A Few Thoughts from Bruce...
The 40th Class Reunion of the Class of 1969 was an experience to remember! If you were unable to attend, you were greatly missed. Your ears should have been burning. We probably talked about you! We talked about old times, fun times and sad times. We laughed and hugged, and then we laughed and hugged some more! It was like opening gifts. With each person who walked in, you would hear,
“Who could that be?”
“It kind of looks like…NO, it can’t be!”
“Oh, my gosh! You have not changed at all!”
“Wow! Are you really who I think you are?”
Sometimes the name tags were the saving grace! The shock of seeing gray hair, wrinkles and few extra pounds around the middle soon faded away. Within minutes we were all “18 years-old” again. The first night was just for catching up. The second night we did a slideshow of pictures, faces and events with everyone participating! What one person could not remember, another could! Of course, the evening could not be complete without Dave Landry doing a great impersonation of one of our favorite faculty.
Of the close to fifty classmates who attended, thirty still live in South Dakota. Dick and Ruth (Lamphere) Ledbetter came the furthest from Hay Market, Virginia (near DC). We had representation from eleven other states.
Ruth (Lamphere) Ledbetter, Cheryl (Anderson) Schara, and Cathy (Holland) Hafner received the Least Changed recognition for the ladies. Randy Bush and Linn Hendrickson were the Least Changed for the guys! Yeah, right! It had to be rigged!
Butch Lehto was lost - but found by Grant Simons on the day of the reunion! Great story! Butch, bless his soul, received a Sugar Daddy award for having the most kids, (nine) and grand-kids (twelve). Gary Weins was a close second with six children and eleven grand-kids. The majority of those who attended had two children. All but seven had grandchildren.
Twelve of our classmates who attended are retired, three are single, five are divorced, forty are married and two are widowed. We sadly recognized the seventeen classmates who have left us.
Sixteen hardy hikers climbed to the top of Bear Butte and ten happy hackers hit the golf ball around in Boulder Canyon on Saturday. The hikers drank a lot of water on the way up. Not sure if the hackers could even identify water!
Jan (Trumpe) and Ross Lamphere provided us with excellent accommodations for our event, and South Dakota reciprocated with excellent weather. Cathy (Holland) Hafner provided name tags with pictures, a slideshow, photos of the hikers, copies of Bear Butte Breezes, and even our May 1969 Sturgis Tribune Newspaper to read. It was fun reading about ourselves and what life was like in Sturgis forty years ago. Thank you to Pat (Komes) and Jerry Casteel who provided the sound system. Pat was great in getting mailers put together and sent out for our event also. A special thanks to all the Reunion Committee for all the work in putting this together. The food was great, the laughs were plentiful and the memories are priceless.
We hope to keep the web site open as long as we can afford it. Keep us up-dated on your life and don’t forget, “we are connected.” We share the simple common bond of growing-up together. We may not all live in the same town anymore, and we certainly can’t stay in touch every day, but beside our family, the Class of 69 is the next closest thing. See you at the 50th!
