The Beatles ride in a Yellow Submarine. Credence sees a Bad Moon Rising. Marvin Gaye reveals he Heard it Through the Grapevine. The news explodes with antiwar demonstrations and riots. Richard Nixon is now president. There are whispers of an end to the Viet Nam war. Last year we experienced the great teachers’ walkout, and this year our school is integrated. We are fairly insulated from the drugs, pain, and rage of the late sixties, but Viet Nam is on our minds. It has been our reality for years, and we all have losses from there. We, the class of 1969, hang up our black and gold poms poms, don our blue graduation gowns, and with eyes full of dreams, march down the aisle to receive our diplomas. We’ve chosen the white rose for class flower and the motto “Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.”
The summer after graduation we are working, traveling, or playing at the beach before we assume a full time job or morph into freshmen once more. I attend a special semester at Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd) to study Spanish. I fall in love with the literature section of the library. The dorms have gone co-ed. A big debate is whether turning off bathroom lights or leaving them on saves the most electricity. We all tune in for the surreal moment when Neil Armstrong walks on the moon.
Time passes. Years fly by. We lose touch with most of our fellow 1969 graduates but stay close friends with a few. We marry, have children, pursue a career, feed our passions, and become older right along with the rest of the world. We lose parents, siblings, a number of classmates, and sometimes our spouses. Our kids transform into adults with little ones of their own. Forty-five years pass in the blink of an eye. Most of us were never that good in math, and our brains can’t compute being so old.
This weekend, we will come together again for a 1969 reunion. We’ll visit, chat, catch up, and ask about the ones not attending. We’ll wonder who’ll be missing at the next one. We’ll sip wine and groove to our music. For one brief weekend we’ll be dreamy eyed and young again, and more than ever before, looking “around in awareness.”
Cheers & Happy Reading!
Flossie Benton Rogers, Conjuring the Magic with Paranormal Fantasy Romance
Enjoy your reunion. And I always love your vintage posts, Flossie!
Thank you, Mae. I appreciate your support.
I hope you have a fabulous time at the reunion. Let us know.
Thanks for stopping by, Daisy. The reunion was a blast.