Welcome to the first night of our "Forty Something" class reunion.
I'm not a very good speaker, so I will be reading most of the communications. You'll just have to pretend I'm looking out in the audience, directly into your eyes.
Our theme for this weekend is "Surviving the Test of Time!" focusing on Life's
Journey, Sharing Ourselves, Chasing Yesterday, and Renewing Old Friendships and
Acquaintances ... Together. When you start thinking about survival—illness
and disease come to mind, in addition to surviving family trials and work
challenges. Often the biggest struggle is surviving our selves.
I'd like to thank all the contributing photographers. In addition to my own photos, you will see some from:
Patsy Kendall Stroud
George Weber
Ruben Guadarrama
Tony Lisauckis
Al Alvarez
If you don't see many of the people at your table, perhaps you can convince someone there to share theirs with us.
Background music has been added to play as you read. If you don't like it, just click it off or on.
Motto
The Class of '66 has a motto. What's our Motto?
We ARE great and we ARE rich.
We're the class of '66!
We're happy to host this reunion for the other classes.
You may ask what greatness we have. We have greatness of character and the greatness of rising from the Valley to the highest mountaintops. Greatness is sometimes obtained by sharing your riches.
Richness is often measured by experiences. There is the richness of infinitely precious things that cannot be taken away from you. Richness comes with truth and honesty. Your good name is your jewel of richness.
Contentment is the realization of greatness and riches and avoiding regrets.
We are here together now
to share our relationships of friendship and love.
to maintain our friendships in the face of fortune, good or bad, and
to value new and long-time friends.
Notice I didn't say old friends. Raise your hand if, in the short time you've been here, you've already thought, "Who are all these old people?" Hopefully, by the end of Saturday night, you will know most of them.
It's my goal that everyone has a GREAT time here. By the end of THIS WEEKEND, no one will go away saying, "I don't know who that person was! They just sat in the corner all night," or "No, I didn't see her there. I didn't know she planned to come."
Reunions often have a bad reputation when portrayed on TV or in the movies. I'm striving to squelch the feelings expressed in the quote "A friend is someone who stabs you in the front." I'd rather our group leaves with a feeling like, "Wow! That was fun. What have I been missing all these years?"
To facilitate that everyone has fun, I'd like to point out that we have a cash bar for tonight and tomorrow night. So, feel free to line up while I finish talking.
We've lived through many changes. Do you realize that since we graduated, the world has gained an ocean and our solar system has lost a planet? In addition to the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, we now have the Southern Ocean that encompasses Antarctica! Pluto was downgraded to a dwarf planet.
As portrayed in Star Trek, scientists are close to creating a real cloaking device for optical wavelengths and radar.
Experimentation has made:
rubber metal that can conduct electricity as well as a bar of steel. It can stretch to three times its length;
carbon nano tubes that exhibit extraordinary strength and unique electrical properties, and are efficient conductors of heat,
translucent concrete that has the strength of traditional concrete but, thanks to an embedded array of glass fibers, can display a view of the outside world, such as the silhouette of a tree; and
a fabric that glows, called Luminex, that is not shiny, it is not glow in the dark; it actually gives off its own light.
There are things projected to become extinct that didn't exist 40 years ago. Included are VCRs, dial-up Internet, movie rentals, and answering machines.
And some things that we are all familiar with seem doomed to disappear, like film cameras, drive-in theaters, news magazines and TV news, mumps and measles, analog TV, hand-written letters, personal checks, phone landlines, Yellow pages, classified ads, and incandescent bulbs. It's amazing! And we've survived all of this.
Photos
Click an image for high resolution. Place cursor on image for information and to stop the carousel.
More photos may be added as they arrive
There are three ways to view this set of photos below.
1. The first is .mov format.
2. The second is in .m4v format.
3. The third, you CLICK on the photo,
it will display in another window in a higher resolution photograph.
.m4v
This .m4v version (about 11 minutes) (77.5 MB) can be downloaded by clicking on the link, or you can just start the
video playing.
If you CLICK on the photo,
it will display in another window in a higher resolution photograph.
Toast
Please lift your glasses for a toast.
Today we toast our memories
the students, athletes, and friends we once were
reunited for a time, reliving our shared past.
Everything that happened here
played its part in shaping us,
so we return to remember the youth we were.
Dinner Blessing
"Father, we thank thee for the privilege of being together. As the
generations grow farther apart, let them be brought together with the
memory of the loved ones who were once with us, but now live only in our
memories. Strengthen the bond of relationships as we face the future,
but always keep with us our ties of the past."
Closing Toast
Drink to all that we have lost
Mistakes we have made
Everything will change
But, love remains the same
