If you open the 1974 VHS yearbook to the senior portraits, Molly Emiliani will not be listed. Instead, try looking for Molly Ritchey. During high school Molly Ritchey was an “A, B” student, who admits that she once got a D in Mrs. Schoenig’s gym class! Her good grades earned her a rank of 50/250 students. Her favorite class was Spanish, which she is now fluent in. Not only did she graduate in 1974, but she met Vincent Emiliani, her future husband.

On the weekends, Mrs. E, as she’s known to most students would normally hang out at Verona Park, behind Terry’s Drugs, or on the pole vault mats behind H.B. Whitehorne. Mrs. E says they were able to roam about the town freely because parents weren’t as cautious as parents are now.

However, “the social event of the weekend was always the football games.” Football games were much more of a town gathering and gave everyone something to do. During the summer, the Verona Pool was the local hot spot. Mrs. E recalls, “We would always hop the pool fences and go explore the Overlook Hospitals.”

Although Mrs. E wasn’t really a big music listener, her husband’s favorite artists were Elton John and Pink Floyd. He was always listening to Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

Mr. and Mrs. Emiliani dated for five years, from the end of senior year to when Mr. Emiliani was enrolled in Medical School in Guadalajara, Mexico. It was there that they both learned to speak Spanish fluently. When they returned, both were hoping to settle down in Verona but ended up in Livingston due to financial constraints. Nonetheless, Mrs. E says if she were to do it all again, her family would live in Verona so they could get the same close community their parents got.

Nowadays, the school and town are different. In 1974, the entire school was around 1,000 students, you had every class every day, and there were
no new renovations. The biggest difference in the school and town now is the size she said. This is not a bad thing though. “Having a smaller school can give you a more intimate feel, which is a nice thing to have as you look back.”