were in Mrs. Vickerman's class for the 2nd grade at Houston) and Charles Cooper (9th grade at Leed's), was all boys, had tougher academic standards, etc. but eventually became more comfortable and felt like maybe I really belonged by the spring of 1973. All the crazy and violent family people were gone, so life at home slowly calmed down. My junior year thus became a transition year of sorts--the beginning of a shift from a life of insanity and violence to normalcy. In summary, my first 16+ years of life was like living in a giant high-speed blender constantly trying to grind me into little pieces--now almost feels like it was a horror movie I watched and wasn't something I actually experienced. It could have been worse--living in an impoverished ghetto or war-torn country would certainly have qualified--but it was certainly a tough way to start life. I never disclosed any of this to my CHS classmates at the time because it was so painful and embarrassing, plus few students or teachers would have had a frame of reference to understand it, so I just kept it to myself.

I started to come out of my shell at CHS, so to speak, during my senior year. I rode the 'L' bus to-from CHS each school day. I survived financially on after-school jobs (Temple Beth Tikvah janitor in Erdenheim, Edelman's Stamps & Coins in Jenkintown (rode the 55 bus to get there from school), Social Security Survivor's Benefits after my father passed (ended up being a blessing, not a sorrowful event), borrowed money from my maternal grandmother, obtained college grants to help offset tuition, and took out a college student loan. Started off at the low bar after graduating from CHS despite getting the cherished "Bachelor of Arts" degree--Philadelphia Community College (Architecture) first, then Peirce College (Business management), I effectively became an "emancipated minor" long before there was such a legal concept. Getting away from the worst of the family chaos ended up being highly beneficial as I was able to fully normalize by the time I joined the full-time workforce in early 1978. I got my Wharton degree at night after work hours. Going to CHS and college and making some friends along the way helped me navigate my path to a normal life.

CHS effectively became a springboard for me to not only grow my circle of friends and acquaintances, but also give me the academic foundation and confidence that I could attend college and achieve success in life. Thankfully my family as an adult bears NO resemblance to the family of my youth! Now that our 50th reunion is over, I would like to express how much I enjoyed the events and meeting everyone again, and to thank everyone for indulging me as I shared my story about what preceded my arrival at CHS and what happened after I graduated. I'm working on a book about the experience--already included my sister's edits, working on adding my wife's edits and hope to have it ready to publish later in 2024. Working title is "Wishes in the Wind". What you've read above is just the Cliff Notes version! Since my wife encouraged me to write my story down, I've found it much easier to share the highlights verbally with others. I'll post an announcement on this site when the book is published and available.

BTW, I started going by my middle name 'Allen' after high school and have ever since. People who call me 'Douglas' or 'Doug' today are either people I haven't seen in decades or are telemarketers trying to sell me something on the phone!

Posted on: Nov 06, 2023 at 2:09 PM

Posted on: Nov 06, 2023 at 2:09 PM

Posted on: Nov 06, 2023 at 2:07 PM