High School Reunion

I attended a very small high school in Oklahoma (Varnum High School) with a graduating class of 20 people. Our school does not have normal class reunions but instead there is an Alumni Banquet that is held every other year and alumni from all different classes come back to renew acquaintances. I graduated in 1982 and I went to the banquet a couple times in the first 10 years after my graduation but I didn't see many people that I knew each time and later after getting married and having children the banquet didn't fit well into my schedule.

I was in Oklahoma recently with my family and we had the opportunity to see two very good friends of mine from high school. One of these (Larry) is a friend that I have been close to for over 30 years and I try to see him about once a year when I am "home". The other is a classmate (Gina) that I hadn't seen since our graduation in 1982 but who had recently found me on Facebook. Seeing both of these friends was great and led to discussions of other classmates, most of whom we had not seen since high school. During these discussions the idea came up of attending the Varnum Alumni banquet next year to celebrate our 30th graduation anniversary. However a little later I realized that a banquet was held this year and the next one will be in 2013.

I made the comment to Gina that "I wish that someone would put together a reunion for our class" and later I decided that I needed to be that someone since this is something that I really wanted to see happen. So the plan now is for us to have a Varnum "Class of 1982" class reunion in June of 2012. We have about 11 months to track down all of our classmates and make sure that everyone is invited to the reunion. Two of the women in our class have passed away so there are 18 of us to include.

This past week I have started looking for people both online and through contacts back home. I have contacted 7 classmates so far and have another 10 to find. I think that most of these will be easy to find as either they or some of their family members still live in my hometown. The final 3 or 4 classmates could be a challenge. The classmates that I have reached so far are all excited about the idea and it has been fun exchanging email with them and learning about what they have been up to for the past 29 years.

My guess is that the process of finding people and exchanging mail with them before the reunion next year will be as much fun for me as the reunion itself. I will try to add another blog on this subject later in the year to let you know how things are progressing.