Growing up in a Western New York college town exposed me to more culture than most country kids, but our family’s trips to the big city to visit Uncle Peter and Cousin Lynne took my cultural exposure to a whole ‘nother level. 

Peter’s appreciation of music, art, and all the amazing things NYC had to offer led to many adventures and learning experiences during our visits.  His leadership brought this aesthetic to my life as well. 

Museum trips:  Metropolitan Museum of Art many times, Guggenheim, Museum of Natural History. 

Other culture:  Statue of Liberty, Empire State building, World Trade Center. Ellis Island as an adult, I believe with Peter, Liz and probably Kurt.   

I’m 90% sure Peter took us to Carnegie Hall (I believe it was Jean-Pierre Rampal and his Golden Flute).  A related Peter joke was:  “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice.” 

Visits to Little Italy, Chinatown, the Peter-named "Underwear Street" (Garment District) – Peter attached history lessons to all these. 

To have Peter and Lynne as well-versed tour guides allowed me to experience things as a veteran, rather than a confused tourist trying to navigate the subway and canyons of buildings.  Their turf, familiar territory, switch trains at this station – I could just go with the flow and enjoy the outing.  Peter made all that comfortable for us.  Lots of trips to Central Park, zoos and botanical gardens, Rockefeller Center and 5th Avenue at Christmas, hot pretzels and roasted chestnuts from pushcarts.

Peter teaching me to ride Lynne’s bike in Queens was a rite of passage.  Later visits included zipping around the city on Peter and Lynne’s folding bikes. 

NYC seemed mysterious and impersonal to me.  Yet, Uncle Peter's friendly interactions with Flushing vendors made me realize that a small-community atmosphere could be cultivated within a huge metropolis.  Whether the produce stand or Ehmer's sausage shop, Peter's
personable demeanor and booming voice made him a favorite customer.  Being introduced as the nephew from the country automatically made me part of the crew.  Peter was a wonderful uncle.  His teachings and legacy live on.  

    Among a faculty of characters at Hicksville Junior High, Peter Borst stood out. Not so much because he was strange, which he was. But then all junior high school teachers are strange and a little bit crazier than our students. It’s a prerequisite for survival teaching hormonal time bombs who are neither fish nor fowl during those critical and confusing three years before high school. Peter did more than survive, he thrived! He loved his subject, music, and he loved his kids who knew it and loved him in return.
    Back in the turbulent 60s I was a young and naïve 7th Grade teacher at the teeming, over-crowded Hicksville Junior High where I spent those first years in semi-isolation trying to teach "alot" is actually two words and sometimes "your" should be "you're" in Room T3 of the hot in summer, cold in winter, noisy, drafty T-Wing. The plan in those days of UP and DOWN staircases with more than 3,400 students under one roof was to keep the new kids and the mostly new teachers (there was a big staff turnover!) away from the “big kids” and the “real teachers” in the main building. So although I had seen Peter at faculty meetings, I didn’t actually meet him until June of my third year when we were assigned duty to guard the halls outside the gym during both graduation ceremonies. He later told me he knew when he saw innocent and well-groomed me in a three-piece suit (it was required) and bright white sneakers I said were in case I had to chase anybody down the halls, that we would become friends. And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship for more than 50 years! Peter always had a smile and made me laugh… well not so much his terrible puns… but his off-beat insights and junior high sense of humor, something we both held on to into old age.
    In the 70s jackets and ties and clean shaved faces disappeared and the faculty let its freak flag fly to the chagrin of administrators who hadn't got the memo. Long hair, mutton chops and beards flourished throughout the building. Even several of the women teachers began sporting facial hair! Before Halloween I stopped at Peter's classroom and announced to his kids that Mr. Borst looked just like a blond Edgar Allan Poe with his shoulder length hair and mustache. In response he cranked up the volume on his stereo, where he was playing eerie Halloween music that shook the walls. It delighted the class and had teachers in the second floor corridor shaking their heads. “Borst is at it again!”
    During the school year we socialized, in summers we sailed, or sometimes just sat at the dock on in his J 24 solving the world’s problems. I remember one morning when Peter called me: “There’s wind just short of small craft warnings. Would you like to go sailing?” And we two nuts did, racing the wind on Long Island Sound from Bayside past Eaton’s Neck with full sails and the J 24 heeled at forty degrees with me on the tiller and Peter running back and forth unfurling the Genoa and trimming the lines with a big smile on his face.
    When Peter and Liz came to dinner at the house. son Jesse, who was a toddler, fell in love with her the minute she sat on the floor to play with him. We all did. In 1986, Peter and Liz got married and I was honored to be their witness. Kurt was born a year after my daughter Mikki and the three kids became friends. Peter and Liz always had great ideas to keep them entertained, from ice skating at the Queens rink to spending the day on the rides at Adventureland to walking among the butterflies at the Botanical Gardens.
    Friday before Thanksgiving when I was going through a divorce, I was upset because I wasn’t going to see my kids for the holiday and I told Peter. He didn’t say much, just listened and let me vent as he often did. But on Monday he came to my classroom. “Liz and I want you to come for dinner at our house after school Wednesday with the kids. Kurt is looking forward to seeing them.” When the three of us arrived I was surprised… amazed! Peter had rushed home right after school to help Liz who had cooked us a complete Thanksgiving feast! I will never forget such an unselfish act of love and friendship. And they had to do it all again on Thanksgiving Day for their families! Even now just writing about it I tear up.
    Our friendship went into retirement and beyond, for more than fifty years. We didn’t visit as much recently because of time and circumstances, but we talked regularly on the phone. Last week I spoke to Peter and Liz and we traded stories of all our doctors’ appointments, joked and laughed, and made plans for the time after Covid. I am grateful for that time but sad we didn’t have the opportunity to be together one more time.
    I will miss you, Peter. I wish you fair winds and happy sailing, my friend.