Columbia High School is now in its 25th year of selecting graduates for its Hall of Fame—a practice started in 1985 by eventual inductee and then-Student Council President Andrew Shue—but 2009 will be remembered as the first year in which an entire family was inducted.

Ben, Joan, Amy and Dan Cohen were enshrined in their alma mater's Hall of Fame today during two assemblies. It's an honor often reserved for famous graduates like Lauryn Hill, Max Weinberg and Paul Auster, but the selection committee chose the Cohens largely because of their ties to the community.

Up first to speak was Maplewood resident Joan Cohen, '63, who's been an elementary counselor in the Elizabeth public school system for the last 11 years. She described herself as a South Orange-Maplewood "lifer" and recalled meeting her husband, Ben, at an ice cream parlor on South Orange Avenue during her junior year of high school. She drew a laugh from students when recalling her high school swim classes in the '60s, when, in separate classes, the boys swam nude and the girls wore matching blue cotton suits.

Her daughter, Amy, '88—who traveled from her home in Costa Rica to accept the honor—spoke next and reminisced about her time on Columbia's gymnastics and volleyball teams. She continued to play sports when she entered college at Brown and ultimately filed a lawsuit against the university, along with her teammates, when the gymnastics team was eliminated at the end of her junior year. The suit, Cohen v. Brown, went all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided in her favor eight years after she initially filed and served to further the cause of Title IX.

"I hope that the idea of unequal opportunity and treatment seems as strange to you as no sports for girls seems to me," said Amy, who teaches at an international school.

Amy's brother, Dan, '91, is now a senior coordinating producer for Fox News Channel. He says he started acquiring the skills he uses to cover assignments like chasing down drug dealers on the Mexican border while taking TV production in high school, when he was instructed to find interesting stories.

"Essentially, I'm doing the same thing I did 20 years ago with (teacher) Frank Mullin," said Dan, a South Orange resident who's also been a member of the Rescue Squad since high school and is now a second lieutenant.

The last of the Cohens to accept the honor was Ben, '62—father of Amy and Dan and husband to Joan—formerly a presiding judge of Essex County's Chancery Division and now in private practice as an attorney. He recalled the lifelong passion a physics teacher instilled in him for cosmology and the impact of his guidance counselor, who called Dartmouth's admissions office on his behalf when she learned that he was short by half the amount he would need to enroll.

"She must have really given them hell, because the next day, she called me into her office and told me Dartmouth would provide all the additional aid I would need," he said.