Reflecting on Age

As a favor to Jess Searle's wife, Nancy Snyder Searle, a Bosse 1967 graduate, I ended up being the "official" photography for the Bosse 45th Reunion this past weekend. It was a smaller affair than the Reitz 45th Reunion the previous week, but combined with three reunions in one year (I'm including my own last May), it was more cause for some thinking on my part about the issues of age, wisdom and grace.

This thinking was brought into closer focus by a flurry of Facebook commentary over the weekend and a singularly unrepresentative photo featured in the Society page of the local rag.

First, it made me think about how lucky we are all, to be here to reflect on all of this. I instantly recalled a classmate of mine with whom I reconnected a couple of years ago after a 43 year interruption. We talked excitedly about attending and seeing each other again at our reunion in May and all the other people who had committed to me to attend and laughed with great anticipation of reliving all the goofy things we did in high school with these folks. It was with great sorrow that I learned of his passing in February of this year and I thought of promises unfulfilled and friendship renewed only to be cut short by unfair and unfeeling time.

We all of us, age. It is a part of our trudging march to the inevitable, the final universal law. The issue is, I suppose, how we engage the aging process in our lives and attitudes about living what time we have left. Those attitudes vary almost as widely as the number of people there are, but I think there are some trends that were revealed by this past weekends' conversation.

I think most have chosen the path of acceptance, trying to maintain what little dignity is left to us as joints refuse to obey our requests for movement; muscles fail to rebound as quickly as we expect; eyes become more reluctant to bring sight into sharp focus and teeth fall prey to 63 years of abuse like ducks in the carnival shooting gallery. We manage as best we can and try to play the hand that genetics have dealt us as carefully as we can without becoming phobic.

We also understand that all of us are doing exactly the same thing. We poke fun at ourselves with old people jokes and pass along cartoons jabbing our foibles in self deprecating good humor. We also tend to address serious medical conditions with grim defiance and determination. I think we saw that as some of our classmates, facing surgeries, crippling diseases and uncertain futures, nonetheless made their attendance at our reunions a mandatory requirement of living. I love and respect these people for placing my company and friendship in such high regard. That is one of the reasons I thought it important to suggest shorter intervals for our next class get-together. I want to see these people again before anything bad can happen and I hope they feel the same way about me.

I'm sorry to believe, as demonstrated by this weekend's events, that some of us have adopted a different attitude toward aging, denying the truth and their common destination, thinking somehow that their good health and genetically random good fortune somehow afford them a platform from which they can ridicule and belittle the less fortunate of us.

I suppose it is the same attitude that allows people to believe that cheerleaders are better than flag twirlers; that flag twirlers are somehow better than the marching band, Future Farmers, or Chess Club enthusiasts and so on down the imaginary social ladder. These tired, cliched, and juvenile attitudes seem to enjoy pathetically long life that supersede class spirit, participation and common memories of adulthood. We are "insert (young looking, wealthy, influential, whatever makes me feel better about myself)", and you're not. Fortunately, most of us outgrow the need for these attitudes fairly early in life so that we can deal more successfully and maturely with life's real issues.

Linda says that I have too much time on my hands to consider such matters so philosophically (this as she hands me my next honey-do list). She just says that there are always a few such folks in every crowd, and moves on from there. She's probably right. It's certainly true of my high school class as well. Leave it to me to try to figure out how or whys of it all.

Once more, off the soapbox. Here the bottom line. Know that your reunion committee is not interested in being an exclusive club. It is based on the willingness to participate and work on a most inclusive enterprise, the quest to make your next reunion the most broad-based and widely attended party the West side has seen in 47.5 years. We want people to try and imitate the success of the Reitz Class of 1967 for years to come. We want them to say,"Now that class was something else. They know what class spirit really is." You are and you do.

We don't care about your bank account, your accomplishments or failures, your material possessions or social status. All we care about is that you went to school with us and care enough about us that you will join us in celebrating ourselves and our common school experiences every few years. It was like that last year, it was like that last week, and it will be like that two and a half years from now.

Oh, and by the way, we have new information from Patty Qualls about one of the 4 as yet not located classmates. Jerry Johnson is somewhere SW Missouri. Linda will be on that one, you can be certain.

Onward to the Pig in the Park and I don't mean Mesker Park either. See ya there.

Feel the Magic, Indeed

This past weekend marked the 45th Reitz class of 1967 Reunion. Participation  surprised me at the pregame dinner, the game itself, and the school tour as warm-up events.

Themed "Feel the Magic", the dinner event itself certainly felt that way for the nearly 180 people in attendance. 

All the planning of the last 18 months since the April Spring Fling paid off and everything went off without major incident. Were there things that we could have done better? Of course. That is just the nature of large gatherings. The unexpected is the norm. But we are observant and humbly learn from our mistakes as we strive to improve the gatherings that have become our responsibility. I know I've been Monday morning quarterbacking since Sunday morning. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Onward and upward! We're going to do the class photo differently next time, for sure.

Let's not forget our classmates who are scattered far and wide and for whom the possibility of attendance is slim to none for whatever reason. That is why we have tried to get all the photos up on Facebook and the website as soon as possible so that they might be able to share in the experience, even if only vicariously through photos. They can only imagine the out-flowing of friendship and fond memories that were shared and renewed. We just received a note from Angela Hempen Long from New York:

Thanks so much for this photo.  Obviously everyone had a ball!!!  I thought of you often over this weekend, and really look forward to seeing many more photos on the website.  And then - WOW - just this morning, on my local radio station, Evansville was at the top of the news....probably old news to you, but to me it was quite a thrill to learn the museum had a rare and very valuable Picasso in its basement.  The commentator said the painting had been stored there for nearly 50 years, so it was there when we were in high school.

Thanks again to you and your husband and all the other people who pulled together the website and the reunions.  For me, and I'm sure for others who cannot make it back, it's a wonderful little touch of home and history.  I love it.  Angela (Hempen) Long

Linda is forwarding the group photos to classmates who did not attend. We urge you all to do so too in the hope that this will change their minds about attending future events.

When we started this current Reunion effort, we never expected it to evolve into the kind of community building that it has become. Reports of local gatherings of all kinds are popping up. Reitz 67 folks far and wide are following the Facebook page and website and even my humble blog. I know from our own experience that Linda is reunited with many of her old school chums in a meaningful way, with daily chit chat and shared meals and the kinds of behavior that characterized the daily contact we used to have with our friends when we were in school. That is the essence of what we are trying to achieve; the ability to think beyond our own blindered busy errand running babysitting grandparent nose to the grindstone lives to open up to old friends and the larger community that is the Reitz class of 1967.

As the events of the weekend started to unfold with the pregame dinner at the west side Hacienda, I found myself sitting back for a moment as a semi-dispassionate observer watching mostly West Terrace people breaking bread together. I truly envied them having gone to school from start to finish together. My education was broken into many segments as my family moved from place to place. The continuity of acquaintance and the sheer length of these enduring friendships is far rarer than many would suppose, even in a smaller city like Evansville. And I realized that I have come to care about what happens to these people who have opened their arms to me as the displaced spouse of one of their own. This feeling was amplified as I watched a whole stadium full of people chanting the Reitz fight song as though they still haunted the halls of the building behind them.

A little before the festivities began at Kokies, I was talking with Don Baggett, the magician, about the group he would be playing to, trying to put everything in context, not knowing whether or not it would affect his selection of illusions etc. - Hey I'm not a magician, so I don't know whether such stuff matters to the act, but it has always been important to me to understand the crowd I'm working so why not. I remember thinking that Don's act was not the only magic that was going to be there at our little event. I couldn't have been more right. The Reitz Class of 67 created and continues to create magic; and it is cumulative, building from last April through this past weekend and beyond.

First, we need to do a little class fund raising since we didn't during the weekend. As Linda has already announced, Gary Malin has once again donated the use of his condo in Orange Beach AL sometime in the spring/early summer of 2013. We will be raffling off this terrific and accessible vacation opportunity again sometime after Christmas and probably start sales in Mid October of this year. Just ask Steve Frohbeiter, last year's winner, if this wasn't a great experience. We'll repost some photos of his time there last year. Naval air museum, private viewing of the Blue Angels up close and personal, sea and sun. Doesn't get any better than this!

So two and a half years from now, sometime in the summer of 2014 we're thinking about a casual event, something I've started to call The Pig in the Park. Needless to say, with a title that catchy can a T Shirt be far behind? Anyway, we're thinking about the Bishea building in Burdette or something like that and one or two roast pigs (and a little something else for you beefeaters and chicken pluckers too). Yes, I know, that's how all this started. Remember how we were going to have a little casual get together in the Howell Shelter house and we outgrew it and had to move the late Cottonwood Center? By the way, did you all realize that we used the same tables this past weekend as we did last year? Kokies bought the tables from the Cottonwood when they folded this year. And like always, low cost means greater attendance. 

No specifics yet, but hey, we've got 2 years to think about it before we have to actually do anything. Lots of time to think about it. Enough time that I think I hear gears turning already. The Magic continues......