Remarks by Will Howarth
I was asked to give a talk tonight because none of our Senior class officers (Bob Newell, Jack Billington, Denny Carroll, Jo Meiers) showed up for this Reunion. We did get an e-mail from Denny, who wrote in part: "As it's turning out, I'll be tied up in one of my rental properties this weekend" . . . Oh, I misread that: he says "I'll be tied up with one of my rental properties" That makes a difference, right? And he concludes, "Tell everyone I'll be thinking of them Saturday night. Good health to all."
Good health is what we all wish for tonight. The 1958 Capitoline has pictures of 326 graduating Seniors. Adding in our "partial" classmates, those who attended for some part of 1954-58, the total is nearly 350. This year we had reservations or responses from 174, or 50% of the class. An additional 20% are unlocated or deceased, which leaves 30% who are located but don't respond. They always puzzle me, especially those who still live in Springfield. I hope that we can work together to make them feel welcome at our next Reunion, in the year 2003.
Yesterday I read through our Reunion booklet and thought about the changes that have come in the last 40 years. Who could imagine that those Seniors in 1958 would turn into "early senior" citizens? Look at their long list of professions. They build homes, restaurants, and bridges. They assist prosecutors, practice law, and manage banks. They teach music, literature, math, and reading. They edit or write books, music, and stories; travel to Europe, Africa, and Asia. One (Jay Morrison) is prominent in Costa Rica, where his wife is running for public office. Others fly airliners, manage forests, work for churches and synagogues. One owns and rides a Harley-Davidson. In 1958 I could have imagined many classmates on a Harley, but perhaps not Harvey Najim!
In 1998, the Class of '58 turns 58. We are now older than our high school teachers, who seemed to us such fossils. We are now older than our parents were, in those days of teen glory. At home I keep a book, "The Oxford Book of Ages," in which the world's great thinkers and writers comment on the passing years. Here are two thoughts from chapter 58:
Mark Twain: "Only at 58 may one still believe that life begins at 60."
W. S. Gilbert: "At 58, my body has become a grand ruin. Like most ruins, it is best viewed in moonlight."
We come of age with jests and tears, but often it's possible to know joy. After he had married late in life, the author C. S. Lewis wrote: "At 60 I am blessed to have found a happiness that passed me by at 20." Among life's long-term survivors, the prevailing mood is mellow. On his 100th birthday, the great ragtime pianist, Eubie Blake, said: "If I'd known I was going to live this long . . . I'd have taken better care of myself."
Forty years out from school, we are all growing old, a little short of wind but long in memories. Like many older folks, we are inclined to say how much life has changed "since we were young." On pages 45-50 of our booklet, you will see how various classmates have recorded moments to remember. I'd like to add a few of my own.
One day you may want to tell someone--a grandchild, perhaps--about what it was like to grow up in Springfield from 1940 to 1960. You will speak of a place and time that seems far more safe, secure, and simple than today. As you tell that child about your early years, be prepared for some puzzled looks and questions. For often you will be talking of a way of life that is utterly gone.
We grew up playing with model airplanes, marbles, jacks, and paper dolls. Our games required no batteries or Internet access: hide and seek, kick the can, Red Rover, come over. At night we fell asleep beside the radio, and it told stories that made pictures dance in our heads.
We lived in quiet neighborhoods and houses, visited by the paper boy, the milk man, the doctor on a house call. We went shopping downtown, in department stores, and when we bought a new pair of shoes, we checked the fit by peering into a big green fluoroscope. That was a first taste of mortality: Mom called our toes "little piggies," but the fluoroscope said that deep inside, we consisted of thin little bones.
At school, we took classes in penmanship. We carried slide rules. We bought yearbooks, like the Capitoline. (Yearbooks are no longer paper and print; now they come on video tape.)
After school, we spent time at soda fountains, drinking malts and nickel Cokes, or going to sock hops and invitationals (a word special to Springfield). We engaged in dating or pinning, in dancing face to face, hand in hand, to music played on "records," vinyl disks that spun at 78 or 45 rpm.
All those things are gone, vanished with typewriters, TV antennas, telegrams, and rotary dial telephones. Gone also are the graceful elm trees that once lined Springfield's streets, and (something I greatly miss) the smell of burning leaves in the fall.
The sketches our classmates wrote of their lives tell many different stories. Some of us have been married many years, others just a few. Several are now single, parted by death or divorce, and trying to write new chapters. Some have grandchildren; one (Pat Stein McPheters) has a grandfather still alive, at 98. A few of us (can you believe it?) have great-grandchildren. Judy Taylor Weaver, who won the door prize for Most Prolific, has 9 children, 11 grandchildren, and 2 great-grandchildren. Maybe that big family is the reason she could not be here tonight.
Today we are spread widely across America, living on its prairies, the two coasts, or in mountains and deserts. We reside in 39 states of the Union and 3 foreign countries. And yet in our written memories we repeatedly invoked Springfield, the halls of SHS, and all the places around this town where we ate, talked, laughed, danced, drove, and made out. We also recalled our friends, teachers, and dates; and most of those people or events revolve around our days in high school.
High school is a uniquely American institution. The schools of colonial days were built for wealthy, privileged families, but after 1800 public schools become a fount of national democracy. Schools ranked children by age, not social status, and moved them through a curriculum, year by year, teaching them to share experiences as a single group. In that process the students became "a class," not defined by wealth but by training and by shared experience. The nation's public schools promote our great variety of skills and interests, and yet they also meld us into a community.
For me, our reunions are not about nostalgia, but the active experience of making and keeping friends. That's why we organized a gift fund this year, to help pay back a place that meant a good deal to us. The response has been very gratifying, and tonight our contributions from classmates, two parents, and one teacher have reached $11, 235. It would be wonderful if, by the end of this evening, we could raise just $765 more to make the final amount an even $12,000. If anyone wants to add a sum, increase their prior gift, or make a dedication, please let Keith Schepp or Judy Van Hagen know within the next half hour. (For results, see Gift.)
We organized a gift this year because, to be frank, our class may never again be at such peak strength. Right now, half of us return or at least write in; while 20% are gone and the other 30% are not responding. At each of our future reunions, fewer and fewer will return. Whoever among us survives for our 80th Reunion, I hope you will know as much friendship, fellowship, and affection as are here in this room tonight.
So I salute the class of 1958. We are a cross-section of mid-century, mid-continent America. We grew up in an All-American town, and we graduated at a time in history when it was happy and exciting to be a teen ager. We knew each other when we were 18, and here we are, 40 years later, still in the process of remaining friends. I hope to see you all at our next reunion, in the new century that is to come.