Curious, isn't he?

Hey, Emily called him Curious George, not me. Mr. George Wallick, who, along with wife Cindy, runs the Whittier. I've taken my family there for a couple weekend breakfasts since the reunion. The food is good. And the ambience of early-morning grizzled truckers and an American flag on a stick in every table's flower vase is even better!

Plus a Wallick

Just added between Em and Jack: Cindy (Poore) Wallick and a Whittier Motel backdrop. Edging closer to the reunion up the street.

Swanson and Mansur

Emily and Jackie just before descending upon the reunion.

Sharon Hall

Sharon Hall-Hunt and her hubsman Doug

Johnny Mac!

John and Erin McIntire

The Costello Family

From L to R: Adam (16), John (same age as the rest of you), Lauren (age unknown), Aaron (12).

The '74 Float...plus word on John Politis and an old friend's passing

Thanks to Paul Kelley for this photo. I had not been aware that Dan Thomas, pictured above, passed away from cancer in 1998. John Politis was very close to him, and wrote: "Dan had completed his stint in the USNavy, a couple of years after completing St. Anselm's College (NH), and was back in civilian life, while maintaining a commission in the Naval Reserves. He was married and had 4 children." I remember Dan as a really lovely guy.

As for John: "I am married (23 years this July) and live in RI. I have two sons, 20 and 16. The elder has just completed his sophomore year at Lyndon State College (VT), where he is majoring in meteorology (yes, bring on the jokes!) and minoring in Computer Science. The younger is anxiously awaiting the end of his sophomore year of high school. Grey hairs, yep, got them, my friend."

A Mechanical Man in Overdrive: The Jonathan Shailor Update

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your story.

My story: Graduated from UMass-Amherst with a B.A. in "Communication Education." Spent my junior year at Roehampton Institute in London. After graduation, taught English, Drama and Communication courses at high schools in Amherstand in Nashua, NH. Spent 2 years in Jamaica (West Indies) teaching similar courses and getting into trouble. Returned to UMass for Master's and Ph.D. in Communication (just couldn't get enough of that place!). Taught at Ithaca College 1989-1994, then at University of Wisconsin-Parkside 1994-present. Got married to Catherine McConnell (clincal psychologist, and no, we did not meet "on the couch") in 1996. Three cats, no kids (yet).

I've enjoyed your e-mails and the bits of information that have trickled through about various classmates. Please say "hi" to all at the big do.

A few scattered memories of jr. and high school days that you can feel free to make part of any of the trivia games that you guys decide to play:

*Admiring Linda Shactman's fudgies (I'll let you explain that one).

*Does anyone remember what I carried in that briefcase? (Somebody wrote a Sound-Off article that described me as moving like "a mechanical man in overdrive")

*Getting Lee Hodge in trouble by persuading him to answer Mr. Dorman's study hall attendance call with "In attendance, SIR!"

*Freshman year: appearing with Bill Thompson in the one-act play contest:"Hear Ye! Hear Ye!" written and directed by now-famous David Morse. Bill and I played a pair of human ears (I believe I was the right ear). We were shirtless, and wore only pantyhose below. Zowie. A few young ladies held center stage as "brain cells." I'd be interested to know if anyone at the reunion was a brain cell.

That's all for now!

Jon

Notes from Bob:

Jonathan's reference above has to do with the time he and I were standing over a large bowl of candy at Linda's Bat Mitzvah during our Jr. High years. Jon remarked: "Gee, I really like the fudgies." According to him, I then loudly announced to the gathered multitudes of kids, "Jonathan Shailor loves Linda Shactman's fudgies!" I have no recollection of this, thankfully.

Jon recently got a bunch of press for his production of Shakespeare in a prison with inmates as actors. There was a big New York Times article, but that you would probably have to pay to read if you can find it. There is an account of the happening in a "lesser' journal at:
http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2005/05/29/local/iq_3540689.txt

Major Ray Gamble and Mrs. Gamble's Piano School!

This email from Ray and Sharon (Fowler) Gamble actually came in on the day of the Reunion (May 28) and is just the sort of update that would be excellent to receive from many of the rest of you, if you would be so kind and forthcoming.

Hi Bob,

Sorry for the last minute answer to your evite to your home for the reunion...We were really hoping we could come, but will not be able to. We held out as long as we could, trying to make it work, so hopefully we get some credit for that. Here's an update for all of you who will be there:

Ray: Retired from the army as a Major and now is Department Head of the History department at Portsmouth Christian Academy. Loves his job. Works hard. Loves summers off.

Sharon: Operates Mrs. Gamble's Piano School and is also state coordinator for a women's ministry called Moms In Touch International.

Our family: We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary this November, have two daughters, a dog, a cat, and a fish. We live in Dover, NH, about two minutes from the school where Ray teaches. Our oldest daughter, Kathryn, attends Liberty University and is majoring in Psychology. She is getting married to a great guy this December. She will graduate in June of next year. Our younger daughter, Mary, attends George Mason University, and is majoring in English. She is considering becoming a lawyer and, as a teenager, certainly demonstrated a remarkable aptitude in arguing, so we think it is a great career choice.

That about does it. Say "hi" to everyone for us and it sounds like you all are going to have a great time!

Thanks to the reunion the night before, these gals are, quite simply, glowing. They've all had plenty of photo ops from the DeScenza Herth camera. Might there be other attendees who took photos of the many others present that night? If so, PLEASE post them...or you can even send them to me and I'll do your dirty work. I have more witless sarcasm to spare, I assure you.

Vito (also known as "The Don" by his mommy to his right) has a gig bodyguarding post-reunion Dianes. You do not mess with Vito. This was taken the next morning when a few of us met at a Beverly Starbucks (don't forget to visit www.spacehijackers.co.uk/starbucks/ or http://www.ihatestarbucks.com/).

I swear I know this girl from somewhere...betcha 6-to-1.

This is a one of a number of photos that came out too dark, so I will spare you most of them. But this showed some good Trudy gam, so it has real merit. Kathye and Meg too!

It must be getting late. Anne would seem to be as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (not quite sure if that's an appropriate term...) as ever, but Trudy, Deb Wagner and Annemarie look like they've entered the last stages of a very lost weekend. Reunions can do that to you.

Mignon and various other people.

No, I never did lose those extra 30 pounds for the event....here is the photographic proof. But I ask you: who needs to do that when you've got double rainbows following you around? (My right foot, not pictured, is planted in dogshit, however.)

Well now...might that be Mignon stage left? I believe that makes it 4. "Ubiquitous" is the polite word to describe such a presence. With Mary and Kim.

I have read that Chris is "responsible for managing regulatory risk through the development and advocacy of generator/supplier positions in the design of efficient bulk power markets." If he is mismanaging the positioning of his right hand in this photo, it appears it has not generated any concern from Diane.

Joyce, Meg and Deb exhibit varying degrees of amusement. Joyce: bemused. Meg: ecstatic. Deb: impatient. The source of such "emotion"? Sam Bick has just promised them a lap dance.

Kim, Mignon, and Arlene. I'm getting the feeling that Mignon is something of a photo-hog. Let's start our count now. That's 3 already, right?

Two beauties back together again: Diane (1st Runner-Up Miss USA 1978) and Anne (HWRHS Homecoming Queen 1975). Defying the notion that anything "fades."

Diane receives some valuable support from Mignon. It is sometimes difficult to stand while one hand encircles the stem of some glassware, you know?

The night before the 30th. Mignon, Mary, and Sandy, plus hands belonging to two other martini-mommas, toast the silly high school boys they left behind.

Here be some pre-reunion revellers, namely Annemarie and Meg. Yes, they are old enough to drink. And pose.

The First Post: Will it stick?

I'm middle-aged...how 'bout you?

As previously advertised on the Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School Class of 1975 30th Reunion Evite, I've taken the dubious next step of establishing this weblog (or blog) as a place for all my crassmates to seek contact info on each other, disseminate details about their lives since graduation, reminisce about their spud-like teenage selves, and generally foul up the net with inane/profound chatter. It's a multi-faceted soapbox, if you will (and you should!), wherein we can give each other the virtual hugs necessary to keep the buzz from the May 28th reunion going in the hope that we might do it again sooner rather than later.

I mean, why see each other for a measly few hours and drop each other like hot latkes? Like every damn reunion I've been to, the latest ended way too early (thanks especially, no doubt, to proofed lubricants). That's not optimal if you were having fun. And who wasn't? This blog will hopefully be the engine enabling MORE FUN (see, I can make a little of it happen simply by putting words in caps...IT'S EASY!), as well as a sense of community among people who have more things in common (starting with the antiseptic halls they used to walk through for 4 years) than they might ever have wished to acknowledge before.

Hey, man, we have a shared history here! So let's maybe work that into the future and use it to entertain and illuminate. Or, failing that, to arrange some mini get-togethers where George Wallick can lunch with Paul Ricker...or Randy Diggle can hang with Meg Lukens!

You think I'm kidding? OK, maybe a little. But what might have seemed like unlikely peer pairings 30 years ago can indeed be a possibility today. I already have promises from Pete Locke, Diane Dunn, Anne Sullivan, and Bill Thompson to meet up this summer "famille a famille." Do you think I hung out with these people in High School? Heck no! I gave Diane up for lost in 7th grade, and now I find out she was in music promotion for years post-graduation. Think we have anything to talk about now? You bet! And how funny/cool was it when she showed up on Memorial Day, two mornings after the reunion, in parade dress uniform with a blank-filled rifle with which she insisted my kids wake up late-sleepers in the neighborhood? I lean toward being a pacifist Dad, but anything for Diane, you know?

This is the type of thing that reunions can engender. Opportunities for laughs AT THE VERY LEAST.

Meanwhile, in the recent present, we had 55 fellow grads attend the reunion. That's just over 25% of the class. Meaning close to 75% didn't experience the benefits inherent in the event. But how about getting many of them (you!) to experience the benefits "deriving" from the event? That's also what this blog is for.

I've never hosted one of these online journals. I think I may have a lot to learn here. So I ask you all now: would you be so good as to climb aboard this word train as it leaves the Hamilton-Wenham depot and tracks its way backwards and forwards through time? It's no fun travelling alone.

--Bob Dubrow