Winter is here with a Vengeance

Our view from the patio window Xmas 2012

Well, it's official and there can be no doubt. Winter is here and here with a vengeance. After last year's pitiful winter of .5" of snow, we were more than due for the bigtime snowfall we got a couple of weeks ago. Clearing the driveway was yet another reminder that either snow is getting heavier or I'm getting more out of shape. While I was happy to see the County clear the road so quickly, I was less pleased to have to dig out the end of the driveway again.

In fact, between the contentious Xmas we had on Syls Drive and the sudden snowfall, Old Man Winter chased us out of town and we spent a quick week in St. Augustine, FL. I can testify that Florida is relatively warm compared to the snowy vistas we left behind.

Now the snow has melted in time for frigid icy cold. It doesn't take but a quick trip to the mail box to realize that we're not in the warm South anymore. What better way to escape from the wintery blahs than a week's vacation in an Orange Beach AL condo graciously donated once again by Gary Malin.

10 bucks, 1/10 of a Ben Franklin for a week on the Gulf. We've extended the sale of tickets another two weeks ( the committee felt guilty drawing for the condo while on a cruise ship, I guess) so send your ticket money in to Linda or get hold of Linda Gamblin or Patty Qualls or Bob Willis in the next few weeks so you have a real good chance of winning a great vacation.

We'll announce the drawing. It'll be toward the end of February, somewhere local again (last year we used the drawing as an excuse to hold Parkway Pizza hostage for a few hours) and draw out the lucky winner and a first alternate (just like Miss America.....if the winner is unable to fulfill their obligation to enjoy a fabulous vacation on the Gulf, the first alternate will take their place.......etc., etc.)

As the late Billy Beal used to say at the end of his enzyme detergent commercials on TV, "Don't wait....Do it today!"

It's Orange Beach Time Again!

The first harbingers of winter are rearing their ugly heads in the Evansville Tri-state region with cold, wet weather and the ever present possibility (rarely realized) of a meaningful snowfall. We are all of us poised to clean out Walmart of every staple we can lay hands on. As gasoline prices continue to fluctuate wildly, I am trying to time things so that my gas cans are filled at one of the low points so that my generator is ready to be fed for the power outages that every winter reliably brings. As we think about hunkering down for winter, it is not hard to understand those of us who would be thinking about warmer climes and sunny beaches (not being a sand person, I can appreciate warmth but not beaches).

As you may recall, last year the Reitz Class of 67 Reunion Committee sponsored a raffle for a stay at the fabulous condo graciously donated by Gary Malin. You may also recall that the raffle was won by Steve Frohbieter, who enjoyed a wonderful stay highlighted by a tour of the Naval Air Force Museum in Pensacola and the unexpected bonus of a real up close and personal visit with the legendary Blue Angels flight group at their home base.

Well, we're doing it again. Once more,  a lucky raffle ticket will win this not to be forgotten vacation during the months of March through June of 2013 in Orange Beach AL. It's up to the winner to contact Gary to work out the exact dates but he has been extremely flexible judging from last year. The important thing to know is that it's as easy as responding to the email that Linda will be sending out shortly after Xmas, and sending in your $10 per ticket to Linda.

Now of course, if you've changed your email address and haven't let Linda know, well shame on you. And, Linda tells me if you want to make sure you don't forget or don't check your email too often, you can always send in your raffle ticket money whenever you feel like it from now until the cut off date of January 31, 2013. The drawing will be held during the class Cruise to Somewhere (most of the reunion committee will be on the cruise) with the results announced upon our return on February 19, 2013.

As before, proceeds from the raffle will go into the general class fund to prepare for the Pig in the Park celebration in the summer of 2014 and perhaps something else sooner if someone gets a wild hair.

To review, $10 bucks a ticket for a week in a Condo on Alabama's Orange Beach this Spring. Send your entry money to Linda by January 31st, 2013. Couldn't be easier.

This year don't just sit and complain about the winter doldrums. Do something about it. Win a week in a Gulf Coast vacation condo for just $10 a chance. Let's put it this way - the odds of winning are a lot better than Powerball and it's for a good cause too.

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......

Down to the Wire

Even while the T Shirt Drama continues to unfold (so whose idea was it to do T shirts, anyway?) Come on, fess up whoever it was. Oops. Linda just informed me that it was our idea. We have just received our final assurance that the T shirts will be ready and they will be right. Please bear with this Westside company. Even though they have messed up our original distribution plan, I am still confident that they will come through.

We are still getting reservations. Terrific! The more the merrier. Never one to rest on their laurels, Linda has just announced that she wants to eat at the Westside Hacienda for a bite before the Reitz-Central football game on Friday night. We'll get an area roped off. If you're interested, give Linda a buzz at 425-3255 or email her at linday7632@gmail.com

I keep on telling Linda that even if nothing else works out from here on out, we still have a football game to attend, a school to tour and reservations for a place to meet and eat. The class provides all the important stuff anyway. School Spirit, Good Cheer and Friendship. That is really what it is all about anyway.

Of course, everything will work out fine. The best reunion ever. There's something great that's going to be happening here on the West side of Evansville on the weekend after Labor Day.

Best Laid Plans

Well, sometimes the best laid plans go awry. We began the T Shirt component of the 45th reunion well in advance. Designed the shirts, got them printed, tagged with names and even got some of them mailed out. Many classmates even stopped by and picked their T shirts up. So far so good, right?

Then a classmate washed one and to our horror and disbelief, we found out that the lettering was coming off. We initially thought that it was just the metallic glitter part of the lettering that we knew would diminish with time and laundering. What we didn't realize was that Nancy was talking about blue showing through the silver gray lettering.

A quick call to the vendor, a local Westside screen printer, confirmed that due to an equipment failure (a heater which raised the shirt temperature to 300 degrees to cure the ink and bond it to the cotton fabric) the shirts were improperly cured.

So how does a good Westside company react to a problem? They do the right thing. Whether or not the original shirt is returned or not, everyone that ordered a shirt will get a properly printed and cured T shirt at least by the time the ball game comes around. Based upon when the shirts are done, which should be early next week, we will reorganize the shirts, retag them and sort them. We will let you know how we are going to distribute them once we actually have them in hand and wash one to make sure they make the grade.

In the meanwhile, while the T shirt drama was playing out, everything else is falling in place and we only recently stopped getting calls from last minute folks. You will all be very surprised at the number of first time reunion attendees who will be there, and I am looking forward to meeting even more Reitz 67 folks this year. The 45th reunion is looking to be the grandest reunion of them all to date. We've got a very ambitious agenda planned and we intend that there will be plenty of time to talk and visit too. It's not too late to get in on the action either. Just let us know you want to attend.

We'll keep you up to date on all our organizing adventures as they unfold. Although we hope for no additional excitement, we know that there is always a way to overcome adversity. It just takes a little more determination and plenty of antacids.

Quiet but Busy

We've been quiet but we've been busy. The final food menu and quantities have been set;  the T-shirts were ordered and delivered and sorted and labeled (available for pickup at the ball game or reunion); name labels are being printed based on reservations received. Attendance is going to be really great, with many new faces to be seen on the reunion scene. 

The Friday golf outing is still available for the duffers in the class - just contact Larry Broerman for details.

The football seats are arranged (for those wanting to sit with the class, use the lower entrance off the double dip (for the least amount of stair climbing) and the school tour is also set for Saturday morning at 10AM. All those wanting to attend should be at the top of the hill in front of the main entrance. Look for Mickey Connors. He's representing the reunion committee to help coordinate the tour attendees. 

All that remains now is to wait for the time to pass until the actual event. For those of you still on the fence, it's not too late. Get your reservations in to Linda. Call her at 812-425-3255.

Thanks to all who have helped with ideas, actions, and equipment, valuable contributions all.

All the pieces are falling in place. Isn't it great when a plan comes together?

By the way, Kokie's Echo Valley is even easier to get to with the opening of the University Parkway extension. Go north on the parkway and turn left at New Harmony Road.