Walter G. O'Connell Copiague High School graduates' friendship has endured for five decades

On a sunny afternoon last month, five friends — Joseph Payton, James R. Lattimore, Michael Preston, James T. Armstrong and Melvin Howell — returned to Walter G. O’Connell Copiague High School for the first time since their 1979 graduation.

As they stood outside the school, the tight-knit group reminisced about their youth, when they wore big collars, bell-bottom jeans and marshmallow shoes — and had “more hair.”

All multisport athletes, the men — plus Robert Lewis, LaGrant Clarrett and Marcus L. Andrews — played together on the football team and ran track. They said they all kept their grades up because they knew if they didn’t, they couldn’t play.

Outside of school, the men said, they worked summer jobs together and would hop in Armstrong’s “Deuce and a Quarter” Buick Electra 225 and cruise to basketball and handball courts around the Island for friendly, but heated, competition.

Inseparable since junior high, the eight young men grew up in the same neighborhood in Amityville, were raised by families that instilled “old-school values,” learned early on to stay out of trouble and were regulars in each other’s homes — especially Lattimore’s, known as “the hangout spot.” They were together, said Payton, 62, of Coram, “from sunup until the street lights came on.”

So even on that last day of high school, as they each set out on different paths, nobody saw it as the end of their friendship.

“I knew these guys were going to be in my life for the rest of my life — I knew that back then,” said Preston, 64, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland. “It feels like home [when we’re together]. Things have changed but our relationships haven’t.”

Howell, a history teacher and former Marine Corps medic who lives in Sun City Center, Florida, agreed: “We all knew it. It’s like a brotherhood, a bond that never fractured . . . I could call them at 2 in the morning, any time, and they’d answer.”

Far apart, staying connected

After high school, life took the men in different directions. Some left the Island — Howell, now 63, headed to Miles College, a historically Black school in Fairfield, Alabama, and then enlisted in the U.S Navy in 1983. Preston, meanwhile, joined the Army, serving at Fort Hood, Texas, and in Georgia and Germany.

Others stayed closer to home — Lewis said he attended SUNY Old Westbury and worked various jobs after high school, including as a manager at Roosevelt Field mall, where he met his wife. Armstrong, 63, of Amityville, studied accounting at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and bartended for the Long Island Rail Road. He said he secured a job with the IRS before pivoting to a career as a postal worker.

But through it all, the men said they stayed connected, getting together when they could to play sports or hit the nightclubs with dance moves they learned watching “Soul Train” on Saturday mornings.

“Back then, if you had $5, you could get into the club, drink and dance all night long,” said Lattimore, 63, of Brentwood. “We had real music then, too, like Donna Summer, Diana Ross, War.”

Armstrong, who fondly recalled the 8-track player in the “Deuce,” said by that point, “Lattimore drove a Cadillac and had a station wagon, Robert Lewis had a Dodge Dart and a Fiat and LaGrant had a Chevy Nova. We used to go to Hempstead, Freeport, Roosevelt. Good times.”

Lewis, 63, who lives in the Poconos area of Pennsylvania, chimed in: “We had some wild adventures in the cars.”

‘They were like my brothers’

It hasn’t all been good times. As each man has faced personal challenges, from illness to the deaths of loved ones, they’ve turned to their childhood friends for support.

Lewis, over a Zoom call, said, “That’s the biggest thing about our friendship: We don’t talk every day, every week, every other week, but I can rely on them at any given time. If I say, ‘I need you,’ they’re going to be there.”

In 2005, Lewis was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He temporarily lost his eyesight and had to be hospitalized, he said. Not long after he called Payton to inform him of his situation, he said his friend “was there. I didn’t ask him to come. That’s just how it is.”

The others were in constant contact as well and visited him as soon as they could, he recalled. In July 2022, Lewis said, Payton and Armstrong took it upon themselves to pick him up at his home and drive him to Maryland, where the friends were meeting for their annual reunion.

Lewis grew up without a biological brother but said he never felt a void in that regard. “They were like my brothers,” Lewis said. “They’re part of my support system and I feel very blessed to have them.”

Preston, a retired firefighter who now works as a courthouse security officer, said, “We’ve come a long way together. We trust each other, and there aren’t that many people you can say that about.”  

Support during tragedies

In 2019, the father of four faced unspeakable tragedy when his son, Marcelle, was fatally shot outside their Prince George’s County, Maryland, home. The young man, 22 and “with his whole life ahead of him,” was a well-known track and football star, Preston said.

“I still feel it,” Preston said. “And they were there to support me because we needed it. We’ve all lost loved ones, and real friends like them make a difference.”

The group was dealt another blow in 2020, when Clarrett died on May 3.

Diagnosed with early-onset dementia, Clarrett came down with COVID-19 while staying at a nursing home in the Bronx and ultimately succumbed to the virus, according to his sister, Latrelle Clarrett Nicholson. He was 59.

“LaGrant was so funny and dynamic, and even at the end, he always recognized me,” said Payton, who frequently visited him in the mornings before work.

Nicholson said of the group: “They were the brothers that my brother never had. He loved them. They were in each other’s weddings, they would counsel one another. They were just a consistent group that he could always depend on.”

During that difficult time, she said, “They were there, they cared and they helped my family.”

Nicholson noted how “unique” it is for men to “allow each other to be their authentic selves and support each other without judgments. They love each other and still do.”  

A reunion for the ages

Despite being in frequent contact, getting all the friends together has proved challenging, as three live out of state and everybody has family and work obligations.

But Payton said the loss of Clarrett — which followed the death of Andrews in 2011 — has motivated the group to meet in person at least once a year.

“That was one of those bells that went off inside our heads, that we are not going to be here forever,” he said. “And because of that, what can we do to make our relationship closer with the time we’re given?”

In late July, the group — except for Lewis, who had to help his daughter prepare for college — gathered on Long Island for a reunion weekend.

They spent one day fiercely competing in the “Lattimore Olympics,” a series of games set up on a school field in West Babylon, including a relay race, jump rope, kickball and layup shots.

“The competitiveness is still there,” said Payton. “We don’t feel the age we’re at even though our bodies do.”

Added Armstrong: “It’s always great, like old times. Like we never left.”

Fitting to the friends’ history and competitiveness, they wrapped the weekend by heading over to Bolden Mack Park in Amityville to play a few rounds of handball, like the old days.

“We want to see who’s still got it,” Lattimore said.

“We haven’t played in a couple decades,” said Payton. “The mind is moving, but the body just can’t keep up. But listen, man, it’s fun!”

Payton, a retired New York State Police communications specialist who works as a bus driver for the Longwood Central School District, said he often talks to the high school students on his bus about his friends: “They’re a reference point . . . I tell them that a friend is a person who is there for you when you least expect it, who acts from a place in their heart with no expectation of payback.”

Lattimore, a father of three who works for Gabrielli Truck Sales, said he’s proud that his children grew up referring to his friends as their “uncles.”

“One of the greatest things about this group of fellas is all these guys have raised their families, they’re all good people,” he said. “The guys I hang out with did what they were supposed to do and took care of theirs.”

Said Howell: “We were friends since we were little kids and we’re still here after our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and now our 60s. To be friends this long and have no ill feelings between any of us is remarkable to me.”