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It is a fact of life few consider: We routinely expect reunions of our high school graduating class, but few of us likely even think of a grade school get-together. Maybe part of the problem is that, depending on the year and place, you attended different schools for different grades, or the “graduation” may have happened in different grades for different cohorts. Certainly the concept of “grade school” has been seriously sub-divided with the emergence of pre-schools, primary centers, intermediate centers and middle schools — terms largely unheard of decades ago.
But as a Sunday story about a 50th anniversary reunion for the St. Leo’s Elementary School Class of ‘74 showed, for many of us the elementary years were actually the more formative — and more likely to bring back happy memories. Consider some of the lessons the alumni offered during their gathering.
Bill Bly couldn’t remember how to spell “friend” back then, until a favorite teacher pointed out the word’s last three letters are E-N-D, and, hey, it’s a beautiful thing for friends to stick together until the end. “What a wonderful teacher she was,” he said.
They attended St. Leo’s back when most of their classmates were also neighbors, many of them walking to school in the morning and going home for a lunch break before returning for afternoon sessions. “It wasn’t just that we went to school together,” Mary Janusiewicz Molitoris explained, “We all grew up in the town. We all grew up together.”
Anne Moore Kasper imparted one life lesson she still holds, provided by the then-assistant pastor at St. Leo’s Church (who attended the reunion): “When we were 14, he told us we needed to become who God wanted us to be. What I heard him say was, it’s not “what have you accomplished?’ but ‘who have you become?’ With God, we have the strength to bear all things.” Even without the religious notion, the idea of making “who have you become” more important than your accomplishments is a potent approach to life.
Maybe high schools get the reunions because it was a “coming of age” time of life, while grade school was simply “of age.” You were all in the same place around the same time, learning the same things, with fewer of the extra-curricular activities and divergent academic options that can splinter students in high school.
Certainly high school graduation has seemed more significant because it was long viewed as the cusp between childhood and adult life — though with so many high schools offering college opportunities or career training to undergrads, and so many colleges offering less-traditional paths to higher ed beyond the 4-year regimen, that distinction is fading.
However, as many of the reunion attendees noted, elementary school memories can offer a lot to smile about.
“Having a grade school reunion was absolutely priceless,” Joe McDaniel’s said. “A high school reunion can be nice, but with grade school, these are the people you really grew up with.”
True for most, but perhaps Bly hit the universal aspect of the event when he noted how the reunion reminded him of those early years, free of so much of the cares the world piles onto our shoulders as we age:
“It was good to feel like a kid again.”