Thoughts About
Our 30th Reunion ...
by Rodney Hammack

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Mystery of "Hands Picture" solved:  For years many of us in the Class of 1971 speculated about a photo from our senior yearbook.  It depicted two hands.  Although the female hand had been clearly labeled as belonging to Connie Dunagan, no one seemed to recall the identity the owner of the male hand.  Some speculated it belonged to Jacky Willis, others thought it was Darrow Cobb.  At the 30th reunion the questioned was answered - the hands belong to Connie and Darrow.  The two even recreated the hand photo (minus their class rings).

What can you say about an event that tugs at your heart the way a reunion can?  How can I express the feelings I experienced as I watched my former classmates enter the cafeteria at Forsan High and greet each other?

Words are sometimes so inadequate.

Ever since I attended my first class reunion back in 1996, I've asked myself how people who had known each other so well (as we had) could lose touch.

Maybe we never did ...

Maybe we always were together.  In our hearts, in quiet memories that waited patiently for a time to come forward.

I know that, in the years since graduation, I would find myself remembering some little episode from my school years.  Little snippets of memory that seemed to pop out at the oddest time.  And they always brought a smile.

Way back in high school ... I was the quiet one.  I guess I was shy.  Sometimes I was the clown, just to get attention.  Sometimes I just observed my classmates.  

It didn't really hit me until years later that I had known some of them for so long.   Debbie, Janice, Bobby, Harvey, Lea Oma, Gloria - we started school together.  The fall of 1959.  We graduated the spring of 1971 after spending portions and all of three decades together.

For our 30th reunion, we met at the old high school.  We met in a cafeteria that did not exist in 1971.  The cafeteria that we had known is now a series of computer classrooms.  Only the murals on the wall remain to confirm that this was where we had laughed and talked over meals of chili dogs and meat loaf..

When we toured the school, we struggled to piece the puzzle together.  Where had the old gym been?  What happened to our old lockers?

As seniors in 1971, we had overseen the installation of a tiled mural of a buffalo on the floor of the main entranceway.  Today the floor is all carpeted.  We wondered  where the mural had gone.  Had it been ripped up during the renovation.  Or did it lie buried underneath the carpet - like many of our memories had over the years?

Some of my classmates I had met during previous reunions - Jacky in 1906 and 1997, Marcy, Jackie, Connie and Steve in 1997.  This reunion was the first time I had seen Karen (O'Dell), Karen (Stovall), Darrow, Lea Oma and Gloria in three decades.

Had we changed?  Yes, but we the spirit we felt in the waning days of our senior year were still there.

They will allways be there.

Rodney Hammack
August 28, 2001