Reconnecting with old friends

Hewlett grads get together for golf and memories

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True story: Though one high school buddy had become an award-winning sportswriter, the two old friends hadn’t seen each other in years and as teens they were about the same height. The sportswriter had shot up a few inches, while the other pal remained at the same height. When another old friend brought these two together, the sportswriter realized he had to bend down to hug his buddy.

“It’s a true story,” said Eddie Plutzer, who first reconnected with Michael Klein down in Delray Beach, Fla., and then took Tony Kornheiser — the award winning sportswriter — to visit Klein in Atlantic Beach several years ago.

Those three friends, along with fellow Hewlett High School graduate Stephen Sheinberg met up for lunch then a round of golf at the Inwood Country Club in Inwood on Aug. 23.

Kornheiser, who now hosts ESPN’s sports talk show “Pardon The Interruption” with Michael Wilbon, Plutzer and Sheinberg were in the class of 1965 and Klein graduated a year later. Plutzer and Sheinberg were both in the clothing manufacturing business and Klein, an Inwood member, was in the coffee service business.

They talked about how close they were growing up, playing baseball, football and basketball and remembering some of their classmates. Listening to all four talk about their past was akin to having a class year book come alive.

As youngsters they went to Camp Keeyumah in Pennsylvania, also attended by Long Beach native and renowned basketball coach Larry Brown. Kornheiser told of the night he was watching “Saturday Night Live” years ago and yelled to his wife, “It’s Jimmy Steinman playing.” Steinman, a Grammy Award-winning record producer produced the 1978 “Bat Out of Hell” album by Meat Loaf and graduated from Hewlett high in ’65.

The friends noted that another classmate, filmmaker Errol Morris won an Academy Award for his documentary, “The Fog of War: Eleven lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.” They also spoke about Donna Fask, a classmate who performed a modern dance number at a talent show and doodled all the time in class. She is better known as Donna Karan.

In addition to this foursome, 18 guys from the class of ’65 recently got together for a small reunion in the city, said Sheinberg, who reconnected with Kornheiser back in 1989 around the time of the earthquake that delayed that year’s World Series. “I told him I would be in D.C. and we met up,” Sheinberg said.

Before heading out to the golf course, Kornheiser, who wrote for Newsday, the New York Times and Washington Post put the reason for reconnecting with old friends in perspective. “When you reach some sort of local notoriety and are a semi-celebrity you ask why now does this person want to know you,?” he said. “Who are the people happy just to see you? The people you went to grade school, junior high, high school and camp with. They like you anyway.”