Friday, July 29, 2005

Reunion notebook

It's Crazy Days weekend in Sandpoint, but more importantly---to a portion of the population---today marks the beginning of the Sandpoint High School Class of 1965 reunion. We'll meet officially for the first time this evening at Swan's Landing. I am aware, however, that several mini reunions have already occurred.

This morning, I'll be going to Connie's to greet Andrea Balch Boyle for the first time in 30 years. Our families were friends from the time I can remember. I do recall meeting "Andy," as we called her, long before enrolling in Lincoln Elementary School. Gene and Etta Balch owned Arabians, and they were members of the Sandpoint Saddle Club with my parents. My mother talked to Etta on the phone almost every day during our childhood.

"Andy" and I began attending school together when we both arrived at Sandpoint Junior High from our respective grade schools as seventh graders. At that time, she befriended Karen Fredstrom, another Lincoln School classmate. They were inseparable. Our class sadly dealt with its first taste of death when Karen was tragically killed in a car wreck the summer after our sophomore year. Andrea told me recently that the loss of her best friend left a permanent hole in her heart.

Andrea Balch has been one of my lifetime heroes. I doubt she knows that. Years ago I wrote a story for the Spokane Chronicle about her generous gift of a kydney to her brother Jeff. This occurred at a time when kydney transplants were so new that the surgery presented a major risk. Andrea took that risk for her younger brother who has led a full life ever since.

I always admired her for this gesture because it definitely did present a life-or-death choice, which she was willing to face for the love of her brother. It's been a long, long time since Andrea and I had a good visit, so I'm hoping to convey that message to her when we meet for coffee this morning among all the other talk of our kids, careers and adventures.

Organizing this reunion and creating our class blog have provided the core for a potpourri of fascinating sagas attached to classmates who'll be coming from as far away as China or from less than a mile down Lakeshore Drive. Everyone's story, no matter how dramatic or seemingly mundane, is important to each member of the Sandpoint High School Class of 1965.

One classmate, Dan Baugh, a Utah contractor, wrote a very poignant but simple statement to his classmates in his bio, " Thank you for helping mold who I am." That seems to say it all in support of why these events generate such strong emotions among those involved. There's a lifelong bond, and there's admiration for what we awkward kids turned out to be as seasoned adults.

We have a host of Vietnam veterans. We'll honor two who made the ultimate sacrifice in that Asian war so many years ago, and we'll rejoice that one classmate, whom we thought had died, is quite alive and well and serving the Veterans Administration in Auburn, Wash.

We have a retired military pilot in our class who went behind the Iron Curtain with his Air Force work. I'm also hoping our classmate who's worked with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and in the office of Condoleeza Rice will surprise us. We have corporate executives, teachers, laborers, lawyers, medical specialists, homemakers, ministers, recreational specialists, fire controllers, contractors, real estate specialists, engineers, photographers, writers, etc. among our graduates---all who have traveled unique paths these past four decades.

The cliques will probably still get together, but we reunion organizers are also sincerely hoping that many of those intangible boundaries that once separated potential friends are long gone by this age.

Hail to the SHS Class of 1965. Let the fun begin . . . .

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank your friend Andrea for me. If it weren't for people like her, kidney transplants would not be the routine operations they are today, and I would have much more fear going into my son's future kidney transplant.

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Anonymous said...

Will they be serving horse ovaries at the reunion?