Fifty years later, we’re getting together again

My high school graduating class, 1973 South Milwaukee Senior High School, will hold its 50th class reunion on July 29. A half-century!

How much has time changed us? Here’s an article I wrote for Reunions Magazine about our 20th reunion. Even then, some of us had already become unexpectedly different.…

(Photo: From the 1973 Bay Mist yearbook: Salutatorian Ron Wadley and valedictorian Marilyn Stroik lead the graduation ceremony march.)

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We came out of curiosity. Two decades earlier, in caps and gowns, we had marched 435 strong out of our high school graduation ceremony, heading into a hot, muggy June evening and into our separate, uncertain destinies as adults.

On an equally hot, muggy July evening two decades later, in suits and cocktail dresses, we walked into a hotel banquet hall to see what had happened to us. A committee had worked for almost a year and had located all but 30 of our classmates. Of those, about a third came to the reunion. With spouses, that made a sea of 280 faces at dinner. We could have drowned.

We were rescued by name tags. After a score of years, we had forgotten too many names. Some of us had studied our yearbooks to prepare for this reconnection, but those old books piqued our curiosity more than they jogged our memories.

Beyond that, even in 1973, no one knew every one of our classmates. With so many students, we fell into separate circles, even cliques. We had jocks, greasers, freaks, and “status” (the high achiever, class leader types). Some of these cliques and circles had no use for each other.

Those feelings faded away over the years. Animosities were forgotten as we reacquainted ourselves. Every familiar face, no matter how vague the recollection, had become a friend. We all shared the same long, intense years during the creep toward maturity, and although our paths had diverged, we met with more in common than ever.

“What do you do? Where do you live? Are you married? Any kids?” — simple questions became the start of renewed bonds. We found common ground both from the old days and from the intervening years, and talked and talked and talked. Husbands and wives talked of the happiness of their marriages. Parents talked of their children in terms of joy and amazement.

We talked of careers. We had become pilots, pathologists, housewives, factory workers, police officers, artists, and office workers. There were surprises. Lighthearted teens had heard the calling to God’s work, class clowns and scholars alike were writing plays, and tiny threads of interest had grown into devoted vocations or avocations.

The amazed talk behind the backs of fellow classmates, however, centered on one thing: looks. A few people looked almost exactly as they had in school. Some others had changed beyond recognition.

In fact, many had blossomed. There were men with strong, sculpted faces, and gorgeous women in glamorous dresses who turned heads and confounded old friends who remembered them as — well, not like that.

We saw that our classmates — close friends and former rivals alike — had journeyed to their own place in the world, and on that hot, long July evening, we were reassured. Some had traveled farther away than we ever expected, but not out of reach from one another.