You are probably thinking that those two have nothing to do with each other. Oh, but you would be wrong. It will become clear if you read this post to its ending.
Last weekend I attended our 50th class reunion (actually 51st). A fine time was had by all. My biggest takeaway from the night was how it has become increasingly difficult to identify classmates that you haven’t seen for at least six years. We are all turning seventy soon. Do we change that much between 64 and 70? Apparently so.
Another takeaway for me was the amount of love in the room. I’ve written before about my Slatington High School Class of 1970. 121 eighteen year olds, now turning seventy. Just wow! We were a typical high school class back then, with its cliques and divisions. The uptown kids versus the downtown kids. The college preppers versus the business and general kids. The walkers versus the bus people. All that is gone, and has been for some time. There appeared to be a sincere caring about each of our lives and our health and our future plans. Maybe we are brought together by that common enemy of lives coming to an end. As Robbie Kemmerer, our class president said, “we may only have a couple more of these”.
As always, a topic of conversation was who isn’t there. (If you don’t want to be talked about, come to the next one!). We have lost about ten percent of our class to death. We had 35 classmates attend, some with spouses in tow. We had one “no show”. Barbara Jones, where are you!? I know there is a significant number of classmates who have never been to a reunion. Unlike me who loved high school, for many it was not a happy time to be a kid.
Segue time! I would like to nominate myself and this blog for the next Nobel Peace Prize. If that prize is about bringing people together, listen to this story. A few months ago I wrote a blogpost about our class and how much I wonder what has happened to people I had neither seen nor heard about since graduation night. I randomly selected Mark Bowers as one of those people. He was a good guy in school, always pleasant and polite. Apparently, his daughter-in-law is somehow a reader of this blog. She called Mark and told him that people were looking for him. He was incredulous! How could that be since he’s lived in the same house in nearby Germansville for the past forty years. His interest was piqued and he decided to attend his first reunion ever. He had a wonderful time and promised to attend our 55th. My next goal is to get the Jews and the Palestinians to share a few beers at the Lehighton Legion!
In another four years we will have our 55th reunion. I hope I am around to enjoy it as much as I did this year. I love my class. I hate growing older.
A Semi-retired Kind of Life 