Longtime Friends Still on Same Page

Daniel J. Cooperson and Barry Abrams met at Cramer School in East Camden in 1956

By Kevin Riordan, Courier-Post Columnist

The two eighth-graders had some things in common — they were both Jewish and obsessed with baseball, for instance — but they were more different than alike. And not just because Dan was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and Barry loved the Yankees.

Dan, who lived near 32nd and Westfield, was shy, nervous and struggling with a disorder similar to Tourette's Syndrome.

Barry was smooth and sociable and even had his own phone ("which was unheard of," he recalls) in his home on Carman Street between 31st and Dudley.

That bond — now nearly a half-century old — is the focus of the new book Barry and Dan. A quirky, discursive and heartfelt mix of memoir, meditation, Camden history and sports trivia, it was written by Dan and is available through the online subsidy publisher Xlibris.

"We lived across the street from Dudley Grange Park," Barry says. "There was a library there, in a mansion that later burned down. I lived in that library. We could walk down to the Arlo Theater and see a movie for 15 cents."

The two chums went through Woodrow Wilson High School together. They reconnected at the 35th reunion of the Woodrow Wilson Class of '61. "Now we're as close as we've ever been," Barry says. "Closer even," says Dan.