Sachem celebrated its first graduation in 1959, four years after the original centralization that brought together students from Holbrook, Holtsville, Farmingville and Lake Ronkonkoma.
Marian Stuart and George Svetlichny captured the honor of being named the first Valedictorian and Salutatorian, respectively, in Sachem history.
Both students appear on the same page of the Class of ’59 Sachem yearbook, known as Invictus even then.
In the student achievement section, it lists Stuart as a member of the newspaper, yearbook, band, encore club, senior play, leaders corps, field hockey, softball, tap dance, and student government.
Stuart attended the University of New Hampshire and majored in chemical engineering. She met her husband George Eskjian at UNH and they’ve been married for over 50 years. In a capsule on the UNH Alumni Association website, George said they “are enjoying a rich, fulfilling retirement with travel, good friends, great family and activities.”
Svetlichny was a three-sport athlete, running cross-country and track and wrestling during the winter. He received his B.S. in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1963 and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton in 1968. After working in the physics department at the University of Maryland and at the Laboratório di Cibernetica in Naples, Italy, he is now a full professor in the math department of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Svetlichny was a visiting professor in the math department of the University of Massachusetts, a member of the sub-faculty of philosophy of Oxford University, and at the math department of PUC in Rio. His research interests are mostly in mathematical physics with emphasis on quantum mechanics, quantum information, special and general relativity, quantum gravity, variational principles and geometry of jet spaces.
-Words by Chris R. Vaccaro