Word: bronx
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What they left behind were the five- and six-story apartment houses that still flank the Bronx's Mosholu Parkway, as do a sprawling park and P.S. 80. In the '30s cars were few, and the street was as much a playground as were the park and schoolyard. "For stickball, we'd break off broom handles, then use sewer covers as bases," recalls Leonard (Lenny) Lauren, today a consultant to his younger brother, fashion icon Ralph Lauren. "The foul lines were the cars on both sides of the street...
...their wives too are from the neighborhood. Only two of the 15 boys have been divorced, including Shapiro, who says that aside from widowers who remarried, the rest remain wedded to the women they courted decades ago. West has been married for 43 years to his wife Marlene, a Bronx girl. Shapiro's current wife, Diane Barnett-Shapiro, is another New Yorker. The secret? Familiarity. "After I told Jerry [Seinfeld] that the more common ground you have, the better chance of a successful marriage," says Shapiro, "he dubbed that 'the Shapiro law of common culture...
...splintering" occurred as they grew up, got driver's licenses, married and moved away. Then in 1991 West was the host of a 60th birthday party at his house in Los Angeles for one of the boys, New York City--based brick salesman Elliott Liss. Half a dozen local Bronx Boys showed up, and, says West, they had such a good time, "it was the trigger to reunite and get close once again. We said let's do a bigger one in five years, and that became the first East-West reunion...
...both weekend reunions, which featured gatherings at their homes and assorted childhood games re-created at a Los Angeles schoolyard rented for that purpose. Wives joined their husbands for meals and mingling but moved to the sidelines as the men played stickball, basketball and touch football. In their navy Bronx Boys T shirts and with their once dark hair gray or nearly gone, the men remained competitive, disagreeing loudly over fouls. Here, though, a player scoring a basket was cheered by both sides...
Shapiro says The Bronx Boys started as "a record for our kids and grandkids to show them who we were, where we came from and what we valued." But when Shapiro's client--and uncle--Reiner heard about it, "he said he had to come," says Shapiro. "They gave him a mike, and he spontaneously interviewed everyone...