Thoughts on that 35 Year Class Reunion

The photo gallery is my only record of that weekend in Tulsa and even that is not much! 🙂 Though in the gallery you can tell that these class reunions are really big and important to a whole lot of students, especially female it seemed to me, with a whole lot more of the girls there than the guys! There were 1,000 in our graduating class, so that good group above is not really that high a percentage of a thousand!

During that part of 1993 I was not writing in my journal, so nothing there! 🙂

I went early enough on the first day to find Uncle J.C. Doggett’s house and drive my rental car by his house for a brief visit, the only time I ever saw in Tulsa, since he was not a professor there during my high school years.

I think it was also on that arrival day that I drove my our old house at 7610 East 6th Street which had been painted purple and was now part of a Mexican or Latin American neighborhood. Then I drove by the nearby Eastgate Shopping Center where both Dad and I worked and of course there was nothing recognizable! Sipe Food Mart was gone and Dad’s Froug’s Department Store was some kind of cheap discount store or something. A newer mall over by the interstate had replaced this shopping center! Then I drove by Calvary Baptist Church which was the only thing that looked the same, but did not stop. I did not go by the high school then since our reunion was going to be there the next day.

Then I checked into the recommended hotel for the reunion which I think was also where the reunion took place in the ball room and meeting rooms. Then after settling in my room, I went downstairs to the meeting rooms for the reunion registration, getting a program and a name tag with my senior picture on it, which was a good idea since none of us looked the same! 🙂 I recognized no one at registration, but the ones at the tables were very friendly and tried to show excitement about seeing me there. One girl, who was also divorced, tried to get friendly and showed a whole lot more interest in me than I had in her. I think I may have dated her once or twice back in school days but my horrible marriage had created a guy who will never even think about marriage again! So I was friendly but not encouraging to her. 🙂

I’m writing this 45 years after the reunion, so may not remember everything exactly right. But I think we had a banquet that Friday night to start the reunion, then a tour, program and lunch at the actual high school on Saturday with maybe some optional activity Saturday afternoon and then the reunion dance Saturday night. Sunday was a reunion golf tournament which is when I flew back to Nashville!

Everybody was nice and friendly and it was overall a pretty good experience, especially going back to the school building and even eating in the school cafeteria! But these people are not my friends anymore, having had no contact with any of the Class of ’58 for 35 years. So it was not that much fun or rewarding socially for me. And after it was over and I returned to my world, I knew I would probably never return to Tulsa again, where some of these had lived the whole 35 years except for college. Just not my world!

One thing is certain: We can’t go back. The musical will never be the same as it was.

~Harold Prince

¡Pura Vida!