“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”
 

— Eubie Blake

Yesterday I was among dozens of members of the University High School Class of 1965 gathered to celebrate our 50th reunion (OMG!).

It’s hard to admit that number, even to myself. It seems like it can’t be true, but I can chant back through periods of my life that do indeed add up to that hefty number since leaving the protective halls of the school in Manoa.

The bad news, I suppose, is that it’s been 50 years. The good news is that we’re still here, and still having fun.

We celebrated in the clubhouse high up in the gated Hawaii Loa Ridge community, courtesy of a classmate.

I’m not sure the final count of those attending, which included a number who flew in from the mainland or the outer islands. But we might have managed to involve half of our graduating class, which numbered something short of 90.

One of the guests was Miss Kunioka, who was the cafeteria manager during our years at the school (and many more, it seems). She’s 92, and quite remarkable. I watched her greet a number of my classmates as she had greeted me, by name, with questions about specific siblings, or in many cases parents. And she apparently can repeat this same performance with other classes as well. I doubt my memory was ever that good, and I can only hope for similar high functioning if the world and I ever reach that landmark age.

There were two other of our former teachers in attendance, Ms. Nakamura, who brought us the wonders of an experimental math curriculum developed at by the University of Illinois Committee on School Mathematics (we fondly recall UICSM, right?), and Richard Will, who after retirement became a prolific letter-to-the-editor writer on a variety of topics.

Here are two versions of our class photo, taken outside the small Hawaii Loa Ridge Club where we gathered with an immense amount of food and an equally huge store of memories. I’m sharing two of my photos because neither one caught good expressions of everyone, but taken together, I think they do the job. And, of course, I’m not in either one. Number 3 is a selfie after I abandoned the photographer role and ran back to get in someone else’s version of the class pic.

Click on any photo to see a larger version.

The rollicking affair continues with a breakfast this morning at an undisclosed location (not really “undisclosed” but it adds a layer of mystery).