Catholic Grade School Class of 1969

      School reunions evoke different emotions in different people. Some folks are delighted with the prospect, others are apathetic. Experiences, personalities, authority figures, and a host of other influences impact our memories. Because the time in high school was shorter and friendships more fleeting, those reunions have not interested me much. However elementary school was a different scenario. St. Dismas was a brand new parish school in a brand new post-WWII subdivision and both were growing at an astounding rate. In September of 1961, I was one of slightly more than one hundred pupils who took their seats in the two first-grade classrooms. School was a thrilling prospect for me - books, learning, a new uniform and new friends. I was an introvert and the forced contact with classmates opened up the doors for friendship.
      Our class remained together for eight years - the core group who attended throughout and some who came and went. We shared all the trials and tribulations of  growing up and of school work, though we had lots of fun along the way. But come high school, college, families and jobs, most drifted apart.
     Recently, however, with the advent of social media and a dedicated leader, we have assembled again, more as a family than classmates. Memories fly fast and thick online, and there have been three casual get-togethers with those folks who still live locally. Collective reflections, shared memorabilia and laughter have dominated these gatherings, and we enjoy discussing who we were and who we have become. (And we wonder if it is a commentary on our society that we were able to behave and learn in a class of this size - unthinkable in these days!)

    
ps:
      Lots of negativity has surrounded the memories of many baby boomers who deplored their Catholic schooling and especially the nuns who taught. Were nuns any more strict or mean than lay teachers? I don't believe so - I think that there were just huge numbers of Catholic students in that era (in contrast to the present) and media attention flourished at the same time as that generation. Therefore the equation became: rancor +  teachers who happened to be nuns = bad memories.