My sister Leslie decided to attend her ##th reunion from Binghamton (NY) Central High School. If MY class had one last year, I didn’t know about it, AND I’m not sure I would have gone. The last one of mine I went to be more than a decade ago, when the Daughter was very small.
Leslie flew to Albany on a Wednesday night, crashed my choir rehearsal on Thursday, then, on Friday, she drove us to the Parlor City, its old nickname, dropping me off with a high school friend and her husband, while she stayed with a grade school chum of ours.
She picked me up a couple hours later and we attended a mixer at a place called Remlick’s. It was a bit overwhelming; a few dozen people from BCHS I hadn’t seen in decades, without the benefit of name tags. But it was a pleasant time, as the cobwebs of forgotten events began to dissolve.
Sharkey’s is a “contender to the throne of spiedie creator,” and that’s where we went Saturday at lunchtime, running into six of my sister’s classmates.
Leslie had attended to Binghamton University, then called SUNY Binghamton, and it was homecoming weekend. So we went to the campus and listened to three choral groups, each performing a piece my church choir has performed. The Women’s Chorus (Zion’s Walls by Aaron Copland), The Chamber Singers (Sicut cervus desiderat by Palestrina) and Leslie’s old group, the Harpur Chorale (Hark! I Hear the Harps Eternal arraigned by Alice Parker).
Onto Thirsty’s, where Leslie sees her old friends Cathy and Bobby and their family, then to a separate room, where a bunch of my First Ward chums were gathering. That was likely the high point, as I recognized several of them without assistance. I got to talk about genealogies, and libraries, and book writing, among the topics.
Round Two of the BCHS reunion was at the Holiday Inn. Now that I had seen many of these folks the day before, AND they had name tags, I was in a much more comfortable situation.
Leslie made the trip specifically for the high school reunion. That it, the First Ward reunion, AND the SUNY-B homecoming were all on the SAME DAY was astonishingly convenient, and wonderful coincidence.
if not for hurricane irma we would have been at the first ward reunion thus we will be in binghamton 10-25 til 11-1 to see the fall colors and get some cooler weather
Jessica S. said they want to do it again.
Roger,
There was a BCHS Classic of 1971 reunion last year. It was held the third weekend in September. I wasn’t able to attend. Sadly, I had previous comittment. Contact Sue Bovey Bump on Facebook and let her know. She was involved with the plans.
50th in 4 years! I plan to be there. – God willing. Maybe see you there.
Stay healthy 🙂
Roger, I am so glad that you chose to crash my High School Reunion. It was a jammed filled weekend but we did it and it was lots of fun.
Hopefully there will be a First Ward get-together again. Would like to spend more time catching up with that crowd too.
Homecoming is every year in October, and it was nice to be able to finally attend.
We are already working on our next High School reunion in 5 years.
Thanks again for sharing that weekend with me. Love you.
Leslie