Later today we’ll be headed for the Nashville Airport to pick up our daughter and granddaughter for the weekend- their first visit to our TN home. The excitement level around here’s pretty high right now. Then Monday evening brother Doug shows up for a day with his new golf clubs to test out our mountain golf courses (Late note: these events were done, with great joy, since I started this post and will be covered in a later post).
I had two memorable trips in the first half of June. The first was a journey up north which started with a visit with USNA classmate Brian, Elaine, and their full family- son, daughter, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren- in Maryland. It was pure chance to have caught the whole family all at once. I had not seen their son or daughter in ten years, and had never met daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Was a great couple of hours. The next day I dropped in on my parents in SE Pennsylvania before heading to New Jersey for the two main events. The first was a Peddie Prep School reunion golf tournament in Hightstown with three Class of 1974 classmates- guys I had not seen in forty years before we started this reunion golf event a few years back. Once a year we see each other for a great seven hour catch-up session, then go our separate ways until the next year. Later that day I headed an hour south to attend our Moorestown High School 50th Reunion.
The reunion was awesome. Thanks goes primarily to the four ladies who organized the two-day event that included a Friday evening happy hour session, a Saturday AM tour of the old high school, and a five hour dinner event that night.
Yes, I’m going to add a few details here which might not be entertaining to anyone but myself. My main message to any reader is that when your 50th (or 30th or 40th) high school reunion comes up, strongly consider attending. Keys to a successful event include 1.) having a small team of organizers start planning well in advance, 2.) use social media to develop a network of classmate contacts, reach out to them, and encourage them to attend, 3.) develop your own network of classmate contacts and keep it active and 4.) get over yourself- everybody’s gained weight and lost hair, or it’s turned gray. If it’s not gray, everyone knows why. If you know a group of your old buddies will be attending- even if it’s just 3 or 4- then you’re guaranteed not to be sitting in the corner all night and not engaging with anyone. We had 81 attend plus spouses out of about 320 graduates. We also had two retired teachers attend. There were another 30 or so who saw the posted pictures and instantly regretted not attending.
Many of these folks I had not seen since graduation, half a century ago. A couple of surprising themes:
- Several classmates who knew I had spent a career in the Navy wanted to talk about that- either they had spent time in the Navy or they had children in the Navy. Led to some great group conversations.
- Another bunch of classmates had become Christian believers after high school and wanted to share their experiences. During our senior year I had become known as a vocal evangelist (which certainly did not make me Mr. Popular back then). Totally unexpected.
- The absolute best part of the Saturday high school tour was engaging with our student and teacher hosts as we went through the buildings, comparing school life back then and now. The students were as amazed at the differences as we were.
I also walked around the old neighborhood and noticed all sorts of things that completely skipped my attention when I lived there.
Six days after returning from that trip I flew up to Boston where I spent the first night with my brother Don and then the next four nights with Dave and Debbie- friends from our marathon running days in the 1980s/1990s- in their new, beautiful Bristol RI retirement home. In the evenings we caught up on our two decades of raising children after the marathon days. During the days I was down in Newport RI catching up with old Naval War College friends and attending the Navy’s Current Strategy Forum for the first time in five years.
So this is what retired life is about. Not bad.