With October seemingly the ideal month to celebrate and recognize everything and anything, why not add homecoming and class reunions to the autumn primetime lineup? The leaves are changing, and summer is naught but a memory, much like those high school days, only without locking that Gilligan-looking fellow in the girls’ bathroom. Class reunions beg the questions, “What is Gilligan doing these days?” and “Did that adversely affect his bathroom habits?” Alumni attend class reunions for sundry reasons – some for general curiosity, others morbid curiosity, some to boost their self-esteem, but most commonly to catch up with old friends and old times. With Watauga High School’s homecoming just around the calendar’s corner, your Mountain Times staff would like to offer a few suggestions – and memories – to make this high school reunion worth every minute.

Steve Behr: Remembering Miss February

I remember my 10th high school reunion well.

The year was 1979 and my wife, Betty, and I met up with the old gang. Veronica, Reggie, Moose and Jughead were all there. We gathered to play some of our old hits and reminisce about all of our old teachers and Mr. Weatherbee, our principal.

Steve Behr’s idea of a swinging good time.

Wait a minute. That wasn’t my high school reunion. That was The Archies. My mistake.

Actually, my 10th reunion of the class of 1982 at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colo. went relatively smoothly. I had lost about 15 pounds before I went, which I gained back about two weeks later.

One of my classmates is Jill Goodacre, the former Victoria Secret model and wife of Harry Connick Jr. I didn’t get to see her, but I heard she was there.

The other famous person in our class was Kari Kennell Whitman, or Kari Whitman to us. She was Miss February 1988 in Playboy Magazine. I used to have an issue of it, got it hot off the rack when I was in college at Northern Colorado, but I lost it in the move to Boone from Monroe.

I didn’t see her there either. It’s the price I pay for being part of the riff-raff.

I saw plenty of other folks. There was the one girl who was good looking in high school who looked fabulous as a 28-year old adult. There was one of my old friends who could be a jerk at times, obnoxious at others, and 10-years later a doctor and tamed by a wife and kids.

I saw my prom date; she was working at the Chicago Tribune at the time, but not as a writer. We had a great time at our prom. One of our friends told us her boyfriend dumped her on prom night.

That’s really cold-blooded. She’s over it, but dang, even Reggie wouldn’t do that to any of the Archies gang.

I’m not the only sports writer in my class. One works at the Fort Collins (Colo.) Coloradan. Fort Collins is where Colorado State plays football. Trust me. Appalachian State plays it better.

There was the quarterback who tossed me my only touchdown, a 40-yarder when I was playing on our sophomore team (kind of like a freshman team, we didn’t have a freshman class). Last I checked, he was in Delaware for some reason.

And no, his name is not Joe Flacco.

I didn’t stay close to that many of my high school classmates over the years. I didn’t even bother to go to the 20-year reunion because I had a family reunion in Chicago and I had never been to the Windy City before, so I became a tourist instead of an honored alum.

I missed the 25th-year reunion, which was unofficial. My older brother went and had a good time in my place.

I think I went to a Crawdads game that night.

My 30-year reunion is in 2012. I’ll be 48 years old, probably unmarried and answering questions about why I don’t have any grandkids.

But hey, how many from the Fairview class of 1982 saw Appalachian State upset Michigan in the Big House?

Even Archie can’t claim that.

Jeff Eason: Reunions and Radio Stations

Being the elder statesman of the newsroom, I’ve been to my fair share of reunions. In fact, I’ve got my 30th high school reunion this weekend and I’m looking forward to seeing my out of town buddies from Watauga’s class of 1978. We’ll be the middle-aged ladies and gents rooting on our beloved Pioneers Friday night at Jack Groce Stadium. Then on Saturday we’ll all get together for dinner, drinks and laughter.

Although I’m a UNC-Chapel Hill alum, I have never attended one of that fine institution’s reunions. Instead, I have attended a few reunions held for the college students who worked at the campus radio station WXYC-FM. The station was a haven for misfits, maniacs and music lovers, college kids who didn’t fit into the Izod shirts/khaki pants/Docksiders mold that dominated the Chapel Hill campus during the Reagan era. Instead, we radio station rats bought our clothes at the PTA Thrift Store in Carrboro so we could spend more money on albums and concert tickets.

WXYC reunions are also unique in that anyone of any age who has ever worked at the station is welcome to come. Some of them are old enough to remember when it was a dormitory-only station called WCAR. Some are young enough to work with music that has been sent to the station by musicians in digital wave form only.
In 1994, WXYC was the first radio station to transmit a live broadcast via the Internet. Not the first college radio station to do so, the first radio station of any kind. Today, the station continues to play an eclectic mix of local acts, international music, and obscure largely forgotten wonders. I look forward to the next meeting of the ex-disc jockeys of WXYC.

.

Melanie Davis: Who needs a reunion? I have Facebook.

I haven’t ever given much thought to a class reunion. If my class senior trip is any indication, I doubt very seriously we’ll have one. The senior trip was traditionally arranged by the class officers, with fundraisers held throughout the year to offset costs.

This is the scene from Melanie’s senior class picnic in full swing. Hear the crickets?

It was a package deal with charter buses and group hotel rates, usually to the beach. When I was senior, for some reason or another, there was not a senior trip. We had a senior picnic at the local lake instead. The school provided hot dogs and hamburgers in quantities enough for the graduating class of 176.

The day came and I heard later that an estimated five people showed up at the lake. The rest of us made other plans for the day off school. It turned into the largest senior skip day in the history of Braxton County High.

If they couldn’t get us together while we were still in Braxton, I doubt there will be an attempt to gather us 10 years later. I did not receive a five-year reunion announcement.

I admit, I am likely to have ignored an invitation. I remain in contact with several friends from high school. In eight years, we have scattered. Through the wonders of Facebook, many of us have reconnected. We communicate and meet up when we can. That is enough for me.

Rather than catch-up as strangers in a 10-minute conversation at a reunion, we have photos and tidbits about our lives posted online. I already know that a fellow thespian club member is now in Arizona and runs his own herbal tea business.

I would rather meet with the small group of friends that I spent the most time with, not all of whom graduated the same year, than meet with the entire class. The full 176 of us never got together to hold hands and sing “Kumbayah.”

Cara Kelly: Sheer Curiosity

Despite her previous statement, Cara really digs the brightly-colored ’90s fashions, even in grayscale.