Yes It Is, It’s True: Facebook sometimes yields wheat

I’ve often complained that Facebook is a cesspool and about 95% of it is garbage and lame chit-chat, but I’ve also learned that if I’m careful enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, I get rewards.

I found wheat recently under the heading of “People You May Know,” a feature that tries to get you to add more “friends.” I was somewhat stunned and pleased when I found Lesley Irvine Kranenberg as a person of interest.

The memories came flooding back. I recalled there was a Lesley Irvine in the mid-1970s, who seemed to score perfect 4.0 grade point averages in the honor roll announcements sent to the Wayland Globe. I left Wayland in 1976, just about when Miss Irvine entered high school, but later was told that she was an academic whiz kid who won many accolades.

I was interested because of one day in 1972 I spent in the yard of her mother’s home on West Superior Street. I was scraping to make ends meet as a substitute teacher and painter, and somehow Rhoda Irvine contacted me to do some odd jobs.

Rhoda Irvine was a delightful woman with a British accent who taught piano. I knew then of her eldest daughter, Suzanne, who I believe was in the Wayland High School Class of 1965.

I knew nothing of her youngest daughter, Lesley, who had to be an elementary student in Wayland at the time.

The moment that I will never forget was after Rhoda told me she taught piano, I told her I was a big classical music fan and had a passion for Rachmaninoff.

At one point, she sat down in front of her piano and banged out the opening notes of Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor. The piece had been known on the pop charts in 1961 as “Asia Minor,” by a mysterious group known as Kokomo.

That was the closest I ever got to a live performance of a classical piece, even closer than in 2011 when my wife and I attended a cozy concert inside a massive church in Krakow, Poland, to hear a string quintet up close and personal. I still rate that as the most impressive concert I’ve ever witnessed.

While at the Globe, I took note of Lesley’s interminable academic exploits and was pleased recently, but not surprised, that today she is managing partner of a Grand Rapids law firm, Kranenberg & McCarthy.

I found her mother’s obituary published after her death in 2000. It stated, in part:

“The former Rhoda Woodfield was born in Sussex, England, and moved to Wayland subsequent to her marriage to Leslie C. Irvine of Manitoba, Canada, after World War II. She moved to Grand Rapids in 1988.

“A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London, England, Mrs. Irvine taught piano and music throughout her life. She was preceded in death by her husband, Leslie C. Irvine, in 1960. Rhoda is survived by her daughters, Suzanne Wasylak of Framingham, MA, and Lesley Kranenberg of Grand Rapids, and three grandchildren.”

Which proves that indeed the secret to using Facebook is to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some good stuff on Facebook. You just have to work a bit to find it.

COVER PHOTO: Lesley Kranenberg and law partner Justin McCarthy, looking like the stars of a TV show, perhaps “GR Law.”