October 4, 2014

On the occasion of the 50th reunion of the Enfield High School Class of 1964, The Nob makes a claim of personal privilege to post the letter I wrote to commemorate the occasion for the book memorializing the event...
Dear Classmates:
It’s now been half a century since graduation night. Fifty years is a pretty big helping of life, so in that regard those of us who gather together tonight to reconnect and reminisce are lucky. Some have suggested that as the first wave in the generation known as The Baby Boomers we’ve been a little too lucky.
Maybe so if you just go by the early media attention that was showered upon us. Before we turned 25, Timemagazine had named our generation its “Man of the Year.” But the road to that recognition was not lined with four-leaf clovers. We grew up under the specter of the childhood killer polio. We served in the Duck and Cover Brigade as the youngest recruits in the Cold War, and then we all nearly got vaporized in our junior year during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The news of the President’s assassination came to us over our school intercom in sixth period.
And that was all before graduation. After, Vietnam waited for most of us in one way or another...and the history that followed seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis...Civil Rights to Watergate to gas lines; hostage takings and impeachment; economic downturns, mirages, and crashes. September 11.
So, no, our time hasn't been entirely a day at Misquamicut. But it hasn't been all bad news either. Polio was cured. The Cold War ended. The country survived multiple assassinations, Vietnam, and all the rest. More than just surviving, we enjoyed events of genuine transcendence. We got to hear Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. We got to see a moon landing. We got to feel the rapture of the first Red Sox World Championship in 86 years (okay, maybe that wasn’t rapture for everybody).
The technological advances alone have made it a dazzling time to be alive. As we sit around our tables tonight, we can hold in our hands power unimagined in high school. Not only can we show off pictures of our grandchildren, we can show home movies, send instant messages to friends who couldn’t make the reunion, and record a rousing version of “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” to post on You Tube tonight for the whole world to watch tomorrow. (Seriously, as your president, I insist we make this happen. Executive order!)
And if an argument should break out at the bar tonight, say, over who was Enfield’ First Selectman in 1964, we have more reference material at our fingertips than we had in all our town libraries combined, plus Springfield.
With so much sweetness and sorrow, it’s been a compelling time to be alive. In that, we have been sort of lucky--lucky to be born when and where we were, lucky to have lived long enough to come together and celebrate tonight, lucky to have had so many who helped us along the way…parents, teachers, mentors, lovers, friends…children finally.
And lucky, too, to have classmates, like those on our reunion committee, dedicated to our collective memory to put in the time and energy necessary so that we can share this special opportunity for looking back on our exhilarating era together.   
Thanks to one and all…and here’s to us, the Enfield High Class of 1964…now and forever. On to the 75th!
Best wishes,Dan Riley,
Class President
10/4/14