30th Class Reunion 1976

Welcome to the Class of 1976 Website! 

In our quest to get as many of you to the 30th reunion as possible, there was a great deal of confessing going on between classmates. It seems that the hurts that came along with being in high school are still just skin deep to so many (and you thought you were alone in those feelings???). A common remark was, "Hadn’t I been through all that once? Why exactly would I subject myself to them again?"   THEM... being whomever was their personal bane of existence during those shared years of adolescence... Others have lamented that they already see the people from the class that they want to see, and have no desire to see anyone else. (Made us kind of wonder if they saw us on the street if they would stop and talk to us…maybe us was them?)

Maybe the reluctance to commit to a reunion was because all of us, in some way or other, felt this way. And just how do we get passed that? We bantered around some of the reasons we felt coming to a reunion were important, other than the obvious, which is we are not the people we once were, and that time changes everything. Our twenty-fifth reunion took place right after 9/11. It was an important time in all of our lives. It's when we came to accept on a grand scale how fragile life is, and how tragically short it can be. There were many of us who were impacted that day, through our proximity to the World Trade Center; through our jobs; through people we knew who perished. Seeing our classmates that night, who were impacted so directly by that day, brought a renewed sense to those in attendance about living in the NOW. We are nearing our half-century birthdays, and as crazy as that sounds, we are also coming to grips with what is left of our lives and how important we are to one another.

We thought this belief from one of THEM on the reunion committee summed up the real importance of YOU attending a reunion.

"The mention of 9/11 struck me as related to what we were talking about the other day -- reasons for us, as adults now, to see each other when we can.  We all grew up together, were idiots together, liked, loved and hated each other at times together -- and whether or not we like it, we are bonded in such a way that no one else is to our lives.  It just doesn't make sense to completely cut that much out of our lives by not coming to reunions and get-togethers -- we all have too much in common, though we have moved on to our various career and family lives.  At this point in life, we need to put the hurt and offended feelings we all have behind us and look at each other in a new and different way.  Laugh about the school stories, share the family pictures, talk about the ups and downs of life, and just be very grateful to be above ground and not below.  Now more than ever, we know how short life can be -- why be concerned with the silliness that went on when we were 16-18 years old?  We're not those people anymore, and the reunion will give us a chance to get to know one another all over again."

Hopefully, now, you will rethink how significant your absence might be when we gather and recount our times, and that you realize you are part of who we are, and we are part of who you are.

And we would LOVE to see you!

Signed – THEM