From Red Devils to Gray Devils (or, 73 is the new 61)
By Jim Szantor
It has been a long and winding road that brings the Class of '61 to Reunion Weekend. A time when we can take our noses out of our devices and communicate the best possible way--face to face. We've come so far and seen so much, but on this occasion it's all about something that we can never get enough of--living in the moment with people who matter to us. Some of us may say more to each other this weekend than we did when we were in the same building on a daily basis. Reunions can be strange that way.
We've gone our separate ways in many ways, but there are bonds that can never be separated, and Mary D. Bradford was a big part of that. Some of the connections we treasure started before that, some came after. But we're so fortunate to have them. There's no app for that.
Our birth dates and graduation dates were bookended by two presidents known mainly by their initials (FDR and JFK), with some of us then sent off to an unpopular war by LBJ. (OMG!) Somehow we survived anti-war and race riots, three high-profile assassinations and thought we were living in turbulent times then. Little did we know.
We've reached the time of our lives when, as is often said, it seems as if we're having breakfast every 20 minutes and a doctor's appointment every 20 days. And if our waistlines have expanded, so have our vocabularies. Unfortunately, many of our new words end in "itis," "oscopy" or "ectomy" (with a few "ograms" thrown in for good measure.) Some of us are lucky enough to have original factory equipment, but others seem to be doing just fine with replacement parts. Our mileage may vary accordingly.
Our lives since high school have had similar arcs (higher education, marriage and careers, exhilarating highs and devastating lows, medical battles won and lost), but no two narratives are alike, with their surprising and fortuitous twists, unexpected and unfortunate turns. We'll talk about them, tell stories--funny and otherwise--we may have told before. But underneath it all is something strangely and poignantly wistful that is easier to experience than to explain. A tear or two may flow, but laughter will carry the day. To borrow a title from my favorite song of those cherished Bradford years, "It's All in the Game."
We'll reminisce about the sweet used-to-be, a time when you could get on a plane without getting undressed, when mosquitoes were occasional nuisances instead of winged assassins, and a Christmas gift might be one of those wildly irresponsible vintage toys of our youth--the chemistry set--the better to conduct home experiments with the ammonium nitrate now prized by rogue terrorists.
Our first cars are quaint relics now (it's cringe-inducing to contemplate how crude and dangerous they really were), but how treasured they were then! Apples were something we ate; Steve Jobs was just 6 years old on our Graduation Day and hadn't decided to change the world just yet. Amazon was a river in South America, a tweet was a sound produced by a bird, and Google was the name of a comic-strip character whose first name, if you don't remember it, can be learned if you use his last name to find it, using a device probably within arm's reach.
Culturally, a maverick from Mississippi named Elvis Presley was viewed as outrageous by some as the fabled Generation Gap reared its head, writ large. No one envisioned such outre performers as Alice Cooper, Madonna and Sid Vicious and others of inexplicable popularity. Thus, rap and hip-hop aren't likely to be heard at the Chateau on our special night; Snoop Dogg won't be making the playlist. We'll hear many oldies and savor the memories they conjure up as the sound track of our youth plays on.
We'll survey the years and laugh about the clothes we wore, the "what were we thinking?" misadventures and the gasoline we burned going around in circles downtown. We took ourselves perhaps too seriously at times but at least took no "selfies." (And what about that sheepskin we worked so hard to get? All we got was a piece of paper! I, for one, still feel cheated and have thus given my graduation an Incomplete. But that's just me.)
Our graduates include at least two doctors that I know of, perhaps a lawyer or three, but most likely no Indian chiefs. Scanning the yearbook, some wonderful names pop out--a Jane Eyre and a Thomas Wolfe, whom I dearly hope can come home again. The Annex may be gone but still stands tall in our memories. It rained on our scheduled Graduation Day, a happenstance that turned out to be more of a innocuous oddity than an ill omen.
We'll share some of our epic Kodak moments, those occasions when someone was bound to say, "Great Grandma is probably looking down on us with a big proud smile." (To explore the thought of other moments when Great Grandma was looking down on us is a thought too unsettling to pursue further in this essay, if you get my drift. Who raises and lowers the celestial curtain?)
Those of us who have moved away can use this occasion to revisit old haunts (the ones that still exist) and scan the crowd for familiar faces (thank God for name tags) and lament the absence of those we fear we may never see again, trying to remember that, as a poet once said, people die but love doesn't have to. The list of Missing Classmates numbers about 280 and leads one to wonder where those people are, and, if still living, why they have stayed in the shadows. If by choice, we have to respect that; if for darker reasons, that's most unfortunate. We may know the circumstances for a few, but for the others--whether they were good friends, casual acquaintances or names we hardly recognize--like a lot of life's mysteries, we may never know. We can only hope that life has dealt them the best possible hand.
It has been said that the 25th is the best reunion--some liken it to life's mid-term exam--and say they only get sadder after that. But most marathoners--those lucky enough to remain in the race--feel more exhilaration in the home stretch than they did at the halfway mark. Granted, we know the trip is not going to last forever, but it's satisfying to toast the milestones we've achieved and humbly acknowledge our good fortune. And who knows--the way research is advancing on the scourges of cancer and Alzheimer's, in five years 78 may be the new 61. Let's drink to that!
