I have a very active high school class. We got off to a slow start. We graduated from Southport High School in 1960. It quickly got to the summer of 1970 and we began thinking about a 10-year reunion. It took us a couple of years to locate classmates and put together a reunion, which made it a 12-year reunion. As I remember, some of our class cliques and hangout groups were still fairly strong and active.
After we bumbled through that first one, we got better. I believe our very next reunion was our 20th. First our celebrations were ten years apart. Then we decided that was way too long and the reunions for our class were five years apart.
Now, for the last several years, we are getting together every year. Last weekend, we celebrated our 63rd high school reunion. It was amazing. We celebrated for three days. Everyone from our class was invited to each of the gatherings. Some classmates attended all three days. Several were present at one or two of the events.
During the days of our reunion, the Southport Class of 1953 also was celebrating their reunion. That created something that I found very interesting and special. Our class of 1960 was celebrating our 63rd reunion, while the class of 1963 was celebratiing their 60th reunion. Several of our classmates had brothers or sisters that were 1963 grads. My good friends Tom and Rosie Click are connected to both classes.
We have several classmates that keep our class connected. Judy Tout-Snyder has been very involved in all the reunions and locating missing classmates. John Todd, Tom Anthony and Randi Bertram-West have also been involved in both the reunions and the class newsletters.
We enjoyed Friday evening at Red Lobster. We had an outdoor afternoon and early evening picnic at The Mucky Duck and a brunch on Sunday morning at Yiayia’s down near Greenwood. All three locations went great and allowed us to mingle and visit.
I really enjoy it when a former classmate shows up at one of our reunions that we haven’t seen or talked with for years. I was very surprised to reconnect with several this time. I looked into our yearbook after the reunion and I started identifying class members that were present during this reunion.
There are 23 pages in the yearbook that display our personal pictures. I checked and found that only two of those pages did not have a photo of a classmate that was in attendance last weekend. Several of the pages displayed two or more classmates that I personally visited with those last three days. We had a blast. Thanks to the 1960 Southport High School reunion committee.
Shonk is a 1960 graduate of Southport High School, a ’63 grad of Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis) and a retired bus driver from Beech Grove Schools. He can be reached through email at fdshonk@aol.com.