The aggregation of innocents pictured above is my first grade class at Nancy Hart Elementary School, Hart County, Georgia, taught by Mrs. Mamie Brown, a true saint if this world has ever known one. In case you're curious, yours very truly is seated at the left on the very first row. Note that the picture was taken in April and I am unshod. ( If this, plus the fact that I actually picked cotton and lived in a mobile home twice, doesn't solidify my credentials as a purebred--and who knows, perhaps inbred as well--southerner, then I don't know what it will take.) Nine of my fellow first graders at Nancy Hart were in attendance when the famous (If you ain't heard of us, it's definitely on you.)Class of 1965 gathered on September 25 to commemorate the 45th anniversary of their graduation from Hart County High School.
Some folks, I suspect, would find little attraction in the idea of commemorating their forty-fifth year out of high school by getting together with a bunch of people who generally look their age and remind you that you probably do too. Not me, brothers and sisters. I ate up every minute of this past weekend's activities, even though I found myself looking at name tags a lot more this time than at our fortieth.
There were 204 of us who claimed our sheepskins on May 31, 1965. Not only were we the largest graduating class in school history, but we were also the last all-white one. A court order issued over the summer would see to that. Moreover, while we were bopping along to the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" (the number one song the week we graduated), decisions that would profoundly affect our generation were coming to light as it became increasingly clear that the Johnson administration intended to escalate our involvement in the Vietnam conflict dramatically. There would be 184,000 American troops in Vietnam by the end of the year and some 537,000 at the peak of the fighting to come.
This war would claim the lives of several classmates, some directly and immediately and some by degrees. One of the latter, the most recent of our thirty classmates who are now deceased, lost his leg in Vietnam and struggled the rest of his life to find his place in the world. When he suddenly fell terribly ill a few months ago, his country offered him no recompense for his sacrifice. Even as he lay ravaged and dying with cancer, the VA hospital would not accept him as a patient, and the Veterans Administration accepted no responsibility even for providing him with a decent place to die. At that point, two of his former classmates, both also fellow vets, stepped forward with the kind of compassion and character that made me doubly proud to be a member of the HCHS Class of 1965 and made arrangements to get our stricken comrade into hospice care.
He lasted only a few days there, but when the VA declined to reimburse them, the hospice folks were out some $5,100 in expenses. Determined not to see the matter end this way, one of the 1965ers who had gotten him into the hospice unit called on the rest of us via the listserv for the upcoming reunion to see to it that one of our own who had been so ill-served by the country he had defended so courageously should not have his passing recorded in red ink. Within a few weeks, contributions to the hospice in honor of our classmate exceeded the expenses for his care by roughly $2,000.
I'm
sure some weighed in more heavily than others on this, but I know for a fact
that a chunk of it came from folks who ain't exactly lighting cigars with $20
bills. I wouldn't argue if you told me that members of other groups would step up
like this to honor the memory of someone they knew forty-five years ago and
hadn't seen much, if at all, since, but that doesn't mean I believed you. What
I saw and sensed among our crew on reunion night was the same feeling of
cohesion and mutual acceptance that I always associated with our class.
Speaking of weighing in heavily, this is what I looked like when I graduated from high school. Not only had I obviously developed quite a taste for my mama's biscuits since the first grade, but I lived out in the country in a tiny little tin-roofed house which had only recently been outfitted with indoor plumbing. Yet fat and "country" as I was, I never felt anything but complete acceptance from the "town" kids who lived in circumstances far more elevated than mine. I'm sure there were class divisions back then just as there are now, but they sure didn't seem to count for much at this event. I bragged on our new grandson to any and all, and they reciprocated heartily in kind. There was also talk of that time some of the girl's basketball team got caught smoking in the janitor's closet, not to mention all the Saturday night hi-jinks in the Dairy Queen parking lot, which was the absolute epicenter of our social universe in 1965. For a few hours, at least, waistlines seemed to recede while hairlines advanced.
Ah, the stories we could tell.
Though it was clear that on a day-in, day-out basis, many of us might not have that much in common, for a night, at least, whether we worked in three-piece suits or coveralls mattered a whole lot less than a shared connection that was rooted in a particular place and a particular time but has held fast even as times have changed enormously. In a time when discord, division, and just pure-tee meanness seem to be the order of the day for a whole lot of politicians--not to mention quite a few preachers--who are hellbent on demonizing those who seem "different," it was mighty good to be amongst people who, despite their differences, were still genuinely proud to be a part of a group where they knew without a doubt they belonged.
However earnest they may be at the time, individual promises to "stay in touch" are rarely fulfilled when reunion-eers are forced to abandon their nostalgic revelry and re-enter their own present-day, real-world lives, but being "in touch" isn't always a matter of emails or phone calls so much as a mindset that willfully refuses to let old emotional connections to others wither and die. Talk of such might seem archaic or purely wishful these days, but I've seen just that mindset endure among my old classmates for forty-five years now, and I'm bettin' a half century is well within our reach.
