Camping Trip, Saturday, May 29

Up early, so we could get ready to go meet classmates at a historic home that has been turned into a sort of museum for the high school where we graduated. Son and Daughter-in-Law stopped by for a short visit before we left at 10 a.m.

The historic home/museum houses the school's endowment office. The coordinator of the office gave us a very interesting talk about the work of the office in raising funds for the parochial elementary and high schools, as well as a history of the church, convent, and schools from their inception in the 1800s to the current day.

The coordinator offered us cards to a popular grocery store that we could load with $100 dollars, and then 5% of our purchases with the card will go to the endowment fund. The cards already had $5 on them, as a gift from the endowment office. This is an easy way for us to contribute without even opening our own pocketbooks. It's a clever fundraising technique, I think.

Of course, we are urged to also open our pocketbooks. Each class, once it becomes fully funded, is allowed to decide how to spend a certain portion of the funds to buy something for the school...a bench, a piece of playground equipment, etc. We were amused when told that the second grade class, when fully funded, had $80 to spend. They chose to buy board games for the third grade...why? Because the games would be available to them when they reached the third grade. Pretty smart thinking!

After the presentation, Hubbie and I went back to camp. My friend and her husband came a few minutes later and joined us for lunch. Family were also visiting...Son and Daughter-in-Law, Daughter, Granddaughter and two Great-Grandsons, Sis, plus Niece and Great-Niece.

Later, at 4 p.m., Hubbie and I went to Mass, joining the other classmates. Afterward, we gathered at a local restaurant for a catered meal. Local classmates had put together a memory book for us, as well as a wonderful video slide show of the history of the students from kindergarten through high school. I didn't arrive at the school until the ninth grade, so there were only a few photos of me in the video (including one in a swimsuit while we were on our senior class trip), but it was still interesting seeing the others.

After the video, various classmates told humorous stories of events and incidents they remembered through the years. Others traced their fifty-year journey since 1960. From our class, their are teachers and nurses, farmers and businessmen. There is a female Methodist minister, a winemaker, and even a retired Navy man, who is now a Naval consultant in Japan.

The Naval consultant and his wife (now on assignment in Bahrain) traveled the farthest to get to the reunion. Of course, they had other business in the town as well, like checking on rental properties and attending a family wedding.

Others traveled from Oklahoma, Michigan, Texas, and Georgia.

Before the end of the event, one classmate conducted a little game, using as prizes a stack of slim volumes of poetry. He must have been collecting the volumes over many years, but decided it was time to part with them. Those who came the farthest, had the most children or grandchildren, etc., got to choose from the stack. But eventually, everyone was given a book. We got two, for the most grandchildren and the most great-grandchildren.

The gentleman giving away the books has Parkinson's disease, and has become very enfeebled since we last saw him eight years ago. Our hearts go to him and his family, who also have a son who was blinded in a hunting accident eight years ago, about the same time as he was diagnosed with Parkinson's.

In conversations, we learned that many of us have medical problems. Two of us have heart disease, and one has recently been diagnosed with diabetes. Owing to this and the fact that we have lost six members of our class already, we have decided we'd better try to organize reunions every one or two years, rather than every eight or ten years.

Before we left the event, the classmate who is a winemaker insisted that we take a jug of his wine home with us. We agreed, and promised to visit him at his home and vineyard at the first opportunity.

We were back at camp around 9 p.m. Daughter was there. She had stayed all evening to be with Mother, in case Shih Tzu needed to be taken out. Daughter brought me the movie, "Up," that belongs to Granddaughter. We have been wanting to see this animated feature. We'll return the movie when we go to Niece's wedding in a few weeks. Daughter left shortly after we returned to camp.

By then, we were ready to hit the sack. It had been a long, though pleasurable day.