40 Year High School Reunions

This weekend I am going to my 40 year high school reunion.  How can that be?  I don’t feel like I’m 40 years older and I’m sure everybody is thinking that I don’t look old enough for a 40 year reunion from high school.  Right?  In my mind, I am that young guy going to the local photo studio one sunny summer afternoon in the late 70s to have a senior portrait made.

But really, who am I kidding?  It was definitely forty years ago.  My fellow classmates and I put on our caps and gowns on the evening of May 17, 1979, and got ready to head to the stadium.  The girls in the group wore white gowns as the guys wore maroon. That’s because we were the Bulldogs from Jennings High School from Jennings, Louisiana, and those were our school colors.  

Before I left for the ceremony, I had to take a few photos with my family.  Here I am with my mom and dad and my younger sister Jamie.  I was the fifth child in my family to graduate from high school and Jamie would graduate the following year.  My mom would be turning 46 a few days later, and my dad was 50 years old. 

I remember thinking my dad was pretty old since I was in junior high, if not earlier.  My mom was no spring chicken herself, yet they still had a few years before their own 40 year high school reunions.  After taking the photos, we headed over to the stadium for the ceremony.

I’m not going to look up the facts about the situation because using my memory will prove just how old I am!  From what I remember there were 209 graduating seniors in our class.  Supposedly it was the biggest class that there ever was at the time from the school.  I also think that I’ve heard that there was never a larger class.  Perhaps that’s true.  I’m sure I’ll be corrected in the likely situation that I’m wrong.

Can you see me in the group photo?  I’m on the right side of the photo in the maroon gown with a gold collar.  That was another school color.  So maroon, white, and gold were our school colors.  Hmm, I think gray was another one.  Can you have four school colors?  But I think that’s all of them:  maroon, white, gray, and gold.  I won’t bore you with all of the other details from that night, mostly because I can’t remember them all!  Remember?  It was 40 years ago!  Our class song was “The Theme From Mahogany.” 

I was thinking about my reunion all this week.  My classmates have been posting information off and on.  I was looking through my family history information and ran across something interesting.  It is a newspaper article about my grandfather’s 40th year high school anniversary in 1966.   I knew when I saw it that  I was going to have to include it in my post this week.

My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry, and her father is the Fred Bucklin talked about in this article.  He also had four older siblings that  had graduated before him, though his graduating class included his identical twin Clarence and their younger sister Edna.

I am not mentioned by name in the article, but I am one of the grandsons that helped him have more grandchildren than any of his classmates.  I don’t remember my grandfather going to his reunion, but I can remember lots of things in my life from 1966 and before.  And one thing I am quite sure of:  my grandfather was a really old man ever since I was a kid. 

So this brings me to one glaring conclusion – I really am an old fart!  There’s no getting around it.  But that’s okay.  Like I said at the first, I’m not alone in this.  All my classmates are old farts, too!

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Reunion update: 

Thank you, Jean Coco, for reminding me that “The Way We Were” was our class song.  I went to my Memories book to confirm this and found a newspaper clipping from the day after our graduation. 

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…found another article about my grandfather’s 40th anniversary online…