Failed Reunion

Cancelled.  Not enough subscribers.

A few folks thought 55 years from high school graduation would make a good occasion to assemble once more.  An event, which I did not attend, took place in Florida five years earlier.  Fifty years often reflects a milestone for many things.  I attended my fiftieth college reunion with my wife, a member of the same class.  I hardly knew anyone in attendance, though a class of 1800 students studying programs that often did not intersect leaves friendships a mere fraction of the total.  Lecture classes of 150, a dorm of five dozen that changes each fall, and shared renewable activities with twenty not all graduating the same year leaves little enduring friendships.

High school created a much different exposure.  Our school buses ran the same neighborhood route for twelve years, mostly with the same neighbors.  The New York State Regents set class requirements that would keep us in the same English, Math, Shop, and Art classes for consecutive years.  Homerooms reflected the surname alphabet.  That remained constant.  Eventually, we would disperse by more stratified AP courses, math levels, and renewable extracurriculars, only to reassemble as a cohesive group on the school bus and homeroom each morning.  When reunions came, 15, 25, 30, 40, 50, you recognized everyone by name irrespective of the career paths and geographic destinies that we each had.  While I could drive to each, I attended with an overnight stay, others would fly significant distances and reserve hotel space at considerable expense.

#50 which materialized and #55 which did not required travel to Florida, home of the principal organizers and many others, perhaps outnumbering those who still lived in proximity to the school building we attended.  If a crossover point occurred, I think it #40.  That year, indeed a few months preceding our gathering, the Sunday NY Times, then more widely respected than it has since become, ran a feature on the growing popularity of Facebook.  Within weeks, many of us acquired accounts, invited classmates to become Facebook Friends, and updated with each other where our adult lives had taken us.  Familiarity generated curiosity.  I'd like to see my reacquainted Friends in person one more time.  The event, held a short drive from where we all once lived, attracted considerable attendance.  Nostalgia Meter measurements varied.  Curiosity about what became of the people I once knew seemed more pervasive.  In fact, at the event, I sat at a table with people I only knew tangentially as a teen, much like I gravitate to tables of strangers when I attend banquets professionally or for my Jewish community.  Mingling, though, at buffet or bar or hallway, directed my curiosity to the new FB Friends.  The organizers had engaged a professional firm to seek out our whereabouts, something done halfway well, and arrange the buffet, music, and event space.  

I had a decent time meeting people, but recognized myself as the outlier I was then.   It served me adequately my mostly productive adult years.  I drove to the area early to attend Sabbath services at a Conservative synagogue in the area the enduring successor to my Bar Mitzvah congregation.  That one, where many classmates also had Bnai Mitzvah, had closed due to membership attrition a few years earlier.  I was never into popular music or disco dance.  A hora or other Bar Mitzvah music with a dance circle would have added to my experience.  I was too timid to request this of the DJ.  My kosher diet, affirmed my last two years of high school, had me nibbling very selectively from the buffet.  But I had pleasant updates with many people.  It's the last I attended.

Fifty years arrived.  A usual landmark.  Many of us had retired.  A fair number had passed away before their three score and ten, which remained two years off.  Instead of hiring a consulting firm, the organizers, those people more memorable as cheerleaders than as analytical scholars, thought they could identify enough people through Facebook contacts.  They thought they could get better attendance in Florida than where we had attended school.  I asked a FB friend, an organizer of this, about his committee's budget.  They had no budget.  I took out my old graduation program and did an individual search for one column of names.  Google retrieved most of them.  When I suggested to an organizer that they divide the list and do this to identify whereabouts, I got a snarky reply that they didn't want my input.  And my intellect which very likely exceeds hers was not valued by that crowd then either.  They had an event, attendance list posted, far from representative of our 431 grads than it could have been.  Feedback from a real friend from Florida who attended.  She thought the In Memoriam list was the highlight.  I did not ask if they supplemented Rolling Stones and Beach Boys of our era with Bar Mitzvah music, also of that era if we had younger brothers.

Year 55 proposal came as a grassroots effort from a couple of women, now grandmothers, who thought we should relive old times once more.  Again Florida, as that's where the organizers live.  I briefly considered going.  The best flight would come from Avelo Airlines, the only commercial carrier from my nearest regional airport.  Good fare.  To keep it a good fare, they engaged in a more lucrative contract with ICE to deport captives to wherever the administration thinks they should be transported to.  Needless to say, I have misgivings about funding this, even if indirectly.  My personal deal breaker came later.  I asked an organizer about options for observing shabbos and kosher.  I got the platform version of shoulder shrug.  When I host guests, which I have, I default to inconveniencing myself to being helpful to them.  My guess is that Boca Raton has shuls and kosher sources of food for a weekend.  Others in my loop, which is not the organizer's loop then or now, opted out for a variety of reasons.  Insufficient down payments ended the project.

Might it have succeeded?  A FB Friend, one I was close to since Cub Scouts who succeeded grandly in several phases of his adult life, offered a FB suggestion that got traction from others.  He noted that while many if not most of us have migrated from our Rockland County origins, the incentive to return includes the environment along with the people of decades past.  I would also challenge the grassroots nature of the event.  High School divided us in a serious way.  We rode school buses with the same neighbors long before that.  Those on the bus route began to find our way, the paths to our adulthoods.  Some prioritized their grades and which college would accept them.  Others liked sports or music.  The two who joined the circus had their origins there.  Most were Jewish, at least on my bus route and classes, but we expressed this identity very differently.  A choral group had appeared on national TV.  Those members became another cohort.  Our class had ethnic minority representation and a geographic catchment that was less prosperous.  I did not see those kids at any of the reunions that I attended, though as I looked up people in my random list, at least one had achieved an honorable military career that took him around the world.  Every successful project needs a champion or two.  People imaging what they might like to pursue is an honorable undertaking.  They also need a committee that is representative of our class' composition.  An event created in an Echo Chamber, whether a reunion or too many of my synagogue happenings, performs less well than they could have, even if the organizers congratulate each other the day after.  We should know that by our senior years.  We've all had to make decisions on children's weddings, Christmas gatherings at work, whose input is needed to make a  committee sparkle.  Our disagreeable Uncle Loouie still gets invited.  The nebish at work gets escorted to the bar by the CEO at the holiday party.  That annoying INTJ who we can count on thinking of something nobody else can has a place on the committee.  Fifty years into our adult lives, that is how the most successful of us lived.  The classmate who cannot afford the reunion hotel at $160 a night can be found a guest room with a local empty nester for a night or two. I viewed the promotions on FB more as an event to be implemented than one of scattered relations or memories to be reassembled.

While this event did not materialize, we still have the people.  Facebook, which reconnected us in 2009, no longer serves that purpose effectively.  In its place, now as 70-somethings, we have fewer attachments despite the emergence of technology that once promised to expand that.  We no longer host bar mitzvahs and weddings to invite those friends from the past.  We do have more unassigned time and efficient transportation that has taken many, if not most of us, across the USA and beyond.  The organizers were too selective in who they tried to capture for what should have been a less selective net.  But our lifelong friends are not like that.  They are particular for a reason.  And we have the ability to keep those personal attachments afloat.