Wait Till Next Year Summary

Wait Till Next Year, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, is a personal memoire of Goodwin’s life growing up in Rockville Centre, New York during the 1950s. Goodwin talks about multiple members of her family, including her father, Michael, her mother, Helen, her two sisters, Charlotte and Jeanne, and her best friend while growing up, Eileen. The memoire includes many memories of how she and her family were affected during the atomic bomb and McCarthyism. Also in her story, she highlights the good and bad things about growing up as a suburban child. Goodwin has great memories about her neighborhood. She had many memories of her school, church, and time spent with her favorite team, the Dodgers, which were all positive. She said, “Our street…was common land – our playground, our park, our community” (Goodwin 55). Goodwin talks about her neighborhood as similar to that of a safe heaven. Her neighborhood was a little piece of heaven that always stayed the same. She was very close with her friends. They all attended the same school, grew up and played together. School was as well a positive memory Goodwin had and was a very important part of community as well. Goodwin recalled her time spent in school and said, “I threw myself into high-school affairs with unprecedented zeal…”(Goodwin 245). Goodwin enjoyed being involved being in activities and the people that were involved as well. Though, her friends from school were not the same denomination as she was. Religion was another factor in the community. Goodwin was catholic and many of her friends and other members of the community were protestant. Catholicism wasn’t necessarily a bad thing but it wasn’t the contemporary way of life for Americans in the 1950s. She very excited to start her life as a catholic, including her first mass and communion. Though school and religion were highpoints in Goodwin’s life, her true love was her favorite baseball team, the Dodgers. The Dodgers were the base of her family and kept many of her