Tom Mazur, Priest, at the Alleman 60th High School Reunion on August 26 2023.
Saturday, August 26th, was my husband’s sixtieth high school reunion.
The Class of 1963 of Alleman High School was, originally, a class of 221. Of that number, we were told that 58 have died.
The reunion venue was Riverfront Grille in Rock Island. Approximately 35 hardy souls showed up for the celebration.
One class member (Bob Hafner) just spent a week in the hospital, but he and Marvis made it to the event.
Some of those celebrating came from Tennessee and other far-flung locales.
As you head into your seventies, with an average life span of 76, the reunions attract fewer and fewer class members. In the case of my own high school class of 110 members, scheduled to have a reunion on September 9th, only 35 people, including spouses, will be in attendance.
I remember that Joan Clark (of my old class) spoke of the 50th high school reunion as the “last one” that people would attend. She shared this insight with me when we traveled to Nuevo Vallara together in 2007. In her own case, that turned out to be prophetic, as she died of a massive stroke in early October of this year.
When I organized a “mini reunion” of the eleven girls who ran around together in high school, only 5 of us were still alive and only 3 of us were able to attend. My old high school boyfriend died on May 20, 2021, at age 76. He had gone in for some tinkering with his pacemaker and he did not survive the operation, which everyone had thought would be a minor bit of surgery. He had just been inducted into our small hometown’s Athletic Hall of Fame.
Class member Kathy Dunaven Meadows with Tim Kennedy, husband of the evening’s Mistress of Ceremonies.
So, if you are coming up on a reunion for your high school during this year (or any year), keep in mind that, with the passing of years, you will lose many classmates, so if you want to see any of them in life, attend at least up to the 50th
because, after that, the herd will thin considerably. (More pictures to follow).
