The reunion is now over and a good one it was

For those of you to whom I gave this address to get the link to the reunion site, here it is:
http://www.classcreator.com/Berea-OH-1968/. I suppose my memory should have been good enough to remember that, but it wasn't. My pictures are there, and some more. If you attended and have pictures you'd like added, send them to me (nissende at msn.com).

Everybody I talked to said it was a good reunion. It started Friday night at Tony K's. It was a lot of talk, a bit of food and some drinking. The wide variety of experiences in our class was great to discuss. Some of us have not thought that much about high school in the entire 40 years as we did this weekend. I had the best conversation with the husband of a class member where I could discuss number 4 cross-bar switching circuits (not that I have any knowledge of that :-)).

We went to the high school on Saturday where Mr. Gary Croy did a fabulous job of running the tour. Too bad I won't be able to recite the many things he told us. Miss West is still kicking. The pictures of the boiler-room are on the reunion website. Something about smoking and playing cards with the janitors was mentioned. The new weight room and the Sports Center were things some of us would have liked to have when our class was there.

We broke into small groups after the school tour, and my eight person group went on to Pizza King, where we had to do our own serving (thanks to all), and the pizza was different (of course). I don't think they had veggie pizza in my time in Berea. And, the sausage was crumbly then.

We moved on to the Lakeside Yacht Club, and a fine DJ who had no idea what music, bands, musicians, or genre's we where discussing when our classmates were asking for tunes. The name tags arrived and Connie Menchhoffer (Bozell now) had done a great job of putting our yearbook pictures on each name tag. I wish I was able to do things like that.

The next day we gathered at the Triangle and Joe Biddlecomb and Donna Thompson (Fife) talked about urban renewal, city hall issues, the historical society, Save Old Berea, and many other happenings during the 40 years since high school for them and us. Mrs. Bonds (Sandy and Brian's mother) made a few comments on what the college had done and planned on doing yet.

After a few trips to the store for edibles, the die-hards among us went to the Coe Lake Pavillion and went back in time again, with more stories many of which were about the intervening years. More talking and we were back into the 60's and learning what really happened on prank night. I'll leave that to the participants. That night, I was on the sidewalk in front of the high school watching the goings on. The sheets my mother gave me had been made into a white cross and were on the roof with a friend of mine. They never got unfurled, however, as the police arrived too fast.

The picnic went on and turned into a discussion of philosophy, eastern (Chinese) religions, contemporary politics, the Catholic Church, agnostics vs. end-pointers, life in the sixties churches, etc. A good, calm discussion of topics, proving that the remaining crowd was mostly nerds like myself.

That was the reunion events. I saw my sister and my brother, went to church in my old haunt, drove around the Cleveland Flats where we found that the bar my father ran for a few years has been torn down, and did a lot of thinking about what it meant to be so old.

Dan

Berea Brochure on Flickr

I put a Berea Brochure on Flickr at http://flickr.com/photos/29401677@N07/sets/72157607219994500/ .