You Can Run, But You Can't Hide, (Tales from the reunion committee)

A number of us gals from back in the day, decided to throw a full scale reunion. Now mind you, we graduated 43 years ago.  I wish I could say it was a hospital nursery reunion, but we are a wee bit older then that! In fact we all knew where we were when President Kennedy was shot, we were together, in our old classroom, watching the news unfold on the small black and white TV.

The first order of business was to find our old classmates.  We parted back in 1968, and except for a handful that we had maintained contact, the rest were scattered like leaves in the wind.

Quite the tall order, but we dug in, and began. Thankfully we had such modern tools, as the internet, Facebook, and Google searches.  However, the most important resource we had was that way back then; the large majority came from huge families.  It was rare to know of a family having two or less children. Most of our classmates came from homes that had an average of 5 or 6 kids.  Even bigger families were not that uncommon. We had the “sibling” connection! Many of our own brothers and sisters knew the brothers and sisters of the people we sought.  Slowly but surely the ripple effect began to spin outward. Everyday a new connection was discovered, and with each new person found, came more and more nuggets of information.

As we made contact, people would reminisce about the old days.  Back then our mothers, for the most part did not work outside the home.  They were too busy watching after a gaggle of children, sometimes having 5 or 6 before they turned 30. There was no second car; Dad took the only car to work.  Any after school activity that took place, had to be within walking or biking distance, or you were not participating! There was one phone in the house, and it was usually attached to the kitchen wall, within earshot of nosey family members.  Rest assured phone calls were short and sweet back then. When one arrived home from school, after running the whole way (we were the original joggers) the first order was to change out of your “school” clothes, and don your “play” clothes. If by chance you had received a reprimand in school that day, you would keep it to yourself, and pray that your teacher didn’t call.  Prevailing wisdom was that the teacher was always right. Good times!

Slowly but surely the list of MIA classmates were dwindling down. Someone suggested we check obituary records.  We realized that many parents of our friends may have passed away in recent years. We hoped to see a reference to a girls married name that would make her easier to find. The only problem with that, was knowing the parent’s first name.  The only names we had for our classmates parents was, Mr. and Mrs. We would never in a zillion years refer to someone’s mom or dad by their first name. Sadly besides finding some leads on married names, we also discovered a few of our old friends had died as well. Found, but not forgotten.

So far, most of our old, we mean former classmates, seem excited about the prospect of reconnecting with old pals. We are hoping to meet this fall, so commence the dieting and exercise, consider this your 8^th month warning! It should be a blast!