Year 2 Days 228 and 229 Pre-Reunion

The official start of my 50th year high school reunion is this Friday. It will cover three days as about 150 people come together to celebrate this special event. However, for the last two days, Mary Margaret and I got a head start in getting together with a few folks that we have not seen in a long, long time.

Wednesday night we went over to Steve and Linda’s house for dinner. Steve was our best man at our wedding and is fellow who I have known since grade school. They were so kind to come up and visit us while we were staying up near Cheboygan a couple of weeks ago. They brought their 22-foot speedboat and we spent the afternoon exploring Iron River and Burnt Lake.

When we arrived, we discovered that Steve had fired up his Big Green Egg, a kamado-style ceramic charcoal barbecue cooker. As a huge beef tenderloin grilled away, he made some special margaritas with all of the fixings. He knew I am a big fan of this luscious drink but did not know if I preferred my margaritas using light, medium or dark tequila. Thus, he had gone to the local spirits store and bought handfuls of the mini airplane bottles of high end tequilas. Tucked away in his freezer, they were chilled to perfection so we decided to start with the light tequila and work our way through the medium to dark tequilas. Each drink was a work of art and we slurped them down with robust gusto. Yum!

We drank and ate our way through the evening as Linda paired the tenderloin with her homemade Caesar salad, grilled corn salad, baked smashed potatoes, sautéed mushrooms and delicious bread. This was followed with a fresh berry pie and hot coffee. OMG! Died and gone to heaven!

That wonderful night was followed up with a larger get together this evening. George and his wife Patti had invited a group of us over to their house for cocktails and then dinner at Michigan State University’s Kellogg Center. George was our class President in high school and was one of several good friends I had while going to the high school. George and Steve were part of the core group of people who have worked so long and hard setting up and coordinating the various events that cover this three-day reunion.

It was amazing seeing people that I went to school with but had not seen in 50 years. There were six couples and toward the end of dinner, one of my best buddies, Cal, (aka: Scooter), arrived. He was delayed joining us as he is an elder at a church here in East Lansing and was coming from a meeting of the elders.

It was fun listening to and sharing stories of things we did back during our high school days and learning what has happened to each of us over the years. It was pointed out that from our graduating class of 360 people, only 30 have died. This is far below the norm, which is between 20% and 30% by the time one gets to our age.

We actually had a rather remarkable graduating class with about 99% graduating and about 96% going on to college. However, after all, we were going to school in the shadows of Michigan State University and many of our parents were professional in their respective fields and a significant percentage of them worked at MSU as professors or support staff. It sounds like many of us went on to distinguish ourselves in education, medicine, law, engineering, sciences, and arts. It was pretty remarkable to learn that our class produced so many people that distinguished themselves in their respective fields.

Tomorrow night the reunion formally starts with an informal gathering at Dublin’s, a local pub. Over 110 people are scheduled to attend. Sounds to me to be a fun time coming!