50th High School Reunion

In the Spring of 1962, 40 of my friends and I set out from Providence High School to make a place for ourselves in the world. In the Summer of 2012, some of us will gather, as we have gathered every five years since 1962, to celebrate one another, catch up, tell stories, and remember the half a Century that has passed since we left P.H.S. 

I do wonder why people go to their high school reunions. I have friends who have never been to one and vow never to go to one.

I know why I go. It’s a life marker for me. I really don’t think about Billy Wilson, for example, as I go through my normal everyday life, year after year. However, every five years, he, and Dorris Burton, and several other people who I really liked in high school, seldom saw after high school, and who I will never see again because they have passed away, come barreling into my consciousness, full-blown, in 3-D and color, as they were in the Spring of 1962.

Over the years I have watched the folks who did come the reunions grow and develop, and become successful in that world into which we were thrown in 1962. I’ve also watched them suffer the pains of divorce, death of loved ones, and debilitating diseases. Every five years, this group of people gets a snapshot of our friends living their lives.

We knew each other when most of us had outhouses, and we remember those cold, cold winter mornings that taught us about bladder control if nothing else. We remember coal: having to get the clinkers out of the stove in the mornings, take the ashes outside and bring in new buckets.  Many of us had coal miners as fathers. At least one of us had a coal mining mother. Several of us made careers related to coal.

We now share memories of people. All of us remember Mrs. Hooks, and Mr. Lane, and Mrs. Crowe, and Mrs. Rayburn, and Mrs. Dorris. We remember the old gym into which we were packed to watch old black and white movies, hear recitals, attend pep rallies. We remember football, basketball, baseball, and track, at which several members of the class of 1962 excelled.

We remember band teacher Joe Allen, who came to town and became a real-life Music Man, transforming the school and the town, generating excitement and parental involvement on a grand scale.

These are people with whom I spent significant time from about 1950 through 1962. Hell, that’s longer than some marriages last.

I find that I don’t have much in common with most of my classmates anymore. What we do have in common, however, I believe is important: memories of a time shared during those formative years of our lives. I use the reunions to review my current life in light of those memories. It's sort of a present-day reality check using a shared rear view mirror. 

This time we will be reviewing memory snapshots in a rear view mirror that spans half a Century. 

When all is said and done, I go to high school reunions because I like these people. I like who they were and who they have become, and spending a day or so with them every five years makes me feel good.

That is why, in the Summer of 2012, I will drive back to Kentucky, and back in time to 1962 and the twelve years before that, to share stories and memories with people who were there with me “in the olden days”.