Reunion Recap
It needs to be said that the Reunion Committee tried very hard to hold the Reunion in August of 2020 but it appears that there were just too many things going against us. Starting in March with the spread of COVID-19, then the Democratic National Convention moved their date to the start the same weekend as our reunion. That sucked up all available rooms in the Metro area. The last straw was the civil unrest and the real possibility that it will continue and most likely escalate during the DNC. We also understand that many of us have health issues, which caused some not to attend or be unable to attend in 2020. There was a lot of progress in the last three months of 2020 and we were confident that come 2021, all of these issues would be a distant memory. Boy…was the Reunion Committee right?!?
The Long & Winding Road
How fitting for the theme of our 50th Class Reunion. Our lives have been full of laughs and tears, trials and tribulations, births and deaths, jobs we love, and jobs we hated. Not to mention classmates we haven’t seen in fifty years and some we see way too much. Yet, we have survived it all, and what better way for us to share our stories over diner and a few drinks.
High school was filled with firsts; first crush, first dance, first date, first kiss, and that list could go on and on. Some of us married our high school sweethearts. And some got married numerous times. I guess marrying people you meet in a bar is the reason internet dating was invented. Some started families having one, two, or three kids. Along with the all joy that filled our lives, there was also much sadness too. We’ve lost wives, husbands, children, brothers and sisters, mothers, fathers, our best friends… and the illnesses some of us suffer from day after day. Yet, here we are 50 plus years later. We got through it with the help of family and friends, near and far away.
The sixties were an amazing time. We buried a President, his brother, and a civil rights leader. We all shed tears. We watched men being launched into space and then walking on the moon a few short years later. We now have smartphones that have more computing power than the computers that guide a space launch. We were part of the first Earth Day and that continues today 51 years later, every April.
Then maybe the greatest event ever… Woodstock. If you think about it, A half million people from across the country, descended on a little town in New Your State to hear THE best bands ever assembled in one location. No crimes, just people sharing their love for each other. If you look back over our music in those two decades, it was truly the best music ever made.
After graduation, we started on our life’s journey. Some got jobs in factories, some went into the service, some went into the trades and some went onto college or tech school. Along the way, we have all come to forks on the road. These paths shaped us to become who we were to become. There was never a wrong path because any path will have challenges. What is important is how and what those challenges taught us. DeAngelo Jones once said, “if you stop learning, you stop living.”