IT'S ONE OF LIFE'S most painful and predictable rituals: leaving friends behind after graduation, marriage or retirement. But for 15 men who grew up together in the Bronx in the 1930s and '40s, today's most significant friendships began in childhood. Despite being scattered all over the country, this clutch of school chums has managed to keep in touch for more than six decades, since starting at New York City's public school (P.S.) 80. The friends' story, which was recently turned into a documentary, reveals a gentler era, when the phrase "friends forever" had meaning.
As they recall schoolboy crushes, ice cream...