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FIRST PRINTED IN THE SUMMER
OF 1998
The Uniontown High School Class of '66 was the best class to ever graduate anywhere. Ever...
...At least that's what I thought until I collided with a sweet but devastating reality. Other graduating classes feel the same way.
I found out firsthand when I happened to stroll into the class reunion for Uniontown's Class of '52. I was there for personal reasons. But I was permitted to roam freely among the crowd. It did not take long to realize the warmth of my ordeal.
I discovered that every class, from every school needs these gatherings.
There I sat with people 15 years my senior being treated like an equal because nothing or no one could separate them from their sheer joy of this weekend.
The class of 1952 was a championship class, of sorts. The first ever undefeated football team Uniontown ever had were seniors then.
Now, 45 years later, every gathering they have glows with that special memory.
Red Raider legend Francis "Moose" Machinsky, an All Stater and later an All American, came home from Columbus, Ohio to be here.
He's the most gentle and endearing "Moose" I've ever met. A man who looks you right in the eye and seeks out those things you have in common on your first meeting is deserving of a more regal nickname, but I'd never try to call him anything else.
There was "Showboat" Norwood and Frankie Henderson and Edwin Santoro and Ron Manning.
There was a group of women straining to remember the Lafayette Junior High School fight song. There were little guys who no longer needed to elbow their way into conversations. They could even hold court.
Ron Firmani, another football All-Stater and Red Raider legend of a few years after 1952, came to pay his respects.
There were people who hadn't seen each other in 45 years who seemed so relaxed with each other, it's like they'd been together all along.
There was this kind bespectacled face, topped with all gray hair in that crowd. He seemed to have been this class's most popular student. He had not been.
Bill Power was their U.S. history teacher and their High School football coach and, from the looks of it, much, much more.
This wry witted gentleman was returning for his ninth reunion to a place where he and the Class of 1952 had made local history and they all had stories to tell.
Stories probably told every five years, but they never wilt. They just get better. The hearty laughter and the moist eyes seemed proof of that.
If you're still with me, you'd swear this was another sports nostalgia piece. It is not. I'm trying to get at something a little deeper. And I'm nearly there.
I know people who have a disdain for such affairs and this is my effort to try to reach them. That a walk through this crowd would have cured any of their ill feelings.
That people who met as innocent youngsters can still find easy warmth with each other today. They may have slowed and faced untold battles to get this far, but on Saturday night at the Summit Inn they had come back to within an arms reach of where they all began. And there was a palpable feeling of safety there.
There may have been class struggles, petty jealousies or racial barriers in 1952 but I could not feel a shred of them in that room.
Ironically, the Bownsville High School Class of 1952 was holding their reunion just around the corner in the Summit that night. One guy had to speak to Edwin Santoro.
He had quarterbacked the Brownsville Brownies to a loss against Uniontown in his senior year and he wanted to meet the man who beat him. Old warriors become new friends in the right settings.
I did not say old men. I said old warriors. These are people who are in their sixties who can still see each other as children. It seems natural that way.
It is a magical moment to see two people who've been away from each other for a long time, searching, even straining, to find the child they once knew. Somewhere inside is that child and they know it.
The participants took turns standing and telling what's happened to them since they left school.
One man struck me most when he boldly stood and with measured eloquence gave his thumbnail autobiography. Before he sat down he added, that not many people knew him in high school, because he was rather quiet. That the years had produced in him, a sense of confidence.
I felt moved by this. Nearly a half-century had passed and he felt it was still important to him to let his high school classmates know he was ready to become part of the crowd.
Self-confidence, where there was none, still produces a roar of applause. He was one person, of many, I'm fairly sure, who went home happy that night.
The McLee family held their family reunion earlier this summer. I had the honor of not being asked to leave when they held their annual rite.
The feelings are the same. One needn't be a McLee to rejoice in the spirit of the McLees.
Class reunions and family reunions bring with them the same unifying feelings of comfort and mutual warmth.
When I've been to my own class reunions I've felt the same way.
I always remark that I have my Park School friends, my Lafayette friends and my Uniontown High friends. I'm happy to have my Uniontown friends. I'm happier to have my Lafayette friends and I'm happiest to have my Park School friends.
One of my Park School-through-Uniontown High classmates shared the delivery room with me. She's the most special.
Her father and my father became fast friends at our arrival 48 years ago. From Park School through that long walk to pick up that diploma I went to school with Patty L.
We are not close friends. We are just lifelong friends. And that is very important to me.
Important because I may make close friends across the world, but I will never know them as long as I've known her.
If you're still not convinced a school or a family reunion can spark something you just may be needing, I can understand.
If you feel, after all these years, you don't have anything in common with old classmates or family members, I have an idea.
Send for "Moose" Machinsky. He'll have everybody in the room feeling like old friends! Even if they're not.
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