Reunions Should Be Enjoyable -- After 50 Years, There's No Need To Impress

Last week my wife and I attended the 50th reunion of my seminary class at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Conn.

Class reunions are not simple little exercises in nostalgia. Seeing classmates from whom we have been separated for many years and having them see us can be among the most traumatic experiences of an adult life.

In fact, a school reunion has been defined as a time when classmates get together to see who is falling apart.

Heywood Broun, the famed newspaper columnist, refused to attend the 20th reunion of his college class.

He said he didn't want to mingle with dead men. If that could happen in just 20 years, I wondered what I would find after 50 years.

Oscar Wilde said that when he attended his class reunion, his classmates had changed so much they didn't recognize him.

The secretary of our 1943 class had sent a letter to each member of the class in which he included a rhyme he had written:

At the 50th reunion

You'll make a mighty hit

By just going around and lying

"You haven't changed a bit."

Well, most of us had changed more than a bit. Time is a tailor specializing in alterations.

With the passing of the years, most of us had become radically altered.

But such a reality was unimportant to us.

Fifty-year reunions are less traumatic than reunions of 10, 20 or 30 years. In 50 years, most folks are pretty much settled down to accept what is.

We did not feel it necessary to try to impress anyone. The judgmental spirit was nowhere in evidence. I was not disappointed that I had traveled clear across the country to attend the reunion. My recall was better than I had feared it would be, and so was theirs.

Occasionally, we find memory to be that which enables us to know we know someone without telling us who that someone is!

That did happen at first, but a few shared experiences of the past brought names and faces together.

We learned early that our classmates were far from dead. It was a delightful three days of animated conversation and renewal of friendships.

One thing about growing older is that everything we hear or say reminds us of something else.

We had to take care lest our anecdotes became anecdotages, and our reminiscences became reminuisances.

Since the bodily deterioration is inevitable with advancing years, most of us were struggling with an infirmity of one kind or another.

But we didn't come to rehearse our ills, but to revive our memories. We were grateful to have lived and been privileged to share a variety of ministries.

Not all of our classmates had been as fortunate. Of our 45 class members, 14 were deceased. One of the 14 had been struggling with cancer for many years, but had been planning to attend, although he had written "there is something ironic as well as irrational in the prospect of being done in by a mindless mass of multiplying molecules. We'll meet in New Haven in May. And if not, perhaps in a Fairer Haven at another time."

We remembered with affection and gratitude professors who had enlightened our minds and lifted our spirits. One of the favorites was the late Dr. Roland Bainton, a world-renowned historian and a specialist in the Protestant Reformation.

Dr. Bainton was a native of Washington and a graduate of Colfax High School in Eastern Washington.

Several years ago, after attending his 50th high-school reunion, he had come to speak at the University Congregational Church in Seattle when I was minister there.

He told of his recent experience in Colfax.

Taking off his glasses and holding them in his hand, he explained that they were plastic, useful for only a limited time.

"Eventually," he said, "they will have to be discarded and replaced.

"But there is one thing," he continued, "that is permanent, that never wears out or comes to an end. That one thing is love."

He told then of visiting with his classmates of 50 years earlier. "How amazing and beautiful to take up conversation as though we had parted just the day before. Love never ends. It reaches across the years and the miles to unite us with one another."

Those of the class of 1943 meeting in New Haven, Conn., last week experienced the same never-ending love.