Little School Reunion

Here we are, the Yard Man and I, in Newport News, Virginia, at the seventy-five year anniversary of the small parochial school I attended as a child.

The building sits next door to the church, where the hundred-and-twenty-year reunion of that congregation was so recently held.

I knew that we would see some of the same folks we had seen on the previous visit to this area, but I was hoping there would be more.  I was especially eager to see any of the alumni who ran around the schoolyard (jumped on the jumping boards) with me in my student days at this place. (Spoiler alert, I was not disappointed.)

The day began with a bus tour of the old colony (the area where one of my great-grandfathers (along with two other men) came from Maryland for a visit, bought up fifteen-hundred acres of land, and then searched for  other Mennonite families to join them in forming a community here.  (There is good fertile farmland, and a river for fishing! they advertised).

The group who clambered aboard the bus had all grown up in this no-longer-farmland area (other than a few married-ins).  We pointed out to one another old family homes and historical buildings.  The Dear Old Neighbor Man was seated near me.   He knew and remembers a lot more of the ancestors we all had in common and the houses in which they lived.

Back at the school following the bus ride, there were new arrivals come to attend the reunion.  It was so delightful to greet folks I hadn't seen for decades!  Following lunch under a tent,  the group of one hundred and some split into smaller clumps to reminisce.  Out of a possible eighteen to twenty,  six of my former classmates (same grade in school) showed up, with four or five more from the grades just below and above.  It made a good-sized circle of ex-schoolchildren to exchange  memories and stories of past shenanigans.  Reader Dear, we did a great deal of laughing!

It's a lousy photo quality-wise, but it nicely erases the wrinkles!

Here is a classmate of mine who missed the group photo.  He is the dear old son of the Dear Old Neighbor Man, and with him is his dear old uncle.  Please be aware, Dear Reader, that everyone at this event was (and remains) both dear and old.

Well, oops, I forgot there were  recent alumni there. I'm sure they are dear (and they're going to be old in the twinkling of an eye).

Dinner was served, and then the group of alumni gathered at the church (next door) to be entertained by current students of the school (skits and such).

We did some group singing, too.
Listener Dear, they were old songs we were singing.

Is this tale of the reunion getting a bit old?

Perhaps I can think of something new to tell you tomorrow, Reader Dear.