45 years in the waiting: The real life love story of two Hutchinson School graduates

45+years+in+the+waiting%3A+The+real+life+love+story+of+two+Hutchinson+School+graduates

In 1974, two Hutchinson School second graders began a friendship that would change their lives forever, but they would only realize it 45 years later. 

John McClernan and Maria Petti-Rozycki were friends throughout elementary school, but lost touch after McClernan moved away at the age of 13.

“I, to be honest, had thought about her over the years, but since I moved in 1980, I lost touch with most people and forgot names. Unfortunately hers was a name I couldn’t remember,” wrote McClernan in an email interview. “But on June 13, 2018, I got a (Facebook) request from Maria Petti-Rozycki. Luckily she added the Petti, ’cause I remembered her instantly.”

After he responded to the message from Petti-Rozycki, the two stayed up well past McClernan’s already-late working hours chatting with one another. (McClernan worked until 11 p.m.). Coincidentally, McClernan had a vacation planned for Shrub Oak in August—which provided just the opportunity for a reunion with Petti-Rozycki. She picked him up from the airport, and they spent the day together. Although Petti-Rozycki had to work the next two days, instead of cutting their reunion short, she invited McClernan to vacation in Lake George.

What had happened to the pretty girl I walked down the aisle with at Hutchinson?

— John McClernan

“The three days in Lake George were the best three days I have had in almost 30 years, and I knew from that first night that she would be the woman I would spend the rest of my life with,” said McClernan.

For McClernan, the funniest moment from their relationship as children was at their Hutchinson graduation in 1978. “A mutual friend, Liz Roche, had approached me during rehearsals to tell me that Maria was floating on the clouds, since she and I were matched up to walk down the aisle together for graduation. I, being young and stupid, ran away thinking, ‘these girls are trying to set me up to look like a fool,'” said McClernan. “Honestly, though, that was the moment that I always thought of over the years; what had happened to the pretty girl I walked down the aisle with at Hutchinson, but couldn’t remember the name of?”

John McClernan was Maria Petti-Rozycki’s first crush, and now, both at the age of 51, the two are happily in a relationship and figuring out their living situation. Petti-Rozycki works in Scarsdale as a cosmetologist, and McClernan lives in Myrtle Beach employed by the Department of Homeland Security in the Travel Security Administration. They plan to move to Myrtle Beach so their lives can become, as McClernan puts it, “sunshine and rainbows.”

McClernan first described finding Rozycki again in a letter to the editor to the Pelham Examiner.