This Philadelphia teacher received a surprise send-off from his students when he retired after teaching music for more than five decades. The beloved teacher Joe Ciccimaro was affectionately referred to as Mr. C by his students. Mr. C directed the performing arts program at the all-boys La Salle College High School for 54 years as per Inside Edition. When the 83-year-old decided that it was time for him to retire, more than 300 of his students came together to be conducted by him for one final time. His former students gathered in the school auditorium to send him off. Among his students was Hugh Panaro, from his class of 1982. Panaro played the title role in "Phantom of the Opera" on Broadway. This goes to show that teachers play such a huge role in creating true masters and work tirelessly towards helping their students achieve big things in life.
After 53 years and a countless number of students impacted by his commitment to the fine arts, Mr. Joe Ciccimaro '57 has taught his last lesson at La Salle College High School.
Thanks to Mr. C for his lifelong dedication to his alma mater - the longest tenured faculty member in… pic.twitter.com/2AGksqdZIM
— La Salle College High School (@lschs) May 10, 2023
People drew several parallels with Mr. C, including GMA comparing his story to that of the movie Mr. Holland's Opus. In the movie, Mr. Holland takes up a job as a music teacher to get a steady paycheck but then he gets little time for his own musical dreams. Be it in movies or real life, teachers make a huge sacrifice to make hundreds, even thousands of dreams come true. “When we walked into his band room, it didn't matter if you were a star on the football field, a star on the basketball court, we walked in, picked up our instruments, sat down at the piano, and we were all one,” Frank Dilella one of Mr. C's former student told Inside Edition. The students planned the surprise overnight to honor Mr. C's work. As per the X post from the school, Ciccimaro is the longest-serving faculty in the history of the school.
The post also wrote about the performance organized by the students saying, "Enjoy a look at his last class - a rendition of Bald Mountain, the last song he conducted at our 2023 Spring Band Concert - and the band playing him out this afternoon with the 'Alma Mater' on his last day." The teacher has created a legacy at the college where he has been teaching since 1968. Mr. C told GMA, "I have to be honest with you. I have never worked a day in my life, that's why I stayed here until I was 83." Mr. C was a musician himself, making him understanding towards kids with artistic talent. Panaro shared that being artistically inclined doesn't earn any extra points in high school, he was bullied, and the only compassionate person was Mr.C, making his success at Broadway possible. Everyone from Mr. C's kids, grandkids, and his students came together for his grand send-off, a testimony to the impact he has made on the lives of people around him.
The performance had a 30-piece plus orchestra and singers coming in from all over the country. Diella said that it was the ultimate thank you and a pitch-perfect homage. The performance was a reflection of what the teacher has done for his community and it was nothing short of iconic. The teacher added that he absolutely loved doing his job and retirement for him would be golf, lots of time with his family, and happy hours that could start before or after 5 post-retirement, he hilariously added.
Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.