Class Reunions, Part I
(Excerpt from Chapter 14, “Reflections, Reunions, and Regrets” in Growing Up Silent in the 1950s:Not all Tail Fins and Rock ‘n’ Roll, Yesteryear Publishing (2013), by Judith Thompson Witmer, Curwensville Joint High School, Curwensville, PA Class of 1955)
Class Reunions are the social process by which periodically
we have the chance to see our high school classmates all in one place at one
time. While there is fertile ground for a research study of alumni groups and
class reunions, generalizations about reunions can be made through observation,
experience, and reading both fiction and non-fiction. All researchers agree, however, that our perceptions of high school remain with
us and that we are today who we were then.
It is in high school that friendships are created that have
a unique depth to them and a hold on those who have forged the friendships.
While we can’t choose our classmates, most of us form very close associations
with them because our high school years are the only ones many of us ever spend
with a social and economic cross section of our peers and is the only time we share an extended common
experience.
Even though this experience is partly one of discord because
adolescents are in the throes of conflict much of the time, we still turn to
our peers for acceptance. Most of us never stop trying to win the love of
classmates—at least for as long as the high school experiences continue through
class reunions. We all pretend that acceptance by classmates doesn’t matter,
but it does, and we want to be a part of the whole.
Classmates share experiences that are unique to those in the
class and unique to the time, because the friendships are tied to events and
these events are not repeated. For any particular class there is only one
freshman dance, one sophomore selection of class rings, class color, flower,
and motto. There is only one junior prom, and one senior experience of everything else that matters.
We remember the football cheers word for word, the pep
songs, lines from the class play we were in, the songs we sang at Commencement,
what we wore the last day of school our senior year, Class Day, how many times
our pictures appeared in the yearbook, who wrote what in our yearbooks, what
was written about us in the school newspaper, who drove us home after a school
event or an evening at the Teenage Center, who commiserated with us the time we
didn’t win the coveted award, who passed notes between classes, the names of
our homeroom teachers freshman and senior years, favorite outfits … and gym
suits.
Even today we frame much of our conversation in high school
terms, describing someone as a cheerleader type, or the boy/girl who never paid
attention to us in high school, the person who always knew the answers, a high
school mentality, and the senior prom jitters. And we find ourselves still
using the slang from those days, sometimes noticing people looking at us
uncomprehendingly. Then we remember: they weren’t there.
Mainly, we all listened to the same music and watched the
same movies. We recall whom we were dancing with or necking with or even
sitting next to in the theatre. And for a brief moment we are there again.
Other than the casually asked, “Where did you graduate from
high school,” high school experiences are almost never a topic of conversation
once adulthood is reached. Not even those who were graduated in the same year
or same decade, but in a different location, offer information about their
years in high school nor do they ask about ours. It is almost a closed subject
and an unvoiced agreement that “if you don’t ask me what I was like in high
school, I won’t ask you.” And there is no question more provocative to ask a
grown woman than “Were you a cheerleader?” The responses usually are strong and
immediate, either something like “Why did you ask me that?” or “Why? Do I look
like one?”[i] In any
case, the response is always defensive.
As Keyes says, “I think the rest of our lives are spent
making up for what we did or didn’t do in high school.”[ii] We
never forget, ever. Mia Farrow (actress) remembers the time every girl except
her was asked to dance; Charles Schultz (cartoonist) says that the yearbook
staff rejected his every cartoon; Warren Beatty tells about the ten football
scholarships he turned down; and Dory Previn (lyricist,
singer-songwriter and poet) cannot forget the role she didn’t get in the
class play.[iii]
In actuality, reunions are more a social history than the
class yearbook, for reunions are fluid over as many years as classmates
continue to hold them, sometimes for as long as there are enough surviving
classmates to meet. And while they are fascinating and widespread, predictable
yet arbitrary, and create both anxiety and hope, class reunions remain
virtually an unstudied American phenomenon.
With all of the angst, then, why do people attend these
fearful, emotionally charged events? When even receiving the announcement is
unnerving, why do we go? Reasons given for attending reunions include looking
forward to reminiscing, thinking one might look better now than in high school,
“letting people know I am still the same friendly person who will talk to
everyone,” or showing one has changed.
The primary reason people attend, however, is because they
want to see particular classmates, especially a rival of the same sex, a high
school steady, or the person who might have changed their life—“if only.” What may be surprising is that those
at their fiftieth reunion remember no less vividly than those at their fifth
who it is they really want to see.
Reasons for not attending one’s reunions include not wanting
to be reminded of being (or not being) in a clique, unhappy memories, or
feeling like one did not belong. Further, people without good news to report
don’t usually attend. Whether or not one decides to attend, we share a fear,
held over from high school, of appearing ridiculous.
For all my own fussing about it (more evidenced by my diary
entries than my memory which recalls few negatives about those days), I loved
high school. I must assume that those who return to our reunions also did. The
reunion attendees are much the same group every time. For the most part we
remain the core of the class and were the nucleus (although not all of the same
clique) in the 1950s as well. Even so, we are comprised of a cross-section. For the most part, we have
remained true to each other and to our class.
Three of the seven high honor students in our graduating class have attended every
reunion and three have never attended. Approximately ten percent of our entire
class have never missed a reunion, but a larger percent have never attended.
Our class president attended only one.
