High School Memories

Fifty years? Really?

I attended my fifty-year high school reunion at Lake City, Michigan, on Saturday. It isn’t the high school that I would have preferred to graduate from, but I still had some good times there. If you want to know what I looked like then, I’m second from the left on the bottom row in the first photo.

We moved right after my sophomore year, so I didn’t grow up with these classmates. That happened at DeTour Village, Michigan. If I’d had my way, we would have stayed there until I left for college, but it wasn’t my choice. Many of my Lake City classmates did grow up together, and they are sharing those events and photos on the reunion Facebook page. I can’t related to those experiences, but here are some of the more memorable ones I did have in my last two years of high school.

Senior English with Mr. Leemgraven occurred in the same time slot as reruns of the television show “The Fugitive.” Somehow, we convinced him to let us watch the 2-episode finale in class.

I played an old maid in the senior play and enjoyed it immensely. (That’s me on the left in the second photo.) The entire experience was fun, but one particular evening practice—or actually before it—stands out. As a general matter, I either walked the ten blocks to school or drove over early with Mama, who taught in the elementary wing. So my classmates didn’t automatically connect me with our Volkswagen. But Brad Stanton had a similar one, and he drove it all the time. One night I drove ours to an evening practice and spun it around on the ice close to the school. Brad was also in the play, and he took a merciless ribbing. He must have been very confused, and he denied it vehemently. I probably told people the truth when I found out they thought it was Brad, but the memory has stuck with me.

The biggest advantage of Lake City over DeTour was that Lake City offered more extracurricular activities. I was in Senior Chorus my junior year, and it put on an annual operetta. I was just part of the chorus, but that was still fun. I would have loved to have been in it my senior year, too. Unfortunately, it conflicted with physics, and physics won out. I did do debate and forensics that year, however.

Then there was the one and only time I visited the guidance counselor. Mr. Ferguson was new, and he decided to start the school year by asking each of the seniors to come to his office and discuss their plans for after graduation. That was his job and he was trying to be helpful, and even then I knew I wasn’t being singled out, but at the time I was insulted that anybody thought I needed help from a guidance counselor. In what was probably the shortest session he ever had, I informed him that I had everything under control and had already been accepted at the college of my choice. I’m sure my words were respectful, but I don’t remember my tone . . . .

At the reunion, people made two main comments to me. The first was, “I remember your long hair.” The other was, “you and Cassie should have been valedictorian and salutatorian” (without specifying the order). Cassie said the same thing, although she accepted it more calmly than she did at the time. Dave (valedictorian) and Susan (salutatorian) had both been transferred to Lake City High School at the beginning of our senior year after their small country school closed, and their earlier grades transferred with them. That’s what I would have expected, but apparently there was some controversy about it. In any event, I felt at the time, and told people at the reunion, that I thought Dave was qualified to be valedictorian. We were in all the same classes senior year, engaged in friendly competition, and came out neck and neck grade-wise. So I never questioned that choice. I knew less about Susan since she was not on the college-prep track and we shared only one or two classes. But losing out on one of the top two slots didn’t affect either my college chances or my career progress, so it never really bothered me.

The final photo shows what fifty years does. (I’m in the back row in the blue-and-white stripped top.) We had just over sixty people in our graduating class. Although people who left before graduation were also invited and several came, this is still an impressive turnout.

I enjoyed the reunion, and I’m glad I went.

But it can’t have been fifty years.