In Another Fifty Years

This past weekend, I celebrated with the remaining graduating classmates my fiftieth high school reunion. I can remember when my mother Sybil Miner Beck celebrated hers and thought, “Wow, is she getting old.” I feel the same about me. Many of us gathered at Bud Murphy’s in Connellsville, Pennsylvania for a mixer and get-reacquainted meeting on Friday evening. The group quickly outgrew the allotted space and we were moved to another room, which was again filled to over-flowing.

The senior class of 1967, Connellsville Area, High School was gathering for another time. Not a prom, not the graduation ceremony, but a chance to reconnect with friends and to start new ones. 1967 was the first to graduate when Connellsville and Dunbar school systems merged, throwing together young men and women from both. We had less than one year to sort out who we were and who they were to create lasting friendships. Some of those quickly formed bonds will never be broken.

Some of those ties have already been broken by illness and accidents. Those faces will forever remain youthful as we once remembered them. Then I look around and see what time has accomplished in our lives, placing roadmaps of where we have been in the intervening years.

It is remarkable that so many remain and how many gathered to celebrate this monumental milestone in our lives. It stirred my heart to see how kind the years have been to many of my classmates and to see the harsh reality of time on others.

The actual reunion dinner was held at the Pleasant Valley Country Club where hugs, kisses, and hearty handshakes were exchanged from people with wide smiles on their faces; gestures to reassure ourselves that we were the fortunate ones that are still here to bridge the distance the years have widened.

I have the class reunion photograph which will rest among the pages of The Falcon my high school yearbook until a later generation finds it and wonders who these people might be. Some insight of our journey will be gained when reviewed with the pictures of our senior class yearbook. Thank you Class of 1967. I love you all.