Fifty Years!

This past weekend our high school class celebrated our 50th year as graduates of Manatee High School in Bradenton. Friday morning several of us gathered to decorate the Palma Sola Botanical Park for the festivities of the evening.

Can you tell our school colors were red, white, and blue? As these balloons were being inflated, a few got away and landed on the ceiling. At the beginning we heard a loud pop as too much helium went into one of them. As they were tied, they were stored in the men's bathroom until ready to put them on the tables and tie them around the deck outside.

We were and are the Manatee High Hurricanes. On game day, hurricane warning flags fly. Our high school was the county high school until 1959 when the high school across the river had its first graduating class in many years. Now there are six.

It's always interesting to gather and reminisce. Some of the boys at dinner Saturday night were talking about cherry bombs and all the mischief they got into. The comment was made that you could walk into any store and buy the equipment needed for making all these things. They would have been a threat to the community these days. A lot of engineers came out of our class. Two of the very popular girls went into convents and lived as nuns for a few years. Our class president, whom we thought would surely be governor one day, did become an attorney, and continues to work in Dade County today.

The thing I like about these reunions is that we're all on a level playing field now. You can pretty much still tell who the cheerleaders were, who the rascals were, who the brainy ones were, but we've all gotten to be senior citizens with our extra pounds, some wrinkles where there were none, artificial joints here and there, but we still laugh together, cry together, and remember the "good times" we had in the fifties.

I think this is how most of us felt when the two evenings were over -- "too pooped to pop!"