***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..The Reunion Redux  

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent to me by fellow classmates via the class website. Also classmates have placed messages on the Message Forum page when they have something they want to share generally like health issues, new family arrivals or trips down memory lane on any number of subjects from old time athletic prowess to reflections on growing up in the old home town. Thus I have been forced to take on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. These responses are no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as computer savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some other stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest.

Other stuff floating on the Message Forum page defies simple classification such as the mundane administrative work that has rightly taken up the time of the reunion committee one of whose members, and an old friend, Jessica Sills, periodically likes to keep me posted describing her trials and tribulations and so I know more, probably more than I want to know about the doings of the committee. I do not know if Jessica is aware of the “law” of organization of such social events but the things she has described to me sounded awfully familiar from my own work on various political and social committees. And as such things go it looks like her work has followed that same path. Obviously for a reunion, a 50^th reunion in the modern go-go age the key question is to be able to get in contact with each and every class member. A daunting task. As she noted to me in one of her e-mails that is the most pressing task lately since in order to make an event worthwhile and worth the energy of pursuing to the end a minimum number of people have to declare they will attend, or seriously think about it.   

That most pressing issue of how to find “missing” classmates has slowed down considerably during the last few weeks as the now tradition sources of current detection, the Internet and mailings have dried up. The Internet is invaluable these days as source since anybody who is anybody with the slightest vanity, or curiosity is on some site. Interesting the most fruitful places are high school-related sites. I believe a worthwhile study could be conducted based on the premise that one’s high school attachment, for good or evil, is the number one place where you would log into, way above any college or other organizational affiliation. That is true in my own despite the hard times I had going through the damn process. This contacting in any case is a thorny question since not everybody once they left North Adamsville High, or any high school for that matter, wants to be found for any number of reasons from awful memories of school to being on the run from the law, repo men, ex-wives or husbands combined with that generational issue mentioned before about computer savviness and ability to navigate the “information superhighway” combined with fifty years of missing-ness [sic] makes for some problems. So that gives you an idea of what a social committee is up against. Nothing earth-shattering but nerve-racking if you are planning a one-shot event.

Recently Jessica, who I believe told me previously that this was her first reunion committee membership since the tenth year anniversary, mentioned how she got corralled into joining this time. Well not exactly corralled since she was looking to volunteer for a reunion that would probably be the last effective time that the class, now deep into the insurance mortality actuarial tables, sickness and disability, could get together short of a nursing home or an assisted living encampment. Let me run the scenario she presented just to show how the thing works.

Last fall, sometime in October, she tried to get in touch with some of the people who chaired the last reunion, the fortieth. Here is what she wrote:

“Hi Jerry [one of the co-chairs] (If you don’t remember me you used to live next my grandparents- The Kellys -on Young Street in the old days.) I sent the following to Linda Perkins (now Cielo) [the other co-chair whom she was able to reach fairly easily because she is still working an administrative assistant at the school and thus a valuable source of information] which may interest you:  

Hi- If I recall from a flyer I received then  you and Jerry Gates were the central organizers for the 40^th reunion of the NAHS Class of 1964 so I wanted to contact you and see if there are any plans afoot for the 50^th next year. If so I would be happy to work on the organizing committee. If not are you up for forming a committee to do that organizing? If we can get five or six people from the area to meet that would get us started. Are you still the Principal’s secretary at NAHS? That would be invaluable. Also below is a note I want to send around to various sites (Classmates, Facebook, etc.) once I know what is up in order to get a feel for whether we would have enough attendees to make it worthwhile.  Thanks for your time. Later Jessica Sills –jessicasills28@comcast.net    

 

Having received information that no committee had been formed at that point Jessica (and Linda, Jerry said he could not so it this time due to pressing grandfatherly concerns) started an event page on Facebook and wrote the following after Linda had set up a class website and became the original webmaster (later taken over by Donna Nolan who had more expertise in this matter).

“Originally posted on Facebook now updated here to reflect information on the North Adamsville 64 website-http://www.northadamsville64.com/class_index.cfm:

“Hi Class of 1964- I would like to help get people together to organize our 50th reunion (Ouch!) –Don’t ask me why but I am feeling some old time breeze in my bones coming from the tepid waters of Adamsville Bay, coming from the dusty old tree-named, Indian-named (oops, Native American-named) streets, and ocean-named streets of our town smacking me in the face. Coming too from some old bleeding Raider red nostalgia that I have not, well, have not felt since the day in June 1964 when we threw our collective caps in the air at Veterans Stadium and went out to face the world, a world that were didn’t create and were not asked about but which we faced as best we could. Coming, hell, from mind’s memory of steamy summers at Adamsville Beach, HoJo’s ice cream, deathly school lunches, those guys including a boyfriend of mine running around tracks and on the streets in shorts subject to the whims of irate drivers and old lady pedestrians, also irate, cheering myself silly at those titanic football battles, especially senior year, when I moved on to another boyfriend who starred on that team, especially senior year, on those granite-grey leafy autumn afternoons. And too reflecting to on that fresh clean breathe of the “newer world” that was in the air just then. (As I write this on November 22, 2013, no need to ask what happened on that date or where we were not with this audience, overwhelmed by that little sadness that our dreams, our outrageous over-sized youthful dreams, might have been shortened up just a bit, that that day some portentous ebb of history would hold us back.)   

All this telling me to help put this reunion idea together since this is effectively our last shot at coming together under the sign of a significant anniversary. To see our respective old gangs collectively for probably the last time that the clan would be able to gather on a significant occasion what with death, disability, forgetfulness and just plain fright at the idea of a next time taking their toll. That the next significant milestone, the 75^th , assuming that the mania for oddball celebration years like 30^th , 45^th , and 60^th , or worst 38^th,48^th or 68^th has no taken root we would all be at or approaching ninety-three. A very scary thought, the thought of holding a reunion at some assisted living site or nursing home. No thank you. Now or never.

Are you up for it? Would you attend? Are you still in contact with 1964 NAHS in your “social network” (formerly known as friends and acquaintances)? Let them know what's afoot – As well as this site I have set up an event page on Facebook - North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 Reunion- and other sites to reach out. Later Jessica Sills”

Of such pitches committees and reunions are made. More later.