Higher Expectations and a New Perspective

When Gary Malin offered up his condo in Orange Beach, AL for a free week's stay as a class funraiser...er....fund raiser, he had modest expectations of our selling 50 tickets so we could raise $500 for the class fund. The general idea is always to build up the fund so that we can minimize reservation price for the 45 in September of 2012. We believe that this was one of the factors that made the 44 so successful. Westsiders are all about bang for the buck.

We have come to learn that when it comes to drumming up interest and sales and participation, our current class reunion committee does not rest on its laurels. With 7 weeks to go until the August drawing, we have logged well over $800 in paid ticket sales and commitments for a number more. The idea of raising $1000 is not beyond reason or reach. So get in touch with Linda Lively Yuan, Patty Qualls, Nancy Layson Burke, Tom Waterman, or Bob Willis for your chance at this opportunity. Remember, the availability of this condo has been extended to include some choice times in the Spring of 2012 as well as this fall.

Just when I thought we had run into a stone wall with my Wayne Valley classmates search, we hit paydirt over the weekend, and I had a chance to reminisce with two more classmates, neither of whom knew they were lost and were both grateful that they were found. It seems nearly universal; very few consciously try to lose touch with their high school group, it just happens over time, day by day as life's demands and happenstance buffet you through the years. Whether by design or not, you come to a moment of respite and your mind starts to wander to the past, and high school days come to mind along with the inevitable speculation about this one or that one. Did they fulfill their yearbook ambitions; if they didn't are they happy anyway? I admit I've run into some classmates who .... Let's put it this way, just like my old classmate (I don't seem to have any other kind), Dale Weber being listed in the dictionary under smart ass, there are a few that can be found under hateful and paranoid. "I don't remember you. Who exactly are you and why are you contacting me and why do you want this information?" I know that this is going to cause you to have to contact your federal witness protection program handlers, and you'll probably have to move again, but your high school classmates are curious about how you turned out. Now I can tell them without you having to provide a lick of information.

Anyway, not to get off too far off target, the contact process for the condo drawing was really quite different than that of locating everyone. Now it's not a case of 44 years since last we spoke. It's a few months, and guess who I talked to the other day or guess who I had lunch or dinner with a few weeks ago, or guess who's coming into town and wants to get together with a few friends to break bread.  Things are happening and they're all good.  You can see it on Face Book. Pictures of old friends gathering here and there; Gayle Brown is still rounding up all the Colorado and Texas people for something local. It's in the wind. It's more than nostalgia. In the past, I was always cynical about it, whether it existed or not, and if it did exist why would you feel it anyway. I feel differently now that I've seen it in action and experienced it firsthand - it's called CLASS SPIRIT and it's alive on the Westside of Evansville.