50-year Class Reunion at Last!

The 50-year honor classes and their spouses walked in at the start of church Sabbath. The class behind us of 1971 only had nine in attendance.  

  

The dorm I lived in four years now stands empty and is up for sale again.

A couple more classmates came Sabbath afternoon (Ken Phillips and Buzz Hammond) who weren't in the class picture, so 26 total attended out of our 83 graduates.  Nine are deceased.  The guy in the motorcycle garb in the back row stopped in on his ride across the country (lives in AZ)!  This group was committed to getting together, in spite of the Pandemic, and came from as far away as California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida.  Other states we came from were VA, MD, PA, ID, TN, OH, MI, and NC!

The Hill Church that we walked to every weekend on Fri. night and Sabbath morning and evening.  Good exercise getting up all those steps from the campus. The thought never occurred to me to see if I could still manage them!  Thankful for a car to get up there. I'm thankful the church is still in operation and we could have part of our weekend services there.

Tom Lemon from the Class of '71 preached an excellent sermon.  He's a VP in the General Conference.  He was so quiet it seemed to me in academy, but he was his senior class pastor.

In memory of our nine deceased class members - Bill Brokaw (on the screen) just passed away in Jan. of 2020.  

The cafeteria where we enjoyed Sabbath haystacks dinner provided by the Alumni and Sabbath's pizza supper for those who ordered it with Eileen/Donado's. We're so fortunate that an alumnus (Isaac White) bought it and lets us use it on Alumni weekend.

Jan Delong Agler (from my home church in Lima) was only there for church and lunch and then left so I didn't get to visit with her.  She ate with these folks who I didn't know, except Linda from the class of 71.

I loved seeing Petra and visiting with her, from the Class of '71.

Haystacks ready and waiting for us after church - for a donation.

Demarees and Blantons with us before we headed up to the church for our Zoom session at 3:00 where nine more of our classmates checked in from around the country and shared what's going on in their lives.

Sharon made this tasty cake for our class reunion using our class colors - burgundy and gold.

Breakfast Sun. morning at Holiday Inn Express with Candy and Brian, Eileen, Sharon and Dave.

Sun. morning good-byes.  It was a long haul planning this gathering, since this was the FIFTH date we planned for!  Eileen and Sharon are quite the event planners, and provided the food for our Fri. night Meet and Greet (salads and sandwiches, and the class donated cookies/desserts) and ordered the pizza for Sat night.  And then Eileen also lined up the platform participants for church and they made the name tags with our senior pictures on them that I mailed to them.  How pathetic that Ed and Cathi Demaree live here in Ooltewah and I have to go to Mt. Vernon, OH to see them!

I got a laugh out of this poster I saw on FB awhile back!

In a library book I was reading today a couple sentences struck a chord in me:  "How we all like to linger on the stage of memories!  Memories romanticized by hindsight and comforting because of it."  I was comforted last weekend by so many wonderful memories made with friends during our academy years and enjoyed reminiscing and catching up on what's happening in their lives now.  It was fun sharing the 36 e-mailed updates with the classmates who I have e-mail addresses for and many said how great it was reading them. 

A classmate (Mike Smith in the picture above) who wrote up what the weekend meant to him and shared it with the class via email, said this in part:  "This weekend meant so much to me.  People say you can't go back in time; the hell you can't - we did!  The memories of this weekend will live forever and please never forget your friends. . . . I wanted everyone to know how special you are and what this weekend meant for all of us.  Again, I'm sorry for the ones that couldn't make it but may we all meet again when the Roll is called up Yonder."