Urbana High School graduating class of 1973. It certainly is hard to believe it’s been 50 years. Although highly anticipating the event 5 years ago, I was undecided as to whether to attend the reunion due to covid then since the weekend conflicted with Ela’s christening. But a few weeks ago, after getting covid, decided that 50 only comes around once. Since we were heading east anyway, I tried to arrange flights to make it happen and was able to use our remaining American Airlines flight credit for part of the trip. The plan was for us to fly to Chicago, Ray would visit his sister and I would drive to Urbana to attend the first night of the 2 night event.
It was a full flight and we arrived in Chicago around 9 pm, checked in and drove around Glenview looking for food, finding everything closed, settled fir McDonalds. We stayed north of the airport Thursday night, met Elaine and Roger for breakfast as my favorite breakfast place, Walker Brothers then I took off in a rental car. I arrived at the outskirts of campus and didn’t recognize the area. The old campus buildings had been filled in with new construction and has grown considerably. I found the I Hotel and suddenly was filled with excitement and apprehension- what if I didn’t recognize anyone? Was it a good idea to come? My first encounter was in the lobby and I realized everyone had the same feelings. People have really changed in 50 years! I had arranged to meet up with Tom and his wife before the evening event. We had connected on FB but meeting in person was quite fun. He told me about Val and pointed her out to me; she was outside. I ran out to say hi and we had a great chat, spending most of the event together.
The event was held at Riggs, a relatively new brewery and it was a blast. Our classmate organizers had made name tags with our high school yearbook picture on them so we could identify eachother. So many mentioned they love my photos, I realized this is my biggest fan base haha! We all agreed the women aged better than the men! Everyone was super friendly and happy to see one another and I realized that after 50 years, we are all the same. It didn’t matter who was homecoming queen or most popular. It felt like being transported in time – everyone looked 50 yrs older but we didn’t feel 50 yrs had passed. Then there were curious stories -Craig said he remembers I had to get up and sing a solo in 7th grade. I sang “Getting to Know You” and he was in awe of my singing in front of the entire class. I have no recollection of this!
