It is a curious plan. The last survivor of the Lumberton High School Class of 1959, which holds its annual reunion tomorrow, will receive in perpetuity the large senior class photograph which once hung in the high school hallway.
I got the idea from a unit of World War II British Army officers who reunited each year and passed along a bottle of brandy to be retained by the surviving member of the group. Hopefully, the taste improved with age. What’s unique about our idea is that we ceremoniously place an adhesive gold star on the photo of each class member who passed away the preceding year. So far, we have placed 23 stars on the 50 photos of our classmates, the largest graduating class in Lumberton High School’s history at that time.
There’s a story behind the origin and condition of this photograph. When we were in school, senior photographs of classes beginning from at least the late 1930s covered the walls of the high school hallways. At some point, in the 1980s or 1990s, I’m not sure when or why, the decision was made to trash every photograph. The man in charge of maintenance, an individual that I had taught there when he was in the 9th grade, thankfully decided to retrieve and store as many of them as he could. Eventually, our class photo, in bad condition, ended up in my hands and I had it professionally restored to the extent possible. Incidentally, my student, now retired from his maintenance job, says that I’m the reason he “doesn’t know any English,” which he really does.
Nothing reminds you of your age like a high school reunion. Technically, I suppose it’s really the 65th anniversary of our 1959 graduation, but we fudge a little bit and call it our 65th reunion.
Ironically, the reunion was scheduled to be held in Purvis, which was our archrival back in the day; however, a recent restaurant fire there necessitated a last-minute change of venue. We met every five years until recently when, because of depleting numbers, we switched to once each year.
As we age, we realize that we should enjoy the life given to us while it is still ours. The journey that we have now is limited and passing with not much room for regrets. Although we will ultimately die and turn to dust, the life that we are currently living is here and is open to many opportunities. One of the best literary summaries of the reality that we all face is summed up in the famous lines from the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyyam” (1048-1131), a Persian poet, as translated by the English scholar, Edward FitzGerald in 1856:
The moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on; nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
Although some studies have shown that around 30% of people never attend their high school reunions, others have documented several reasons why the majority do. Oddly enough, the most “successful” people tend to attend their reunions. Perhaps it’s because they “network?” In any event, two of the most popular reasons for attending class reunions are nostalgia and self-reflection.
It’s funny how strong of a “motivator” nostalgia can be. When you finally get away from home, you start wanting to come back. The Southern writer, Thomas Wolf, was wrong when he said in his 1940 novel of the same name: “You Can’t Go Home Again.” We tend to view the past in an overly positive and nostalgic light. Reunions can reconnect you to your past and make your life more coherent.
And then, there’s self-reflection. Today, I saw on television that the actor, John Cusack is one of the Hollywood “elites” urging President Biden not to run again. I couldn’t help but think of Cusack’s 1977 movie, “Gross Point Blank,” where he attends his high school reunion for the first time and is forced to confront his disastrous life as a hired assassin. Reunions can prompt self-reflection as people consider how they’ve changed and where they are in their lives. I’ve read that the most significant reunions are the 10th, the 20th, and the 50th. The 10th is significant because it is often the first and the most “competitive;” the 20th is when most people are settled into their careers and can measure themselves against the progress and situation of others; and after the 50th, everyone can be themselves because nobody cares anymore.
Looking back, 1959 was an excellent time to graduate and be unleased onto the world. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States, and everybody “liked Ike.” Of course, it was the height of the “Cold War.” Children were still taught to “duck and cover” and to hide under their desks. A breakthrough, of sorts, occurred that year when the country was visited by the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, who was only one year away from removing his shoe and banging it on his desk in the United Nations in New York in protest to a speech he disagreed with. A general in the Russian army during World War II, and a communist administrator who had spent many years in the farming areas of the Ukraine after the war, Khrushchev was quoted during his visit to the States as saying that “The pigs in America are too fat and the turkeys are too small.” If you want to see an intriguing account of the cutthroat “palace politics” that took place when Stalin died in 1953 and which catapulted Khrushchev to power until he was purged in 1964, watch the movie, “The Death of Stalin” (2017), starring my favorite actor, Steve Buscemi, as Khrushchev.
Closer to home, a nuclear capable B-58 “Hustler” bomber had recently crashed in Oak Grove, killing one of the crewmembers whose parachute failed to open. Castro and Che had just come down from the Sierra Maestra Mountains in Cuba and ousted the dictator, Fulgencio Batista, only to begin a communist regime which lasts until this day. A few months later, I got into Guantanamo City before Castro shut the gate, cut off the water, and isolated the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. On the domestic scene, Alaska and Hawaii became states that year, the top grossing movie was “Ben Hur;” and the number one song was “A Big Hunk of Love” by Elvis Presley. Mattel introduced the Barbie doll; this was the year that Buddy Holly died, and the year the Vatican told Roman Catholics that they could not vote for Communists.
Economically, the situation sounds very wonderful, until you take inflation into account. For example, the average cost of a new home was $12,000; a gallon of regular gasoline was $0.25; and the average cost of a new automobile was $2,200. On the downside, the federal minimum wage was $1.00 per hour ($10.80 in today’s money); the median income for families was $5,400 and $2,600 for individuals.
I went to school with my class in grades 1-12, and they became my surrogate family. With few exceptions, I considered every boy in class to be my “best friend.” I suspect that we’ve kept up with each other more than the average graduating class. As far as what happened to us after graduation, I tend to divide us into two groups: those who stayed in Lumberton or the surrounding areas and those who left completely. I cast no aspersions on either group. There’s something to be said for the “familiar,” for the “known,” vs. the “unknown.” Some of us, however, were just born wanting to know what was on the other side of the hill – or, in my case, the world.
In those days, about one quarter of each class was made up of Baxterville Elementary School graduates who rode the bus to and from Lumberton every day. One of our classmates, all of 17 years old, was the regular bus driver, which certainly would not be permitted today. I’m not sure when or why it changed, but those students all go to Purvis now.
I’ve always felt that there were at least three traditional ways of rising out of poverty in the deep South: join the military, become a teacher, or go into the religious ministry. Looking at our senior class photograph not only brings a kaleidoscope of memories, but it confirms many of my suspicions about available career paths. For example, our class sent three members to Vietnam, and two came back. The lost classmate, a Marine, drowned while swimming a river on combat patrol. Another classmate became the Chief of the Boat on several nuclear submarines, one of the most demanding jobs in the Navy.
Our relatively small class produced at least ten schoolteachers, including three on the college level, during a time in which only 10 percent of women and 6 percent of men were college graduates. Women were certainly not cloistered, but my wife remembers being told by her parents that she had two choices for a college major: nursing or teaching. One of these teachers, a tenured professor at an elite southern university, was also, reportedly, based on his many overseas postings, an agent for the CIA. Our class only produced one minister, but it produced two minister’s wives, which is probably the most demanding profession.
In addition to many successful local professionals and dedicated wives who raised outstanding families, we were blessed with the classmate whose young husband was killed on Highway 11 about a mile south of the school; the basketball star who signed his homework with the caricature of a laughing wolf; the boy who never tied his shoes who became perhaps the tidiest of us all; as well as the blonde girl who kept her head in a science book and who became a pharmacist. One classmate moved to Louisiana and became a successful farmer. In his old age, he specializes in peas, which he gives away to his neighbors, already shelled.
There were the four cousins, all but one a gifted athlete, who dominated our sports teams. The other cousin dominated our classrooms with his quick mind and sharp wit. One girl went to Texas, became a flight attendant for Braniff International Airways in their heyday of miniskirts, plastic “dome” helmets, and two-tone calfskin boots, and eventually married a former Ole Miss quarterback. Another classmate became a successful mortician in Arkansas, but gave it up because, as he later confided in me, he “couldn’t deal with the death of young people.” One ran his own successful construction company for years, along with his father, and built many of the roads still in use in South Mississippi. There was only one marriage between class members, which has endured until this day, and at least one unrequited love affair. There was another classmate, now deceased and totally quiet, who probably didn’t say a dozen words out loud during four years of high school. Unfortunately, we also had several classmates who died quite young.
Two of our class members retired from state government after long careers of public service. Another became a successful lawyer and the subject of my envy even while he was in college. I, of course, was overseas in the Navy, but I heard somehow that he was taking Latin at Ole Miss, which had always been my dream. When our class, as part of its 50th anniversary reunion, donated a concrete bench to be placed in front of the high school, the lawyer classmate confidently predicted that it would eventually fall over, injure someone, and that we would all be sued. It hasn’t; we haven’t; and thankfully, none of us has ever been in jail as far as I know. If anyone had, it would probably have been me.
The first time I saw the reconstructed class photograph, I was surprised to remember that I had been elected “Class Reporter.” Unfortunately, I’m also the last surviving class officer. Such an honor was prescient, and somewhat delayed, as this column about the reunion is the first class “report” that I’ve ever written. I have kept a record of our reunions on my website (bennyhornsby.com), however, and you can check it out for class photographs from many of the reunions. You can see the members of our class age and the numbers dwindle through the years. Tempus fugit!
Light a candle for me.
—
Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
