See BCHS Class of 1960 Post REUNION Newsletter below!

For the last several re-unions I have been asked to organize a little program for our dinner and to act as a Master of ceremonies of sorts. I have been asked again to do the same for tonight. In the past we have had some fun with various games and contests regarding who has traveled the furthest to attend the re-union and who remembers what trivial facts about our time together in Bethlehem Central. Tonight however seems a bit different. We have been out of school for fifty years, a half-century, two score and ten, and it seemed that something more substantive would be appropriate. And so I asked each of you to e-mail me about your accomplishments since graduation and I thought I would try to weave them together into some kind of a tapestry of what we, as a class, have done and accomplished since we were last all together in Bethlehem. One accomplishment most, but not all of us, have made is to survive. Dwelling on those who are no longer with us would be inappropriate at a time of festive gathering like this, but we have lost a number of good friends. The memorials we have had available last night and tonight help recall them to us and allow them, in a fashion, to join us here tonight to celebrate our lives and renew and rejoice in old friendships. It also a time for remembrance of 9/11; it has been nine years since that date. And one of our old Teachers, Mr. Feldman who helped us with our musical plays and drams is with us here tonight.

As for my own accomplishments, I have indulged in the study of the medieval art of alchemy. In its heyday the alchemists search was for ways to turn lead into gold, but I have brought to the process a more modern twist. I am working on turning Guinness into urine, and have become fairly adept at the process. Others in our class have done many more interesting things. I received a number of replies to my request for information on 50 years worth of experience and I would like to share some of them with you; as I promised in my request I will keep the stories anonymous. Three very large issues stand out in the letters I received. Two of them were the womanÕs movement and war, especially the Viet Nam war, both of which took on special intensity shortly after we graduated.

Half of the members of our class were women and the letters reveal that on graduation day many of them felt they had a rather limited horizon on their expectations: wife and mother, perhaps nurse or secretary in a mans office, but not too much more than that. Remember, one of the school clubs was the Future Homemakers of America. That changed with a vengeance. Brassieres were burned, THE PILL, became available, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was enacted, and women asserted their independence. This did not affect only our female classmates, however, for even if one is not really equipped to wear a brassier, one lives closely with those who are. A number of the letters I received spoke of the turmoil of those years, trying to make adjustments in our basic expectations which had been forged when we were younger but which then seemed so out of step with the times. The sudden appearance of apparently boundless possibilities seemed to exhilarate some while others seemed more attached to traditional outlooks. Rifts between spouses and families sometimes occurred, as well as coming together in stronger bonds as people struggled together to reach accommodations and master this new social reality.

War, especially Viet Nam, and military service also were featured prominently in the letters. Fortunately, we as a class did not suffer the massive casualties that our parentsÕ generation had suffered twenty years before in WWII. But the experience of war, and the opposition to war, came to us a few short years after we left the hallowed halls of Bethlehem Central. There was a draft then and many of us, almost all men, went into military service. Some made it a career; others simply put in their required time and then returned home. A number of our class opposed the war and some of those outside the military organized, demonstrated and acted against it. This was, like the womanÕs movement, a reflection of the forces playing out in the larger society; they were not unique to our class. But a number of us were personally and intimately affected. Lifelong friendships were forged, and rifts and fissures opened up in families and between friends. To me, the letters reveal these events still playing out in our lives a half century later.

The third stand out issue was not marked in public by parades, meetings, and political agitation. Rather, it was marked in the quiet of the homes we established. It was the raising of our own families, the doing of the things our parents had done for us. We recognized, some of us at least, how smart our parents, who had been so out of it when we were in school together, had suddenly become when it was our turn to raise children. Sometimes we had to try several times to establish a real home with someone we could love and cherish over the long haul. We had divorces, re-marriages, changes of career, and employed moving vans which hauled our belongings all over the country, indeed all over the world for some of us. Some of us lost a spouse to death; others suddenly gained children upon the death of siblings who left orphaned children behind. Families were blended and whole new definitions emerged of what a family was. But we were an extraordinarily resourceful and determined group of people. When we got knocked to the floor we got up and got going again, perhaps in a new direction. We were plucky as one of us said, and who would have thought that in 1960. We were young then, optimistic and sure to have our way. How could we know what would happen when we discovered that youth is not forever, optimism is not always warranted, and you do not always get what you want. But time and again in these letters I read stories of ordinary people I had gone to school with doing remarkable things when it came time to do so. People went back to school, disentangled themselves from poisonous relationships, changed jobs and homes, traveled to exotic climes in Africa and the South Pacific, Alaska, Latin America and Europe. Our classmates were resourceful and determined not only in big ways, but found happiness in the countless small ways of domestic life. People sang in choirs and played instruments in local organizations. Indeed one letter recounted a group of our class holding their own mini-reunion and singing on a mountaintop with a group of Korean vacationers, a scene straight out of the Sound of Music. People planted gardens and trees, took up needlework to make shawls and quilts. some prize winning and some not, or explored the spiritual dimensions of life. People joined civic and arts and theatre groups to improve the life around them. We did some good work, and in the words of a saying popular in our years, bloomed where we were planted. Who would have thought that a ragtag bunch of kids would turn out so well?

There were also a lot of small themes. We enjoyed ourselves with hobbies. Some of us took to the water. Boats were purchased, and promptly run aground, in one case when it was not even in the water. Crunching your boat by dropping it from a trailer on dry land is not the mark of a skillful sailor, but as I said, we persevere and after many dings and dents a mariner emerges like a butterfly from a chrysalis, sort of. Some others, in true maritime fashion, have gotten tattoos. I imagine they looked better when our skin was more taut and less wrinkly than today. Fishing has been popular, especially if you combine it with Photoshop. If you do that right then the minnow you actually caught can be made to look like Moby Dick and small children, especially grandchildren, will hold you in awe as the King of the Anglers. Some of us have become involved in historical re-enactments. The Revolutionary War happened a long time ago, but you can have fun summoning it up again today. Tent encampments, fife and drum bands and competitions, historical lectures add spice to some of our lives. Some of us write books, some write music. Some of us run, others swim, and still others bike, all in pursuit of good health. I, as you can see, am not the Adonis-like creature I once was, and was not impressed by the biking crowd, but several of our intrepid band ride motorcycles. Now that is something I could really get into: me an Easy Rider, cruising down the highway, wind in my hair (what there is left of it), bugs in my teeth, on a chrome festooned Harley hog spitting out smoke and rolling thunder. Of course the actuality of it all is that I would be killed. You Remember Coach Richko the boys gym teacher and football coach. Among other observations he made about my pigskin prowess, or lack thereof, he did tell me I had a wonderful sense of balance, back then. Well, that balance would surely fail me now and I would find myself dead in a ditch alongside the winding road. There would be a smile on my face at the adventure, but I would be dead, dead, dead. Such are the embers of youthful male machismo left at retirement age. I probably ought to settle for the relaxation favored by one of our number: good red wine and fine cigars.

Besides our many avocations, we followed many vocations to make the money which kept body and soul together. We have been lawyers and doctors, managers of big and little industries, and extraordinary employees too. We have been teachers of everything from grade school to graduate school. Some of us have started our own businesses. Some have reaped the rewards of financial success, but others have had to fold up failing endeavors. But again here too we were resilient and got up from the floor and started new enterprises, perhaps with better success based on lessons learned from the failures. A number of us have been career military personnel; others have gone into social services. Ecology has attracted quite a number of us, with people pursuing environmental careers in the Great Plains, the South and here in New York. Technology has proven irresistible to many of us, either in our jobs or our homes. We, after all, have gone from watching that little round TV screen in the Tollgate Ice Cream parlor to keeping up with each other on Facebook. I suppose I should be careful with the use of that WE. Some of us, as shown by the work of Fritz Kass in putting together the class Website that has kept us all informed, have indeed embraced the new ways of the computer and the microchip. Others, like myself for instance, are technological troglodytes who remember Hal the computer in the movie 2001 and curse the person who invented the automated push-button phone menu.

For many of us now, the time of employment and work has passed. Many have retired and others are contemplating that possibility. What are we doing? Sitting in rockers and easy chairs watching the world go by does not seem to be our cup of tea. People are going back to school, not necessarily for a degree to advance their chances for a job, but to learn something about an area that interests them. Art and music programs attract many of us, handicrafts and travel too. One of us joined the Peace Corps and taught English in the vast reaches of the South Pacific. An interest in the spiritual life has grown, something beyond the immediate physical life we experience. That physical life probably was all we were concerned with when the hormones of youth ran warm in our veins; but now something deeper seems to call many of us. Friendships that have endured for decades are tended to, with people meeting each other, as here, or communicating with the new technologies that let miles and time fade away.

So, my intrepid fellow travelers on this fifty plus year voyage of discovery that is our time on this earth together, I offer this toast. To those that we love, and have been loved by, to those who have enriched our lives by their presence, and those whom we have enriched, to those who are here now, and those who have gone, may we express our profound gratitude for sharing our lives until now, and into the future, whatever and whenever that may be.

La Chiam! (To Life!)