Reunions

Having had a week to think about it I thought I should put down a few thoughts about class reunions. Last week, after forty years I met with my fellow alumni for the reunion of the Benzie Central High School class of 1969.

First of all I only recognized one or two people. Don’t get me wrong I remembered them, I just didn’t recognize them. Time it seems changes us all. Hair turns gray, waistlines expand, hair lines recede, and everyone is forty years older.

Time brings us together. It would seem that as we age differences in personality and lifestyle that seem so important forty years ago no longer mater. They have been erased by a lifetime of shared experiences. We have all watched as the world has changed and dealing with that change has blurred the lines between the jocks, band kids, and the kids who were in shop class. It makes you realize that in so many ways we are the same.

We may not remember things exactly the same way, but the memories we share are the same. We may not agree on how things happened, but we agree that they did and that’s all that matters. Lets jest hope that next time we can still remember at all.

As it is I’m looking forward to next time and I’ll see you in five more years.

Walter Cronkite

A great man has passed away.

If you were born in the eighties you may wonder who he is, but the rest of us know. At a time before cable TV and computers in your pocket when all we had was the radio and three channels on TV he came into our homes each night and told us what was happening in our world. He was there when our world was shattered in Dallas in 1963 and helped us make sense of the war in Vet Nam. He told us about every thing good or bad that happened and somehow made us feel that things would be alright and life would go on. He made us realize that it was ok to cry over the bad things and life would go on.

He was always there to reassure us as he brought us the news and as a result he became part of our memory of each event. The moon landing, the Cuban missile crises, J.F. K.’s death, he was a part of them all and he helped shape the way we remember them.

Good by Mr. Cronkite you will be missed.

Why?

On Saturday I was in Benzie County, Michigan for my fourth class reunion. With time to kill in the morning my wife and I decided to enjoy the scenic wonder of this area that is the gateway to the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. The wind was blowing and it had stormed during the night so we headed out to the Point Betzie Lighthouse to watch the waves and take some pictures of the light on a stormy day.

The National Lakeshore is visited by people from all over the United States and around the globe, and as a result so is the Point Betzie Lighthouse. People go there to watch the sunsets, the lighthouse, and changing modes of Lake Michigan. It is a with pride that local people point it out as a place that is truly worth the drive to see.

You can well imagine how I felt as I walked down to the lake shore and discovered that the night before someone had a party there and left the area completely trashed. Beer cans and rubbish were spread all over the place leaving an ugly on what should have been a pristine view of nature’s beauty.

I can only wonder what kind on thoughtless, inconsiderate, jerks would see fit to leave a miss like this to welcome visitors to our State and one of the scenic wonders we are so blessed to have to share with the world.