For a good many years, I’ve been putting together a newsletter for my high school classmates. In early February, I send them Valentine cards with a reminder to write something for the newsletter. By March, the responses have started arriving and I find myself knee-deep in nostalgia.
Eleanor, once my closest friend in grade school, a retired teacher, was twice widowed with a large, blended family from three marriages when she wrote about kayaking on Lake Michigan. That intrepid, determined girl who refused to give in to the ravages of polio sent lively letters and silly jokes every year, photos of prize pumpkins she raised in her garden and the miniature horses she and her third husband raised on their farm in Minnesota.
Charles, my first love in kindergarten days, started the Austen-Healey Club of America and wrote of travels in Europe, his many activities as a Shriner, and asked me to paint his portrait, representing him as the volunteer storyteller he was in schools and churches in Chicago. A grandfather for the first time when the rest of us were beginning to welcome great-grandchildren, he doted on his new role as grandpa.
Barbara, the long-time high school buddy who shared my enthusiasm for math, English and art, married a classmate and moved to Florida until they decided to spend a few years living as gypsies in a motorhome, traveling the country, visiting national parks and other historical sites and their four married children who were scattered across the map. An award-winning artist working mainly in pastels, Barbara often sent copies of some of her lovely paintings and brought little handmade gifts for class members when she managed to make it back to Iowa for reunions and visits to her mother and brothers who still lived here.
Jobyna, the “farm girl, “who became a much closer friend once we were both in college in Iowa City, married a doctor and moved to a remote town in Washington state where he was the only doctor for miles around. She had three sons and an adopted daughter: all roughly the ages as my own children. We both experienced (only a few months apart) the heartbreak and trauma of losing a child in their early twenties. She wrote about her busy life and church activities and joked about taking their vacations with the church’s minister and his wife. “We have to go out of town to have our fun,” she explained, “People don’t want to know that we’re just like everybody else.”
Marjory, Maxine, Donna, Emma, Angelica and Phyllis were among the group of girls who were involved in sports, cheerleading, clubs and other influential groups. They were the ones who planned school dances, fashion shows, pep rallies and who hung around the soda fountain and knew all the gossip. Ronnie, Russ, Richard, Les, “Moe” and “Ponch” were the three- and four-letter athletes that everybody wanted to be friends with. We had more than our share of club presidents, beauty queens, student council members and honor-roll scholars.
Our class numbered just short of a hundred; several teachers considered us to be a special bunch of students; we functioned like a close-knit family of siblings and cousins, even though only a few of us were actual blood relatives. Many of us were born in Knoxville and most of us had been together in school since kindergarten. There were two elementary schools in town, but we were thrown together in junior high and high school, beginning with sixth grade.
Many of the friends I’ve mentioned here are no longer with us, though more than a third of the class have survived this far. With only three relatives of my own generation remaining, I’m glad to have all those friends who have known me most of my life. There’s something sad about realizing that my children and grandchildren have known me only as an adult. Thank goodness for those classmates – they remind me of the person that I really am!