Class Act(s): School Reunions Keep Us Connected in a Wired World

Contributed

Members of the St. Andrew's School Class of 1975 will hold their 50th reunion on Aug. 23 at the Cascade Club. Ron Waldinger, second from left, second row from the bottom, is helping to organize the get-together.

You might call me a school reunion fangirl.

Two years ago, I took a 10-hour Amtrak ride (including a layover in Chicago) to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for my 50-year college reunion at Marquette University.

Last summer, I hauled a towering "VMA" banner back to the Sisters of St. Joseph advancement office following our 55-year reunion for Villa Maria Academy at the Zem Zem Shrine Club.

Soon, I'll be working with friends on a 60-year reunion for St. Andrew's Grade School. At our age, we are mourning the loss of too many classmates, including Kathy McCallion DiNicola, longtime assistant principal at Villa, and Virginia Smith, owner of Chuck and Ginny's Restaurant with her late sister, Mary Ellen. Reunions are a good opportunity to honor their memories.

Of course, I don't blame those who shy away from reunions.

A friend from St. Andrew's once asked me why he would want to get together with the same people who bullied him for being an overweight kid. Other friends hold painful memories of the times when teachers scorned their intellect. And jock-cheerleader cliques still exist, according to two women I recently overheard talking about why they won't attend their 50-year high school reunions for East High (now East Middle School) or Tech Memorial (now Erie High).

Younger people also may not feel the need to schedule reunions at 5-year intervals. Emily Wargo, a member of Young Erie Professionals, attended an all-school reunion for Iroquois High School last year with her parents. She was one of three members of the Class of 2018 at the reunion, and her folks "had more fun than me," she joked. Younger people keep up with news from friends on social media, she pointed out.

Still, I treasure in-person reunions. We learn new things about our classmates and ourselves – and sometimes, even, make new friends.

When I traveled to my college reunion, a woman at the Amtrak stop at the Milwaukee airport noticed my Marquette t-shirt, and we began to talk. Amina Gautier, Ph.D., was on her way to Milwaukee to find housing for her one-year visiting professorship as the Women's Chair in Humanistic Studies for the Association of Marquette University Women.

In a span of about 15 minutes, we talked about where she was originally from (Brooklyn, like my late husband), favorite books, Milwaukee, and Marquette.

It was only later that I learned she is an award-winning fiction writer. On March 21, the Southern Literary Review described her new book The Best That You Can Do as "a powerful, multi-award-winning collection of short stories centered on characters from the Puerto Rican and African diaspora." I have it on hold at Blasco Library.

I've never tried writing short stories but school reunions make me wish that I had that talent. At an all-school reunion for St. Andrew's at UPMC Park last year, a friend recalled how the nuns would yell at her for not paying attention in class. That's because she was busy looking out the window onto the 700 block of Raspberry Street, daydreaming about the lives of the passersby, she said. I would definitely devour a fictional account about the characters populating Raspberry Street if she would write it!

Even the bad memories from schooldays can provide inspiration to get the gang together again. Ron Waldinger and his friend, Tom Kaveny, play racquetball together, sometimes twice a week, and when they realized that it's been 50 years since they graduated from St. Andrew's, they decided to organize a reunion for Aug. 23 at the Cascade Club. "Social media has been the biggest factor in getting in touch with a lot of people," he said.

Ron and his three siblings grew up on West Seventh Street, two houses away from St. Andrew's Church, and he has fond memories of his school days, even though he also got in trouble back then. He figures the guys will likely bring up the half-dozen or so times Ron, only age 14, "stole" the keys to his brother's 1965 Pontiac LeMans to take his friends for a spin. "I could barely see over the steering wheel," he said with a laugh. "And it didn't have power steering and it didn't have power brakes, so it was a struggle."

His class was so rowdy that the school canceled the eighth grade class trip. Looking at the class photo from that year, "You start to remember all the kids' personalities and how they behaved back then, good and bad. A lot of them, you can see, have an attitude," he said. "I don't know if it was because of the teacher. She was very strict. If you mispronounced her name, she had a holy fit."

Ron is 10 years younger than I am and he noted that, like me, "We have a lot of classmates that are no longer with us. It would be such a valuable and meaningful thing to just get together and talk about all those days back in the day."

Organizing school reunions may prove challenging as we age and especially after schools close. St. Andrew's shut its doors in 2006 but my friends and I have used other gatherings, including parish picnics and spaghetti dinners, to organize informal reunions.

Liz Allen recently celebrated her 55th high school reunion with her classmates from Villa Maria Academy. You'll find her in the front row on the right. (Contributed photo)

Villa Maria Academy consolidated with Cathedral Prep in 2022 but the website prep-villa.com has information about reunions for both Villa and Prep, including details about the 5-year reunion for Prep's Class of 2020. Click on the alumni link to learn more.

Many public school districts in the Erie area also do a good job of connecting with alumni. On fairviewschools.org, the Fairview School Foundation link notes that it provides mailings, including postage, for reunions and a guided campus tour.

"We think class reunions are a big deal. Please keep us posted on your events and how your classmates can be a part of these great gatherings," the website millcreekeducationfoundation.org states. It currently lists six McDowell reunions, starting with the Class of 1975 and going up to the Class of 2005.

Erica Erwin, the Erie School District's coordinator of public relations and strategic communications, isn't aware of a central site for Erie School District reunions but said she knows that graduates of Erie high schools take fierce pride in their schools and organize reunions via social media such as Facebook. Former Erie students also enjoy returning to their old schools, including those who attended Academy and/or Collegiate Academy, Erwin said. Daria Devlin, former Erie School Board member and now a Democratic candidate for Erie Mayor, was president of her Central High School class in 1995, now Erie High and formerly Tech Memorial. She organized 5, 10, and 20-year reunions but the 25th would have been in 2020, the year COVID shut everything down. "After that, things fell off. I always enjoyed them and we got a decent turnout. With social media now, it's easier to stay in touch and keep up with people," she said. Still, getting together every 5 or 10 years is fun, she said, and she's been talking to people about organizing a 30th reunion.

Collegiate Academy (formerly Academy High) also hosts a Party on the Patio every summer for alumni, she said, and Strong Vincent alums also have organized reunions at their school.

It's not just school names that change; uses also evolve. The former Villa Maria Academy is now home to the Erie County Community College. On the day before our 2024 VMA reunion, the college advancement office graciously arranged a tour of our old school, allowing us to reminisce and also to get silly when we lined up on the inside balcony to toot out our Alma Mater song on kazoos.

In 1953, Villa High School moved to 2403 W. Eighth St. from its old red-brick building at West Eighth and Plum streets. That building also included Villa Maria Elementary, Villa Maria College, and the Sisters of St. Joseph Motherhouse; it has been transformed into affordable housing for seniors and families. The community college has preserved the beautiful tile floors in the school I attended while updating it to meet the technology needs of today. The tour was a chance to see the benefits of adaptive reuse and to learn more about the important mission of the community college.

Of course, successful reunions always need volunteers with special skills to keep the fun rolling. For Catherine McMahon Hundley, that means creating a quiz to test the memories of her classmates from the Villa Maria Academy Class of 1970, a year behind me. She calls her 20-question test "Villa Reflections" and some of them are easy and transferable to other classes.

For example, "Who was president of the United States the year we graduated?" (Richard Nixon for both of us).

But I was stumped by the question about how much a peanut butter cookie cost in the school cafeteria. Was it a nickel, 15 cents, a quarter, or 50 cents? My mom baked chocolate chip cookies for us to pack every day, so maybe I never bought a peanut butter one.

Catherine is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and a West Point graduate in nursing, but she compiles her quiz with the rigor and challenges any good teacher would, including adding an extra-credit question. "We were assigned to read the novel Flowers for Algernon. The story was adapted and made into a movie starring Cliff Robertson and Claire Bloom. We held a teleconference with Mr. Robertson who talked about his role in the story and ethical undertones of issues with people with intellectual disabilities. What was the name of the movie adaptation of the novel?"

When the movie was made in 1968, we would have gone to the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature to find the answer. Today, I simply Googled to find the answer but I will let readers do their own research.

Naturally, good reunions offer more than a pop quiz. A.J. Hanson, general manager of the Plymouth Tavern, said his business has "quite a few" class reunions scheduled this year, including the 65th reunion for the Academy High School Class of 1960. St. Benedict's Academy, which closed in 1988, also has held reunions at the Plymouth, as have many Catholic grade schools. "Especially for people from Erie, it's very nice to have them here. It's kind of home base and a familiar setting," he said.

A drink or two helps to "loosen everybody up a little," Hanson said. "But don't overdo it," he advised.

VisitErie doesn't keep data on whether school reunions bring people back to Erie. But, "I can say anecdotally that reunions are a powerful reason former Erie residents return home," said Christine Temple, the tourism agency's director of communications. When she attended her Mercyhurst Prep 30th reunion at the Erie Yacht Club last summer, out-of-towners also attended.

"A lot of them said they haven't been back in 20 or 30 years so it was nice to hear they made the effort to come home. Why should people come back to Erie for their reunion? I'd say it's about reconnecting with the community, seeing how Erie has grown and changed, and revisiting the places that made it special in the first place."

Liz Allen may be known as a reunion-crasher after she attends the 50-year j-school reunion at Marquette with college newspaper friends in June. You can reach her at lizerie@aol.com.

Reunion help is at hand

Do you want to learn more about your school days or those of family members who came before you? If you attended high school in Millcreek, you're in luck. The Millcreek Education Foundation manages the Alumni Association for Millcreek high school schools but its services go beyond helping alumni to organize reunions, according to Kristina Huber, the foundation's executive director.

"Our office also holds a yearbook archive dating back to 1927, preserving unique insights into the life and times of Millcreek students. These volumes are more than just school memories – they're living historical records that reflect local and global events through the eyes of Millcreek teenagers," she said

Huber said there are more than 12,000 living alumni from Millcreek and McDowell high schools. "It makes sense that the same organization dedicated to enhancing educational opportunities for current students also stewards the connections with those who helped shape our schools' legacy," she said.

For reunion planning, the organization maintains an alumni data base and communicates with graduates on its website, millcreekeducationfoundation.org, on social media platforms and through alumni newsletters. "We regularly collaborate with class reunion planners – sharing updates, memorial lists and even offering fun perks like alumni swag bags and McDowell alumni feather flags for event décor," she said. "One of our most-read communications is the annual MEF Impact Report, sent each December 31."

Huber said "It includes a memorial list of deceased alumni and former educators—pages that quickly spark heartfelt responses from our readers. (The 2024 list is on pages 12-13.) We're grateful when people reach out to help us complete the record, whether it's notifying us of a loved one's passing or requesting old graduation photos for memorials. These interactions show just how deeply Millcreek alumni remain connected," she added. Other school district in Erie County also have foundations that offer alumni resources, including the Iroquois, Harbor Creek and Fairview districts.