Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Reunion

My friend Helen is so good about keeping in touch with old friends and she is so good about helping us all get together with each other. Twice a year Helen organizes a reunion of grammar school and high school classmates. In the Fall she usually organizes the reunion in a restaurant, she reserves the place, she contacts all the 'girls', she collects the money and makes all the arrangements, she goes through old yearbooks collecting pictures of those who will be attending, she makes up name tags with our 'Senior Pictures' and maiden names to make it easier for us to match names and faces, she still has her yearbooks from all four years and she totes them along, she organizes a 'Christmas ornament exchange' between the girls, she organizes car-pooling for us, she encourages us to bring any old pictures we have of our school days, and she reminds us to bring recent photos of our family, and at the reunion she will hand out to each of us a list of our classmates home addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses so that we can keep in touch throughout the year! Whew!
In addition to all this, Helen is constantly on the hunt trying to track down and contact even more classmates to add to the group, and every Summer Helen hosts another reunion for us in her home!

I just attended the Fall reunion a few weeks ago and it was wonderful! Such fun to reminisce, and to catch up on each others' lives and families, to celebrate our milestones, and so touching to share our heartaches and console one another, and nice to talk about future plans.

(Unfortunately I forgot my camera! But those who remembered were kind enough to post their pictures on Facebook, so I was able to copy a few.)

About thirty girls attended this reunion:

(Helen is seated on the far left of this picture in the black and white top.)

One of the girls had this picture of the school, the main entrance was for Seniors only:


Ann brought along her uniform!



And it still fits her!! Lucky girl!!






Here's Helen again, with Amada, Maria, and another Helen (Helen on the right very kindly gave five of us a ride to the reunion!)



The girls on the right are twins, Mary and Joan, and I went to school with them from fourth grade through Senior year in high school!




The food was delicious, reuniting with friends was so sweet, getting reacquainted was amazing, and the time went much too fast!

I think you might recognize the 'girl' in the middle of Jill and Anita, but...


...I'm not sure how many at the reunion recognized me! I guess I've changed a little!

(My Senior Yearbook picture, taken thirty-eight years ago.)


When we arrived we each dropped our wrapped ornament on a gift table, and as each of us exited we would pick out a gift at random. Helen feels it is such a nice reminder of our past and our friends as we hang each ornament on the tree and she is so right.
This year I unwrapped this beautiful angel ornament:


I don't know which former classmate chose to give this ornament because there was no card or tag enclosed, but I'm grateful to whoever included this ornament for the give-away!




Inscribed on the angel is this quote that was printed on the back of the box:

Good women ~
may we know them,
may we be them,
may we raise them!


I thought it was so appropriate for the gathering of these good women!

7 comments:

  1. Oh my Eileen- such a wonderful tradition and big cheers to Helen for organizing these wonderful gatherings of long time friends. wow
    I love the angel ornament. And I see you opted to not go ahead and become all gray!! :-) You look beautiful.

    Love Gail
    peace......

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  2. Such a great saying Eileen. I love it. I think I remember you posting about these reunions in the past. This must be something that Helen REALLY loves to do. There's a lot of work involved but it looks like it was so worth it! What a great tradition! Oh and I could tell that was your school photo!
    Glad you got the kinks worked out of the computer so that you could post this. What a fun evening!
    Love Di ♥

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  3. Whoo-hoo! It posted! I can not make out rhyme or reason to this blog! I set this post up earlier and it was supposed to automatically post a few days ago, but never did! That's okay, it gave me a chance to add a few more pictures anyway.

    Gail, my hair is still the same, a skunk stripe down the middle, and lots of gray underneath, but I guess I still have a lot 'pepper' too so it's not that noticeable in pictures, but I'm determined to let it go natural now. 'Wish it was a beautiful white like my sisters and like my Mom's was, but I guess we never get everything we want!
    Thanks for stopping by, girls, I really enjoyed your Thanksgiving posts. I tried to do one, but it won't post, it's just sitting in limbo here. Sometimes if I do a whole new post and reload the pictures again that helps, but I don't have time to do that now. And I'm having trouble visiting a lot of my favorite blogs again, I keep getting an error message.
    Stupid Blogger!
    Oh well.
    Love you girls!, Eileen

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  4. Hi Eileen, This sounds so wonderful! Life long friends... sigh.... It doesn't get better than that. We have a group of girls that meets monthly for lunch but we have only know each other through the hospital. I would love to be able to contact some of the girls I went to school with. Your gift is so beautiful. something to be cherished for ever. Thanks for sharing part of your special day with all of us.

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  5. Your old school friends reunion looked very special Eileen. I do the same thing once a month with old grade school friends, but with a much smaller group (12). We exchange birthday gifts! It's a fun time isn't it!

    Smiles...Wanda

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  6. Love how you all meet as you do and exchanging ornaments is so nice.....Other than the hair style I don't think you have changed all that much, you look good Eileen.....:-) Hugs

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  7. Every class ought to have a Helen! What a wonderful organizer!

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