Members of GAR Memorial High School’s class of 2000, Shamika Harris, Lisa Barberio Cunningham, Cooleen-Gill-Baird and Anthony Harris, remember being part of a Heights-Murray kindergarten class that was interviewed by the Times Leader during the 1987-88 school year.
                                 Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader

Members of GAR Memorial High School’s class of 2000, Shamika Harris, Lisa Barberio Cunningham, Cooleen-Gill-Baird and Anthony Harris, remember being part of a Heights-Murray kindergarten class that was interviewed by the Times Leader during the 1987-88 school year.

Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader

Some classmates had been together since kindergarten

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<p>Former classmates Warren Whitaker, Ph.d., and Sandy Nardi share a hug at the GAR class of 2000’s 20-plus-one reunion, held July 17 at Keeley’s Alehouse in Kingston.</p>
                                 <p>Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader</p>

Former classmates Warren Whitaker, Ph.d., and Sandy Nardi share a hug at the GAR class of 2000’s 20-plus-one reunion, held July 17 at Keeley’s Alehouse in Kingston.

Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader

<p>A montage of photographs reminded the alumni of their high school days.</p>
                                 <p>Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader</p>

A montage of photographs reminded the alumni of their high school days.

Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader

<p>The 20-plus-one reunion crowd gathered for a group shot.</p>
                                <p>Facebook.com</p>

The 20-plus-one reunion crowd gathered for a group shot.

Facebook.com

“If you were born in the 80s and raised in the 90s and make it to 2020, you have lived in four different decades, two different centuries and two different millennia — and you’re not even 40 yet.”

A member of GAR Memorial High School’s class of 2000 posted that message on an alumni Facebook page in November 2019, reminding classmates, just as the group was starting to anticipate a 20th-anniversary reunion, that there’s something numerically special about their class.

Then the pandemic happened, and the 20-year reunion was postponed.

But last weekend, despite torrential rain, about 45 class members and guests gathered under the pavilion at Keeley’s Alehouse in Kingston for a 20-plus-one reunion — and admitted they felt as comfortable with each other as if they had just seen each other last week.

A few of those GAR graduates from 2000 had first gotten to know each other in 1987-88, when they were kindergarten students at Heights-Murray Elementary in Wilkes-Barre.

During that school year, the Times Leader had realized that the kindergarteners of the day would graduate in the year 2000, and sent staff to interview the Heights-Murray group during what would be the first of several visits.

As a kindergarten student, class member Anthony Harris remembers, he “wanted to be a scientist, or a lawyer, or a businessman” when he grew up.

He did become a businessman, currently serving as vice president for strategic enterprise risk management at Wells Fargo in Charlotte, N.C.

“I apparently wanted to be a basketball player,” Lisa Barberio Cunningham of Hanover Township, said with a laugh, noting someone had passed out props, and she was holding a basketball in the picture.

“I apparently wanted to be a cheerleader,” said Colleen Gill-Baird of Nanticoke, who held pom-poms in the posed shot.

Basketball and pom-poms aside, Cunningham eventually would study nursing and Gill-Baird would go into preschool education at Head Start.

Shamika Harris, no relation to Anthony, said being a gym teacher had been one of her goals — and appropriately, she did get to hold a whistle in the kindergarten photo.

“I attempted everything I wanted to do,” she said with a smile. “And I did it.”

As the evening progressed, guests were able to read a list of memories displayed on a side table — Cheri had thrown a cupcake in the cafeteria … a mascot had deflated in the auditorium …

And there were spoken memories, as old friends remembered the best times of high school.

“The football games,” said Sandy Nardi, now a speech therapist from Mountain Top.

“Hanging out in the balcony between classes,” said Warren Whitaker, Ph.d., who was secretary of the class and organized the reunion.

Dr. Whitaker, who teaches in the education department at Molloy College in Long Island, also made some new memories at the reunion — taking a turn with a squeegee to keep the floor as dry as possible on a very rainy evening.